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Kyosuke left the library building and tucked what looked like a small parcel into his leg pouch. If Amegakure was known for one thing, that one thing would obviously be the rain, so the library had a habit of rolling their books up in plastic to keep the rain out. It always fell, day and night, summer as winter. An outsider would probably think that it would snow during winter, not rain. It wouldn’t be a stupid thought as such, the problem was only that the temperature very rarely dropped low enough for the raindrops to actually freeze into snowflakes, so what they got instead was damn-near-ice-cold rain instead of the luke warm rain they had in the summer and the just irritatingly cold rain in between. Once Kyosuke had asked the adults at the orphanage how it could rain almost all the time at this one spot, and (because even as a small child Kyosuke had an eye for strange things) why someone would build a village right on top o such a spot. He’d been yelled at for being a smartass, and sent to the library to figure it out for himself.
Of course, the finer points of air streams and humidity transference was a bit too heavy a subject for a child, even one so eager to learn as Kyosuke. Heäd never even seen most of the characters in those texts before and didn’t even know where to begin to figure out what they meant. They had been told that if they needed help they should ask the librarian, and so that was what he did. The old librarian was an old crone. He didn’t remember her name, but she looked 500 years old, only held together by her glasses and wrinkles. He’d asked her about the meaning of some characters, and it hadn’t taken her long to figure out that translating the whole thing one character at a time would take years (and quite like most of her age, she figured she didn’t really have that long). She asked why he was reading such a difficult text, he told her and she did her best to explain that Ame was situated in a kind of area where many winds met and as they clashed they could either go up and away again (which sometimes happened with warmer winds and resulted in sunny days), but most often would go down, bringing the rain with them. She as well had no idea why anyone would build a village in such a place, and as the child pointed out, she agreed that it did sound pretty daft. Kyosuke had liked the old crone. She wasn’t really that fond of children as such, which he would understand as he grew a bit older, the younger kids didn’t really get the whole “sit still and be quiet”-rule of the place. She did however act fairly, and as long as you obeyed the rules, you could pretty much spend all day in there, no problem.
Kyosuke had spend many days in the library. Sadly, she’d died while Kyosuke was still a kid and replaced with a younger man who really didn’t like questions.
From the library Kyosuke made his way back toward the orphanage. He wasn’t going home, and even took a slight detour to always have at least one building between himself and the place. Even if someone would spot him, he’d be too far away to go after just like that. Past the orphanage he traversed a few buildings and then quickly turned and disappeared into one of them. There was an unused spaceright below one of the floors, like someone had planned to build another room for their apartment and almost finished it, only forgotten to put an actual door in and then forgotten about the whole thing altogether. While the mystery of it was intriguing, Kyosuke was scared to bring it up, afraid that someone would figure out they were missing a room, knock the wall down and claim it. So he kept quiet about it.
It wasn’t like they were missing much. There wasn’t even enough room for any furniture, and even Kyosuke who was still on the small side couldn’t stretch out all the way in any direction really. But it was a nice little quiet place to read and try to forget about life.
He opened his bag and unrolled his book. It was a collection of traditional fairy tales. He enjoyed the, and wondered how much (if anything) of it was actually just history, passed from mouth to mouth and corrupted over the centuries. The first in the book was about the gallant shapeshifting Ogata Shuma Hiroyuki who could turn himself into a toad, he fell in love with the beautiful slug princess and fought an evil snake wizard. He wondered if they could be ancient ninjas, but from a time before that was even a thing, and if something like that could’ve ever happened.
A few hours later his stomach started to groan. He was hungry. He hadn’t even had a chance to eat breakfast, and he didn’t have any money to buy food. Instead, he picked up the book again and read the next story as the drumming sound of the rain drowned out any noise coming from outside…
Five days later
To be at the meeting place at 5 in the morning meant getting up before the sun. Kyosuke wasn’t much of a morning person to begin with, and meeting so early was rough on him. He really had to drag himself out of bed. He’d been so anxious about meeting his team and his new sensei that he’d had a hard time falling to sleep, which he was now paying for. His eyes only opened enough during breakfast (which he had to steal for himself as no one else was up quite so early, he did react to not seeing Sadako, but knowing her she’d probably done breakfast already). He had to dip his head in the cold water he brushed his teeth in just to wake up properly.
He left the orphanage with time to spare. He usually liked to arrive early, it gave him some time to familiarize himself with the surroundings of a new place and if something should happen on the way he’d have some time to sort it out without getting late. He hadn’t travelled long before a blurry shadow crossed his path a house or so ahead of him. It was still a bit dark and foggy, but that blurry silhouette was very familiar to him. “Sadako..? No, don’t tell me they put us in the same team.” He said to himself and picked up the pace so he wouldn’t lose sight of her. True enough, she headed right toward the Lumine building and once there quickly identified the only person in the vicinity that could pass for a jounin. He circled the building once just to make sure before he too made the last bold leap and landed close to his new sensei. He had misjudged the jump somewhat and had to steady himself against the wall to not fall after landing, but nothing worse than that.
He looked up at the adult woman, expecting a scolding for not landing perfectly. She didn’t say a word and her eyes were strangely non-committed, like she was really just watching for the time being. She gave him a nod, he nodded back and then, still only using her head, she pointed him toward where Sadako was. He staggered over there, a bit blindsided, that wasn’t how adults were supposed to act, but it wasn’t all bad.
As their third member finally arrived Sensei made a short introduction. He wasn’t fond of the idea of getting an inexperienced jounin, but didn’t say anything. Complaining would probably not fix it, and in a worst-case scenario he’d get to experience what getting beaten to a pulp by a jounin felt like, and he wasn’t really up for new experiences.
Sadako was called first to introduce herself. Kyosuke could not muster up much enthusiasm. He knew her already. He thought he’d take the time to think about the answer to sensei’s question, why did they want to become shinobi? He honestly didn’t know, he had never thought about it. At the orphanage they’d have him tested and then trained with all the other potential ninjas, why? Because that was how it was.
Suddenly he was jerked out of his thought process by Sadako’s words and he couldn’t help but squint as he looked at her “I don't have a clan…” she said. “Of course you don’t have a clan, you’re an orphan, that’s pretty much the definition of it”. It even got worse, she hadn’t thought about why she wanted to be a ninja either (he figured), she just regurgitated the same like they’d heard a few days earlier at graduation about sacrificing so other didn’t have to. If his whole body could roll its eyes, that would be what he looked like.
Before he was done with that set of mental gymnastics sensei’s eyes turned to him. He snapped out of it, opened his mouth and began to speak, but his mind was racing through fifteen different things he could say and his mouth couldn’t keep up. He stumbled and mumbled for a second before he paused, took a breath and put his thoughts in order.
“I’m Shoma Kyosuke, an orphan like her” he said as he let his gaze wander, avoiding eye contact, and nodded his head in the direction of Sadako “!...” and he bit his teeth together for a microsecond before he continued “...also like to read, and…” he sighed, wondering what else he should say. “I can do medical ninjutsu”.
With another sigh, a heavy one, he focused his eyes on the mortal between two bricks in the wall next to sensei. “I want to become a ninja because…” he fell silent for a second, his mind working like a computer trying to come up with an acceptable answer, but he just couldn’t think of anything “...it is what I can do”. He gave a small smile that seemed to say “yup, that’s it” and a small shrug and turned to the team’s third genin.
Katon.
Ninpo: Chakura Kyūin no jutsu (Chakra absorption technique)