In the next stall over, three young women were laughing and wrestling in a noisy heap.
They all looked to be in their mid-twenties.
They wore the sand-bath house's thin yukata, the fabric half-caked with sand and clinging to their bodies.
The one in the middle had long black hair loosely pinned up, a few damp strands stuck to the slender line of her neck.
Her collar had slipped open from all the dodging and teasing. She clutched the front of her yukata with both hands, cheeks flushed, glaring at her friends as if she could scorch them with her eyes.
"You little demons, you did that on purpose!"
"On purpose, and what about it?" the girl on the left cackled, reaching for her waist as if to tickle her. "With a figure like yours, Yukata, Kazekage-sama would definitely like it!"
"Stop saying that!"
"Yukata's right, Matsuri, don't run!"
On the right, a girl with a neat ponytail lunged in and hugged her from the side, laughing as she tried to pin her.
"I've been wanting to check if you've gotten bigger again!"
"Hey, don't touch there!"
The hemp curtain fluttered. Their laughter rang out clear as bells.
Teizawa expressionlessly pulled his gaze back.
He lay flat on his back and stared at the ceiling.
He stayed silent for three whole seconds.
Then his throat bobbed once.
It wasn't that his self-control was bad.
It was that the whole situation was… loud.
Laughter. The rustle of fabric. Sand shifting. It all drilled straight into his ears.
And whenever the wind lifted the curtain a little wider, you caught a flash of frantic movement, a blur of limbs, a glimpse of a collar slipping, a hand fumbling to fix it.
Teizawa abruptly felt like the sixty-one-degree sand was a little too hot.
Worse, he recognized them.
In the original story, they showed up during Sunagakure's second chūnin exams.
They were a few years younger than Temari, but each of them had grown into herself, bright and full of life.
Teizawa couldn't help thinking, not for the first time, that this so-called barren wasteland of a village somehow still managed to raise people well.
He closed his eyes, forcefully dragging his thoughts back to something productive.
The Rōran Dragon Vein.
Desalination.
Roads.
Border control.
The moon.
Anything except whatever chaos was happening next door.
"Ahahaha, Matsuri[1], admit defeat!"
"Yukata, save me!"
"Chiyo, stop yanking my sash!"
Teizawa's eyelids twitched.
He opened his eyes again, face blank.
When had Sunagakure acquired three walking disasters like this?
He drew a slow breath.
Then, at last, he made a decision.
He stood up, bare-chested, and dropped the disguise. His face returned to his real appearance.
And he strode toward the neighboring stall.
The sand was scorching, hotter than before.
But nobody had the attention to spare for the temperature now.
"K-Kazekage-sama…"
Matsuri's voice cracked first.
She'd been crouched closest to the outer edge. She jerked like a startled animal and shrank back into the sand, and in the process tugged at a loosened tie.
Her collar slipped further.
She panicked and tried to fix it, but the more hurried her hands got, the more tangled it became.
"Ah…"
Yukata reacted fastest. She snatched up a spare outer wrap and tossed it over Matsuri's shoulders, covering her.
Yukata wasn't in much better shape herself. In the scramble, her hem had ridden up to mid-thigh.
Chiyo, the tallest of the three, instinctively tried to stand straight and salute.
The moment she rose, she felt a cool draft across her back.
Her tie had come undone at some point during the scuffle, leaving her shoulders exposed.
She froze in place, half-standing, half-kneeling, ears turning red so fast it looked painful.
Teizawa stopped three steps away and took in the scene.
He could have pretended he hadn't seen anything.
A normal Kazekage would nod politely, say, "Sorry for the interruption," and withdraw, leaving three flustered genin to compose themselves in peace.
Unfortunately for them, Teizawa wasn't a normal Kazekage.
"Didn't expect to run into you here," he said, voice steady.
There was even the faint edge of a friendly smile.
His gaze didn't linger. It didn't pointedly avoid them either.
He treated their disheveled state the way you'd treat the weather, like it was simply part of the day.
"Matsuri, Yukata, and Chiyo, right?"
All three pairs of eyes widened at once.
