Miyu stands outside the building, hands tucked into the warm sleeves of her yukata as she waits for the doors to open.

  “What time does the class start?” the sudden voice to her left has her jolting in place, and when she half-turns she sees a woman standing beside her. She’s peering at the door before them, a thin brow raised as she places her hands on her hips.

  “Twelve-thirty,” Miyu says once she’s found her voice.

  The woman turns to her, long red hair swaying only slightly with the movement.

  “Ah, it’s almost time. Hopefully they haven’t pushed it back after that whole drama last night, eh?”

  Miyu smiles politely, and points at the notice posted in a window to the left of the door.

  “I believe the owner just had to step out for a moment.” The notice says nothing about last night, but that’s not unusual.

  “I really hate that damn alarm,” the woman huffs, “been tellin’ Minato to disable it and let me apply a chakra alert system. No point lettin’ intruders know you’re on to them.”

  Miyu cocks her head, eyeing the woman curiously, “That seems logical,” she comments, “that way ninja will be alerted without waking the majority of the village.”

  The woman nods, and then pouts, “Ah. But in cases of actual intrusions, it’s probably best to have all civilians up and aware of the situation.”

  Miyu hums in agreement, looking back to the door before them, “You’re right.”

  “So,” the woman’s gaze is on Miyu now, “this your first calligraphy class?”

  “Yes,” she offers a polite smile, “I’ve been looking forward to it for a little while.”

  “Iori-sensei is just the best,” the woman beams, and Miyu finds herself blinking against the sheer positivity she radiates. Oddly, she feels a sense of déjà vu.

  Before she can place it, a grey-haired woman – Iori-sensei, Miyu realises – arrives, and unlocks the door.

  Miyu and the woman file in behind her.

  The room they’re led to is traditional. Tatami floors, thin sliding doors, and low tables set an even distance from each other.

  “Take a seat,” Iori-sensei says with a smile, and Miyu tentatively settles down beside the only other present classmate.

  In the back right hand corner of the room, she watches with interest as the woman unpacks her own paper, brushes, and ink.

  Miyu begins to pull her own things from the satchel she’s brought along, glad that she took the time to invest in a few good-quality wares.

  “Ah… Sugawara-san, was it?” Iori-sensei approaches her with a smile.

  “Yes…?” Miyu smiles politely, puzzled.

  “You don’t wish to sit closer to the front, dear?”

  Miyu’s lip twitches, and she wonders who this red-haired woman is, to garner this… defensiveness? From the teacher.

  “Ah, I’d prefer to stay at the back,” she confesses with a placating smile, “but I can move across if you’d like?”

  “Leave her, Iori-sensei,” the woman is already absorbed in grinding her ink, tongue peeking from the corner of her mouth as she narrows violet eyes at the stone.

  The teacher bows and offers no further explanation as she retreats to the front of the room. Miyu sits in silence as the other members of the class file in.

  Today will be her first attempt at a new hobby. Shogi – well, it’s everything to her. But her discussion with the Nara has made her realise that her prospects for the time being aren’t great. She doesn’t know when, or if, she will ever play in tournaments again.

  A small part of her acknowledges that shogi is tied intimately to traumatic parts of her life. She loves it, she’ll always love it, but the thought of working on other skills isn’t unwelcome.

  Itachi’s close brush with death had made her realise her dependence on him, made her realise how much she misses her friends from the flower districts. Perhaps she will make a few acquaintances in this class, and be less reliant on Itachi and people who associate with her because of him.

  Women trickle in, and Miyu watches them from beneath her lashes as she grinds her own ink, careful to keep her sleeves clean.

  “Today,” begins Iori-sensei without fanfare, “we will introduce ourselves to the kanji that make up our names.”

  Miyu watches as the woman holds her sleeve in place with one hand while her other guides a beautiful brush in sweeping, practiced lines.

  “Mariko is my given name,” their instructor says as she sets aside her brush. Slowly, she lifts her paper, and Miyu admires the traditionally styled characters.

  “Using the characters for ‘real’, ‘village’ and ‘child’, I have given each consistency to align with my own attempts at a steady and calm peace of mind.”

  Miyu watches as she sets the work down, offering the class a smile.

  “Today I don’t want you to think about the technicalities of calligraphy. Today, I want you to feel your name, the ink, the paper. Use the brush to communicate who you are through your name.”

  Miyu presses her lips together, sceptical. Feel her name. Right.

  She looks down at her blank parchment, and wishes desperately for the comforting grid of her shogi board. Swallowing down her hesitance, Miyu picks up her brush, and dips it in ink.

  Her hand remains hovering over the page as she tries to think.

  Mi, written as beautiful, because whoever named her between her absent minded mother and her drunken father, had been as unoriginal as anything.

