Konoha smelled like sun-warmed stone and boiled bones.
Steam rolled off the street vendors in lazy sheets, carrying broth and grilled meat and sugar. Children wove through the crowd with exam headbands tied too tight. Chūnin leaned against railings, pretending not to watch the gates.
Konan walked among them with her hands folded, a paper flower tucked above her ear.
No cloak. No headband. Just travel clothes in neutral colors, dust on the hems, a nondescript satchel at her hip. The only oddity was the flower, folded from pale cream paper that had once held an encoded report.
Beside her, the red-haired boy adjusted the strap of his pack.
He looked like any other foreign genin: a little too thin from travel, clothes worn at the edges, eyes the wrong kind of sharp for someone his age. Red hair pulled back, travel cloak unfastened. His gait was relaxed, almost lazy.
If you didn't know to look, you'd never notice the way his movements stopped between steps, like a puppet at rest.
Konan let her gaze drift up.
Above the tiled roofs, chakra clung to the air like mist. The Barrier Corps had wrapped their net tight. She could feel the way it bowed and flexed, reacting whenever someone pushed against it from outside.
The river is trying to dam itself, she thought.
She breathed in ramen steam and chatter, breathed out Rain Country's endless grey.
"Is this it?" Sasori asked, voice pitched a little higher than his real one. Tourist-boy bright. "The famous stand you mentioned?"
Ichiraku was a wedge of wood and canvas slotted into the street like an afterthought. Red curtains hung from the frame, edges stained with years of oil and steam. Three stools were occupied—two chunin gossiping over miso, one civilian in work clothes trying to inhale his lunch in ten minutes.
"Mm." Konan nodded and pushed the curtain aside.
Inside, heat wrapped around her. The broth smell was stronger, anchored with garlic and soy. The counter was clean, hands behind it busy.
"Welcome!" the man behind the counter said. He had a round, open face and forearms like stone mortars. "Travelers, yeah? Grab a seat."
Konan slid onto a stool. Sasori took the one beside her, posture easy, attention ostensibly on the pots.
"Sis! New customers!" a girl's voice called from the back. A teenager with her hair tied up in a bandanna leaned out of the tiny kitchen space, wiping her hands. "What can I get you?"
"Two miso with egg," Konan said. "One extra noodles. Extra bamboo shoots on that one."
Sasori's eyes flicked sideways at her. A small, private thing.
"You remembered," he said under his breath.
"I remember many things," she replied.
The ramen man nodded briskly. "You got it. Ayame, two miso, one with extra everything!"
Ayame vanished with a cheerful "Hai!"
Konan let the chatter around her settle into a backdrop. Outside, footsteps and voices swelled and broke like waves. Inside, metal clinked, broth bubbled, the old wood under her elbows thrummed faintly with the weight of years.
It was a different kind of river than Amegakure. No gutters overflowing with dirty water. No rain beating all sound flat. But it flowed, all the same.
Sasori leaned his forearms on the counter, looking for all the world like a bored teenager on an errand.
"Kinda bright," he said, eyes on the street. "Too much color."
"You don't like color," Konan said mildly.
"I like control," he corrected. "This village—" He gestured vaguely with one hand, careful not to make it look like a jutsu seal. "The canvas is crowded. Too many layers. Too many hands have painted over it."
"Old murals are often the most fragile," Konan said. "Cracks hidden under fresh pigment."
His mouth twitched, almost a smile.
"Mm. But the framework…" He tilted his head, studying the line of rooftops, the watch points, the rhythm of shinobi moving past. "The framework is solid. Someone understood structure."
The previous Hokage, she thought, but didn't say. The one who had made the river bed in the first place.
The curtain rustled as a pair of chunin left, laughing about "that grass kunoichi's tongue" and "the Forest of Death honestly should not be legal." Their chakra brushed past Konan like a light breeze—strong but unfocused, all surface tension.
Easy to break, if someone knew where to press.
A shadow moved across the stand as something passed overhead.
Konan didn't look up. She didn't need to. The shape of their chakra was as familiar as her own hands.
ANBU. Two signatures, high and tight, moving fast across the roofline. A third lagged slightly behind—sensor-nin, hands together in a seal, chakra flaring in a quick, practiced pulse.
