By the time we saw the village walls, my legs hated me and my ribs felt like they'd been replaced with bruises.
Konoha's gates rose out of the trees like always: giant wooden doors, scarred and solid, flanked by the two chunin who seemed to live there more than any house. The mid-afternoon sun painted everything warm.
Naruto, naturally, had enough energy to jog ahead and yell.
"WE'RE BAAACK!"
The guard on the left visibly flinched. The one on the right peered past him, eyes flicking over Kakashi's slouched form, Sasuke's scuffed clothes, me trailing behind with ink-stained fingers and a mission scroll in my hand.
Their chakra did an interesting little double-take—relief, surprise, something like as they realized all three of us were walking in under our own power.
"Team 7," the right guard said, pen already scratching across his clipboard. "Report?"
Kakashi raised a lazy hand. "Back from escort mission. One client delivered. One minor bout of international terrorism averted."
Naruto puffed up. "We beat this huge demon of the Mist with a sword taller than Sylvie! I did a super awesome combo with Sasuke and Kakashi-sensei—"
"Correction," Sasuke said flatly. "You almost died and Kakashi cleaned up."
Naruto whirled on him. "We almost died together, thank you."
I leaned my shoulder against the gate frame, letting the village wash over me.
Wave had felt like someone turned the saturation down on everything. Chakra there ran grey and thin, stretched over too many empty stomachs and empty houses. Even the air had tasted tired.
Konoha was… lighter. Brighter. The chakra "weather" here hummed like a crowded street market: warm pockets of contentment, sharp flashes of irritation, kids laughing somewhere off to the left, an ANBU watching from a rooftop with their presence folded small.
But right next to me?
Naruto burned hotter than before, wild orange-red threaded with something darker, heavier. Sasuke's presence had sharpened into a hard, spinning point. Kakashi's chakra, usually this easy, smooth current, felt dimmer at the edges—tugged thin by Sharingan overuse and a week of pretending he wasn't exhausted.
We'd left as three rookies with a scarecrow. We were coming back as… slightly more dented rookies with a scarecrow who had to pretend this was fine.
"We'll need the written report, Hatake," the left guard said, pen hovering. "The mission was listed as C-rank."
Kakashi eye-smiled. "And it will be very earnestly filed. Right after the hospital tries to convince me I'm not allowed to run myself to chakra exhaustion. Again."
The guards gave us another once-over, like they were trying to reconcile "these undersized goblins" with "rumors of a missing-nin and a crime lord." One of them muttered, "Kids these days," under his breath.
I didn't take it personally. They were just late to the party.
Naruto inhaled deeply as we stepped through the gates, chest puffed out.
"Smell that?" he said. "Ramen. And not-rotting-fish-smell. I missed not-rotting-fish-smell."
"Your standards are inspiring," I said.
He grinned, wide and toothy, then winced when the bandage under his shirt tugged.
Right. We were home. Which meant step one was obvious.
"Hospital," I said.
Naruto groaned. "Nooo, not bandage gremlins—"
Kakashi flicked him lightly on the back of the head. "Hospital, Naruto. Non-negotiable."
Sasuke said nothing, but his shoulders had that extra-straight look they got when he didn't want to admit he was also in pain.
I adjusted my glasses and followed them toward the white-walled guilt box where Konoha stored its broken shinobi and pretended that made us fine.
The hospital smelled like it always did: antiseptic and herbs and faint sweat, with an undercurrent of chakra that tasted like static if you focused too hard.
Kakashi got hijacked by a medic-nin the second we walked in.
"Hatake-san."
The woman was short, steel-eyed, and had the violent patience of someone who'd treated him before. She looked him up and down the way Ino's mom looked at mismatched outfits: clinically offended.
"You're pale," she said.
"I'm always pale," Kakashi said.
"Your chakra pathways are inflamed."
"Occupational hazard."
She narrowed her eyes. "Sit."
He sat. The power of medical authority.
Sasuke and Naruto slumped into plastic chairs nearby. I hovered close enough to eavesdrop without getting in the way, mostly because watching someone tell Kakashi off was cheap entertainment.
The medic pressed glowing hands over his side. The air around her shifted, little waves of professional focus rippling the chakra-weather.
"You overloaded your Sharingan again," she said. "Did you forget the part where it's not actually yours?"
