Day 1: The Pickle Carriage
[Date: October 23rd]
[Location: Fire Country Main Highway, Northbound]
Notes from the back of the equipment wagon:
The romance of travel is a lie invented by people who have never shared a ten-foot square space with Sandayū Asama.
The man is nervous. When he is nervous, he eats. Specifically, he eats pickled plums and daikon radishes. The entire carriage smells like vinegar and fermentation.
Crunch. Slurp.
The sound of him sucking the pit of a pickled plum was a wet, rhythmic torture that made my eye twitch. It's seeping into my clothes. I think I'm going to smell like a side dish for the next three weeks.
Status of the Convoy:
Lead: Team Kakashi (Kakashi, Neji, Tenten, Sasuke). They are taking point. Sasuke looks bored. Tenten looks excited to be using her new Kunai. Neji looks... vigilant.
Center: The "Royal" Carriage. Yukie Fujikaze is inside. She hasn't come out since we left the gates. I heard a bottle smash against the wall about an hour ago. She's essentially a high-functioning prisoner in a velvet box.
Rear: Team Anko (Me, Naruto, Anko). We are stuck with the film crew gear.
Observations:
Naruto: He has asked "How far is the snow?" fourteen times in the last hour. Anko has threatened to tie him to the roof. He is currently vibrating in his seat, attempting to sharpen a kunai with a rock. I have told him he needs a specific kind of whetstone, but he refused to listen and picked one off the road at some point.
Skreee-griiiiind. It sounded like a dentist drilling into a chalkboard, sending shivers down my spine. The sound is excruciating.
Neji Hyūga: Every time the road curves and our carriage aligns with the vanguard, I see him looking back. He's not looking at the scenery. He's looking at me. His Byakugan isn't active, but his gaze is heavy. Did Hiashi tell him something? Or does he just know that my chakra feels wrong? Note: Keep the polarized glasses on. Do not engage in staring contests with the guy who can see through my skull.
I adjusted the frames, feeling the cool acetate press against my temples—a physical barrier against his x-ray judgment.
Tenten: I watched her run a perimeter check during the lunch stop. She moves with so much efficiency. The way she organizes her scroll holster is honestly kind of beautiful. Why is she so cute? Is it the buns? It's probably the buns.
Geography: We are approaching the border. I wonder if the Land of Hot Water and the Land of Tea are related? Are they rival beverages? Does the Land of Hot Water resent being just the ingredient for the Land of Tea? I need to sleep. The vinegar fumes are making me hallucinate.
Day 2: The Harmony of Murder
[Date: October 24th]
[Location: Border of Land of Fire and Land of Hot Water]
The landscape changed around noon. The manicured roads of the Fire Country gave way to the humid, overgrown thickets of the borderlands. The air here was heavy, smelling of wet moss and rotting leaves.
The humidity clung to my skin like a damp towel, heavy and suffocating.
We stopped for a rest break in a clearing surrounded by ancient, twisting oaks.
"Five minutes!" Anko shouted, jumping down from the driver's seat. "Stretch your legs. Don't wander off. If a bear eats you, I'm not doing the paperwork."
I walked toward the edge of the clearing to get some fresh air away from Sandayū's pickle jar. Naruto and Sasuke followed, mostly because Anko had kicked them out of the wagon.
We found Makino, the director, standing by a thicket of brambles.
He was a short, intense man with wild hair and a scarf that seemed too heavy for the weather. He was staring at the ground with a look of profound, hypnotic fascination.
"Director?" I asked, stepping closer. "Is everything okay?"
Makino didn't look up. He pointed a trembling finger at the roots of a massive oak tree.
There, tangled in the roots, was the carcass of a wild boar. It had been dead for days. It was bloated, split open, and teeming with life. Thousands of ants and beetles swarmed the flesh, disassembling it piece by piece in a writhing, chaotic mass.
Squelch-click. The sound of a thousand tiny mandibles chewing on wet meat filled the silence, louder than the wind.
"Gross," Naruto gagged, covering his nose. "It stinks."
Makino inhaled deeply, as if the scent of decay was a rare perfume.
"Look at it," Makino whispered. His voice was soft, accented, and carried a strange, weary gravity. "Yomu. Bring the camera."
Yomu, the cameraman, scrambled over. "Yes, Director! Do you want a wide shot?"
"Close up," Makino commanded, his eyes never leaving the maggots. "Film the decay. Look at how the ants disassemble the flesh. It is a perfect society."
He turned to us. His eyes were wide, but they weren't seeing us. They were seeing the subtext of the forest.
"I wouldn't see anything erotical here," Makino droned, gesturing vaguely at the lush greenery around us. "I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival... and growing and just rotting away."
I blinked behind my dark glasses. Okay. This guy is intense.
"It's just nature," I ventured carefully.
"Nature here is vile and base," Makino corrected me, his voice devoid of emotion yet full of passion. "Look at the trees. They are in misery. The birds are in misery. I don't think they sing. They just screech in pain."
As if on cue, a crow let out a strangled, gargling cry—caw-hack—that sounded more like a death rattle than a song.
He looked up at the canopy, where the sunlight struggled to pierce the gloom.
"It is like a curse weighing on an entire landscape," he murmured. "I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility, and murder."
Naruto looked at me. He looked at the dead pig. He looked at the Director.
"This guy is weird," Naruto whispered loudly. "He talks like a villain but... boring."
I looked at Sasuke.
Sasuke wasn't looking at the Director with disdain. He was looking at the rotting boar. He was watching the violence of the ants stripping the bone. His dark eyes were unreadable, but he wasn't turning away.
He agrees, I realized with a shiver. He thinks the Director is right.
"Keep rolling," Makino told Yomu, stepping closer to the smell. "Capture the indifference of the insects. It is the only truth in this script."
The camera whirred softly—whirrrr-click—the lens iris contracting like a mechanical eye judging the dead.
I took a step back.
I had been worried about Dotō Kazahana. I had been worried about missing-nin. But standing there in the humid rot of the border, listening to the Director narrate the inevitability of death, I realized the civilians on this trip might be crazier than the ninja.
"This guy is insane," I whispered to myself.
Sasuke looked up, his face hollow.
"No," Sasuke said quietly. "He's just observant."