The wave spread out in a ring, invisible to most.
Konan felt it wash over her like cold water.
The paper seals layered under her clothes soaked it up, glyphs she'd inked and pressed to her own skin hours ago drinking in and bending the pulse away. Her chakra folded in on itself, reeds bending with the current.
Beside her, Sasori didn't twitch. She doubted the sensor got much off him at all. His current shell read to most people as "odd" but low. The heart inside it was another matter entirely.
The wave continued on, bouncing off the barrier net, returning to its sender.
On the roof, the sensor's chakra flickered once in brief acknowledgment.
Satisfied. No anomalies detected. The village is secure.
Konan's lips barely moved.
"Testing the currents," she murmured.
Sasori glanced at her, lashes low.
"The river?" he prompted.
"Their barrier." She watched Ayame ladle broth with easy, practiced movements. "They send out waves, feel where it catches, where it slips through. Testing the currents of this river before the flood."
Sasori huffed softly.
"You still insist on calling it that," he said.
"What else would you call it?" she asked.
He considered.
"A performance," he said. "An installation piece. Something large and unavoidable, meant to be seen from a distance."
Konan thought of Yahiko's hands shaping imaginary futures in the air, Nagato's eyes seeing too far, too much. The way the world refused to change until someone forced it.
"Leader will want to know the flow," she said. "Where the banks are high. Where they're already crumbling."
"Leader likes his metaphors," Sasori said. "Floods. Storms."
Konan's fingers brushed the rim of the bowl in front of her, savoring the warmth.
"The one watching the storm likes maps even more," she said. "We're only here to sketch the shorelines."
The ramen arrived, cutting off further poetry.
Two bowls set down with a satisfying clack of ceramic on wood. Golden broth, noodles piled high, eggs glistening, bamboo shoots tucked in neatly like thoughts in a row.
Ayame beamed. "Here you go! Careful, it's hot."
"Thank you," Konan said. She picked up her chopsticks, broke them with a soft crack.
Sasori inhaled steam, eyes half-lidding.
"The smell is acceptable," he allowed.
"You told me once," Konan said, stirring her noodles, "that a good piece of art doesn't have to be permanent to matter."
"Mm." He twirled noodles around his chopsticks with precise fingers. "Ephemeral works can be the most striking. They force you to confront mortality."
He slurped, chewed thoughtfully.
"This," he said, "will be gone in minutes. But as a small study in warmth and salt… it has its merits."
Ayame laughed, not quite sure if she was being complimented. "I'll take that as a good review."
Konan tasted the broth.
It was simple. No showy tricks. Fat, salt, umami. A foundation someone had paid attention to and then left alone.
"Your base is strong," she told Teuchi, honest. "You don't hide it."
He scratched the back of his head, embarrassed. "Ah, well, you know. Long as people leave full and smiling, I'm happy."
Outside, someone shouted about exam odds. A bookie argued with a shopkeeper over whether Sand or Leaf teams would place higher.
Konan listened without seeming to. Snatches of information slid into place.
Forest. Five days. Foreign teams. Sound. Sand. The usual arrogance of a village assuming its walls would do the hard work for it.
Sasori traced condensation on the side of his water glass with one finger.
"The composition is busy," he said quietly. "Adding more elements risks clutter. More genin, more allies, more enemies. But…"
He flicked a glance upward, toward where the barrier hummed unseen.
"The underlying frame is good enough to hang something large on. That's rare."
Konan swallowed another mouthful of noodles.
"You think this riverbed can handle a flood," she said.
"For a while," he answered. "Long enough to watch what breaks first."
The paper flower in her hair rustled faintly as a breeze slipped under the curtain.
"Leader will ask for specifics," she said. "Routes. Weak points. Which stones in the riverbed are load-bearing."
"The man with the bandaged eye thinks he is one of those stones," Sasori said.
Konan's expression didn't change, but the broth tasted briefly of iron.
"He believes he hired knives," she said. "He doesn't see the hand that forged them."
"He thinks we're here to cut for him," Sasori agreed, amused. "I'm tempted to show him a real dissection."
"Not yet," Konan said. "We didn't come to shatter the canvas today. Just… test the frame."
She finished the last of her noodles, set her chopsticks across the bowl.
