The tower roof was the first place in days that didn't feel like it wanted me dead.
No trees leaning in. No murder-mist. Just stone under my sandals, a low wall, and the village in the distance like a doodle on the horizon. The late light hit everything sideways, soft and orange, like the sun was tired too.
The wind kept trying to eat my bangs.
What was left of them, anyway.
I pushed the choppy pink mess out of my face and squinted over the edge. From up here, the Forest of Death looked almost normal. Just… trees. The kind you'd draw for a kid's book. You couldn't see the places where the ground had teeth.
"Found you," a voice said behind me. "What did your head ever do to you?"
I turned.
Ino stood by the stairwell door, hand on her hip, the other twirling a pair of scissors around one finger. Her hair was still perfect: long, shiny, tied back in that neat ponytail that said I did this on purpose, unlike you, disaster child.
I resisted the urge to run.
"I've been informed this is a closed rooftop," I said. "Authorized personnel only. No hair police."
Ino snorted. "Please. If this was a crime scene, your head would be Exhibit A."
She walked over, giving me the once-over. Her gaze paused briefly on my bandaged hands, then jumped straight to my hair and stayed there like it had gotten stuck.
Up here, away from the med-nin and the noise, I was suddenly very aware of how bad it looked. Uneven chunks hacked off at weird angles. Some strands still light brown at the tips, others bright dyed pink, all of it sticking out like I'd lost a fight with a knife.
Because I had. Just… not in the way people assumed.
Ino clicked the scissors open. "Sit," she ordered, pointing at the low wall.
"Are you licensed for this?" I asked, but my body was already moving. I perched on the edge, legs on the safe side, hands fiddling with my ribbon.
She stepped behind me, fingers combing gently through the wreckage.
"You know," she said, "when people told me you cut your hair in the middle of a fight, I thought they were exaggerating."
"I vaguely remember screaming," I said. "So that's probably accurate."
She hummed. A lock slid down in front of my eyes, longer than the rest. Ino tsked at it like it had insulted her.
"Hold still," she said. "I'm going to rescue this."
"I thought you were gonna yell at me for ruining it," I admitted, before my brain could tackle my mouth.
Ino's hands paused.
"Why?" she asked, scissors hovering.
"Because…" I swallowed. The words felt stupid, heavy. "I don't know. You put so much work into it before the exam. And then I just—" I made a chopping motion in the air. "Destroyed it. Like some feral raccoon. It felt… ungrateful."
She was quiet for a second.
The wind picked at my sleeves.
"When I heard," she said finally, "that you hacked your hair off so you wouldn't get grabbed again instead of freezing up and waiting for someone else to save you?" Her fingers settled again, more careful. "I was proud of you."
My throat did a weird tight thing. "Proud?"
"God, don't sound so surprised." Her tone went sharp to cover it. "You chose not-dying over looking cute. That's the right call. Even if it makes you a styling emergency after."
Snip. A chunk dropped past my shoulder and spun away on the breeze.
"Close your eyes," she said. "If you keep watching, you're going to flinch and I'll ruin the line."
I shut them, more to hide my face than anything.
Her hands moved through my hair, sure and practiced, combing, lifting, trimming. It wasn't like when I'd cut it—desperate, fast, half-blind with adrenaline. This was precise. Intentional.
A style, not a crime scene.
"I liked it long," I heard myself say. "Not just because it looked nice. It was… proof."
"Proof of what?" she asked, genuinely curious.
"That I… deserved?" I groped for the shape of it. "To be seen. As a girl. It felt like… if I did it right—if I was pretty enough, soft enough, if I kept it long and took care of it—there'd be less room for people to say I wasn't… real."
The scissors stopped mid-snip.
The rooftop went very quiet.
I wished I could fall straight off the building and into a hole.
Then Ino's hand settled on top of my head—not the careful stylist touch, but the blunt, grounding kind.
"Okay," she said, voice flat in that way she got when she was about to argue with the world. "First of all? You're a girl because you are. That's it. End of story. Hair's just… hair. Dead stuff you decorate your skull with."
I snorted, half-choking. "Romantic."
"Yeah, yeah." The scissors started moving again. "You could shave your head tomorrow and you'd still be a girl. You'd just be a girl who needs a hat."
