Age Fourteen
The letter came on a Tuesday.
I was in the dojo, practicing my chains, when a messenger hawk landed on the windowsill. It carried a scroll sealed with the Senju symbol—but the seal was broken, smeared with something dark.
Blood.
I unrolled the scroll with shaking hands.
"Ren,
Nawaki is dead.
He was on a reconnaissance mission near the Kiri border. An explosive tag. There wasn't enough left of him to bury.
I can't do this anymore. I can't keep losing people.
Don't write back. I need time.
—Tsunade"
I read the letter seven times. The words didn't change.
Nawaki. The little boy who wanted to be Hokage. The one who bounced on his heels and smiled at everyone and never stopped dreaming. He was eleven years old.
I thought about the last time I had seen him. He had visited Uzushio with Tsunade six months ago, full of energy and questions. He had asked me to teach him the shuriken trick. I had promised I would, next time.
There wouldn't be a next time.
My Mangekyo activated. The golden spiral spun in my eyes, and I saw the threads. I saw Nawaki's death—the explosion, the blood, the silence. I saw the thread leading from his death to Tsunade's grief. I saw the thread leading from her grief to something darker, something that would consume her for years.
And I saw another thread. A thread where I had rewritten the consequence. Where Nawaki had lived.
But that thread was faded. Broken. Because I hadn't seen it in time. Because I had been too focused on my own war, my own village, my own survival.
I could have saved him. I had the power to save him. And I hadn't.
I threw up.
---
I didn't write back. I couldn't. What was I supposed to say? "I'm sorry"? "I should have been there"? "I could have saved him but I didn't"?
None of it would bring him back.
I waited two weeks. Then I wrote a single line:
"I'm here. Whenever you're ready."
She didn't reply for a month.
When she finally did, the letter was short.
"I'm not ready. But I'm not giving up either.
Come visit me when the war is over. I need to see your stupid face.
—Tsunade"
I folded the letter and placed it in the box under my futon, next to all the others.
I will, I thought. I promise.