He left the garden the way he always left dreams, by letting it soften and not by tearing it.
The violet thinned, the swing stilled, and the market's shutters closed behind him until there was only the garden's violet, then only his room. The peach that had not stayed. The words that had not been said before and then had been said, properly.
'I will wait for the tomorrow where you will bring a real one.'
He opened his eyes in his room. The shadow clone breathed in his bed a hand's breadth away, chest moving, face slack. It had held his shape while he was gone, nothing more. It had not been to the desert or the garden. He let it go with a thought, and it came apart with a small quiet rush behind the teeth, bringing nothing but the memory of lying still.
He sat up. The floor was cool against his feet. The small altar where the White Zetsu had left its mark was still there, in the corner where he had pressed his palm the night before. The mark was dry and small, about the size of a coin.
The house was awake. He could hear water in the kitchen, the way Mito moved when she did not want to be heard, and Tsunade's lighter step near the table.
He went down.
Mito was pouring tea. Tsunade sat with a scroll open to a page she had not read, her hair still damp from washing, a brush gone dry while she thought. Both looked up when he came in.
"You were quiet," Mito said.
"I was out," Akane replied.
"Not in the house," Tsunade said. She studied his face the way she did when a report was due. "You left a copy in the bed."
"Yes."
Mito placed a cup in front of him. The tea was dark and smelled of the island, even here.
He told them.
He did not shape the story to be smaller than it was. He told them about the blood taken past the white stones, the small Katsuyu piece riding damp and quiet, the White Zetsu that had taken Himari's shape with that blood and waited where the sand met the stone of the buried city.
He told them about the seal frame, the lines cut deep and filled with dust, the same symbol Mito had shown him when she taught him to think about storage and release. He told them how he had told the copy to step to the edge, how nothing had happened at first, how the stone had warmed against the cold air, and a low hum had moved through rock the way water moved through a pipe.
He told them about the pale light gathering in the lines and running a short way before stopping, as if it had met a hand. The way the Zetsu-Himari's skin had rippled from wrist to shoulder, the way its hands had tightened without meaning to, the way small grains of sand at the edge of the frame had lifted a finger's breadth and fallen again.
He told them how he had told the copy to step back, how the light had thinned, and the hum had faded, how the Zetsu-Himari had looked at its own hands as if it did not understand what the hands had done.
When he finished, the kitchen was quiet. The river beyond the wall was a low, even sound.
Mito's cup stopped halfway to her mouth.
"You touched the Vein," she mentioned.
"I knocked," Akane replied. "I did not open."
"We said not to touch it until we understood it," Tsunade said. She did not raise her voice, which he had expected. "But you went."
"I did this without telling you," Akane said. "The summit had a condition not to touch until we understood. If I had told you last night, you would have been angry. If something had gone wrong, the beating would have been deadly. I wanted to bring a story, not a risk."
Mito looked at Tsunade, and Tsunade looked at him, and for a moment he thought the cup might be thrown, but it was not.
"The blood remembered," Mito repeated, quietly.
"Even through Zetsu's skin," Akane said. "The copy was enough to wake it, not enough to hold it. The blood remembered, but the will did not."
Mito set her cup down carefully.
"Then the girl must learn to hold it herself," she said. "Not to be copied."
"To hold a breath," Akane said, repeating what Kaguya had told him. "And a longer breath, and a bowl of water without spilling it. The river learns her before she learns she is touching it."
Tsunade's mouth moved a little. "Kaguya said that."
"Yes."
"And how was the rest?" Mito asked.
"She spoke of the beasts," Akane said. He had told them about the constraint at the summit, so they knew it: the Chakra that powered the bridge and the formations and the message tags would betray them if built more; Kurama's Chakra would leak the Nine-Tails ' signature.
"That is why the Vein is not optional for us. The river carries no beast's scent. And there is one of them that lives in the sea near the Land of Water. The third. Isobu. Kiri keeps it."
Mito looked at Akane as she heard about the three-tails, and her mouth tightened as if she understood what he was trying to say.
"Two birds," Tsunade murmured, and her eyes flicked to Mito and back, as if she too got what he meant. With two Uzumaki in the house, the offer was enticing.
"Two birds," Akane agreed. "When that beast disappears from them, the hunt loses its reason."
