Fate Wheel | Naruto

𝟏𝟎𝟑| "A slave to your kind"

CHAPTER 103 — A SLAVE TO YOUR KIND
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"Do you know how a star is born?"

Dawn asked, sorting through a pile of paperwork as she placed her pen down and leaned her chin on her knuckles. "I read about it, basically it has something to do with nebulas which are clouds of dust and gas and nuclear fusion occurs when the nebulas start to shrink until it becomes immensely hot, like ten million Celsius, and then these explosions occur and then boom! The star is born."

"Really?" Shikamaru looked up in interest, intrigued to know about anything other than the paperwork in front of him. "That's kinda cool."

"Right?" She grinned in amazement. "I also know how they die. It happens around several billion years after they're born, and it's when they exhaust their nuclear fuel, the star collapses and when the outer layer explodes it's called a 'supernova'. A supernova is when it becomes super bright and the explosion ejects majority of its mass. Here, look."

She pushed forward the book as he craned his neck to see the photo, his eyes widening in the process.

A kaleidoscope of bright, splendid colours, each ejecting its own uniqueness and fluorescence that shedded off, somewhat like staring at a thunderstorm in clear plains; where lightning, rain and clouds all form a beautiful image of destruction. Despite death being the inevitable ending of human life, it didn't necessarily mean that it'd end in hardship. Good always came out of bad.

"Beautiful, right?" Dawn watched his expression with a small smile. "It might sound kind of silly, but when I die I wish to die as beautifully as a star. Grievance is a natural process, but I want my memory to be something that makes someone happy rather than sad, you get me?"

"I don't want to be a downer, but a part of me always knew that I won't die a peaceful death. In a way, it makes sense, for something that started tragic to end as tragically. I know I'm not destined to die peacefully in my sleep or of old age, but one thing I truly desire is to die in the company of loved ones." She murmured with a distant look in her eyes as she stared out of the window. "I don't want to be alone, I don't want to die in fear that the people I care about are unaware of the way I left the world. It's morbid, but true."

"There's also something else I reflected on, normally when people die they want to be remembered in a positive light, right? Well, I want people to remember the good and the bad. I feel like only remembering the good distorts the reality of who the person once was, it makes them more real to not pick and choose what to remember, but to understand that they were a real aspect of your life and they'll always remain real to you even after they die."

She was an enigma.

An unsolvable puzzle. Every time Shikamaru thought he came close to figuring her out, she'd say something or act a certain way that would completely refute his calculations and leave him in a confused mess. Figuring people out itself was bothersome. When he was young, he preferred to acknowledge people the way they were and that was all there was to it, psychoanalyse was a complicating process and a part of him wondered whether his laziness stemmed from the fact that discovering the true nature of the people he knew would completely distort the image he had of them in his head.

Dawn was the first person that made him think twice about his actions and naturally, he was forced to think of her as a person, as a friend, as a comrade, as someone who mutually understood the way his mind worked and his inability to stop thinking. Thinking was like breathing, it just happened without it being a conscious thought, except at times it had proven to be the bane of his existence.