Chapter 499: A Secret From Years Ago
Naruto had come home to rest. More precisely, Satsuki had pulled him home.
Once things in the Pure Land had reached a natural stopping point, she had taken hold of his sleeve, fixed him with those bright black eyes of hers, and said absolutely nothing. She hadn't needed to. The meaning was perfectly clear: it was time to go home.
So they had gone home.
Now the kitchen was putting out the kind of smell that made a room feel occupied. Satsuki stood at the stove in her apron, giving her full attention to whatever was in the pot. Naruto was technically the better cook between the two of them, but Satsuki took quiet pleasure in the duties she had decided belonged to her as a wife.
Preparing dinner for her husband. Watching him eat what she had made. Seeing the satisfied look on his face afterward. This particular shade of ordinary happiness ranked just below physical closeness with Naruto in terms of what she valued most.
As for what tonight's dinner was --
Naruto glanced toward the kitchen. Through the rolling steam from the pot, he could just make out plump oysters rising and falling with the boil.
Oyster ramen.
The corner of his mouth twitched.
The feelings Satsuki had suppressed for so many years showed no sign of cooling down. If anything the flame had grown larger, burning with the enthusiasm of someone making up for lost time. After each time... she looked increasingly radiant. Glowing skin, bright eyes, a quality to her that made her seem lit from within.
As for him -- well. He had lost a little weight.
His gaze drifted involuntarily toward the bedroom. On the bed, neatly folded and laid out: several sets of clothing. The maid outfit. The white wedding dress. Even the white kimono from their wedding day.
Naruto's face went red. Tonight was going to be another keep-him-up-until-midnight situation, wasn't it.
He shook his head hard. No, no, no. If he kept thinking about it, he really would lose himself completely.
He wiped at a nonexistent bead of sweat on his temple and decided that while Satsuki was cooking, he needed to find something to do with his hands. Give his attention somewhere to go.
He started wandering the house.
This small villa had gradually started to look like a home since they moved in before the honeymoon. Satsuki's chosen throw pillows on the living room sofa. Her preferred fruits on the low table. Both their shoes lined up neatly side by side in the entryway cabinet.
He walked without any particular destination and pushed open a door.
The study.
This room didn't get much use. Mostly it held documents, books, and a collection of miscellaneous old things that hadn't found anywhere else to go.
His gaze moved around the room and then stopped.
On the desk, sitting quietly by itself, was a stuffed toy.
A small chibi-style white cat dressed in a miniature Uchiha clan outfit, its large black button eyes looking straight ahead with a bright, fixed expression.
The toy was showing its age.
The white plush had yellowed slightly at the edges. A thin layer of dust had settled over the little clan robe.
Naruto walked over and picked it up gently. Memory came up like a tide.
This was from years ago -- before the Chunin Exams. Satsuki had pressed it into his hands with that particular brand of proud awkwardness she used to disguise anything that felt too sincere. She had sewn it herself.
The toy had been with him from that day forward.
Company while he read. Set on the pillow beside him when he slept. Something to hold and squeeze when nothing was going right. Those black eyes had always looked back at him with the same bright steadiness -- very much like Satsuki herself.
The years had worn it down. Recently it had gathered dust, and he hadn't gotten around to cleaning it.
Naruto looked down at the toy in his hands and felt warmth settle in his chest. Since there was nothing pressing to do right now, he might as well give it a proper wash.
He found a pair of scissors in the living room and came back. Working along the seams, carefully, he began to pull the stitching apart.
The stuffing was cotton wool. He would need to pull it out, wash the outer fabric, let it dry, then pack everything back in and resew it.
He worked carefully, teasing apart the looser threads one by one.
Eventually the seam came open.
He reached his hand inside to scoop out the cotton -- and his fingertips touched something that wasn't cotton.
The texture was completely wrong.
Naruto's hand went still. "Hm?" He pushed his hand deeper. "What's this?"
-- -- --
"Naruto, dinner's ready."
Uchiha Satsuki carried two steaming bowls of ramen out of the kitchen, setting them carefully on the dining table.
Creamy broth. Plump oysters bobbing at the surface, trailing the smell of the sea.
She straightened up, expecting Naruto to appear from wherever he was, the way he always did, eating his way through the bowl and ending with a thumbs-up and the verdict that it was good.
No response from the living room. Satsuki's brow creased slightly. Her gaze moved over the empty space.
The study door was open. Warm light came through it. There was some faint sound of movement from inside.
"Naruto?"
She walked toward the study, puzzled, and leaned her head through the doorway -- then stopped.
Naruto was standing at the desk with his back to the door, completely still.