Kakashi scratched his cheek. "It was either that or let my students be turned into red mist by an S-rank missing-nin. I made a call."
Naruto perked up. "We weren't gonna be red mist! Me and Sasuke had it totally under control—"
"You froze and got chained," Sasuke said.
"You froze and got almost dead," I added helpfully.
Naruto pointed at both of us. "You're supposed to be on my side."
"I am on your side," I said. "I'd just prefer that side not be 'splattered across a bridge.'"
The medic snorted once, then schooled her face back into disapproval.
"You need to stop pushing your limits like this, Hatake," she said. "Especially if you're going to keep taking genin on missions that jump two ranks in the field."
Kakashi lifted his visible eye toward the ceiling like maybe there was a friendly Hokage up there who'd bail him out.
"If someone wants to give us only D-ranks forever," he said, "I'll happily spend my days rescuing cats."
"Liar," I muttered.
He cut a glance at me. I shrugged.
"You do," I said. "You'd die of boredom. Very dramatically."
"Some of us enjoy reading quietly," he replied. His chakra flickered with tired amusement.
The medic finished her scan, then scribbled something on a chart.
"I'm putting in the file—again—that you're restricted from high-intensity missions for a week," she said. "You need to rest, hydrate, and for the love of the Shodai, stop using the eye unless you absolutely have to."
Kakashi gave a lazy salute.
"I'll consider treating my body with basic respect," he said. "For the children."
That was my opening and my mouth did the stupid thing before my brain could stop it.
"If you need a control group," I said, "you could give me some first-hand lessons in 'what chakra overuse feels like.' For education purposes."
Naruto blinked at me. Sasuke stared. The medic raised her brows. Kakashi's entire presence went "…".
Heat shot up my neck.
"I mean—" I flailed. "Not actually! I'm not asking you to— I just— lessons, not… experiments."
Naruto frowned. "Why would you want to feel like that on purpose? He looked like he was gonna fall over and die."
"Curiosity," I said weakly. "Terrible personality trait. I'm working on it."
Kakashi made a soft, incredulous sound.
"Sylvie," he said, "as your sensei, I feel obligated to inform you that my training methods do not include 'collapse in front of your students so they can take notes.'"
"Yet," I said under my breath.
He ignored that.
The medic shoved a smaller clipboard into my hands.
"You," she said. "Diagnostics practice."
My brain did a very quick happy dance.
"Yes, ma'am," I said.
Naruto slumped dramatically. "Why does she get to 'practice' and I just get poked?"
"Because she volunteered to be a terrifying little nerd," the medic said. "Put your arm out, Naruto."
He grumbled but obeyed. I pressed my glowing fingertips to the bruises under his sleeve, letting my chakra trickle in just enough to feel the difference between "healing" and "we need to panic now."
The buzz of his presence jumped out at me, familiar and loud. Underneath the surface scrapes, his body was knitting itself back together at a ridiculous speed.
"You're fine," I said. "Annoyingly so."
He grinned. "Told you I was tough."
"Sasuke next," the medic said.
Sasuke extended his leg without comment. The ache in his chakra was deeper, slower—muscle strain, the echo of Ice Mirror needles, fatigue he was carefully not showing.
"Try shifting your chakra to your fingertips," I murmured, more to myself. "Less flood, more… thread."
It wasn't elegant, but I could feel the injury in clearer outlines. Every bit of feedback like this was a little treasure hoarded.
I hesitated, watching the medic's hands as she adjusted Naruto's chart. Her chakra felt clean and steady, like cool water running under skin. Not flashy. Not destructive. Just… fixing things.
"Hey," I said, before my anxiety could drag it back down my throat. "If I wanted to get better at this—at scanning, I mean—what should I even be looking for?"
She blinked at me, then at my still-glowing fingers. "You already are," she said. "Most genin your age can't feel the difference between a bruise and a torn ligament."
"Yeah, but I didn't know his arm was fine until you said it was," I argued. "I'm guessing. I don't want to be guessing when it's… worse."
Haku's body flashed across my mind, too still on the bridge. Kakashi slumped against Zabuza with blood in his hair. The tiny dip in Naruto's chakra when he'd sagged into sleep.
The medic's face softened in a way that made me uncomfortable. "If you want formal med-nin training, talk to the hospital after the Exams," she said. "We always need more hands. Until then? Start with anatomy. Learn what the body's supposed to feel like before you try to fix it."
