JackSGreyson Says

Mornings in Ueno General Store are an exercise in patience, frustration, and futility. Still better than what her mornings used to be like at the orphanage, but only just.

When most small business owners say they open whenever they want, they generally mean later in the morning, sun high in the sky, so they can get a few extra hours of sleep.

Hikari-san wakes up before the sun–opens the store at dawn hours before any of her competitors think to do so–and so Tetsuki must do the same.

Hikari-san is a strict taskmaster, rapid staccato orders from the storefront heard even up the stairs in the apartment turned makeshift stockroom turned both. Tetsuki carts down boxes of inventory to the rhythm of Hikari-san’s “don’t you dare drop those,” and “don’t use chakra with that box, they’re shock tags” and “check how many of the high grade soldier pills we have, I might have to order more, no not the generic brand, the Nara brand.”

It’s a living.

Once enough supplies are brought downstairs, she directs Tetsuki to put together the genin kits–basic bundles of kunai, basic food pills, bandages, and other things that non-clan Academy students or their parents can purchase without shinobi background and the knowledge included.

First day of Academy means a huge boost in sales for these bundles which is, of course, fantastic. The fact that she’s the one who has to assemble over a hundred of them herself is less so. If Tetsuki knew how labor intensive the kits were, she’d never have suggested them in the first place.

But it’s a quieter sort of busywork, repetitive and mesmerizing…

… until Hikari-san smacks her over the head with a stack of invoices.

“Ten minutes until classes start,” she says, nodding her head towards the door, “Off you go.”

Tetsuki scurries away, though not before catching the muted, exasperated, “Honestly, that girl.”

The bakery next door is Akimichi owned, not run–a branch of the original–but just as delicious. In exchange for delivering their paperwork to the Tower every morning, Tetsuki gets a free breakfast.

Yoshihiko-san, civilian through and through, but with strong arms from kneading dough gives her a smile as she comes in, skirting around the line.

“The two of you were at it again early this morning,” he says, before handing over a paper bag of still warm bread and a flour covered envelope due for the Tower.

She takes a curious sniff at the bag–savory and sharp, curry pan.

“Good nose,” he confirms, before clapping her on the shoulder, “Better get moving, you’re running late.”

She shoots a quick thank you his way before dashing away, self-deprecatingly amused at herself: how worried she had been in the wee hours of the morning, and yet now she’s on her way to being tardy for the first lesson.

Well, it’s unlikely she’ll miss too much.

Tetsuki wakes up from a dream so vivid and ferocious she gasps and jolts upright on her cot. There are no clouds this night, nothing to block the bright shining moon; the boxes of inventory in the room cast sharp, angular shadows on the floor.

Her heart beats furiously, achingly. There are tears on her face.

Between one blink and the next, she forgets what she had dreamed.

Her heart slows, as do the flurrying, wild emotions. Still, she gives herself a moment before drying her face, turning and swinging her legs off her cot.

The floor is cold beneath her feet, toes curling up in reflexive protest, but she stands nonetheless.

There is no more sleeping for her tonight.

Creeping down the stairs, she pauses at the spill of light coming from the makeshift kitchen of the store.

Hikari-san is awake then.

“So loud,” her boss chastises, not looking up from her book of accounting. There’s more black than red, but only just. “If this were wartime, you’d be dead.”

But she gives a nod to the empty seat across from her, and Tetsuki takes her up on the invitation. There is a still steaming teapot on the table and two cups. Tetsuki prepares one for herself and refills the other.

“So would you,” she says in response, belated, hesitant despite her attempt to banter–after all, Hikari-san is her boss and landlady both.

The woman gives a small, acquiescing smirk.

Neither of them look at her prosthetic leg, stiff and wooden and propped up against the wall but still within Hikari-san’s reach.

“Worried about tomorrow?” she asks, curt but not unsympathetic, the scratch of her pen a static, soothing sound.

Tetsuki pauses, considering. Yes, actually, though she hadn’t been thinking about it just now. She knows there’s no real reason to be so, it’s just another year at the Academy. Her final year–if all goes well, that is–and the most important, but just another year at the Academy all the same.

It’s a silly thing to be worried about, when a woman who fought in a war says it out loud.

“You’ll do fine,” Hikari-san says, more in a tone that brooks no argument than one outrightly encouraging, but Tetsuki has learned over the years how to interpret that subtle language.

She’ll be fine. Just another year, same as before.

Tetsuki hopes so.

~

A/N: I’m going to make another serious attempt at my Externality series, in the actual order that I would publish it instead of just jumping all over the place. So… wish me luck, I guess?