  Yu, written as excellence, and Miyu again wonders who selected it for her. Maybe the registration office, or perhaps one of the harried, home-taught midwives who no doubt helped birth her.

  “It’s gonna drip all over your page if you leave it any longer,” the red-haired woman murmurs, eyes not straying from her own ink-stroked page.

  Miyu converts her surprised jerk into a movement that places her brush back over the ink stone, and hopes her cheeks aren’t flushed.

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  “Don’t think about it so hard,” the woman says, sparing Miyu a slim slip of a bright smile, “just write your name how you like to see it, for now.”

  Miyu swallows again, nodding. She picks up her brush, mindful of her sleeves again, and dips into the ink once more.

  Without giving herself time to hesitate, she lets her arm guide the brush.

  The characters form in thick, even lines, until her name is glistening up at her wetly.

  She sets the brush back down, and suppresses a wince as she looks at her work. It’s neat. That’s all she can say for it right now.

  There’s no artful flare that had been so distinct in Iori-sensei’s work, nor any of the finesse of the woman beside her, who seems to be drawing circular diagrams of sorts.

  It’s almost a direct conversion of how she would write her name with a pen. Plain, and rather boring to look at.

  Gods, she should have just stuck to shogi.

  “Not bad,” says the woman beside her, looking away from her work for the first time. “You have a steady hand, and your pressure on the brush is consistent.”

  “Thank you,” Miyu tries not to cringe looking at the fast drying ink, “I think it’s rather lacking, but I suppose I’m taking this class for a reason.”

  “Hah!” the woman explodes in a laugh so loud that half the class startles. A few women turn around with a scowl, and Miyu exudes a slight, polite smile, and an air of apology as they do. She wouldn’t have wanted to be jolted mid-brushstroke either.

  “Right you are,” the woman is smiling at the side of her face, and Miyu feels rather like the sun is hot against her skin. “You’ll only get better – Miyu-san, is it?”

  Embarrassed that the woman is reading her rather lacklustre calligraphy, Miyu nods.

  “Thank you…”

  The woman blinks for a moment, seemingly surprised at having to introduce herself.

  “Kushina,” she replies with an easy smile. It’s beautiful, creasing the slight lines around her mouth and the outer corners of her eyes. Miyu wonders if she’ll ever smile enough to have lines of her own one day.

  “Thank you, Kushina-san,” she bows slightly, “I will work hard to improve.”

  They write their names a few more times, and then start writing assigned words. Around forty minutes in, most of the class are talking between themselves in low voices.

  Miyu listens to them chat about their children, or upcoming dates. Part of her is comforted by the sheer civilian mundanity that settles around her.

  Another part, a smaller part, whispers that she’s never been one of them, can never be like any of these women.

  She’s grown up in dark, forgotten places, abandoned by the educated, the rich, those with any other options.

  Her eyes skim the room, and she wonders if any of these women know what it’s like to be five, starving and cold and alone, or twelve, grief-stricken and afraid.

  She guesses that the only point of similarity may lie in being sold. Miyu, at least, was not under any illusions that night outside the Okiya. But some of these women, talking and laughing and discussing their upcoming weddings? Have some of them been sold by their clans, or by the men in their lives?

  The thought only makes her unsettled, so she pushes it away.

  Miyu doesn’t fit with these people.

  But… she doesn’t quite fit with ninja, either.

  Once, she would have fit in the cracks that she’d been born in, but she’ll never return to those if she gets a say in it.

  Sighing softly, she packs her things and neatly tucks away her discomfort. Yesterday has her rattled still, and it infuriates her to no end. Itachi hadn’t returned last night, and she had only heard that the alarm had been falsely triggered by Chikako at an early hour of the morning.

  Spotting the little crow on her balcony had almost brought her to tears – Miyu hadn’t seen her since before the fire, before Konoha. Probably an intentional move by Itachi, but gods, had she missed the summons.

  “My dear Mi-chan,” Chikako had nuzzled her smooth, soft head into Miyu’s palm, “I can only stay long enough to reassure you that Itachi is fine, and that the village has been cleared as safe.”

  “Thank you,” Miyu spoke around the lump in her throat with difficulty, “I’ve missed you, Chikako-san.”

  The bird blinked at her once with those beady black eyes, and with one more nuzzle to her palm, disappeared.

  “Lovely to make your acquaintance, Kushina-san,” Miyu bows to her briefly as the woman breaks into a wide smile.

  “You too, Miyu-san!”

  With that, she begins the walk to the shogi school, feeling off-balance from that evening, and her revelations in the class. Civilians – those outside the flower districts – have never been quite like her. But the thought of walking into a club that’s not Rin’s makes her chest ache, so she dismisses the idea before it gets the chance to cross her mind properly.