"Homework," I muttered, but my brain was already making a list. Books. Charts. Maybe I could bribe someone into letting me watch their rounds.
If I was going to be the one slapping glow-stick hands on people, I wanted to know what I was missing before it killed them.
Kakashi watched from the exam table, eye half-lidded. His chakra smoothed out, just a little.
"Look at you," he said. "Already stealing my job."
"I'm just trying to make sure you get to keep yours," I said.
He hummed, something unreadable flickering under the noise of the room.
That was the thing about Kakashi: he could fold his emotions so flat it took real effort to tug at the edges. Here, surrounded by clean white walls and the ghosts of every shinobi that hadn't walked out of this place, there was a tired gratitude buried under the habitual lazy.
I didn't prod it. Not yet.
We almost made it out of the hospital before Naruto got ambushed.
"NARUTO!"
Iruka hit him like a small, panicked meteor.
One second Naruto was standing in the hallway, whining about wanting ramen. The next he was wrapped in a flak vest and tan arms, his face smushed against a chuunin's chest.
"CAN'T—CAN'T BREATHE—" he wheezed.
Iruka did not care.
"You little idiot," Iruka choked out, voice cracking around the edges. "A B-rank? With a missing-nin? Do you have any idea how—"
He broke off, clearly cycling through at least six different emotions at once. His chakra was a hot mess: guilt, fear, relief, exasperation. It hurt to touch.
Slowly, cautiously, he unwound his arms enough to hold Naruto at arm's length and inspect him. Naruto, of course, beamed through the oxygen deprivation.
"See?" Naruto said. "Totally fine. We kicked butt."
Then Iruka saw me.
"Sylvie," he said, and I got the same treatment, slightly less intense. His hands closed around my shoulders. His eyes did a quick, frantic scan like he was checking for missing limbs.
I picked up a flash of the last time he'd seen us: kids in an Academy classroom, still safe, still unblooded. Then a mission scroll with the words "Chakra exhaustion (Jonin), multiple critical injuries possible," and the knowledge that his brats had been out there in that.
"Hi, Iruka-sensei," I said, awkward, trying not to crumble under the pressure of his worry. "We… didn't die?"
"Not funny," he snapped, then swallowed hard. "You're—are you hurt?"
"Less than last week," I said. "More than I'd like. Working on it."
His expression did something complicated, like someone had tried to mix "proud" and "furious" in the same bowl.
Naruto took the opportunity to wriggle free and puff himself up.
"I told you, Iruka-sensei!" he said. "We took down this giant demon of the Hidden Mist with a huge sword, and then I went all—" he flailed his arms, "—whoosh, and Sasuke did this super cool fire thing and Kakashi-sensei was like—" he mimed a one-eyed glower, "—and the guy was totally scared—"
"It was a B-rank missing-nin named Momochi Zabuza," I cut in. "He wasn't scared of anything. Naruto almost died, Sasuke did actual tactics, Kakashi did most of the heavy lifting, and I… tried very hard not to throw up in a puddle."
Iruka's head snapped toward Kakashi, who had just ambled up behind us like he hadn't heard his name.
"You turned a C-rank into a B-rank?" Iruka demanded.
Kakashi lifted his hands. "Technically, the client turned it into a B-rank. I just… adjusted."
"You took three fresh genin into a lethal combat situation with a missing-nin," Iruka said, voice going tight.
Kakashi's posture never changed, but his chakra hummed low.
"They're alive," he said. "More experienced. You know as well as I do that the world outside D-ranks doesn't wait for perfect timing."
Iruka clenched his jaw. "They're twelve."
"Twelve," Kakashi echoed. "And already saw more in one mission than some chunin do in a year."
Naruto blinked between them, sensing the shift but not the depth.
"Uh," he said. "Should we… leave?"
Sasuke had already stepped back, something shuttered dropping over his face. I grabbed Naruto's sleeve and tugged.
"Yeah," I said. "Let the adults fight about child endangerment without an audience."
We slunk a few steps away, just far enough that Kakashi and Iruka's voices blurred into low murmurs… but not far enough that my chakra sense couldn't pick up the edges.
Words floated down the hall: "Chunin Exams," "recommendation," "too soon," "already in B-rank territory," "responsibility."
