In Another Life

Konoha is still when you wake.

Not the brittle stillness of tension or unrest, but the softer kind—the hush that clings to rooftops and rain-washed stone after a long summer downpour. Everything feels damp and alive. The air smells of clean earth, wet bark, and green things pushing their way up from the soil. It’s the kind of morning that makes the village feel like it’s starting over, as if the whole world pressed reset while you slept.

You stay where you are for a few moments, stretched out on your futon, arm slung across your forehead, watching golden light sneak through the slats in your blinds. It slants across the room in lazy angles, pooling on the floor, warm and drowsy on your skin.

For a moment, you pretend.

That you’re just a civilian. That you’ll spend the morning buying vegetables in the market, arguing with old vendors about melon prices, and wasting the afternoon stretched out on a porch somewhere with a book and a fan.

But then your mind starts counting inventory.

Knives. Rations. Scrolls. Spare wire.

And the weight of reality settles, just as it always does.

You sit up.

The illusion cracks.

Your routine is muscle memory now—gear checked, hitai-ate tied snug around your upper arm, weapons in place. You pull your gloves on last, flex your fingers once, twice, as if reminding yourself who you are.

When you step outside, the village is beginning to stir. Mist still curls in the gutters. Roof tiles glisten where the rain clung to them overnight. Somewhere in the distance, a bird calls out—a high, brief trill—and a cart rattles over the stone road as someone opens their shutters and yawns into the morning.

The peace is deceptive.

You know better than to trust quiet.

By the time you make it halfway across the district, the air has started to shift. Not unpleasant—just heavy. Still damp, still fresh, but with a kind of weight behind it. Like the atmosphere is bracing for something it hasn’t decided on yet.

You’re focused on your path, steps steady, when movement flickers at the edge of your peripheral.

You spot him leaning against a low wall near the mission board.

Kakashi.

He’s not masked in indifference today. Not entirely. His posture is relaxed—almost too relaxed—but there’s something about the angle of his shoulders, the way his gaze traces the street like he’s memorizing the way the light falls on the stone. His hands are tucked in his pockets, but his guard isn’t down. You can feel it in your bones.

He’s waiting.

For what, you’re not sure.

You don’t stop walking, but your pace shifts. Subtly. Just enough to give him space to say something if he wants to.

He does.

“You’re up early,” he says, voice low and dry.

You raise a brow, lips quirking. “Says the man loitering like a bored ghost.”

His visible eye creases faintly. Not quite a smile. But something close.

There’s a beat, just long enough to feel like it’s stretching between you.

Then, his tone changes—softer, careful in a way you recognize. “Tenzo said you’re heading out with him.”

“Scouting assignment,” you reply. “Nothing dramatic. In and out.”

He hums.

But his gaze lingers longer than it should, his eye tracing the line of your shoulder like he’s memorizing how you look before you vanish into the trees.

“Watch your six,” he says, quieter this time.

You scoff under your breath. “Always do.”

But there’s something off in his voice. Something you can’t quite name.

Concern, maybe.

Or guilt.

Or a weight that has nothing to do with the mission and everything to do with the space that’s still slowly healing between you.

You could say something. Ask. Reach.

But you don’t.

And he doesn’t offer.

Instead, he looks away first, gaze sliding toward the rooftops as if he’s already somewhere else, retreating behind the familiar wall of nonchalance.

You let it go.

You always do.

You keep walking, the soles of your sandals scuffing soft over stone slick from last night’s rain, and you don’t look back until you’re at the edge of the street.

By then, he’s gone.

Just shadows and silver and stillness in his wake.

And somehow, the morning feels heavier than it did before.

Tenzo’s already there when you arrive at the south gate, leaning against one of the thick wooden posts like he’s trying to disappear into it. He’s dressed for travel, uniform crisp, mask hanging loosely from one hand. He straightens at the sound of your footsteps.

“Morning,” he says, voice even, polite. Familiar. The way it always is.

You grunt, adjusting your pack. “Barely qualifies.”

He lets out a quiet breath—something between a chuckle and a sigh. “You’re in a mood already.”

“I’m being sent into the woods for three days with a man who once made an entire squirrel population vanish to see if he could regrow them from memory. So, yeah. A little.”

His small smile quirks up just a hair more. “The squirrel thing was purely hypothetical.”

“They never came back, Tenzo.”

“Minor side effect.”

Despite yourself, your mouth twitches. Not a smile, not really. But close enough.

He nods toward the road leading out of the village, posture slipping back into that fluid, watchful ANBU stance. “Ready?”

You adjust your gloves. “Let’s go.”

No goodbyes. No fanfare. You both move into the treeline with the practiced rhythm of people who’ve done this too many times to count. The village fades behind you in moments, replaced by the dense hush of Konoha’s surrounding forest.

The mission is straightforward: a sweep of the outlying border zone, a few scouting marks to check, follow-up on a recent trail of movement near an old ambush site. Bandits, maybe. A wayward rogue-nin at worst. Nothing complicated. The kind of thing that should pass without incident.

And yet.

Something is off.

You don’t say anything about it at first. Not when the wind brushes against your cheek the wrong way, cold where it should be warm. Not when you realize you haven’t seen a bird in over an hour. Not even when the sound of your footsteps on the forest floor starts to feel too loud, like the trees are listening.

You’ve both seen stranger things.

You’ve walked into worse.

Silence doesn’t always mean danger.

But sometimes it does.

It starts at dusk on the second day.

You’re crouched on a ridge overlooking a wide clearing choked with dead grass and faded sunlight, the air thick with the scent of moss and drying pine. The trees here grow sparse and warped, bent as if trying to lean away from the open space.

