Chapter 15: The Cloth Over the Eyes
Chapter 15: The Cloth Over the Eyes
The laughter still lingered in the warehouse air.
Yuni was halfway through mimicking her dramatic dagger stance, Rei pretending to ignore her while sneaking glances, and Dazuro had only just found a new wall to lean against when the sound of boots broke the mood.
Heavy, deliberate steps. A lot of them.
Kagerō turned first, his eyes narrowing.
Manju entered like a shadow dragging dawn behind him. His flak vest was darkened with mud, or something thicker, and his ever-present scar gleamed as though freshened by sweat. He didn't walk alone. A dozen Rain shinobi followed in formation. Their uniforms were smeared red and brown, their sleeves soaked. One even had a kunai still sheathed in his forearm.
Gasps echoed across the room.
"Is that blood?" someone whispered.
"They… they're hurt."
"Are we supposed to fight them?"
A ripple of unease passed through the children. The earlier warmth drained quickly, replaced by the cold uncertainty only shinobi could deliver.
"No," Manju said, answering no one and everyone at once.
He stopped in the middle of the warehouse, arms crossed, face unreadable beneath the faint spatter across his jaw.
"You will not fight them," he said flatly. "Yet."
The word hung in the air like a blade.
The bloodstained chunin silently moved among the children, each holding a coil of rough cloth. Thick, gray, frayed at the edges.
"You're being split into cells," Manju continued. "One team per site. One site per child."
"Blindfolds?" Yuni asked, her voice forced into cheer. "You guys just love your drama, huh?"
A chunin handed her a strip of cloth. She stared at it.
Manju met her gaze. "When you are blind, you see who you are."
No one joked after that.
Kagerō accepted the cloth from the silent shinobi who approached. The man's eyes were hollow. Blank, like glass, left too long in the rain.
'They're not here to protect us', Kagerō thought. 'They're here to carry us.'
He tied the cloth slowly, deliberately, making sure it pressed evenly across his eyes. He let darkness bloom around him, robbing him of sight, stealing every scrap of light and shape and edge.
But his breath stayed calm.
His body knew the rhythm now. The beat of this world.
"Good luck," he murmured quietly to the space around him. He wasn't sure who was still near.
But then—
"Don't die, baby brother," came Yuni's teasing voice somewhere to the right. "Or I'll kill you."
"Tch. You too," came Rei's sharp, embarrassed grumble. "Stay out of my shadow."
"Save me a rice ball," Dazuro added from further behind, the smile evident even without a face.
Kagerō smiled faintly beneath the blindfold.
And then, in perfect unison, they were led away. Each child was taken by a blood-slicked hand into a day that would not end as gently as it began.
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The cloth over his eyes was tight, but Kagerō didn't need vision to know where he was.
His feet told him. The rhythm of his steps against the old tile, the slight give in places where the flooring sagged from too much water and too many winters. The smell confirmed it next; sweet dust, iron rust, and something distant, like dried milk and faded lilac.
His breath hitched as they passed the threshold.
This was the orphanage.
His orphanage.
For two years, it had been everything. The hum of Mera's voice. The low warble of crying infants. The distant clang of spoons against tin bowls. The cold creak of morning stretches on worn wood.
That sound was gone now.
So was the warmth.
The hand that guided him forward was not kind. It gripped his arm too tightly. And it was wet. Soaked, almost, with something tacky that didn't come from the rain. Blood. And the chill that seeped from it wasn't the kind the air made, it was the kind left behind by violence.
Click.
The door opened.
A slow, deliberate noise. Like the room beyond it had been waiting. Patient. Hungry.
Kagerō was shoved forward.
He didn't resist. Couldn't. His body pitched into the dark.
And landed.
Not on wood.
Not in stone.
But something soft.
Warm.
Still.
He caught himself with trembling arms, but only just. His cheek pressed into cloth soaked through. He smelled something...something faintly sour and metallic.
And then, instinctively, his hands moved.
Familiar shapes.
Tiny limbs.
A small chest.
No rise. No fall.
He froze.
And slowly, painfully, reached up and untied the cloth binding his eyes.
The moment it slipped free, light poured in.
And with it, a screaming silence.
It was Ren.
The baby with wisps of hair like down feathers. The one who giggled every time Kagerō made faces. The one he'd fed, rocked, and shielded from cold drafts during winter nights.
His eyes were open.
Too open.
Glass instead of joy.
A thin, dark line cut cleanly across his throat, like a mockery of a smile.
Kagerō reeled back, gasping but his hand struck another body.
Kruna.
Curled into herself as if still asleep. But her blanket, her favorite blue one, the one Mera always tucked around her shoulders, was soaked, blackened and stiff.
Her hand still clutched a rattle.
He staggered up, but couldn't find balance.
The floor stretched out around him and everywhere he looked, he saw them.
The others.
Children he knew. Children he'd soothed. Played with. Fed. Fought with. Loved.
And now...
Limp.
Unmoving.
Cold.
He stumbled toward the wall, pressing his palm against it as if the texture could ground him, could remind him that he still existed, that this pain wasn't all there was.
But even the walls betrayed him.