  Her thoughts drift instead, to the pinboard she so often frequents when delivering lunch to Itachi. So much crime, in such a prosperous village. Most of it located in and around the flower district and it’s surrounding areas. Drugs, disappearances, and – missing children.

  Konoha, she thinks grimly, has deep, dark cracks – just like any other city.

  Miyu enters the courtyard, smiling at the gate guard distractedly.

  She’d think nothing of this interaction usually.

  But the guard’s returned smile catches her eye.

  In the weeks that Miyu’s been teaching here, the guard rotations have been constant. A squad of nine ninja operating in teams of three, switching once a day on rotation. She doesn’t know their names, with the exception of Hiyori-san, a friendly chunin woman who sometimes helps her clean up.

  They chat occasionally, and Miyu likes to think her an acquaintance by now.

  This ninja, though. He’s middle aged, with a deep scar stemming from the corner of his mouth to his ear in a pale white line. His face remains impassive, even when children start petty squabbles, or when his teammates grin at him.

  Miyu’s never seen so much as a twitch from his stony countenance.

  She tries not to do a double take at the sight of his straight white teeth.

  Odd.

  Gods, is she that distracted from yesterday? She needs to get a grip.

  She sets up the courtyard, readying her chalk board and placing the shogi sets on the tables. She uses the time to ground herself, knowing that she must be put together by the time her class arrives.

  The children file in, chattering between themselves as they settle in their usual places.

  “Good afternoon,” Miyu calls over the noise, “please be seated and we’ll begin today’s session. If anyone is cold, raise your hand at any time and I’ll bring you a blanket.”

  They take their seats and Miyu hands out around five blankets before she begins.

  “Today,” she finds her gaze drawn by the figure of Hiyori-san, who seems to be staring at the children from the cover of the surrounding path. “We will be learning a few basic openings. Can anyone tell me what an opening is?”

  Seven little arms raise, and Miyu points to a girl towards the back left of the boards.

  “Openings are the name for the first few moves of a game,” she says with a bashful smile. Her dimpled cheeks flush pink and Miyu lets herself think ‘cute’ for just a moment before she responds.

  “Correct, Hanabi-chan! Openings are important because they allow you to set the tone of the game you want to play.”

  She looks over the bright little faces, and picks one.

  “Giyu-kun,” the boy settles his solemn gaze on her, and she refrains the urge to storm over and squish his cheeks. “We spoke about this last week. Do you remember the different playing styles we went over?”

  He nods, and speaks up in his high-pitched, grave voice, “Yes, sensei. We spoke about aggressive openers, and defensive openers. I… I know you mentioned a few others, but I cannot recall.”

  He looks like that upsets him.

  “Well done, Giyu-kun. I certainly mentioned offensive and defensive opens. I also mentioned other tactical openings, but today we will only be going over three or four very simple ones.”

  She smiles at him and he nods, shoulders easing out of their short, tense line.

  “I’m going to come around to each of your tables with a few different games. I want you to move your pieces according to the paper I hand you. While you play the game out, pay attention to where the paper is telling you to move, understood?”

  They nod, and she reaches for the stack of papers on her own shogi table.

  “Let me know when you finish playing this game out, and I will assign you another.”

  She walks between the tables, handing each student a slip of paper. As she passes the eastern side of the courtyard, she notices Hiyori-san still watching.

  “Raise your hand if you have any questions,” Miyu says, and then smiles, “you may begin.”

  She wanders over to the female guard, cocking her head curiously. Something about today hasn’t felt right, and it’s not just the aftermath of last night. It can’t be.

  “Everything okay, Hiyori-san?”

  As she nears, she notes the slight slant of the woman’s shoulders, the miniscule downturn of her lips.

  “Yes,” she says, offering a smile.

  Miyu doesn’t ask why she’s watching class today instead of their surroundings. Instead, she decides to ask a simple question.

  “How is Toru-san? Still running around like a madman?” she pairs it with an empathetic smile, and watches as Hiyori raises a hand to brush her sandy blonde hair behind an ear.

  Miyu’s eyes catch on three things.

  First, Hiyori-san’s ears are unblemished. Not a single speck of jewellery, nor indication of a piercing in sight. When Miyu last saw her, she had two piercings in each ear, and quirky, mismatched earrings in each.

  Second, the woman’s left hand – the one she used to shift her hair – is… tanned. Well, tanned with the exception of a few pale bands around her fingers. Konoha has not had sun strong enough to leave an impression within the four days since she last saw her.

  And third, the woman’s beauty mark – a tiny brown speck, just to the corner of her mouth – is on the wrong side of her face.