Chapter 7
“Collection of lightning property jutjsu…First-aid for Jonin (Revised Edition)…A Trilogy: Road to Ninja…and…and…”
Sakura counted the books she had hugged to her chest. She had figured after chewing thoughtfully on her dango after the training session that if, by any chance, the mysterious person had awakened before their predicted time, say: at night, a few interesting volumes and a note of inquiry should be able to reduce his confusion and keep him busy.
Though, I should be the one that’s confused after all.
Rays of sunshine streamed through the library’s windows, and the vivid greenness outside glowed with vitality. Leaves left faint prints on the window’s glass panels; the chill air of winter seeped into the facility under the door and through the cracks hiding on the windowsills. Library lights were normally turned off in the mornings to conserve energy. Scents of stained scrolls, old leather, and decaying papers dominated the dark corners of the library while the lasting fragrance of fresh parchments and grass circulated throughout the study’s brightest place.
Sakura rubbed her temples as she huffed out a meditative sigh; she turned and began walking down an aisle further into the shadows of the library. Generally, texts containing sophisticated information, recommended for adults or designed for a rarer population within the audience were stored in one of these aisles, that spent their time bathing in dimly illuminated parts of the library. A place for dares from the young kids who were eager to test their bravery as a ninja. Sakura remembered she witnessed a funny incident like this sometime before: of kid walking into this section because his friends dared him to and getting lost around these aisles due to their overwhelming fear. Sakura couldn’t remember what happened to that kid afterward, but she did recall she saw his friends with their parents apologising to him the next day at the Ninja Academy’s front gate.
At this Sakura couldn’t help to stifle a giggle, there’s nothing to be afraid of in these sections. The space she was standing in right now was full of edgy romance novels and overly exaggerated autobiographies. Though it was true that the more spine-chilling and grim the appearance a bookshop or library takes, the more mysterious materials it would be trying to conceal.
“…” Sakura squinted at the characters written on the spine of every book. The inky letters seemed to be dancing in front of her eyes and the fatigue which plagued her from last night didn’t make her attempt to focus any better.
“…Make-out Paradise…by Jiraiya-san?…” Sakura bent down to see a familiar hint of orange squashed amongst a row of red and blues. She reached and tipped the book slightly towards her, peering at the front cover of the work.
Racing Heart, it said, probably one of those narcissistic authors working at some disreputable and misleading content again. It was published years ago, Sakura noticed, her eyes flitted back to check on the book receipt the front desk gave her (which was a guide to what the books she was trying to borrow were about and where they were in the library). It came out into the market roughly five years before the first volume of the Icha Icha series dropped.
Rustle——rustle——
Sakura noticed a tear on the ledger. She pulled the book out completely and scrutinized it in her grasp. A corner of the novel’s orange cover was bent or rather torn, now that she could see it clearly under the light, curiously Sakura put an uncertain thumb onto the bent wrapper and began peeling it off the book slowly; beneath the orange wrapping was another layer: a completely black book jacket framed with eyes emblazoned onto the cover’s edge with gleaming white prints. She tilted the book left and right for a moment, utterly mesmerised by the symbols that framed the cover; the eyes felt as if they were indeed real ones belonging to an alive person, twinkling with mirth and amusement.
The center of the front cover, where the title should have been was completely back. However if one studied closely enough, a few stains of something could be seen speckled here and there. Accustomed, Sakura lifted the novel near her nose; immediately, the odour of dust invaded her senses and Sakura saved herself just in time by pulling the book away.
“An old volume, huh?… I might just have a peek at it,” Sakura murmured, slipping the novel open and leafing through the first few pages——which were blank until she came across the fifth one filled with legible scripts, composed of straight and thin black lines and occasionally circles and curves. Sakura could fish out some Japanese characters amongst the sea of words yet the many others remained unreadable: they were unlike any of the secret codes in Konoha or scrolls from the confederation she skimmed through during and after the Fourth Shinobi War. Compared to the Japanese letter system or any of the cryptographs in the five big nations, the prints on the stained-brown pages were like an adopted and improved version of cuneiform mixed up with some hand-drawn pictures and some comprehensible Japanese characters.
Shifting restlessly so Sakura could spare her hands for a moment to bring the book closer to her a few bold letters popped out of the page and jumped into her vision, waltzing gracefully before her eyes.
“Worldview. A journal containing the travels of the very legend himself, Sakai Arakune.”
For a long time, Sakura stood there like a stone reading through the writings in the tome.
It was the lunch bell chiming from the library’s neighboring offices that snapped her out of her trance. Soundlessly, she slid the orange book cover back onto the novel and frantically searched for the adult romance novel she came here to find.
The alarm finished ringing and the sun had just managed to inch up to the highest point in the sky when Sakura stepped out of the library with a small tower of books in her hands.