Every fingerprint he'd left there during play. Every scratch. Every smudge of food. All wiped clean. Sterilized. Like this place was preparing to forget them.
He fell to his knees.
The breath shuddered out of him.
Not a scream.
Not a cry.
But something deeper.
A soundless echo of a soul tearing just enough to leave a scar.
This isn't real, he tried to think.
But it didn't matter.
Because his body believed it.
His heart believed it.
And when his eyes landed once more on Ren's still form, something broke.
Not loud.
Not shattering.
Just a soft, permanent crack.
Like a doll dropped one too many times.
The stench of blood hadn't settled before a new presence arrived.
The door creaked again, slow and deliberate, and from the shadows stepped a tall shinobi. His uniform was unmistakable.
A leaf jōnin vest.
The green, flak-patterned armour clung to him like moss on the stone, smeared with fresh gore and mud. His eyes gleamed like cold iron, and slung over his shoulder, limp and gasping—
Was Mera.
Her apron was torn. Her arms hung like broken reeds. But her eyes, bloodshot and desperate locked onto Kagerō the moment she saw him.
"Run," her lips shaped.
The jōnin shoved her to her knees, one hand fisted into her hair, the other holding a blade. A real one. Long, thin, and trembling with chakra.
Kagerō froze. His chest seized.
The jōnin spoke then, voice thick with amusement.
"This the one you raised, woman? The little shadow brat?" He asked the trembling woman. She didn't signify him with a reply but a whimper of pain.
The man grinned, finding a twisted sense of reassurance from her pain. Without confirming the answer to his question, he continued, "Then here's your choice, boy."
He flung a kunai at Kagerō.
"Take that kunai. Cut your own throat."
Next, he held his own blade against Mera's. Just an inch away from handing her over to the Shinigami.
"Or I'll gut her like the rest."
Time broke.
Kagerō didn't move. His small fingers curled and dug into the ground. His entire world shrunk to two faces: the tear-tracked agony of the woman who had tucked him into bed and the twisted grin of the man who promised to snuff her out.
His breath hitched.
His heart went silent.
Then something else moved.
Not thought. Not mind.
Will.
Raw, furious, and more ancient than reason.
Kagerō screamed.
But the scream didn't come from his throat. It exploded through his muscles, his chakra, his limbs. He moved, surging forward with a momentum no two-year-old should have. Dead bodies flung aside as he ran, vaulted, and virtually flew.
A kunai gripped in both hands. A blur of shadow and rage.
The jōnin's eyes widened just enough to flinch.
Too late.
Kagerō hit him with a shoulder of coiled fury, launching three kunai mid-air. One aimed for the hand holding Mera, one for the knee, one straight for the throat.
The man parried, barely. The kunai nicked his arm.
But Kagerō wasn't done.
Mid-spin, he kicked off the wall, flipped upward, and stuck to the roof. His chakra flared out wildly, burning instinct into motion.
Then he dropped. Silent.
Behind the jōnin.
His kunai aimed for the neck, heart pounding so hard it rang in his ears.
Steel met steel.
The jōnin twisted at the last second, catching the blade with his own. Sparks flew. Kagerō landed and stumbled but didn't fall.
Then the world stopped again.
A crack.
Not steel this time.
Bone.
Her neck.
Snapped like twigs underfoot.
Mera crumpled.
Eyes open.
Unseeing.
Kagerō didn't remember screaming this time. He only remembered red. His limbs stopped feeling like his own. The kunai felt heavier. The chakra in his chest burned and burned until it singed the walls of his soul.
The jōnin lunged.
This time, Kagerō didn't dodge.
He invited the blade in, twisted his small body around it, and let it slash through his arm even as he plunged his own kunai into the man's side.
Blood sprayed.
Not his.
The jōnin grunted and staggered.
Kagerō didn't stop. Another step. Another strike. A blade pierced his thigh, but he pushed forward.
Until his left leg gave out completely.
He fell.
But his arms kept moving.
He tackled the man using weight, gravity, or anything.
Until they both hit the floor.
And then, he drove the kunai into the man's throat.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
The jōnin jerked.
Then stopped.
Silence.
The kind that doesn't echo.
Just… ends.
Kagerō slumped beside the body.
His right arm hung useless.
His left leg twitched once, then stilled.
Blood pooled beneath him.
And slowly, oh so slowly, the world around him began to shift.
The air shimmered.
The cold softened.
The corpses...devoured by the dark of his consciousness.
Faded.
Dissolved into the abyss of nothingness and the mist of uncertainty.
The orphanage floor became grey, and the tile became an empty void. Clean. Empty.
No bodies. No screams.
Just silence.
And the scent of rain.
Kagerō lay on the ground, breathing ragged. His hands still clutched the phantom kunai. His lips moved, but no words came.
He didn't cry.
He didn't even shake.
But something had changed.
Not broken.
Just… sharpened.
A weapon forged in agony.
A child, perhaps.
But now… unmistakably, a shinobi.
Unfortunately, the change had taken something away. He struggled to open his eyes again, to look at Mera one last time but his body robbed him off his wish as exhaustion claimed him.