"We will speak of moving beasts another night," Mito said at last. She reached and poured him more tea, which was her way of closing a subject without forgiving it. "Today you will be seen doing small things well. That was the whole assignment before, and it is the whole assignment now."
"I will show those," Akane said and nodded at Mito, though he felt the topic had been archived, not finished.
He went to the desk and helped stamp the morning slips for others, the way he did when the desk was short-handed. The clerk praised his stamp work again with the same words as yesterday, and Akane thought that was a small and good thing, that a clerk could be reliable. His own D-rank for the day was still open.
On the way to the fourth street, he passed the Hokage building.
The door to Hiruzen's office was open a hand's breadth, and a voice came through it, younger than Hiruzen's, with a laugh that tried to be easy and was too loud for the corridor. Akane did not stop, but he looked, the way a boy carrying slips looked at any open door.
Hiruzen stood by the window with a pipe that was not lit. Beside him stood a young man with white hair that fell untidy to his shoulders, a broad grin, a headband tied crooked, a pale scarf that hung like something amphibious. He gestured with both hands as he spoke, as if describing a summon too large for the room. Hiruzen listened, amused and patient.
Akane kept walking. The white-haired man did not see him, or chose not to.
At the market, the fourth street was already open, shutters clacked back, morning light falling through canvas awnings in the way his dream had tried to remember and got slightly wrong. The smell of oil heating was there for real now, and the call of the woman selling pickled plums was sharp and true.
The mission desk had a board with slips clipped to it. Akane took the one he had taken last week, because the farmer asked for him by description: the boy with the stamp who did not bruise.
"Top row faces out, you mule," the farmer called when he arrived at the crates, exactly as before. "Pay by crate before noon."
He worked. The fibre of the crate wood pressed into his palms, the fuzz on the peach skin caught the light, the sorting tray thudded in the small rhythm he had given Kaguya in the dream, not too gentle, strong enough, turn bruised ones in, do not stack faces against faces.
Midway through the second crate, he felt it.
The watching did not come as chakra, not as a flare. It came as a weight on the skin between the shoulders, the way it had felt when Kushina's walk to the stalls had shown him a jonin who was not shopping.
Akane did not look directly. He lifted a peach, turned it, set it down with a small click. He glanced toward the radish stall the way a boy would when checking a price, and he saw white hair past the awning.
The same young man from Hiruzen's corridor stood near the pickle stall, not shopping, holding a paper bag he had not opened, grin still there but eyes elsewhere. When Akane looked toward him, the man's eyes moved to a roofline with clean sightlines onto three intersections, then back to the bag, as if interest had simply wandered.
Akane set another peach down. He continued the crate. He did not speed, did not slow, did not call out, did not pull chakra to his feet.
'He is following me, huh!' he thought. 'Not approaching me, maybe because of something Hiruzen said..'
He could have lost the tail in three turns, but he chose not to. A tail that wanted to be seen a little felt like a message, and the Hokage had left the door open.
At noon the farmer counted. The farmer paid, counting coins into a cold palm, and Akane asked for what he had not asked last week.
"I need one peach," he asked. "With your permission, I will pay."
The farmer looked at the crate, then at the boy.
"Take one," the farmer said. "You did not bruise them."
Akane chose the peach that was most even, warm from real sun, not dream sun. He placed it in his sleeve where it would not be crushed.
At the Senju home, he went to the small altar in his room. The mark was still there, and he set the real peach upon it. It was heavier than the dream peach, its fuzz real, its weight true. It did not waver at the edges, but it felt empty.
He did not try to send it. The garden was not a place you sent to with Zetsu, and the moon's garden was not a place a peach could be carried into. The dream peach had not stayed because dreams could not keep. The real peach would keep because it was not for her.
He left the peach on the altar for himself, where the evening light could touch it, a reminder that a tomorrow had been named and that he owed it.
Beyond the Senju wall, the river was a low, even sound. The market on the fourth street was still noisy with afternoon trade, its shutters open, its peaches still being traded crate by crate, and on a rooftop two streets over, white hair caught the light and moved on.
Akane stayed by the altar a moment longer, his palm flat, the real peach beside his hand. The small warmth on his lips from the night before had not yet cooled, but now there was a second warmth beside it, the kind that came from a debt that had been kept.
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You guys can support me at my ptreon.com/kaoski (˵◝ ⩊ ◜˵マ Chapter 122 is out there, plus various original one-shot stories. Exams are over btw! Hehehehehehehe!