Everlasting Beauty
Shinobu's steps were less fluid than usual as she made her way to Sasori’s workshop. She rehearsed her words silently to herself under her breath: “Thank you for your help, and for everything you have taught me. I believe that I am now ready to continue on my own, using the lessons I have learned from you..” The words felt right,
“Thank you for your help, and for everything you have taught me. I believe that I am now ready to continue on my own, using the lessons I have learned from you..” she repeated to herself, as Sasori’s house came into view, and she entered through the gate.
She called out from the doorway, “Sasori-san?” but received no answer.
She hesitated for a moment before sliding the door open, and stepping inside with caution.
She slid past the breakfast room, past the kitchen, and finally, down the hall connecting the house to the workshop.
“Sasori-san?” she called again. As she entered, the scent of plants and chemicals filled the air, bringing with it memories of countless intensive lessons. However, the usual hum of activity was absent. As she descended the threshold, into the dimly lit room, something caught her eye… to the right of the entrance. The door to the other room, that she had never entered, nor even presumed to be allowed to enter, usually closed, was now ajar. She paused, her curiosity getting the better of her. “Sasori-san?” she called again, now with a slightly different purpose. “Sasori-san? Are you in there?”
No answer again. Shinobu gulped, and with no logical explanation, proceeded forward.
Pushing the door open gently, Shinobu entered the room—and her eyes went wide. Lining the walls were rows upon rows of puppets, hanging motionlessly like an eerie collection of lifeless bodies. Some resembled former demons so closely that they sent chills down her spine, not due to their resemblance to the monsters she fought and killed regularly, but the fact that their forms remained, without having disintegrated… and the knot in her stomach tightened. These demons must have been alive when they were turned into puppets. No matter how vengeful she had thought towards the demons before, it still bothered her.
Her heart pounded as her gaze landed on a puppet that looked eerily familiar. It was lifelike, more so than the others, with features that mirrored Sasori’s own. She froze in shock. Before she could process the revelation, a cold voice pierced the air behind her. “Who gave you permission to come in here, girl?”
Shinobu whirled around, startled, and found Sasori standing in the doorway, his eyes glinting in the dim light… and a slight expression of amusement on his face. “I—I didn’t mean to intrude,” she stammered, quickly regaining her composure. “I came here to speak with you.” He said nothing, only watching her with that ever-present, unsettling calm. Taking a deep breath, Shinobu forced herself to continue. She told him what she had rehearsed, her words steady despite the unease swirling within her. She thanked him for his teachings, for everything he had done to make her stronger, but firmly stated that she would no longer be coming to him for training. Sasori listened in silence, his expression never wavering. When she finished, she hesitated for a moment before pointing to the puppet that resembled him. “What is this?” she asked. “Why does it look like you?”
Sasori’s lips curled into a faint smirk as he stepped forward, his eyes glinting with pride. “That,” he said, “will be me. Once I perfect my technique, I will transfer my consciousness into that puppet, just as I did in my own world.”
Shinobu’s breath caught in her throat. “Transfer… your consciousness?” She recalled Sasori telling her and Kanae, only a few weeks after they had met… he told her then, but somehow… she had gone all that time without actually thinking about it. But now that she was face to face with the actual puppet, she could no longer ignore it. Her eyes fixated on the puppet itself… a monolith whose lifeless appearance emanated a nightmarishly oppressive aura. That hair, that fake skin, those fake features, those eyes devoid of light… Her tabi scraped the stone floor as she instinctively took a step back.
The anxiety of it was sucking her in, and trapping her inside of it… but that was exactly what it was meant to do. Sasori intended to do it to himself. “In my world,” Sasori began, with a dark pride in his voice, “I crafted many such puppets, far superior to anything in this realm. The fighters in my world were far stronger. I had a collection of the warriors from all over the world, all under my control. I even possessed the Third Kazekage, who was said to be the strongest warrior in my country.” There was a hint of vengeful satisfaction when he said this. “And I, Akasuna no Sasori, killed him.”
Shinobu felt a cold chill run down her spine…. ‘Akasuna no Sasori.’ his name literally meant, “Scorpion of the red sand.” Then she remembered something that had happened more than a year ago…
“Uzui-san,” she asked, with curiosity about Sasori on her mind, “what was it like… growing up in a shinobi family?”
Tengen paused mid-pose, raising an eyebrow in surprise. He glanced at her, his usual grin breaking through. "Curious about me, are you?" he teased. “Well, I can’t blame you. I’m quite the flashy figure.” But despite his playful tone, something in his eyes softened.
He sat down on a bench, and motioned for Shinobu to sit down beside him, which she did. “It's not a pretty story though, I’m only telling you because it's you, you got that Shinobu?’
“I understand Uzui-san,” she said in a soft voice.
