DiSCERN (Naruto Fanfic)

Chapter Fifteen.

"Hi Itsuki," Asuma greets dryly as he picks a book about Shogi off the shelf. "Why are you greeting people at a ninety-degree angle today if you don't mind me asking?"

Casually, like it was about the weather.

"Hi Asuma," Itsuki dryly responds. "Orochimaru-sensei said that, to make sure I really did regain my mastery of tree-walking, I'm not allowed to be upright today. Something about how it teaches me to get used to the landscape of Konoha without my sight."

Asuma hums. "I see."

They weren't really close. Asuma was in the generation ahead of Itsuki, after all— they were passing acquaintances at best.

A moment of silence later, Asuma gives up. It's way too awkward here to cope with being stared at— is that even the right term anymore— by a younger Genin, three inches away, sitting sideways upon the shelves. Like, it's definitely because of the blindfold, but Itsuki hasn't stopped facing him for even a second. Asuma's going to crack from whatever this harassment is.

"Is there a reason you're in the library?"

"Yes," Itsuki immediately says, holding out a book about seals, "I have a bit of time before I have to pick up Anko from the Academy and Orochimaru-sensei is in a meeting. And Genma ran away. Read this for me."

That made so much sense Asuma couldn't help the extended, "ahhhhhhhh," of sudden enlightenment that came out of him. "Right. You can't read anymore."

"You're the only chakra signature I recognize in this building."

"Darn, I knew I should've turned back when I passed that black cat on the way here."

-

"What, no. If you move the knight there, it'll be taken by the silver general in two moves."

"What? No it—" Asuma pauses. Then, "ah. Okay then I'll move it this way—"

"That rook's going to be in the way of any good moves you can do."

"What? Agh, can you be quiet, Itsuki?" Asuma groans, "I can't do anything like this!"

"Well if you read the book properly you would know your first few moves were already too bad to continue," Itsuki says, petulantly, holding the shogi strategy book in his hand, "oh, you should move your lance actually."

"You didn't read that book!" Asuma snarls. "It's upside down!"

"No it's not!" Itsuki whines, and very unsubtly he flipped it around as he argues, "I meant to do that. Anyways can you check this for me?"

"What? Huh. How'd you draw that circle so perfectly?"

Today was apparently 'if a blind kid can identify you, you kind of deserve babysitting duty' day, which is why Hyuuga Hizashi is stuck here on the other side of the shogi board, trying to figure out how he ended up here.

Well, he just got back from a mission and wasn't particularly in the mood to talk politics with the Hyuuga elders, so he wasn't in a rush to go home.

"Why shogi?" he asks first.

"Shikaku-san challenged me to it but I didn't know the rules," Asuma says, checking the basic storage seal drawn on the table against the one in the book back and forth, "so I'm here because I need to shut him up."

Hizashi did not understand, but whatever.

"And not being able to see the seals you draw may prove inefficient on the field," he turns to Itsuki, who's just scribbling the seal on his smaller pieces of paper over and over.