Ryo's lashes jolted, and his cracked eyelids dragged open. Harsh light sliced his muddied vision into wavering motes.
Every breath tugged at pain like torn flesh. His bones felt filled with cold, sour lead. The thick smell of medicine and blood clung in the back of his nose, a stubborn reminder of the battle that had nearly ground him to dust.
His sight struggled to focus. The first thing he saw was a calm swath of deep violet cloth, faintly damp. Above it, a slightly pale profile, exhaustion barely hidden beneath carefully kept softness. Her black hair was a little damp with sweat, clinging to her clean cheek.
Uchiha Mikoto.
Back to him, she was half-kneeling by a small brazier, carefully wiping the rim of a clay medicine jar with a damp cloth, gentle, almost devout. Warm, yellow firelight cast a small, tremulous shadow beneath her lowered lashes, softening the hard edge of the tang of drugs in the air.
Sensing the gaze behind her, Mikoto's hand paused.
She turned slowly. In the obsidian of her eyes, worry had not yet faded. Surprise flashed, and was swiftly pressed down beneath the composure of a clan's daughter.
"Ryo-kun? You are awake." Her voice was deliberately softened, pleasantly husky, as if she had kept vigil a long time. "How do you feel? Do the wounds still hurt badly?"
"…" Ryo tried to speak. Fire raked his throat. Only a hoarse breath escaped. He twitched his neck. Pain shot through the numb, heavy hole in his left shoulder. His brows knit on instinct.
"Do not move." Mikoto set the jar down at once and stepped to the bedside. As she leaned in, a clean wintergreen scent mixed with salve came close. A cool fingertip gently pressed down his wrist when he tried to lift it. "Tsunade-sama said your injuries are severe, you must rest. Especially your left shoulder, it almost…" She did not finish. Her long lashes trembled, just the right hint of aftershock.
"W… water…" Ryo rasped at last.
"Okay." Mikoto rose smoothly, with no wasted motion. She picked up a rough clay cup from the low stand, tested the temperature, then topped it from a sealed waterskin, stirred, and brought it to his lips. Her other hand slid under his nape with gentle, unarguable strength, lifting him a little. "Slowly. Do not choke."
Warm water slid down his throat like rain into cracked earth. After a few swallows, the near-dry exhaustion inside him eased a fraction.
"How long was I out?" Still hoarse, but at least coherent.
"Over three days." Mikoto set the cup down and carefully brushed away a tiny bead of water at the corner of his mouth, quick as a blink, her fingertip's touch so brief it felt imagined. "Everyone is worried. Especially Kushina. There were several messages from her side. I did not tell her exactly how serious it was. I was afraid she would rush here."
"What is the situation outside?" Ryo's gaze drifted past her shoulder, as if to pierce the white canvas to the battlefield he had just carved his way through.
Mikoto paused, then took a warmed cloth from the brazier's edge. She wiped his brow and the line of his neck, lifting the clammy sweat with a practiced, feather-light touch.
"The front is the same, entangled fights, attrition. Not much change. We are still holding the main points." Her voice was even, like stating a mundane fact, sanding down the brutality of war. "The reinforcement to Ridge B-7 was canceled. Iwa took heavy losses that day, I think. Their attacks have eased a bit these past two days."
"Jiraiya?" Ryo remembered the extra cargo he had dragged back, the man with the caved-in chest.
Mikoto's hands did not stop, working around the unbandaged skin of his arm, avoiding the intersecting abrasions and the borders of the dressings.
"Jiraiya-sama pulled through. Tsunade-sama and Orochimaru-sama watched him all night. Several broken bones, organs badly hurt, but he will live. He is recovering now." She paused, a true note of relief woven into her tone. "Ryo-kun, thanks to you."
Ryo listened in silence, eyes unreadable. Jiraiya surviving, good. His only target had been Tsunade. Saving Jiraiya and Orochimaru had been a natural side effect. With the objective secured, and no large-scale battle imminent, the wire inside him loosened the faintest bit.
"In addition…" Mikoto set down the cloth, lifted a bowl of thick, dark brown medicine she had been warming, and stirred it gently to let the steam thin, speaking as if offhand. "Hokage-sama signed an emergency promotion."
Ryo looked up. A question flickered in the black of his eyes.
"Congratulations, Ryo-kun," Mikoto said with a poised, gentle smile, eyes subtly watchful. "You are a Konoha chūnin now." She dipped a spoon, blew on it softly, and raised it to his lips. "Decided while you were unconscious."
"Mm." Ryo's noncommittal sound carried no ripple. Titles did not move him. Power was the only measure. That gray forehead protector, he had long since outgrown it. His gaze fell back to the dense liquid in the bowl.