The phrase "Chunin Exams" rang like a bell.
Naruto's ears perked. "Did he say—"
"Shh," I hissed, even as my pulse kicked. "Not our business yet."
My brain, of course, ignored that and immediately started cataloguing.
Chunin meant rank. Rank meant more responsibility. More say in mission parameters. Less being handed "escort this client, surprise, it's a mob boss situation."
More kids in danger, if those kids weren't ready.
Also, more ways to make sure people like Gato didn't get to steamroll entire countries.
Iruka's chakra spiked with worry. Kakashi's smoothed out in that deliberate way that meant he was digging his heels in.
"They're not ready," Iruka said, low and fierce.
"They're as ready as anyone ever is," Kakashi replied. "And they won't get readier if we keep them chasing cats."
Naruto leaned closer, practically vibrating. "Chunin Exams," he whispered. "That sounds awesome. And dangerous. And awesome."
My stomach fluttered.
"Yeah," I said. "It really does."
We finally escaped the hospital with a promise from Kakashi to "let us know" about whatever adult argument was happening, which translated to: he'd say nothing until we were standing in the middle of something exploding.
Naruto and I ended up on the main road as the sun dipped lower, orange light hitting tile roofs and the Hokage Monument in the distance. The paint we'd once splashed all over those faces was long gone, scrubbed away by punishment and time.
People moved around us in easy currents: vendors packing up, shinobi heading off-duty, kids chasing each other with paper shuriken.
Every person we passed made Naruto's shoulders twitch just a little. Some glanced at him and looked away quickly. Some didn't look at all. Old habits.
He kicked a rock down the street like it had offended him.
"Next time," he said suddenly, "I'm gonna be the one who saves everyone."
I blinked. "You literally already helped save everyone. You and Sasuke almost got turned into ice cube pin cushions for it."
"Yeah, but Kakashi-sensei had to bail us out," he said, scowling. "He almost died because he had to protect us. If I was stronger, he wouldn't have had to use the eye that much. Or at all. Or we could've taken Zabuza down ourselves."
The rock bounced off a wall and skittered away.
"I'm not gonna be the dead weight forever," he muttered. "I'm gonna get so strong that no one ever has to save me again. I'll be the one saving people. And then—"
"You'll be Hokage," I finished.
He shot me a quick look. "Yeah. I will."
His chakra flared hot and determined, the same stubborn orange that had punched through Haku's mirrors and screamed at Zabuza about treating people like tools.
I thought of Haku's still face. Zabuza's bloody hand reaching for him. Gato's body tumbling off the bridge. Inari's little wrist with my stupid charm seal tied around it.
In my first life, I'd died alone in a forest, bleeding into the dirt, nobody coming because nobody knew I was gone yet.
Here, people died on bridges and battlefields and hospital beds.
Here, people also held their hands when they went.
Not better. Not worse. Just… different.
"I want the next test," I heard myself say.
Naruto blinked. "Huh?"
I shoved my hands into my shorts pockets, fingers brushing dry ink flakes.
"The Chunin Exams," I said. "If Kakashi recommends us. I want to take them."
His face lit up. "Yeah? Really?"
"Really," I said. "Not because I want a fancy vest. I mean, the pockets would be nice, but. If we're doing missions like that, I'd rather have some say in what 'like that' looks like."
He squinted at me. "You mean… boss people around."
"I mean influence strategy," I corrected. "But yes, eventually, boss people around."
He laughed, loud and bright, earning a couple of annoyed looks from passersby.
"Man," he said, "we are gonna blow those exams away. Written stuff, fighting stuff, whatever. I'll show them. I'll show everyone."
"Careful," I said. "Your overconfidence is showing."
"My overconfidence is amazing," he said.
We turned down the street that split toward the orphanage on one side and the cheap apartments on the other. The sky above was streaked pink and gold, the Hokage faces watching like always.
Naruto dropped his voice a little as we walked.
"Hey," he said. "On the bridge… when you closed Haku's eyes."
My chest tightened.
"Yeah?"
He kicked at another rock. Missed. Tried to pretend he hadn't.
"Thanks," he said. "For being there. For him. For me."
I swallowed around the lump in my throat.
"Thanks for not letting Zabuza turn us into art installations," I said. "Team effort."