Outside, the ANBU signatures shifted, continuing their patrol pattern. The barrier's hum steadied again.
Konoha's river kept flowing. Laughing, eating, gambling on other people's children.
When they paid, Konan laid folded bills neatly on the counter—more than the cost of two bowls.
Ayame blinked. "Oh! That's—sir, ma'am, that's too much."
Konan shook her head.
"Your warmth is valuable," she said. "Keep it."
Sasori stood, adjusting the strap of his pack again. For a moment, he looked exactly like a boy about to continue a long, dull journey.
"Thank you for the meal," he said, voice perfectly polite.
Teuchi bowed slightly from behind the counter. "Anytime. Safe travels, you two."
Konan stepped back out into the sunlight. The crowd swallowed them up without a ripple.
Above, the river pressed against its own banks and pretended it couldn't feel the storm gathering offshore.
For a few seconds after the curtain fell back into place, Teuchi just stood there, ladle hovering over the pot.
Steam fogged his glasses. He didn't wipe them.
Ayame was the first to break the spell.
"Did you hear that?" she said, scooping up the bills. " 'Your warmth is valuable.' That's… kinda poetic for a ramen review."
Teuchi grunted.
"Poetic, yeah," he said. "Customers like that…"
He trailed off.
The stand had seen all kinds. Loud, quiet, broke, flashy. Shinobi who smelled like blood and mud. Civilians who smelled like ink and sweat. Drunkards leaning too hard on the counter, kids swinging their legs so hard the stools squeaked.
Most people came in carrying some kind of noise, even when they didn't talk. Worries. Excitement. Exhaustion. The air around them moved.
Those two had felt like stones dropped in the middle of the stream. Everything else flowed around them.
He scooped broth on reflex, noodles following, muscle memory working while his thoughts chewed on the aftertaste they'd left behind.
"…give me a bad feeling," he finished.
Ayame snorted. "They tipped well, though," she said, fanning the bills a little. "Better than some of your regulars, dad."
"Hey." He jabbed a finger at her, mock-offended. "Naruto always pays eventually."
"He pays in enthusiasm," she said. "And dishwashing."
Teuchi smiled despite himself, the familiar ache of fond worry settling in his chest.
The brat should've been here, making a scene about extra pork, bragging about the exams. Instead he was somewhere in Training Ground Forty-Four, running around a cursed forest with crazy proctors and foreign kids.
His ladle dipped a little too hard; broth splashed.
He glanced at the flap where the blue-haired woman had disappeared.
"Just saying," he muttered. "I've been serving shinobi longer than you've been walking, Ayame. You learn to feel it, sometimes. When something's… off."
Ayame's smile faltered just a hair.
"You think they were ninja?" she asked. "They didn't wear headbands."
"Doesn't mean much these days," he said. "Could be from a minor village. Could be merchants with a flair for drama. Could be nothing."
He handed a bowl to a waiting customer, forced his hands to their usual steadiness.
"I hope it's nothing," he added.
Ayame tucked the tip money into the box, fingers lingering a second too long.
"Everyone's jumpy because of the Exams," she said, a little too bright. "I'm sure they were just… weird tourists. Happens all the time."
"Mm," Teuchi said.
Through the gap in the curtain, he watched the street for a heartbeat longer.
Kids in forehead protectors walked past, laughing too loudly. A patrol cut across the roofs, masks flashing white. Somewhere far away, a flock of crows took off all at once, black against the blue.
The village hummed around them, warm and loud and very proud of how safe it was.
Teuchi turned back to his pots.
He couldn't do anything about bad feelings. He could keep the soup hot, the seats open, and the door—well, the curtain—ready for a certain orange idiot when he came back.
Because he was coming back.
Whatever storms were brewing, whatever strange customers wandered in with too-quiet eyes and too-polished words, Ichiraku was going to be here. A little patch of warmth on the riverbank.
"Oi, Ayame," he said. "Don't forget to put extra pork aside. For when Naruto shows up demanding a victory bowl."
She smiled, for real this time.
"Yeah," she said. "He'll complain if we don't."
Outside, the currents shifted, unnoticed.
Inside, broth simmered and bowls clinked, and Konoha kept pretending the flood wasn't already on its way.