Chapter 6: I'll Handle It
The training ground dirt was a different kind of grime than catwalk powder or set foundation. It clung, gritty and honest, under her fingernails and in the sweat-damp roots of her platinum hair. Saija knelt by the small, twisted sapling she’d been trying to coax life into for the past hour, her chakra feeling like a sputtering faucet—a weak trickle where a stream should be.
It was humbling. No, it was humiliating.
Behind her, Shikadai Nara observed from a shaded bench, one ankle resting on his opposite knee. “Your form’s better,” he called out, his voice the same lazy, even drawl he’d had since they were kids. “Less like you’re posing for a photo. More like you’re actually doing the thing.”
“But it’s not working,” Saija said, not turning around. She heard the frustration, sharp and brittle, in her own voice. She wiped her cheek, leaving a smear of earth. The sapling remained dormant, a stark, twiggy testament to her disconnect.
“These things are troublesome.” Shikadai’s shadow stretched long in the late afternoon sun as he stood and ambled over. He nudged the soil near the base with his toe. “You’re thinking about it like a performance. It’s a conversation. You’re not commanding. You’re… persuading.”
She sat back on her heels, looking up at him. His expression was its usual canvas of mild apathy, but his eyes were focused, analytical. It was the look he gave a complex shogi board. She braced herself for more criticism, for a detached breakdown of her failures. The kind Mitsuki might provide, but with a Nara’s specific brand of intellectual exhaustion.
“You want to get a coffee?”
The question hung in the air, so utterly foreign to the context that Saija’s brain stuttered. She blinked. “What?”
“Coffee,” Shikadai repeated, as if she’d misheard a tactical order. “There’s a new place near the mission desk. Their cold brew doesn’t taste like ditch water. Seems more productive than glaring at a tree that’s probably given up on you for today.”
He wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t not-smiling. It was just a statement of fact, offered with the same casual ease as his observation about her form. But the implication was a live wire in the quiet training field. This wasn’t a debrief. This wasn’t a clan heir checking on a comrade’s progress.
This was an ask.
A warmth flooded Saija’s cheeks, bright and sudden. She felt it burn, a visceral reaction she couldn’t suppress. “I… yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. I’m covered in dirt, though.”
“They’ve seen worse,” Shikadai shrugged, already turning toward the gate. “Five minutes?”
“Five minutes,” she echoed, her mind spinning. She watched his retreating back, the familiar lazy slouch, and tried to reconcile it with the sudden, quiet thrill in her stomach.
The flower shop was a cacophony of scent and color, a familiar balm. Inojin was at the back, meticulously stripping thorns from a batch of red roses, his brow furrowed in concentration. The bell above the door chimed her arrival.
“You’re late,” he said, without looking up. “Mom and Dad left for the council liaison dinner. Left us stew. It’s in the pot.”
“I went for coffee,” Saija said, slipping off her shoes. The cool wooden floor felt good on her sore feet.
“With who? Chōchō? She’s on a three-day radish cleanse, she wouldn’t—”
“With Shikadai.”
The snip of Inojin’s shears stopped. There was a precise, final click. He set the tool down and finally looked at her. “Shikadai.”
“Yes.”
“Nara Shikadai.”
“Is there another one?” She tried to sound light, moving to the sink to wash the training ground from her hands.
“Since when?” Inojin’s voice had lost its casual edge. It was flat now. Alert.
“Since today. After training. He asked. I said yes.” She scrubbed at the dirt, watching it swirl down the drain. “It was just coffee.”
“Right.” Inojin picked up the shears again, but didn’t resume his work. He turned them over in his hands. “Just coffee. Like Mitsuki ‘just happening’ to find you at the festival. Like Iwabe ‘just stopping by’ the other day to ask about your barrier tags. Like everyone suddenly needs to consult the rookie returnee on goddamn everything.”
Saija turned off the tap, the silence ringing. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the fact that my little sister comes home and my entire life becomes crowd control!” The words burst out of him, sharp and sudden as a kunai throw. He gestured around the shop. “I’m the one running interference. I’m the one answering the questions they’re too polite to ask you directly. ‘How’s she really adjusting, Inojin?’ ‘Is the training too much, Inojin?’ ‘She seems fragile, Inojin.’ And now they’re just… circling. Asking for coffee. It’s troublesome.”
She stared at him, hurt crystallizing into something harder. “They’re my friends. Or they’re trying to be. And I don’t need you running interference. I never asked you to.”
“You didn’t have to! It’s what happens!” He ran a hand through his hair, frustration etching lines around his mouth. “You have no idea. You walk in with your… your perfect hair and your honest eyes and this whole ‘searching for meaning’ thing, and people are fascinated. They either want to protect it or they want a piece of it. And I’m just here, in the background, making sure nobody gets too close and breaks it. Or breaks you.”
The sheer weight of his presumption took her breath away. “Breaks me?” Her voice dropped, cold. “Inojin, I spent six years in rooms with men who saw me as a walking contract. I navigated parties where every smile was a negotiation. I think I can handle Shikadai Nara and a cup of coffee.”
“It’s not the same!”
“It’s exactly the same! It’s people. And I can read people. It’s the one thing I’m actually good at.” She took a step toward him, the gulf between them feeling physical. “You don’t get to be annoyed because people are being nice to me. You don’t get to be my gatekeeper.”
“Somebody has to be!” he shot back. “Because you’re too busy assuming the best in everyone to see when someone’s interest isn’t just… friendly.”
The accusation hung there, ugly and undeniable. Was that what he thought? That her warmth was naivety? That her honesty was a flaw?
She thought of Mitsuki in the lantern-lit alley. You are easy to see when one knows what to look for. It hadn’t felt like a threat. It felt like recognition. Inojin’s version felt like being stuffed into a glass box.