He grinned, crooked and sincere. "Team 7," he said.
"Team 7," I echoed.
We split at the corner with a lazy wave—Naruto heading toward his empty apartment that smelled like instant ramen and stubbornness, me toward the orphanage that mostly smelled like cabbage and regret.
Ink stained the pads of my fingers. My chakra felt like a frayed wire, humming low and tired.
Somewhere in the mission office, a jonin was filling out forms that would decide whether three twelve-year-olds got thrown into a tournament where children fought other children for promotion.
Somewhere, the world was rearranging itself around those words: Chunin Exams.
I curled my hand into a fist, feeling the ghosts of seal patterns under my skin.
"I'm not going to stop people from dying," I murmured to myself, so quietly the village couldn't hear. "But maybe I can make sure more of them live long enough to choose how they go."
Back home, slightly less squishy, significantly more complicated.
Felt about right.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Later that night, I was walking home when the street in front of me… acquired a Kakashi.
One second I was alone under the streetlamps, listening to the soft hum of sleeping village chakra. The next, my sensei was just there, hands in his pockets, casual as a lamppost that had learned to slouch.
"Hey, Sylvie."
I tried very hard not to jump. My feet still left the ground.
"G-good evening, sensei," I said, shoving my hands into my shorts like that would hide the flinch.
He tilted his head. "Come on. You said you wanted solo training."
He turned and started walking like that was a perfectly normal sentence and not an invitation to spontaneously combust from nerves.
My brain fuzzed a little. I am a professional, I told myself. I am a kunoichi. I do not skip after my jonin sensei like a duckling.
I only kind of skipped.
We ended up at the old hospital on the outskirts of the village—the one they mostly used now for overflow and low-stakes stuff. During the day it was where people went for broken fingers and food poisoning. At night, it sat under the trees like a dozing beast, just a few windows lit.
The lobby had one bored-looking receptionist behind a high desk, reading a book I didn't recognize. Her chakra was a sleepy, soft blue that brightened the second she saw Kakashi.
"Oh, Hatake-san," she said, smiling. "Long time no—"
He lifted a hand in apology and tipped his head toward me. "Training," he said. "Sorry to steal a room."
Her eyes flicked over me, curious. I tried to stand up straighter and look like a person who knew the difference between a vein and an artery on purpose.
"Go on, then," she said, smile lingering. "Exam room three's free."
Kakashi led me down a short hallway that smelled like disinfectant and old paper. Exam room three was exactly what you'd expect: narrow bed with crinkly paper, metal stool, cabinet of supplies, sink. No ominous ritual circles or hidden trapdoors. Disappointing, honestly.
He leaned against the wall by the door, arms crossed.
"Okay," he said. "Your patient will be here in a second. The only rule is: no questions."
He winked—at least, I think he did. With the hitai-ate over one eye, it was impossible to tell.
I opened my mouth. Closed it again. "No questions," I repeated. "Got it."
"Good." He pushed himself off the wall. "I'll be in the hall."
I sat on the stool after he left, my palms a little damp against the metal. For a minute there was just the buzz of the fluorescent light and the distant murmur of the receptionist turning a page.
Then I heard Kakashi's voice outside. Something about "sequel" and "actually better than the first one," followed by another set of footsteps joining his. Their chakra signature was… odd. Tight, neat, folded in on itself.
Instinct made me stand, smoothing my shirt like that would somehow make me look more medically competent in my slightly-too-big shorts.
"Good even—" I started, cutting myself off as the door opened.
The person who stepped in wasn't Kakashi.
The first thing I saw was the mask. An ANBU-style porcelain mask: white with red markings, painted into a vague cat shape. The kind of thing that would've freaked me out in a horror movie. Here, it just made my stomach flip for different reasons.
ANBU.
They said nothing, just walked in and closed the door behind them. Up close, their chakra felt… wrong in a way that wasn't bad, just unfamiliar. Most people were messy gradients, jagged edges, little flashes of color where their emotions leaked. This was like ink on rice paper: controlled, smooth, very still.
Under all that flat white, though, there was a faint tremor of nerves. Not danger. Just someone who really did not like being on the patient side of the equation.
I exhaled slowly.
"Please, have a seat," I said, motioning to the bed. "How can I help you?"
They hesitated, then moved with that same precise economy and sat. No wasted motion. Definitely trained.