"No need to feed me." He tried to lift his right hand for the bowl. The simple motion triggered a wave of intolerable sour-numb pain in his left shoulder, like steel needles driven into bone seams. The muscles of his right arm slumped with an uncontrollable heaviness. His wrist managed a few inches off the cot, trembled hard, and dropped. Fine cold sweat sprang on his brow.
His body had never felt so strange, so heavy. Those battlefield outbursts that wrung out every reserve, the life-burning flying slashes and Flying Thunder God, the wounds forced shut, now the backlash came like a landslide and a tidal wave.
Mikoto missed none of it, every flicker of expression, each bodily response. In her heart, a hidden hope grew another ring.
Watching the man she admired, a thread of fierce possessiveness rose, silent and wild. She crushed the untimely thrill. The worse the injuries, the longer this beast would be chained to the bed.
The longer he stayed, the more likely her invisible threads could set a mark deep in the soul beneath that iron shell, Uchiha Mikoto's mark.
As for her best friend Kushina, safe in Konoha, far away. Guilt had already thinned beneath day-after-day closeness and the quiet swell of possessive desire.
"See?" Her voice gentled further, an almost indulgent scold, soothing a stubborn child. "I said do not move. If your wound splits, I cannot answer to Tsunade-sama." She held the bowl steady, gaze kind but firm. "Let me. Kushina asked me to take care of you. She is most worried about your health."
"Kushina," raised so naturally, like a well-timed flag, wrapped all her nearness in perfect justification. It made every act, every touch, feel like it carried the warmth of their faraway red-haired friend.
A spoon of hot, bitter medicine crossed his lips. Strong earthiness and domineering bitterness detonated on his tongue. His throat bobbed hard. He swallowed.
Watching his tight brows and rigid endurance, something like a micro-smile flickered at the bottom of Mikoto's eyes, like a hunter savoring a trapped beast's struggle.
She stirred patiently, voice soft and distracting. "Nawaki-senpai came by twice. Clumsy as ever, knocked over the basin and nearly soaked you again. I sent him to quartermaster duty to sort supplies. At a time like this, someone careful is better company, do you not think so, Ryo-kun?" Her tone was easy, with a girlish, teasing judgment, quietly casting herself as the most suitable caretaker.
Ryo did not answer, he just shut his eyes against the indescribable bitterness.
Mikoto's lip curve deepened by a hair. She set the bowl down, crossed to a small deep-violet wicker chest she had brought, and opened it.
Bending at the waist, back to him, knees together, the curve from slim knee to small ankle traced a gentle line beneath her skirt. When she turned back, there was a tiny plate in her hand, oiled paper wrapped around a few dark preserved fruits, a rare luxury with supply lines tight.
"Open up." No spoon. Two slender, pale fingers lifted a piece and brought it directly to his lips, subtly intimate, quietly irresistible. Her fingertips brushed the cracked edge of his lower lip, hardly there at all.
A strange sensation sparked. Ryo's body tightened, barely. This closeness, this way, was past the usual line.
Only the occasional crackle from the brazier, and the sudden awkwardness of two breathing rhythms, filled the tent.
He hesitated, gaze dark on the fingers and the sweet. The bitter aftertaste in his mouth clung like a parasite. In the end, survival, and flight from the taste-hell, won. He parted his lips and took the morsel.
As her fingers withdrew, they grazed his lip again, lightly.
"Sweet?" Mikoto asked, the exact right note of gentle expectation. Her eyes flicked to his moving lips, deepened a shade, then shifted away, natural as breath, as if that moment never happened.
Ryo hummed vaguely and swallowed.
Time ran thick in the little square of canvas and wood. Ryo's face stayed expressionless, words few.
Mostly, he closed his eyes and tried to coax his near-dry chakra to crawl, mending shredded muscle and nerve, fighting the lingering numbness of poison.
Mikoto's presence grew.
Like a silent shadow, she always occupied the exact spot within his sightline. When he felt dry, water of just the right warmth met his lips. Before sweat could mat his hair, a warm cloth wiped it away. When pain broke his focus mid-heal, a folded strip of clean cloth appeared for him to bite.
Each approach, each brief brush of skin or cloth, each exchange that let fingers touch for a heartbeat, became a drill Mikoto practiced and refined.
She fused a noble girl's reserve with an almost selfless "I was entrusted" stance, making everything she did seem proper, unassailable.
(To be continued.)
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◇ One bonus chapter will be released for every 200 Power Stones.
◇ You can read the ahead chapter on Pat if you're interested: p-atreon.c-om/Blownleaves (Just remove the hyphen to access normally.)