“The shinobi way,” Tengen began, his eyes drifting off into the distance, “is about turning a person into a weapon. We were tools, and nothing more. My family... my brothers and I, we were raised with the expectation to kill, to endure, and to obey.” His voice dropped slightly as he recalled the faces of his brothers, once so close, now ghosts of his past. “It was all about survival, even at the cost of your own kin.”
Shinobu remained silent, allowing him to continue at his own pace.
“One of the hardest things about being raised like that…” Tengen clenched his fists. “It wasn’t just the training or the bloodshed. It was the idea that strength mattered more than anything else. We had to be perfect soldiers, no matter what. And when the time came, they forced us—my brothers and me—into combat against each other.”
His jaw tightened as he recalled the brutal memory. “It wasn’t a battle for glory. It was to the death. And it was all part of the plan. My father thought it was the only way to weed out the weak.
I was one of the few to survive…. But!” he exclaimed, his extroverted demeanor returning to him. “Thats all in the past! As a demon slayer, I can be as flashy as I want, fuck those Ninja guys… oops… sorry, I didn’t mean to say that in front of you. Hahahaha!”
Back in the workshop, Shinobu was fixated on Sasori’s cold features. She could no longer look at the puppet… and rather than ask any of the other things she wanted to know, she could only bring herself to ask the question she already knew the answer to. “Why would you want to turn yourself into a puppet?”
“Because,” said Sasori, admiringly of his own craft, “I will have an everlasting body. A body that never decays, never ages. Never has to eat, sleep, urinate or defecate. It will last forever, forever beautiful.” “and completely invulnerable” he added silently to himself. “I already explained this to you at the Ubuyashiki mansion.”
“But…” Shinobu breathed, her head feeling hot. “You would no longer be human.”
Sasori paused for a brief second, and then continued, as if he were completely ignoring Shinobu. “The last time I did it, I was unable to make it complete. I wasn’t really able to transfer my consciousness into a puppet, but rather, into a spiritual core which then would be inserted into a puppet, just like the one you are looking at. That damn thing… the puppet body wouldn’t die, but my spiritual core had to be made from my own heart, and it was about twice the size of it. It made the perfect target for that old hag…”
Shinobu knew without asking, that Sasori was talking about a family member… “When I do it again, I’ll do it better.” and when he said that, Sasori felt a sudden pain in his heart… He remembered, in that moment of sheer…. Human weakness, he chose to throw the fight.
He made the conscious decision not to evade his grandmother’s trap, and throw his body into one final embrace from the puppets he had built to resemble his parents…. One last false embrace, that still could never recreate the warmth that he had so longed for, but couldn’t even remember how it felt… A puppet would have never have made such an error of judgment.
“If our business is concluded, then you may leave now. I have work to do.”
Shinobu bowed one final time. “Thank you again, Sasori-san.”
She backed away slowly, with no discernible response from Sasori. His presence made the room seem darker, time seem slower, and gravity feel stronger. As Shinobu finally exited the house, she began to stagger as though the weight that had just been lifted from her left her fatigued, and wobbly. She closed her eyes in pain as she put her hand to her temple. She had never been able to understand Sasori before, but she could at least conceive that people like him existed… but to see his own body as something to escape, to want to live without being able to taste food, feel the bliss of a warm bath, or cool water on a hot day… The thought of it exhausted her.
***
She woke up to Kanae’s humming, as she sat by her bed side, gently stroking the back of her hand with her’s.
“Nee-san,” Shinobu said wearily, “I’m sorry, how long have I been asleep?”
“I don’t know that silly,” Kanae said playfully. “You were fast asleep when I got back. It’s about 2:30 in the evening now.”
“I don’t remember what time I got back,” Shinobu said as she sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes. “I must have gone right to bed after getting back...”
“Would you like to talk about it?” Kanae asked gently.
“As a matter-of-fact, I would.” Shinobu said, stepping out of bed. She walked over to the basin by the washroom, and began to wash her face.
“I’ll go and make us some tea,” Kanae said. “How does green tea with sakura leaves sound?”
Shinobu, who had been trying to control the feelings that gnawed at her since she woke up, allowed herself a small smile… she didn’t realize how much she needed it. “That would be great Nee-san!”
Kanae smiled. “I’ll open a package of cookies as well.”
***
Muichiro moved with feather-like grace, his mist-breathing technique creating veils of haze around him. His blade slashed with a fluidity that seemed to erase the air itself.
Mist breathing, First Form: Low Clouds, Distant Haze…
Flower breathing, Second Form: Honorable Shadow Plum…
Kanao deflected his oncoming attack, and his Bokken was deflected by hers!
She was pushed back slightly by the force, but quickly recovered, and leapt into the air as Muichoro crouched down and aimed for her knees!
