…
The gates of Konoha rose ahead of them as the caravan rolled to its final stop, and for the first time in nearly two weeks, the air didn't smell like dirt roads and carriage wood.
The group dispersed almost immediately after getting checked in with shinobi peeling off in twos and threes, exchanging the kind of easy, half-shouted farewells that came from people who'd bled through the same stretch of road together and decided, somewhere along the way, that this counted as friendship now.
"Oi, Murakami." Sakumo walked up to him as the crowd thinned, hands tucked into his pockets. "You should drop by the Hatake compound sometime. When you've got the time."
It wasn't quite anything, really, just an offer, extended plainly, the kind a person made when they'd decided someone was worth knowing better than circumstance alone had allowed.
Murakami considered it for a moment, then nodded. "I'll try."
Sakumo's mouth curved into something wry, like he'd expected exactly that answer and found it amusing anyway. "That's the best I'll get out of you, isn't it."
"Probably."
The smile lingered a second longer before Sakumo turned and jogged off to rejoin his own team, raising a hand in a lazy wave that didn't bother waiting for a response.
Murakami watched him go, then turned toward the village center, Hideki limping slightly on his left and Sora flanking his other side.
…
The administration building was as bureaucratically unremarkable as Murakami remembered.
They'd barely cleared the entrance when a familiar voice called out from down the hall.
"Well, isn't this a surprise." Kaito approached with an expression of genuine astonishment, eyebrows raised, a stack of scrolls tucked under one arm. "Back from the mission already? I was told the escort route wasn't supposed to wrap up for another few days."
"We ran into some complications," Sora said, deadpan.
"Complications." Kaito's eyes flicked to Hideki's bandaged shoulder, then to Murakami, lingering there a half-second longer. "That the polite word for it?"
"Define polite," Hideki muttered.
Kaito huffed something close to a laugh. "I'll get the full story eventually. For now…" he held a hand out, and Murakami produced the mission scroll, passing it over without comment.
Kaito turned it in his fingers once, noted the fresh wax seal from Kanzashi, and tucked it under his arm with the others.
"Alright. All three of you, go rest." He pointed at Hideki without looking up from sorting his folders. "Hospital. Don't argue, I can see that shoulder from here." Then to Sora: "Home." Finally, his eyes settled on Murakami, and something in his expression paused, just briefly, before he finished the thought. "...Home. Same as him."
"Hai." The three answered in near unison, and Kaito was already walking past them down the hall before any of them had finished saying it.
…
The hospital wasn't far, and the walk there passed mostly in silence.
"Try not to use that arm for anything heroic," Sora said once they'd reached the entrance, the closest thing to genuine concern he allowed himself to show.
Hideki snorted. "No promises." He glanced at Murakami. "Thanks for not letting me die out there, by the way. Would've been embarrassing."
"You're welcome." Murakami said it plainly, without performance, which seemed to be exactly what Hideki expected from him by now.
They left him at the entrance, watching a nurse usher him inside before turning back toward the street.
They hadn't gotten far when a voice called out, bright with recognition.
"Murakami!"
He turned, and something in his posture, barely perceptible eased, but Sora caught it anyway,
Aiko jogged the last few steps to close the distance, falling into step beside them with the easy familiarity of someone who'd known him long before either of them had ever worn a forehead protector.
Behind her, a step slower and considerably less enthused, trailed a boy Sora recognized from their class, Kenji, if he remembered right, though the only thing he remembered clearly about him was a permanent expression like he'd just bitten into something sour whenever Murakami's name came up.
"You're back," Aiko said, eyes flicking briefly over him, the kind of scan a medic did almost unconsciously, checking for what words alone wouldn't tell her. "How'd it go?"
"Fine." Murakami's tone shifted as he spoke, not exactly warmer but looser.
"That's it? 'Fine'?" Aiko arched a brow. "You've been gone two weeks."
"It was an escort mission. Walk, watch the road, walk some more." He said then paused. "Mostly uneventful."
