The Red Maelstrom

[40] The Next Chapter Unfolds

Several days blended into weeks of trying to rebuild what Konoha had lost. Kohana spent most of her time taking part in small missions that involved interacting with grief-stricken villagers and assisting all those whose houses and shops were in dire need of repair. On some such days when Team 7 would be forced to communicate with their clients more than what was demanded of their tasks as genin, Kohana found her night terrors snowballing—so much so that she had recently taken to sitting through awkward silences with Bunko as soon as she woke up. Because there were mornings when waking up to her dark and empty home did the exact opposite of bringing her comfort from another night spent sweating into her pillow and screaming her throat sore until she was conscious. Because she could ask no one else to accompany her (Osamu was far too busy, and she didn't want to burden Naruto or Sasuke). Because although some part of Kohana still harbored a deep resentment for Bunko, her feelings did nothing to change the fact that Bunko was a good listener, and being a retired shinobi, understood fully how horrific Kohana's nightmares could be.

If she thought hard enough about it, Kohana couldn't quite remember the specifics of her night terrors. She possessed the tendency to repress them at every waking moment, but sometimes... tendrils of darkness that hadn't been flushed away by daylight would reach her. They would catch her off guard in the most mundane moments: when she had once asked to step out for some air after she felt something yank her hair (it had been a baby, but the memories had resurfaced nonetheless); or when she stared far too long at a dark corner of her room; or when she would catch Sakura suspended in a daze; or when she just knew that Sakura could sense that something was amiss with Kohana, something that neither Sasuke nor Naruto were alert enough to pick up on.

Each one of those moments, and more, killed all the bright within her—obliterated in one fell swoop. At times Kohana imagined crows eyeing her remains, picking at the open skin where the shattered bones of her knee could have had sliced clean through like a rotten floorboard that had caved in half under the weight of a foot. Given enough time Kohana would swear to herself that she could smell the stench of her viscera and imagine crows flocking around her body to tear through her body and dip their beaks into a pool of her blood. And there would be more of them to come, and they would take her hair in their talons and yank just as all the bullies had, just as so many evil men had. Sometimes her mind ventured to a scene wherein they would slowly peel the skin off her skull.

And if it wasn't all her memories of violence that triggered such macabre thoughts, it was the near or actual deaths around her. If it wasn't one thing, it was another. Little else could occupy her mind, but there were brief minutes when she would watch the people around her, strangers and friends alike, and ask herself: Did they have such thoughts as well? She'd never been one to dwell too much on her problems, but she supposed that such a case happened before she even became a shinobi. Before she realized that one day, not only were Naruto and Sasuke going to face constant peril and anguish, but so was Kohana. So were other people she would come to deem precious to her.

And now she was going to be promoted to chūnin?

The very notion of it still tended to sound so utterly ridiculous to her. Since she had the time to consider the news properly, did she truly deserve it? Were they not wrong about their assessment of her? Were they not all based on results? Kohana could at least admit that her deliberate disobedience had miraculously turned out to be a job well done, but they hadn't seen her before that. Maybe they hadn't seen her groveling in the dirt for a mercy killing by a man who had caught her because she had been foolish and arrogant. Chūnin should have the aptitude to be budding leaders in every sense of the word. They were to possess a leader's skill, intellect, and mettle. All that necessitates an intimate knowledge of their team entwined with the resolve to see a mission through for the sake of the village. Before the preliminaries even commenced, the reality that she was lacking in multitudes had been lovingly shoved into Kohana's face.