"Don't tempt me," I muttered.
"Second." Her tone sharpened. "Anyone who looks at you—at your clothes, or your hair, or whatever—and decides that gives them the right to declare you fake?" Snip. Snip. "They're wrong. They can be loud and wrong. They can be dangerous and wrong. But it's still wrong."
Something hot pricked behind my eyes. I kept them squeezed shut.
"And third," she added, lighter now, "if long hair made you feel good and you want it again, you can grow it again. You're allowed to change your mind. You're not stuck with one version of yourself forever just because some idiot once signed off on it."
"Even if the idiot was me?" I asked.
"Especially then."
We sat with that for a bit.
Hair drifted down around my shoulders in little pink and brown snowflakes.
"My mom always said," Ino went on, conversational now, "that beautiful hair is a girl's pride. Which is true. Sometimes. But she also said it like it was a rule. And rules like that?" She snipped off another uneven chunk. "They're just cages with bows."
"Your mom sounds terrifying," I said.
"She is," Ino said fondly. "But even she'd rather you be alive and ugly than dead and stylish."
"Thanks," I said dryly. "Really hitting the compliment quota today."
She laughed, soft, right near my ear.
"There," she said, after a few more careful cuts. "Okay. Open."
I did.
The tower's top window was just reflective enough to work as a terrible mirror. My new hair stared back at me in it, blown slightly sideways by the wind: short, yes, but shaped now. Choppy layers around my jaw, a bit longer in front, nape neat. It wasn't soft. It wasn't pretty in the gentled, storybook way I'd always imagined.
It was… sharp. A little punk. Like I could plausibly throw a punch and get away with it.
"You made me cool," I said, incredulous.
"Obviously," Ino said. "You have the bone structure for it."
"That's a lie," I said automatically. "My bone structure was assembled from discount parts."
"It's working," she said. "Turn."
I did. She fixed a stray bit near my neck, nicked one more piece into place, then stepped back, hands on her hips, assessing.
"Okay," she declared. "Now it looks like you chose this. Not like a forest chewed on you and spat you out."
"Technically both can be true," I said.
"Don't ruin my art."
She caught my eyes in the reflection then, expression finally out of the usual playful range. Serious. Soft in a way I wasn't used to from her.
"Just so we're clear," she said. "I'm proud of you for surviving. Hair or no hair. Got it?"
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. "Got it," I said. My voice came out thin.
"Good." She bumped my shoulder with hers. "Now if any idiot makes fun of it, send them to me. I'll cut their hair into something truly tragic."
Before I could respond, the stairwell door slammed open again.
"Naruto, you can't just—"
"Watch me!"
Naruto barreled onto the roof like he'd been launched, nearly tripping over his own sandals as he burst into the open. Sasuke followed a second later at a normal human pace, hands in his pockets, pretending he didn't know this person.
Ino hissed. "Crap, I'm not supposed to be up here…"
She snapped the scissors closed and slid them into her kunai pouch in one smooth motion.
Naruto spotted us. His face lit up like someone had switched the sun back on.
"Sylvie!" he yelled, waving both arms. "There you are! We're allowed on the roof! They said we can 'get some fresh air' or whatever, which is code for 'don't start fights in the hallway.'"
"Inspired," I said.
Ino was already backing away. "And that's my cue," she murmured. "Boys ruin the aesthetic."
She squeezed my shoulder once as she passed. "Remember what I said," she added quietly. "About cages."
Then she straightened, flipped her hair, and walked toward the door like she was absolutely supposed to be here, toss-off wave at Naruto and Sasuke included.
"Try not to fall off anything, you three," she called. "I just fixed her."
"Fixed?!" Naruto sputtered. "She looks awesome!"
"Exactly," Ino said, and vanished down the stairs.
Naruto skidded to a stop in front of me and leaned in so close I had to lean back or lose my nose.
"Whoa," he breathed. "Your hair…"
My stomach clenched on reflex. "If you say 'you look like a boy' I'm pushing you off this tower," I said.
He blinked. "Huh? No. I was gonna say it looks way more ninja. Like—" he flailed his hands in the air, searching for words— "like you're about to flip-kick someone off a tree and then explode them with a drawing."
"That is… weirdly specific," I said.