“I see just fine,” she said, her tone final, leaving no room for his brotherly scrutiny. “And I can handle myself. You should worry less about everyone else and more about your own thorns. You’re missing one.”
She turned and walked out of the main shop, into the private living quarters, leaving him standing amidst the vibrant, silent flowers. The slam of her bedroom door wasn’t loud, but it was definitive.
Inojin stared at the rose in his hand. He looked down. A single, vicious thorn remained, hidden near the blossom. He hadn’t seen it.
He hadn’t seen it. The thorn bit into the pad of his thumb, a sharp, petty pain. Inojin sucked in a breath, dropping the rose onto the workbench, a single bead of blood welling up.
Upstairs, the floorboards creached under Saija’s angry, precise steps. He could picture her pacing, that particular storm-cloud silence she’d perfected backstage before a major show. It was a quiet that demanded an audience, and he was no longer willing to play his part.
He wrapped his thumb in a clean cloth, the sting faintly satisfying. Let her be angry. His job was thankless, and maybe she was right—maybe he’d missed more than a thorn.
Saija stood in the center of her room, the fight’s adrenaline souring into a hollow ache. Inojin’s words echoed. They either want to protect it or they want a piece of it. She looked at her reflection in the dark window. Platinum hair, icy eyes—a composition people had always wanted to own, to define.
Was Shikadai any different? His offer had been so casual it defied analysis. That was its own kind of mask.
Her scroll buzzed on the nightstand. A simple, text-only message from an unknown code. The cold brew is adequate. 18:00 at The Grind Stone if your schedule permits. – S.
Her thumb hovered. Inojin’s frustration was a wall in her mind. His fear was real, even if his method was suffocating. She thought of the kitsune mask, its serene, knowing smile. Of Mitsuki’s blunt observation. She was tired of being a thing to be managed.
She typed a single character. ✓
The response was immediate. Troublesome. See you then.
A real, unbidden laugh escaped her. It cut the tension in the room like a knife. She tossed the scroll onto her bed and went to shower, washing the last of the training ground and her brother’s doubts down the drain.
At 17:55, she stood outside The Grind Stone, a sleek hole-in-the-wall built into the stone foundation of the mission office. It smelled of roasted beans and damp clay. She wore simple dark trousers and a cream-colored sweater, her hair in a loose braid. It felt like a uniform for someone she was still becoming.
Shikadai was already at a small corner table, two misted glasses of iced coffee before him. He gave her a slow, acknowledging nod as she slid into the opposite seat.
“You made it,” he said.
“I said I would.”
“People say a lot of things.” He took a sip, his eyes scanning the room with a strategist’s idle assessment. “Inojin blow a gasket?”
The directness shouldn’t have surprised her. “Something like that. He thinks you’re part of a sudden influx of… problematic interest.”
Shikadai’s mouth quirked. “Problematic. That’s a word.” He set his glass down, the condensation making a wet ring on the wooden table. “He’s not entirely wrong. Your return has shifted certain social calculations. My mother has mentioned you three times in council meetings. Not by name. ‘The Yamanaka girl’s situation.’”
A chill that had nothing to do with the iced coffee touched Saija’s spine. “My situation.”
“Reintegration of high-profile personnel is always a diplomatic note. Makes some clans look good. Makes others nervous.” He swirled the dark liquid in his glass. “But that’s background noise. I asked for coffee because you looked like you’d lost a fight with a philosophy textbook back at the field. And I wanted a decent drink.”
She studied him. The lazy posture was a disguise for a mind that never stopped moving. “So this isn’t a date. It’s a tactical retreat and a beverage review.”
“Could be both. Doesn’t have to be a production.” He met her gaze, utterly unfazed. “You spent years in productions. Seems troublesome.”
Again, that laugh, softer this time. She took a drink. The coffee was rich, bitter, and perfectly cold. “It’s better than adequate.”
“Told you.”
They sat in a silence that was, for once, not charged with anyone’s expectations. It was just two people drinking coffee. The simplicity of it was a revelation.
“Inojin thinks I can’t see people’s motives,” she said quietly, voicing the itch his warning had left behind.
“Do you see mine?” Shikadai asked, his head tilting.
Saija let her perception widen, past the surface of his casual slouch. She saw the careful way he’d chosen a table with a clear view of both exits. The lack of fidgeting in his hands, a sign of focused calm. The absence of any performative charm.
“You’re curious,” she said finally. “But not in a way that wants anything from me. You’re gathering data. And you’re… bored. This is more interesting than whatever else you’d be doing.”
A slow blink. A barely-there smile. “See? You’re fine.”
For the first time all day, she believed it. The conversation drifted—inconsequential things, the horrible new lamp in the mission room, Chōchō’s radish cleanse despair. It was effortless.
When they left, the evening air was cool. Shikadai walked her to the turn for the flower shop. “Training’s at seven tomorrow,” he said. “Don’t be late. That sapling’s losing patience.”
“I’ll be there.”
He raised a hand in farewell and ambled away, hands in his pockets, already fading into the village’s shadowy tapestry. Saija turned toward home, the taste of coffee and uncomplicated companionship lingering.
She pushed open the shop door. The main lights were off, only the security glow from the back room painting the flowers in monochrome. Inojin’s shears were cleaned and put away. A single, perfectly thornless red rose lay on the counter.
Next to it, a note in her brother’s swift script: Stew’s in the pot. Don’t let it burn.
It wasn’t an apology. It was a ceasefire. She picked up the rose, its scent sweet and heavy in the dark shop, and headed for the kitchen, the unresolved tension now a quiet hum in the background, a problem for another day.