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CHAPTER 7: Those who can see ghosts
Karakura town wasn't anything unique. A small city with a small population, but to an interloper like Sakura, it was another planet. Accurately speaking, another version of the same planet. The pride in her intelligence wouldn't allow her to take time to wrap her head around the concept.
Taking in the unusual architecture, which was unknowingly a few years away from her own world. The buildings were primarily made of glass, which didn't seem very sound or safe, as she peered from a distance and could see people walking through, working at desks, or talking at tables. At eye level, though, streets were paved in tar and concrete, making every step smooth and unaffected by any weather changes. And metals dominated over wood.
Sakura watched as the vehicles sped past the streets, and how people knew to wait at crossing walks and lights, while she just walked across the other side.
Kisuke instructed her to go out and explore, but Sakura couldn't find anything of interest. She didn't want to spend her time window shopping, and it angered her that Kisuke chose to kick her out.
If it wasn't for Soul Reaper training and the fact that Kisuke was the only way back to her world, she would've left on her own.
She hadn't mentioned this, but her sword seemed to have gone silent. While Sakura still couldn't fully grasp the idea that her weapon was sentient, it felt cold in a way that someone would normally describe a corpse.
She was even starting to wonder if the problem was in fact her, because, as ludicrous as it sounded, shinigami were real, she had become one, and swords had their own names.
Sakura eventually found a greener part of town, a forest converted into a park. Appreciating the change in landscape, she wandered farther down the well-maintained paths. While much tidier than the forests back in her world, it felt close enough to home that she continued deeper. She aimed to get far enough that she wouldn't see or sense another soul. There weren't many people: just a few joggers in the distance and an elderly couple walking hand in hand. It was nothing like the city's crowds.
She went a little further, looking for solitude. And she thought she had found it when she felt something.
Every shinobi learned to read the air, to sense the subtle shifts that preceded violence. It was a refined survival instinct: the ability to detect hostility.
This wasn't quite bloodlust. More like... aggression.
Sakura's feet changed direction without conscious thought, following that sense toward its source. Around a bend in the path, through a gap in the trees, she saw them.
Four boys were fighting in a match that was clearly three against one.
It was the one that caught her attention. Perhaps it was the bright orange hair that made the impression, along with the fact that he was moving with more practice and obvious signs of training than the other three. He was getting caged in from all three directions, and when his back was turned to face the other two, the guy picked up his skateboard and came at him from behind.
"Stop!" Sakura ran towards him as the skateboard raised above his head. She gave a swift kick that had him kissing the ground. She didn't use any chakra to power her kicks and even held back on the output, sensing that there was no real power behind any of them, and she didn't want to kill anyone.
"What the heck?"
"Where'd this chick come from?"
Sakura met their eyes, and things went quiet, a single look that felt as if their legs had been anchored, and their adrenaline shut off.
One of them finally managed to speak, "He-Hey man, what's your problem?!" He wasn't talking to Sakura but to the orange-haired boy.
"Yeah, we weren't doing anything, and you came and attacked us!" It seemed like they were trying to redirect her attention to a new victim.
The guy who had been knocked to the ground started picking himself up, holding his mouth like he was checking if any teeth had been knocked loose. But Sakura hadn't been that reckless.
"Do you see that!?" The orange head pointed. And Sakura realized he gestured to a memorial. There was a picture of a small boy in a striped shirt lying on its side, on the floor, a toy plane with a string on it, and a few bouquets of flowers that were obviously crushed underfoot. "Do you know what this is?"
"Uh, a memorial for a kid who got killed here."
"Correct!" The orange head moved, punching the guy who answered. Hard enough to make his nose bleed.
"And why is it looking like this?"
They knew what he was referring to, and Sakura got the gist as well. She glared at them again, in a way that made the three feel like they would need a change of clothes from the sweat. Hopefully, just sweat.
"Did you three deliberately wreck this child's memorial?"
"We're sorry!" They cried before rushing off, leaving just Sakura and the orange-haired boy. Who was now moving to set the memorial back in place. He took the toy plane and tied it back onto the tree. Then he took the bouquets, trying to fix the flowers that could be salvaged. Dropping the crushed ones, muttering a sorry.
Sakura went to the flowers, picking up a few of the loose ones and weaving them together into a crown, since they couldn't be placed back into the bouquet. Ino had shown her how to do this, and by now she could finish one in a minute.
Sakura and the boy moved together, resetting the space in silence.
"That looks good," Sakura set the flower crown at the tree by the picture that was set back up. "He's so young."
"Yeah."
Sakura glanced at the stranger. Spikey orange hair, soft brown eyes, he was obviously trying to keep hard, had to be around her age.
"That was a nice kick."
"Thanks. You've got some blood on your lip," He wiped it without comment.
Sakura wondered if this boy was a relative who had passed, but if that were the case, she didn't want to be crass and decided that now was the best time to take her leave.
That's when something caught in the corner of her eyes. Just behind one of the trees, peering over, Sakura saw it. The same boy she had seen in the picture.
"Hey," She walked over, crouching down, losing awareness of her surroundings. In all of that, something didn't occur to her, something she had forgotten. This wasn't her world, and the rules weren't the same.
She heard the rattling sound of chains before she saw them, as the boy moved from behind the tree, revealing his full figure. A translucent figure. A short chain running to the boy's chest, linked. A soul.
'A ghost,'
She heard shuffling behind her, and the orange-haired boy stood. And she prepared for the questions, for that special look people gave when you were caught talking to yourself out loud. But it was fine, she could handle strange looks from a stranger.
But then he spoke, "You…can see him?"
Sakura froze.
..
..
..
..
..