"Mostly?"
"Mostly."
She huffed, clearly unconvinced but unwilling to push past whatever line he'd drawn with that 'mostly,' and let it go in favor of her own update instead.
"Well, while you were off being mysterious, I got moved up in the medical track. Tsubaki-sensei says I can start shadowing real rotations next month."
That earned something close to genuine attention from Murakami. "Already?"
"Don't sound so surprised."
"I'm not surprised. I expected it."
"That's somehow worse." But there was no real annoyance in it, just the easy back-and-forth of two people who'd long since stopped needing to perform politeness with each other.
One has to understand that medical-nin training in Konoha didn't work the way Academy lectures made it sound.
Passing the written portion and demonstrating basic chakra scalpel control earned a genin a slot doing exactly what every other hopeful did after graduation: field-medic fundamentals.
Triage drills on training dummies. Diagnostic technique practiced on each other, over and over, until reading a chakra signature for damage became reflexive instead of effortful.
Most spent months there before anyone in the actual hospital gave them a second glance, let alone a reason to.
Real rotations were different.
Real rotations meant standing in an actual ward, under a licensed medic-nin's direct supervision, working on patients who were genuinely injured and didn't have the patience for a trainee's hesitation.
Trauma stabilization, poison and toxin treatment and surgical assistance, where a single wrong motion meant a correction barked at you in front of the patient you were trying to help.
It was the difference between knowing how to bandage a wound and being trusted near someone who might die if you got it wrong.
Getting fast-tracked into that this soon after graduating wasn't normal.
It wasn't even "unusually fast", it was the kind of acceleration that got a name attached to it in hospital staff meetings, the kind of thing a sensei mentioned to other senseis as something worth watching.
Aiko had earned that in a matter of months, but somehow that didn't surprise Murakami.
He had groomed her to the level where other would see her as a genius, but where he had the foreknowledge to keep himself hidden, she didn't.
Which was good for him. The further she went, more rooms were opened to her and with that, the more resources. He wouldn't lack for a medic nin to help him in the future if the situation demands it.
Aiko huffed, something between exasperation and fondness, and the two of them slid easily into a back-and-forth that left no real room for anyone else to interject.
Aiko needling him about the seal modules he still hadn't sent her, Murakami deflecting with the same dry tone he used for everything.
With occasional flickers of something that might, on anyone else's face, have been called a smile.
Sora watched, increasingly aware that he was witnessing something he hadn't actually seen before.
'He's said more words to her in the last two minutes than I've heard him say to anyone, in total, in the last six months.'
He turned the thought over, half-listening to the conversation, half-cataloguing what he already knew about her.
Top kunoichi of their graduating class. Aiming for the medical corps. An orphan, like…
His gaze flicked between the two of them.
'Like him.'
A picture began assembling itself in his head, piece by piece, with the kind of momentum that came from connecting things that should have been obvious sooner.
Orphan. Same age. That easy, unguarded familiarity neither of them had shown anyone else all day.
'Are they—'
Beside him, Kenji's expression had curdled into something between irritation and resignation, watching Aiko laugh at something Murakami had said with the air of a man who'd clearly had this exact thought, and this exact reaction to it, more than once before.
'Siblings,' Sora concluded, more confident now. 'From the same orphanage.'
Which, if true, raised an entirely new question, one that settled into his thoughts with an unwelcome kind of curiosity.
'If she's anything like him… are all his siblings like this?'
"Sora."
He blinked, Murakami's voice cutting cleanly through the half-formed theory before it could fully take shape.
"I'm heading home." Murakami was already half-turned, Aiko a step behind him, clearly intending to walk the rest of the way together. "You should rest."
"Right." Sora shook himself loose from his own thoughts, waving a hand. "Yeah. Go."
He watched the two of them go, Kenji trailing a step behind with the resigned posture of someone who'd long since accepted his role as the third wheel, and found himself no closer to an answer than he'd been a minute ago.
'I really need to ask him about that orphanage sometime.'
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
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