As she somersaulted over him, Muichiro swirled around to guard his back, and their swords clashed in rhythmic harmony, each technique testing the other as they sparred with a quiet but fierce determination.
Kanao’s movements were soft yet sharp, like petals carried by a sudden gust of wind, while Muichiro’s seemed to vanish into the mist before materializing with lethal intent.
Their bokkens clashed, and in attempting to press the other, Muichiro’s initiative proved to give him the edge.
Kanao stumbled back, not with enough force to knock her off her feet, but with enough to make her lose her guard for just a split second, and in that window, Muichiro’s bokken stopped just short of her shoulder.
“You died,” he said in an egoless tone. Kanao nodded politely and smiled, accepting her defeat with an equal lack of ego. “It was a good sparring session. Do you wanna go again?” Muichiro asked. Kanao took out her coin, and eyed it trustingly, before tossing it into the air.
On the engawa, Kanae and Shinobu watched, sipping tea and nibbling on cookies as the friendly competition unfolded before them. Kanao lunged, her footwork swift, and Muichiro weaved in and out with perfect balance. The two of them were practically weightless as they moved. "They're improving so quickly," Kanae commented, her voice warm with pride as she watched Kanao give her all.
Shinobu nodded absently, her thoughts elsewhere. She placed her teacup down and turned to her sister, her brows slightly furrowed. “Nee-san… I saw something disturbing when I was with Sasori.” She hesitated for a moment, still piecing together her words. “He has this… puppet, that looks exactly like him. He said he’s planning to transfer his consciousness into it one day.”
Kanae's gentle smile faded, and her eyes grew somber. “Transfer his consciousness?” she repeated, leaning in to listen closely.
Shinobu nodded, her grip tightening on her cup. “Yes… He told me…” She recounted everything Sasori had told her, and while Sasori’s telling of the story carried his own tone, Shinobu retold it in her own words, and found herself trembling, until Kanae put a hand over her’s in support. “I know he is twisted Nee-san, but still… I can’t help but wonder what happened to make him prefer that…. being a puppet, over living as a human.” Kanae stayed quiet, allowing her sister to process her emotions aloud. “I thought I had hardened myself to the things that exist in this world, especially since we see so many horrible things done by the demons…”
Her voice quivered slightly as she said this. “I thought that maybe, someone as callous as Sasori-san would help me prepare though sheer osmosis, and perhaps he has just a little bit, but hearing him talk about rejecting his humanity so casually... it broke something in me. Nee-san, I keep wondering, what kind of pain could push someone that far? How much torment must he have endured to reject being alive?”
The sparring continued in the background, Kanao twirled gracefully dodging Muichiro’s attacks, and landing on her tip-toes with the elegance and skill of a ballerina.
Their bokken’s clacked together, and Kanao this time, had not only paired Muichiro, but thrown him off his course, and as Muichiro prevented himself from falling to the ground, and regained his balance, Kanao twisted and attacked with an aerial offensive of her own!
Sixth Form: Whirling Peach!
Second Form: Eight-Layered Mist!
Their attacks canceled each other out, and they now stood across from each other in a lull.
“Your good,” Muichiro complemented.
Kanao said nothing, merely smiling as she accepted the praise.
“Shinobu,” Kanae said, back on the engawa, “I understand you. I too, ever since my second encounter with Sasori-san, felt a lot of fear of him… but also pity for him. However, we cannot change the past, and we cannot help everyone, no matter how painful it is. In some ways, its easier to handle demons, since we are trained to fight them, but as you well know, a human being is different.”
Shinobu hung her head. “Nee-san I… I don’t know how its possible that someone could come to one world from another, but... I cannot think of him the same way I think of a demon… I feel as though maybe, he’s right to hate it.”
Kanae smiled as she gave Shinobu a reassuring pat on the knee. “It’s that heart of yours, Shinobu. No matter what, you always find a way to care.”
“Your the same way Nee-san,” Shinobu said. “And yet even still, I cannot imagine how to become friends with the demons like you hope for, but… maybe it is the same. Either way… I’m never going back there.”
Shinobu stood up, watching Muichiro and Kanao continue to go at it. ”Which also means Nee-san, that I must train even harder now that I am no longer relying on that man for help. Would you please help me with my training this evening, Nee-san?”
Kanae beamed. “Why should today be any different from always Shinobu?”
“Thanks!” Shinobu cried, the calm joy returning to her face.
Momentarily, the unease she felt at Sasori's workshop was forgotten. Sasori was proud of his puppets, and his reputation as a heartless shinobi. Kanae's pride, came from watching those whom she nurtured grow. A warm, and welcomed contrast...
The sisters descended the steps of the engawa together, the tea and cookies, left for the ants.