Paradise Found

CHAPTER 18

Chapter 18

A/N - I'm aliiiiive! I was fasting the month of Ramadan and made that my priority because it is the holiest time of year for us, but now that Ramadan is over and my cold is gone, I'm back and ready to crank out some more chapters. Thank you all as always. Your reviews are so kind and I'm so happy you guys are enjoying it as much as I enjoy writing it.

Much love!

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Heartbeat and footsteps went hand-in-hand as I traversed down the main road that led towards the Yamanaka flower shop.

Everything felt different, as if something monumental had shifted, but as I walked onward and watched the many villagers continuing their daily lives and routines, it became apparent that the shift was one that had occurred within myself.

I felt as though I were now an outlier, independent, a lone wolf, and the gravity and implications of my new affiliations were sure to be noticed. Someone was bound to see it. Any moment now a woman or man would see past the mask I was wearing on my face, or perhaps my heart would beat loudly enough to clue in a suspicious shinobi that I was something other than what I seemed. Any minute now I would surely be taken in to custody, dragged kicking and screaming to the T&I unit. Somebody would smell it on me, anybody might see.

Yet, despite a paranoid mind attempting to convince me otherwise, none of this came to pass. The world continued to turn, and nobody paid me any more attention than before. I continued on my path as normal and was largely ignored by shinobi and civilians alike.

Civilians were still busy with reconstructions and rebuilding what had been destroyed during the invasion. Women sold fish and vegetables in the market as

they normally did. Old men continued their games of mahjong, go, and shogi as they sat outside drinking tea and discussing politics, albeit a bit more quietly than they had before. And although there were more shinobi than ever patrolling the streets, almost as if the war we were fighting was inside the village and not outside of it, they paid me no mind.

I was overlooked, as I always had been.

I was a civilian woman, a housewife, a being with little to no chakra reserves who had rarely stepped foot outside the village, and a well-mannered and obedient citizen who had only gained a small notion of popularity by being involved with the village Jinchuuriki and marrying into a shinobi clan. And now that the dust had settled after my marriage and Naruto was gaining more popularity and friends within the village, my actions were not seen as radical as they had been almost half a year ago.

After the death of a Hokage, a world-wide war threatening our borders, and a dangerous and continuous shift of power towards one man who now sat in the Hokage's chair, people had far more serious things to worry about than trivial gossip.

And in the same way I was likely to be looked over without a second thought, so was Sumi – the fashionista tailor who painted on an airheaded façade along with her makeup in the morning.

To anybody else, I was a housewife who had married above my station and left tradition behind. To anybody else, Sumi was a ditzy young woman who cared more for fashion and the latest clothing and makeup trends than for the politics of men.

And if you weren't just anybody else, if you could see us for what we truly were, we were much more. But nobody thought to look to the civilians, especially not towards the women. And so, we were looked over and left to ourselves.

I could see now why the Resistance had as much success as it did. For who else could be so easily ignored other than the ones you might suspect the least?