You’re watching. Waiting. Trying to convince yourself the unease pooling at the base of your spine is just residual nerves from a week of bad sleep and not something real.

Then it hits you.

Not a sound. Not a shadow. Just—pressure.

Like a ripple across the surface of your skin. Like the space behind you hiccupped, just once. A tug.

You go still. The kind of still that lives in your bones.

Next to you, Tenzo tenses.

You don’t need to look to know he felt it too.

He doesn’t draw his blade, but his hand drifts to it, fingers resting on the hilt like an anchor.

“What the hell was that?” you murmur, voice low.

He tilts his head slightly. “Not chakra,” he says after a moment. “Or not the way we know it.”

You glance down at the clearing again. The earth below looks undisturbed. No tracks. No broken branches. No sign of life at all.

It doesn’t make sense.

You descend slowly, checking the perimeter. Still nothing. Not even insects. The air feels wrong—not dangerous, exactly, but hollow. Like something’s been scooped out of the world here and not filled back in.

You crouch, brushing your fingers against the soil. Dry. Too dry. The kind of dust that doesn’t belong in a place with this much tree cover.

You look at Tenzo. He’s frowning.

“We mark it,” you say. “But we don’t stay.”

He nods once. Agrees too easily.

You move on, back into the woods.

But they don’t feel like the same woods anymore.

You travel in silence after that.

Not tense silence. Not yet.

Just… quiet. The kind that makes your skin crawl.

Every branch creak sounds too sharp. Every breath you take feels like it echoes. There’s no wildlife, no rustle of distant movement. Just the slow rhythm of your footsteps and the occasional whisper of wind that dies too fast.

When you finally stop for the night, Tenzo doesn’t speak. He moves mechanically, setting camp with calm precision. You watch the way his hands move—efficient, thoughtful, maybe a little distracted.

You sharpen your blades. Not because you need to. But because the sound of steel on stone feels real. Grounding.

Tenzo builds the fire.

It crackles to life. Small. Steady.

You both stare at it for a few moments, neither of you sitting too close.

Then, it flickers.

Not like normal flame. Not with the breeze.

It jerks.

Once. Like something yanked it sideways and let go.

You blink. The fire is normal again.

You don’t say anything.

Neither does he.

Instead, you lie back against your pack and watch the treetops above, sharp black lines cutting through a dark blue sky. You can feel the pulse of the forest like a second heartbeat in your chest. Slow. Uneven.

Something is out there.

Not close. Not yet.

But moving.

Bending.

Waiting.

A ripple in the water—subtle, but widening.

And you don’t know where it leads.

You and Tenzo sit opposite each other, the flames licking low between you, casting shadows that move just a little too slow. It’s quiet, the kind of quiet that sinks in through your clothes and into your bones.

He’s reading something. Or pretending to.

You’re not even pretending to rest.

There’s a rhythm to mission nights like this: patrol the perimeter, check the map, sharpen a blade or two, eat something barely edible, then sleep in shifts. You’ve done it a hundred times. Probably more.

But tonight, the routine doesn’t sit right.

The trees rustle like they’re trying to whisper to each other. The stars overhead are faint—dimmed, almost, like you’re not supposed to see them from here.

Tenzo glances up from his scroll. “I did another sweep,” he says. “Perimeter’s clear. No chakra signatures, no traps. No disturbances. Still.”

Still.

You both feel it.

You shift slightly, blade laid across your lap. “What if it’s not something that triggers traps?”

He tilts his head. “You think it’s an illusion field?”

You shake your head. “No… nothing that organized.”

He studies the fire a moment longer, then mutters, “Then it’s something old.”

You don’t answer.

You don’t want to.

Because there are things older than illusion and jutsu. Old things don’t need seals or triggers or even names. They just are.

You lie down eventually, but you don’t sleep—not really. You drift in that space between dreams and alertness, one hand resting on your weapon, the firelight casting soft, strange shadows against the inside of your eyelids.

At some point, you think you hear someone say your name. But when you sit up, Tenzo’s still where he was, eyes half-lidded but awake.

He doesn’t ask why you moved.

You don’t ask if he heard it too.

Morning breaks with silver mist. Dew clings to the grass, and everything is too quiet again. Still no birds. No animal trails. Not even the usual buzz of insects. Just pale light and a thin breeze that doesn’t quite touch your skin.

You pack quickly.

Neither of you mentions the fire.

The final set of coordinates is about a half-day away, marked on the edge of a forest basin near a long-dried stream. The further you travel, the thicker the trees grow—crooked, twisted in shapes that make no botanical sense. You notice it first when the sunlight starts bending wrong.

It shines too sharp in some places. Filters weirdly through the leaves. You pause once and realize your shadow is pointing in the opposite direction of Tenzo’s.

“Okay,” you mutter. “Nope.”

Tenzo nods. “Yeah.”

You’re not scared yet. But you are paying very, very close attention.

By midday, you reach the basin. It’s wide and shallow, like a natural amphitheater cut into the land, ringed by bleached stumps and pale grass. There’s a pressure to it—like the air is thicker down there.

You crouch at the edge, scanning. No signs of life. No chakra signatures. Not even residual ones.

Then the wind shifts again.

And you hear something.

Not a voice. Not even a word. Just… a sound. Like the world taking a breath and forgetting to let it go.

Tenzo stiffens beside you.

And that’s when you see it—the ripple.

Not in the air. Not in water.

In space.

A slight shimmer, down near the center of the basin. Like heat distortion. Barely visible.

It twists once, flickers, and then is gone.

You exhale slowly, knuckles white around your kunai.

Tenzo speaks first.

“We need to report this.”

“Yeah,” you say. “Definitely.”

But neither of you moves right away.

Because whatever that was, it didn’t feel like it left.

It felt like it noticed you.