“Ah isn’t that Doctor Haruno!” a little boy’s yell rang across the grounds. Something tugged at Sakura’s lips and her heart did a small cartwheel yet on the surface she remained collected and didn’t spare a single glance at whatever was behind her. Her feet carried her faster through the streets; cutting through the crowd of people while her sight stayed fixed on the ground. She had a task at hand and she wanted to get it done and over as quickly as possible. Sorry, she apologized with an impassive tone, there’s something I have going on at the moment our meeting will just have to wait. She hoped the young lad wasn’t mad at her for ignoring him.
“Where is she heading I wonder?” Ah, that must be the dark-haired girl who brought him to the nurse’s office that day! Yes, she told me she will enroll in the Ninja Academy this year…and train relentlessly in Taijutsu to be able to stand on the same levels as Lee! Sakura remembered how she laughed with pride and admiration when she heard the girl’s goal.
“To the hospital, of course!” came the boy’s arrogant reply yet in the next split of a second, his irritated voice dropped to a low whimper, “I wonder when we will get to hang out with Doctor Haruno again…”
“Ah, you’re at it again…come on, if Doctor Haruno is speeding away this quick she must have got something urgent to do. See her at the door of Konoha’s hospital? Let’s not bother her anymore and go off to play on our own…Come on——!”
The girl’s voice was cut off the moment Sakura shut the door. The bleak corridor was illuminated with bright artificial lights as she swept through them. The Kakashi-lookalike was displaced to the ANBU ward, which was a separate part of the hospital from all others, a special place designed to treat the spies and strongest warriors of Konoha and the most concealed figures. That was the safest place for him to be resting, only those with the responsibility of treating the unit or those who came with huge authorities or were granted access by those authorities could drop in for a visit.
Sakura braked when her eyes caught the white sign pinned to a metal door, “Room 16”. Sakura took a moment to adjust the books in her arms before sliding open the door.
ANBU ward appeared to be the same as any other unit in the hospital: there were the same amount of beds lined against the walls, the same white curtains they hung around the windows and used to separate the beds and spaces, the same painted grey wooden drawer positioned at the corners of the furthest wall from the entrance and an eye-catching basket of apples placed on one of these drawers——where the duplicate of her teacher lies.
Sakura proceeded cautiously, seemingly tensed by the presence of the inert patient. She didn’t release the breath she was holding onto until she found herself a seat by his side. On the wooden stool, she sat, peeling the skin of an apple she picked from the basket; the stack of novels rested on the top of the drawer while her eyes studied his face for the entire time.
Seeing the lack of the scar on the man’s left eye felt odd to her. Kakashi, the teacher of Team 7 (her former teacher), was once the eminent “genius” and “copy-ninja” and still was when he moved into his Hokage office donned in white robes and a face hidden by a broad red hat, had a scar which ran down from his brows to his cheek: a mark his cruel youth left on him.
Sakura bit the inside of her cheeks as she placed down sliced apple on the plate in her lap. With or without the scar, he still looked like the impertinent person he would sometimes be. A sudden image of Kakashi looking at her with his dead-fish-eyes floated into her mind which Sakura swiftly dismissed with a shake of her head.
Good thing they still left the mask on him, Sakura observed contently. It would probably take another lifetime for her to figure out why her teacher would never appear without a black mask stuck to his face. Has he ever taken it off before? Sakura pondered she had only seen a version of him without the mask in the hospital records and years ago, in another ANBU file Tsunade asked her to organize with Shizune. At this recollection, Sakura flushed disconcertingly…though Shizune might not be interested in some grey-haired young man armored in aloof manners at that time, the Genin version of her definitely was: during that time, she always had a thing for smart, good-looking but arrogant boys——and the thirteen years old Kakashi just so happens to be one of these guys.
Sakura hated herself for her failure in concealing her reactions when she first saw what her teacher was like without a mask…Shizune would sometimes still tease her about it. Waving these thoughts away again, Sakura bowed her head in concentration and began peeling another apple.
Then another, when her bored brain took her back to the memories of the Fourth Shinobi War. There she sat in the cinema her mind created for her, watching the blurred outlines of moving figures…Naruto, Sasuke, Kakashi, and Tsunade… reappeared and disappeared; a loud unintelligible yell resonated around her followed by a series of clashing noises: rocks scraping against rocks, metals clanging with metals, and cries echoing after cries. Shortly after a few minutes into the show, Sakura excused herself from the theatre and the movie before she sizzled into smoke and the face of her teacher drained from the screen like dried-up ink.
Her hands paused in their motion, and the doctor’s gaze slowly fell from looking at the man to the window and then reluctantly back down at her own hands. She finished skinning the third apple in silence; outside the wind groaned and the curtains shuffled in reply; the afternoon blaze of the sun softened into creamy yellow and white glows; the air gradually turned chiller and chiller minute by minute waiting for the wintery evening to poke its head around the corners, and with that, Sakura stood up from the stool and walked off impassively; her white coat sweeping against the hem of her red skirt and her shoes clicking against the concrete floor like a someone snapping their tongue against their teeth in disagreement.