He grinned. "You look cool. Cooler than me. Don't get used to it."
The knot in my chest loosened another notch.
"Thanks," I said, and meant it.
Sasuke came to stand by the wall, just far enough away to pretend he wasn't part of this conversation and just close enough that he absolutely was. He glanced at my hair, once, then looked back at the forest.
"Better," he said.
I raised an eyebrow. "Than what?"
"Than being easy to grab," he replied.
I huffed. "High praise from Mr. 'I keep my neck conveniently exposed.'"
Naruto snorted.
Sasuke's mouth twitched, the micro-version of a smile. "I'm reconsidering that," he said.
We stood there for a minute, the three of us and the wind and the distance.
From here, the forest looked smaller. The tower threw a long shadow across the trees, stretching toward the village. Somewhere down there were the places where we'd been buried and bitten and marked. Up here, I could almost pretend they were part of another story.
Naruto bounced on his heels, energy leaking out around the bandages.
"So," he said. "When this exam thing is over and we're allowed to walk around without chaperones again—"
"We were never allowed," I pointed out.
"—you should totally draw a victory mural," he bulldozed on. "Like, a huge one. 'Team Seven vs Murder Woods' or something. With me looking extra awesome right in the middle."
"Wow," I said. "Subtle."
"I mean you and Sasuke can be there too," he added, magnanimous. "Doing cool stuff in the background. But someone's gotta be the main character."
"You are a plague," Sasuke muttered.
"You love me," Naruto said cheerfully.
"Debatable."
I pictured it anyway: a wall in Konoha somewhere, lines and ink and color. Naruto bright and ridiculous, grinning in defiance. Sasuke cool and sharp, eyes red, curses asleep. Me somewhere between them with ink-stained hands and a ridiculous ribbon, hair short and loud on purpose.
Alive.
"I'll think about it," I said. "I'd have to get permission to vandalize a wall with art."
"Pfft," Naruto said. "We'll just ask the old man. He likes you."
"He likes you," I corrected. "I'm collateral."
"Collaterally awesome," Naruto said.
Sasuke made a disgusted noise and turned fully to face us, back to the view.
"This team is noisy," he said.
I smiled. "You 'enjoy' that, right?"
His eyes slid to mine. For half a second, the brittle parts were gone, and there was just a tired boy who'd almost let a monster eat him and backed away from the edge at the last second.
"We work," he said, which was as close to yes as Sasuke Uchiha got in public. "Don't make me repeat it."
"Aw," Naruto said. "He likes us."
"I didn't say that."
"You implied it."
"Do you ever shut up?"
"Only when I'm unconscious," Naruto said. "Which I'm not doing again, because I'm not missing any more cool fights."
"Good," I said. "You snore."
"I do not!"
"You absolutely do," I said. "Consider this my official medic report."
He spluttered. Sasuke rolled his eyes. The wind pushed at my new hair, short strands tickling my neck instead of dragging at my shoulders.
My gaze drifted back to the window.
The reflection there wasn't perfect, but it was enough.
Bright pink hair, short and unevenly new, catching the light. Glasses a little crooked on my nose. The borrowed schoolgirl top with its silly ribbon, wrinkled and stained. Shorts that didn't quite fit right, belt holding everything together. Bandages on my hands, on Naruto's shoulder, on Sasuke's neck.
All of us standing close enough that our shapes blurred at the edges.
Not pretty. Not clean.
Still here.
The last forest I'd survived in my life had taken pieces of me and left something smaller behind, something quieter, easier to ignore. I'd let it decide that about me because I didn't know I was allowed to argue.
This forest had tried to do the same.
I'd cut my hair. Burned my hands. Screamed myself hoarse pulling a boy away from a curse that wanted to own him.
I'd walked out anyway.
I touched the ends of my hair, feeling the rough new line against my fingers.
"I cut it off," I thought, watching the girl in the glass. "And I was still me."
Behind me, Naruto started arguing with Sasuke about who would win if they fought each other in the next round. Again. Their voices bounced off the stone.
This time, a forest didn't get to decide who I was when it was done with me.
I turned away from the reflection and fell into step between them as we headed back inside, three sets of sandals scuffing the floor in messy, overlapping rhythm.
The Forest of Death was behind us.
Next up: a whole new mess.