Matsuri forgot to keep adjusting her collar. She just stared at him, dazed, clutching the wrap.
"K-Kazekage-sama… you know us?"
Her voice was so small it barely sounded real.
She was just a genin. She'd graduated the academy two years ago.
The highest-ranked mission she'd ever done was a B-rank escort.
In a village of over ten thousand shinobi, she was as ordinary as a single grain of sand.
How could the Kazekage possibly know her name?
"Of course I know." Teizawa's tone made it sound obvious.
He tilted his head slightly.
"You're Matsuri. Sixteen. Academy Class Forty-Seven. Strong in sensory work and support-style Wind Release."
"Three months ago, on border patrol near the Land of Rivers, you spotted signs of an ambush early and kept your squad from walking into a trap."
Matsuri's breathing stopped.
That mission had been small, small enough that even her report had been written quickly and turned in without a second thought.
The "early signs" she'd noticed, she'd always believed was just luck.
The jonin leading the team hadn't even highlighted her in the summary.
"I…" Her lips parted, trying to form the words, how do you know?
But her throat tightened, stuffed with something soft and painful.
Teizawa's attention moved to Yukata.
"Yukata. Seventeen. Top-tier theory scores in your year, and you've got an unusually clean chakra control profile."
Yukata's eyes went wide. She instinctively pulled her collar into place, then realized she was doing it too nervously and stopped.
Then Teizawa looked to the last one.
Chiyo.
The tallest.
She'd managed to retie her sash, but in her hurry she'd knotted it badly. The fabric sat awkwardly, the wrap too tight in one spot and loose in another.
She met his gaze without backing down, though her fingers twisted the edge of her sleeve until the cloth wrinkled.
"Chiyo. Sixteen."
"Four months ago, you volunteered in the west district relief camp."
"That camp was housing refugees from the Land of Rivers conflict zone. Mostly elders and children."
"You stayed forty-seven days. You helped build temporary shelter, distributed supplies, taught basic hygiene."
"You did it on your own rest days."
Chiyo's mouth opened slightly in shock.
She'd never thought her name mattered enough for the Kazekage to remember it.
But she'd been wrong.
"I remember," Teizawa said. "Anyone who does a little more than they're required to do, I remember."
After that, the three of them fell quiet.
Silence.
Matsuri finally finished fixing her collar properly.
She didn't wrap herself up tight like she was trying to disappear. She just tied her yukata neatly and lifted her head.
Something in her eyes had changed.
"Kazekage-sama… you actually know us…"
Her voice trembled, close to tears.
Yukata said nothing. She only tucked her hair behind her ear, jawline soft, gaze lowered as if she didn't trust her own expression.
Chiyo was the most direct.
She took a breath and looked straight into Teizawa's eyes.
"Kazekage-sama came over here… because you have an order for us?"
Teizawa held her gaze.
"No order."
He nodded toward the sunlit sand-bath area beyond the curtains.
"Since you're here already, settle down."
"Drink water, cool off between sessions, and don't mess around so hard you hurt someone."
His tone shifted, just slightly, into something more like a leader speaking to the village's future.
"And three days from now, there's an assembly."
"If you have something you want the village to fix, don't just complain about it in a stall like this."
"Bring it forward the right way."
Matsuri's hands tightened on the wrap.
Yukata's breathing steadied.
Chiyo's eyes sharpened.
For a few seconds, none of them spoke.
Then Matsuri bowed her head, quick and sincere.
"Yes, Kazekage-sama."
Yukata followed, quieter.
"Yes."
Chiyo held his gaze for a beat longer, then nodded once.
"Understood."
Teizawa gave them a calm look, as if confirming something to himself.
Then he turned and walked back to his own stall.
The hemp curtain fell back into place.
And for the first time since he'd arrived at the sand-bath house, the noise next door finally faded into a wary, respectful hush.
Teizawa lay back in the hot white sand.
He exhaled.
At last.
Now he could think about the Dragon Vein again.
(End of Chapter)
[Get +30 Extra Chapters On — P@tr3on "Zaelum"]
[Every 300 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter Drop]
[Thanks for Reading!]
[1] I totally forgot the name of this characters