Without a word, they started rolling up their left sleeve.
The bite was obvious: two punctures on the inside of the forearm, already puffy and discolored. The flesh around it looked… wrong. The veins nearby had gone a dark, ugly violet, spiderwebbing up toward the elbow. The blood at the edges had thickened into something that was more sludge than liquid.
I stepped closer, reaching out with my chakra sense. Up close, the whole area felt like static under my fingers—wrong frequency, like someone had poured ink into clear water and stirred.
"Okay," I said, mostly to myself. "That's… not great."
The ANBU tilted their head, mask giving away nothing. I could have sworn their chakra twitched at my dry understatement.
I pulled in a breath, forcing my brain into checklist mode. This was why I'd begged for more training, right? To do something when it mattered.
"No questions" meant I didn't ask what bit them, or why they weren't already in the main hospital. Maybe it was classified. Maybe this was a test. Probably both.
"Pain?" I asked instead. "Numbness? Dizziness?"
They hesitated, then gave a small nod and tapped two fingers against their chest—just under the collarbone. The chakra around their heart fluttered, faintly off-beat.
Great. Circulating poison. Timer already ticking.
"All right," I muttered. "We're going to need to get that out of you before it reaches anything important."
I stepped over to the supply cabinet, hands moving almost on autopilot. Gloves. Bandages. A small scalpel. An empty syringe. A roll of blank tags and a pen.
I wasn't good enough yet to neutralize venom with pure medical ninjutsu. But I didn't have to, not if I could move it.
I dropped onto the stool and quickly sketched a seal on one of the tags, pen scratching fast: a simple siphon array, tuned to pull out anything that didn't match the target's chakra signature. I'd practiced it on bruises and splinters, never on something this serious.
"Give me your arm," I said.
They extended it without flinching. Up close, the faint scent of metal and ink clung to them. There was a paint stain on the inside of their wrist, half scrubbed away. Huh.
I pressed my glowing fingertips to their skin just above the bite, letting my chakra seep in, careful and thin—a thread, not a flood, like the hospital medic had said. The venom felt like cold grit in a warm river, heavier than blood, dragging at the flow.
"Okay," I whispered. "I've got you. Don't move."
I placed the tag just below the puncture, the paper sticking slightly to their skin. With my other hand, I guided my chakra into the seal, activating the siphon.
The tag warmed under my fingers. Slowly, painfully slowly, the color around the bite shifted. The dark purple veining began to recede from the elbow, pooling back toward the punctures as if someone had hit rewind. The tag's ink lines darkened, swelling with something that wasn't blood.
The ANBU's breath hitched, just once. I felt the flutter at their chest steady a fraction.
"Almost," I murmured. Sweat pricked at my temples. My own chakra reserves were not exactly massive, and this was like trying to vacuum gravel through a straw without swallowing any.
When the veins nearest the surface had mostly cleared, I let the siphon taper off. The tag had gone from pale paper to a heavy, almost wet dark. I peeled it back carefully and slapped a second, much smaller seal over the bite itself to hold any leftover venom in place.
"Okay," I said, voice a little rough. "Step one done. Step two… let's see what we caught."
I set the used tag on a metal tray and pressed the tip of the scalpel to it, slicing a careful line through the center of the seal. The paper shivered, and a bead of thick, purple-black liquid welled up like a very gross tear.
It smelled acrid, like burned herbs and old pennies.
I drew it up into the syringe, capped it, and slapped another tag over the barrel—a containment seal, rough but functional. No sense leaving mystery poison just lying around.
Then I pressed my fingers to the ANBU's arm again, flooding the area with gentle, green-tinted chakra. Flushing the tissue, coaxing the blood back into its normal rhythm. I followed it up the arm toward the shoulder, checking for lingering grit.
It wasn't perfect. I could still feel faint traces of the wrongness deeper in the muscle, but nothing like the concentrated mess it had been. The chakra near their heart had smoothed out almost entirely.
I exhaled, only then realizing I'd been half holding my breath.
"How do you feel?" I asked.
A beat, then a small nod. They flexed their fingers experimentally. The dark discoloration had faded back to a more normal angry red around the punctures.
"Good," I said, letting my hands drop. "The venom's mostly out. There might still be tiny traces in your system, so you're not going on any marathons tonight, but you're not going to keel over in the next ten minutes either."
