[Konohagakure — Eastern Gate, November 9th, 6:14 AM]
Jiraiya packed light.
One scroll bag, half-full. The field-grade kunai set, not the parade one. Two weeks of soldier pills because he was fifty-four and his back made certain decisions for him now. The completed Icha Icha manuscript in its oil-treated sleeve, because it had been on his person for three weeks and leaving it behind felt wrong in a way he couldn't articulate.
He was at the gate at six, which was early enough that the only people awake were the gate guards, the chestnut vendor, who appeared to be a permanent feature of the landscape at this point, and Naruto.
"I knew you'd be here," Jiraiya said.
"I knew you were leaving today," Naruto said.
"How."
"You returned the borrowed chair to the mission desk yesterday. You only return things when you're about to go somewhere and you don't want loose ends."
Jiraiya looked at him. The boy was sixteen now, had been for a while, and the specific quality of his attention had shifted in the past month — still loud, still earnest, still fundamentally Naruto in every way that mattered, but with a precision underneath it that was new and was, Jiraiya suspected, the product of a month of being seen clearly by an ancient scroll.
"Two weeks," Jiraiya said.
"I know."
"I'll be back."
"I know that too."
Naruto held out a wrapped cloth bundle — the kind that held three rice balls and a boiled egg, Jiraiya could tell by the weight and the smell. He took it without comment. He had learned, over years, that refusing Naruto's practical kindnesses was both impossible and wrong.
"Jiraiya-sensei," Naruto said.
"Mm."
"Is it Orochimaru."
Jiraiya looked at him.
"Yes," he said. There was no point in the other answer. Not with this kid.
Naruto was quiet for a moment. He had his hands in his jacket pockets and he was looking at the road north rather than at Jiraiya, which was his way of giving someone room.
"Be careful," he said.
"Always."
"I mean it this time specifically."
"I know."
"And eat the rice balls before noon. They get weird after noon."
"They're rice balls. They don't get weird."
"The egg specifically gets a vibe."
"The egg does not get a vibe, Naruto."
"The egg gets a vibe. I stand by this."
Jiraiya put the bundle in his bag. He adjusted the scroll case on his shoulder. He looked at the road north, at the way it went from cobblestone to packed earth at the treeline, at the morning mist sitting low between the pines.
He thought: twenty years. I've been walking toward this for twenty years without admitting I was walking toward it.
He walked.
Three hours north of Konoha, in the particular quiet of the midmorning forest where the road thinned and the birdcall shifted from the domestic species to the wild ones, Jiraiya reached into his bag for the rice bundle and found something else.
A small notebook. Orange cover, the color of a certain jacket he'd been looking at across training grounds for years. Soft-cover, held closed with a plain cord.
He didn't remember packing it.
He untied the cord and opened it.
Inside, in handwriting that had improved significantly since the academy but still retained its essential Naruto-ness — the big loop on the K, the way the R leaned forward like it was in a hurry — was one sentence.
He was your student too. You taught him how to come back. He still knows the way.
Jiraiya stood in the middle of the forest road for a moment.
He thought: this kid. This absolute kid.
He closed the notebook and put it in his vest pocket, against his chest, where it would stay for the entirety of the two weeks.
He kept walking.
[Northern Sound Border Region — Tsukigakure Inn, November 9th, 7:43 PM]
The inn at Tsukigakure was small and clean and served three meals a day that were always the same three meals. The innkeeper was a woman in her sixties who had been running the place for forty years and had developed, over those forty years, the ability to assess a traveler's purpose and emotional state within thirty seconds of arrival.
She assessed Jiraiya in twenty.
"Room three," she said. "Second floor. There's a message for you at the desk."
Jiraiya stopped. "A message."
"Left this morning. Paid the holding fee." She did not elaborate. She had the innkeeper's gift of providing exactly the information required and none more.
He took the message at the desk. It was a sealed scroll, small, with no identifying marks.
He opened it.
Inside, in handwriting he recognized without needing to think about it — neat, economical, the hand of a man who had trained under precision and then added something of his own to it:
I know why you're coming. The Tsukigakure road, two days north. There's a teahouse at the crossroads. I'll be there the morning of the eleventh. One cup. No weapons. No teams. Just the conversation we should have had before.
— K
Not Kabuto. The initial was different. The K with the particular serif on the base that Jiraiya had spent twenty years not allowing himself to look for.
Orochimaru. The K was for the name he had signed letters with as a child, before the war years had made formality a habit he'd never fully broken — Kimi, the shortened form his mother had called him, that he had told precisely three people in his life and had apparently never stopped using when the correspondence felt like it mattered.
Jiraiya sat down in the inn's narrow hallway. He sat with the scroll in his hands for a long time.
He thought: he's been tracking me since the memorial stone. He knew I'd come north when Kabuto came in. He's been positioning for this conversation for longer than I realized.
He thought: the notebook said he still knows the way.
He put the scroll in his pocket.
"I'll need the room for two nights," he told the innkeeper.
"I assumed," she said.
[Konohagakure — Hokage Tower Plaza, November 9th, 8:17 PM]
The scroll pulsed at eight.
Not an announcement — just a pulse, the ambient one it had been doing since category fourteen, the slow gold heartbeat that had become as familiar as the bell at the academy gate.
Naruto was at Iruka-sensei's for dinner. He felt the pulse through the small scroll at his hip and looked at it.
Nothing yet. Just the pulse.
He put it away and ate his rice.
"He'll be okay," Iruka said, from the other side of the table.
"I know," Naruto said.
"He's been okay every time before."
"I know."
"You're going to be distracted for two weeks."
"I'm always distracted."
"You're going to be specifically distracted for two weeks."
"Yeah." Naruto looked at his bowl. "Yeah, probably."
Iruka refilled his tea. "He taught you well, you know. Whatever happens up there."
Naruto looked at him.
Iruka said: "Jiraiya-sensei. He taught you how to believe in people who are hard to believe in. That's the most important thing he ever taught you. Whatever happens with Orochimaru—" He stopped. "Whatever happens, Jiraiya didn't go in blind. He went with the thing you gave him."
Naruto was quiet for a moment.
"The notebook," he said.
"He found it?"
"He found it three hours in. I could tell because he sent me a message that said 'eat the egg before noon' which means he read it and didn't know what else to say."
Iruka smiled. "That sounds about right."
"Yeah," Naruto said. "Yeah, it does."
He finished his rice. He helped with the dishes. He walked home through the evening village with the scroll pulsing faintly at his hip and the category fifteen announcement still three days away and the particular patience of a person who has learned that some things take exactly as long as they take.
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