On the desk surface, the small white cat she had sewn herself -- the one that had kept Naruto company for years -- had been taken apart, its cotton stuffing scattered in loose clumps across the wood.
Naruto's hand was inside the empty fabric shell.
"...Satsuki."
His voice came with emotions she couldn't easily name -- something like fond exasperation, and something like the particular softness of being genuinely moved.
"You really did keep this from me for a long time, didn't you."
Satsuki's heart skipped a beat.
"Though I was pretty careless too," Naruto continued. "All these years and I never noticed the secret you hid in here."
He turned slowly. Those blue eyes found her face. "I suppose you really can't trust a cute exterior to tell you everything."
"...!!"
Satsuki's body gave a violent shudder. Her mind went blank for one full second, then flooded all at once with sharp and panicked thoughts.
Naruto had found it?!
How? After all this time? Why now? Why right now?!
The color left her face at a visible rate, draining until her skin was close to white.
The little cat's eyes -- she had sewn them on herself. But no one had ever known what was hidden behind those two black buttons.
A camera.
She had installed it during the period when her feelings had been at their most consuming, when every waking hour had been saturated with thoughts of Naruto. What was he doing. What was he thinking. Did he ever think about her. She had been so desperate to know that she had hidden a camera in the eyes of the toy she sent him.
Through that feed, she had watched him sleep. Watched him stare into space. Watched him hold the toy and talk to it quietly. Watched him confide things to the cat the way he might have confided them to a person.
She had imagined, back then, that it wasn't the cat he was holding while he fell asleep. It was her.
Then came Naruto's eighteenth birthday. That night. And everything she had imagined became real.
After that, she had dismantled the surveillance entirely. Wiped the computer clean, deleted every saved recording, destroyed every piece of evidence. Those years of compulsive behavior had been buried in the deepest part of her memory, never revisited, never mentioned.
But she hadn't removed what was still hidden inside the toy's eyes.
What do I do?!
Thoughts crashed through her mind like a storm. Will Naruto be disappointed in me? Will he think I'm frightening? Disturbing? He's so genuine, so normal -- how could he possibly accept that his wife once --
What if he wants a divorce?
That last thought hit her like something physical. Her legs nearly went out from under her.
Divorce.
The moment that word surfaced, Satsuki felt something invisible close hard around her heart. That suffocating terror -- to Satsuki, it was worse than death.
She had to do something. Her mind accelerated.
Her eyes. The Six-Tomoe Rinnegan in her left, the Nine-Tomoe Rinne-Sharingan in her right. The power to alter concepts, stop time, reverse the flow of moments.
If she activated her ocular techniques right now and rolled the world back -- back to before Naruto opened the toy -- she could stop all of this.
"Satsuki really is adorable."
Naruto's voice cut through the storm.
"Ha." He smiled, and that smile held not one particle of disgust or alarm -- only a softness so complete it had no edge to it, the look of someone thoroughly and helplessly charmed. "Though now that I've found out, I won't get to see her embarrassed face when she first tells me herself, will I."
"...Hm?"
Satsuki's mind stalled. The words she had been on the verge of saying -- please don't leave me, I'll do anything -- were swallowed back down before they could come out.
Adorable? Surveillance was adorable?
She looked up at him, confused, and saw what he was holding.
A small chibi doll, palm-sized. Completely new, dust-free, as though it had never been touched.
Black hair. Black eyes. Dressed in a tiny version of Uchiha clan clothing -- a black high-collared shirt with the clan fan embossed on the back.
Her. A miniature, carefully made likeness of herself.
That was what Naruto had found inside the white cat.
"Back then," Naruto said quietly, "you had already hidden yourself in here."
He looked down at the small figure in his hands. The corner of his mouth curved. Inside the white cat's stuffed body, the cotton had been cleared away and replaced with this -- a doll in Satsuki's image, nestled in the deepest part of the cavity, cushioned by soft cotton on every side.
She had been watching him through the camera every day, imagining that the thing he held while he fell asleep was her -- and so she had made a version of herself and sewn it inside. Hidden herself in the toy that stayed beside him every night, present in secret, day after day.
"When I think about Satsuki lying awake imagining she was the one keeping me company..."
Something warm and a little undone moved through his voice. Fondness. Being moved. A thread of something that felt close to heartache. "I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Really, I should have been the one to reach out first."
"..."
Satsuki stood where she was, at a complete loss for words. Her gaze drifted slowly from his face to the desk behind him.
The white cat, partially disassembled. Its head still intact. Two black eyes still sewn in place, catching the warm yellow light of the study lamp.
The camera still exactly where she had put it.