They stared at me through the painted cat eyes of the mask. For a second I wondered if I'd completely misread everything and they were about to stand up and collapse.
Instead, they bowed at the waist, sudden and precise.
It threw me a little. ANBU weren't exactly known for effusive gratitude.
"You're welcome," I said, then realized I was still clutching the syringe and probably looked like a tiny, concerned serial killer. I set it down. "Uh. Nice mask, by the way. Very… dramatic."
Their chakra flared—a quick, embarrassed flicker of pink under the controlled white. One gloved hand went to the back of their head in a universal "don't know what to do with my limbs" gesture. If a porcelain cat could look flustered, this one did.
Something about that made my chest go soft. Under all the secrecy and training and "no questions," they were just… another kid who'd gotten bit by something nasty doing a job too big for their age.
"Try not to get eaten by anything for at least twenty-four hours," I said dryly. "I'm on a chakra budget."
They let out a tiny huff that might have been a laugh, then straightened and headed for the door. Just before they opened it, they glanced back at me, bowed again—smaller this time—and slipped out.
Kakashi slid in a heartbeat later, as if they'd traded places.
He looked from the cleared veins on the bed's former occupant's arm-shaped dent to the used tag on the tray to my slightly shaking hands.
"Well," he said. "The patient didn't explode. Always a good sign."
"Not for lack of trying," I muttered, rubbing my eyes. "What was that? The venom, I mean. It didn't feel like any snakebite I've read about."
One silver eyebrow arched.
"What was the rule?" he asked.
I made a face. "No questions."
"Mm." He stepped over to the tray and eyed the sealed syringe. "You did well. For the record."
A little knot in my chest loosened at that. "I didn't get it all," I admitted. "There's still trace contamination. If it's something that keeps cycling—"
"He'll be monitored," Kakashi said. "You bought him time and prevented a trip straight to the morgue. That's not nothing."
I snorted. "High praise: 'not nothing.' I'll embroider it on a pillow."
His eye crinkled. "Don't tempt me. I know people."
He leaned back against the wall again, hands in his pockets, gaze sharpening just a fraction in that way that meant the laziness was mostly a costume.
"Consider this your first ANBU-adjacent consult," he said. "There's a whole part of this village that lives in shadows. When they break, they can't always come through the front door. We need medics who can handle that. Quietly."
I swallowed. "Quietly," I repeated.
"Which brings us to the second rule," he added.
I eyed him warily. "There's a second rule?"
He nodded. "You don't tell anyone what you just did. Not Naruto, not Sasuke, not Iruka, not Ino. Not even the nice receptionist who gave you the good room. This stays between you, me, and the patient. Understood?"
The words settled over my shoulders like a new weight. Not heavy in a bad way. More like a cloak I hadn't realized I was already wearing.
"…Because of ANBU stuff?" I asked carefully. "Or because of me stuff?"
"Both," he said. "They need anonymity. You need time to grow without every faction in this village trying to recruit you or kill you."
"Okay," I said quietly. "I can keep my mouth shut."
"Good." Kakashi pushed off the wall. "Then let's get you home before the matron decides I've kidnapped you for some terrible experiment and bans me from the orphanage."
I gathered the used tag and containment syringe onto the tray for the staff, peeled off my gloves, and flexed my fingers. They trembled just a little.
As we stepped back into the hallway, the receptionist glanced up. Her eyes flicked from me to Kakashi, to the now-empty doorway of exam room three.
"Everything all right?" she asked.
Kakashi gave her that lazy eye-curve that lied for him. "All patched up," he said. "She did great."
I rolled my eyes, but warmth crept up my neck anyway.
Outside, the night air was cooler, the village quieter. The Hokage Monument loomed in silhouette against a sky full of stars.
I walked beside Kakashi in silence for a while, feeling the echo of the siphon seal in my fingers, the ghost of venom in someone else's veins.
Today I had watched a man cry over a kid who almost wasn't his student anymore. I'd listened to two adults argue about whether I was ready to be thrown into a tournament designed to weed people out. I'd promised myself I would try to keep more people alive long enough to make their own choices.
And now, apparently, I was also on call for the people in masks who never wanted their names spoken.
Back home, slightly less squishy, significantly more complicated.
That still felt about right.