Control. It wasn't the desire to have everything in your grasp, but the desire to have everything you wanted laid out on your plate, set the way you wanted it, cut in the forms you wanted, with nothing left to chance. Everyone wanted control. It was tied to success, it was tied to stability, it was tied to sanity. And it was something all humans chased, in the hopes of gaining inefficiency and peace. The armor to walk through life without sustaining damage.
Even Sakura had fought for control, her entire life. Her career as a shinobi had been a hard landing into reality, holding up a mirror to what she was capable of. And she didn't like what she saw. But she held onto the belief that she could take control of her situation and herself. She shattered that mirror and crushed the shards in her palm, determined to see a new image. Only for things to go awry and for the world to remind her that she never had control of anything.
Even the world she chose to walk in.
Sakura pushed her food around with her chopsticks, eyes almost glazed as everyone around her chatted. Her bowl of rice untouched, and ignoring Jinta's third request to pass the salt. It was obvious she had something heavy on her mind, and the considerate choice of action would be to ease into their concerns or allow her space to breathe.
But Kisuke was not willing to do anything of the sort.
He curled his hand around his mouth and called out like an announcer at a stadium. "And here we have Sakura Haruno, looking all gloomy after taking a day off from training. She has been failing for the last two weeks. What are your thoughts?"
She nearly jumped over the table to strangle him, but just glared at him. "What the hell?"
"Come on, what's going on in that head of yours that you're ignoring your meal?"
Sakura's chopsticks pushed a grain of rice around her bowl. "It's nothing."
"Nothing," Kisuke repeated, as if testing the word's weight. "In my experience, 'nothing' usually translates to 'something I don't want to talk about.'"
"That's such an old man thing to say," said Jinta, taking another bite.
"Hey! Come on. It's not good to keep things in. Don't you know that's how you get constipated?"
Sakura's nose crinkled, a flicker of her old annoyance breaking through the haze. But relented. "Can normal people see spirits?"
The table suddenly got quiet, everyone turning to look at Sakura. Kisuke didn't deter, though. "An interesting question. Not usually. But there are humans with higher spiritual perception, people who can see what others can't. It depends on certain factors. Some are born with the gift. Others..." He paused. "Others experience unexpected circumstances that force their senses open. Encounters with the supernatural can leave marks."
"I met someone like that today."Sakura's hand drifted unconsciously to her chest, hovering over the place where the Hollow's hole had torn through her.
Sakura proceeded to tell them about how her day off took an unexpected turn in finding a boy defending a decrepit memorial, and how she had been caught trying to comfort a spirit.
"So what did you do?" asked Ururu
Sakura rubbed the back of her neck, "I ran."
Before the boy could get another word in, Sakura decided to take her leave. She started with a brisk walk past him, and then she just took off. And while she had been in view, and didn't think to go at blinding shinobi speeds in a public setting the moment that she could get out of view, she made sure he couldn't follow after her.
"Spirits can linger where they passed," Kisuke mused, tapping his fan against his chin. "Especially those who don't feel ready to leave. They can even become bound to a place, tied to the memory of affection."
Sakura's voice dropped. "The little boy... he had a chain in his chest."
"Well then," Kisuke folded his fan and pointed to her with it, "You're going to have to take care of it."
Sakura's eyes snapped to his. "What?"
"You saw a soul that needs crossing over into the soul society, and it's a soul reaper's job to make sure that happens."
"What?"
"If you don't get that boy into the soul society, he'll eventually turn into a hollow." Kisuke's voice held none of its usual teasing. "Whether you like it or not, you, Sakura, are a Soul Reaper now. So you need to go back."
She set her chopsticks down. "Go back and do what exactly?"
"Perform konso," Kisuke said.
Konso, another foreign term that Sakura had to add to her permanent vocabulary. Another ability of the zampakuto, a sword which she still could not name. It wasn't a weapon that took lives alone; it also took souls and cleansed them.
"That isn't my job," Sakura hissed.
"It is now. Besides, you should get some practice. When you return to your world, who knows if you'll find spirits that need help crossing over." Kisuke took a refill of rice and began stuffing his face, like he didn't just tell her something ridiculous.
"You said soul reapers don't appear in my world. By that logic, why would hollows and ghosts be a problem?"
With his face still stuffed, and rice flying, Kisuke responded. "That's true,I just wanted to see if you remembered. Still, we should try to keep the number of spirits in the area as low as possible, and having you perform konso is the best way."
Sakura slammed her hand on the table, "Why?"
"Because if there is an influx of spirits in the area, then hollows will also be prone to appear to devour them." Somehow, she could feel the hairs on the back of her neck rise at the thought. Kisuke settled again, shifting his chopsticks in his hand to point at her. "You may be facing hollows in your world as well."
"What are the odds hollows can even get into my world? Based on what you've told me, that shouldn't be."
"Yes, but as they say, it only takes one pull of the thread to unravel everything. If a hole got in before, I'd say the possibility of it happening again is high. Normal weapons can't defeat hollows, as they are spirits with dense reiatsu."
While ghosts, ordinary spirits could be walked through, Soul reapers and hollows were beings with dense spiritual pressure that made them tangible to the living. Only in terms of being felt, but they couldn't normally be seen either.
"While hollows and soul reapers can exist on a physical plane, the logic and rules of the living don't apply."
Sakura sighed, "So I have to go back."
Kisuke took his glass and held it out like making a toast, "Perhaps if you start doing the duties of a soul reaper, you'll become more in tune with your zampakuto and finally hear their name."
"Doubt it."
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EARLY CHAPTERS FOR MEMBERS NOW: BUYMEACOFFEE
-Kunoichi amongst Heroes chapter (107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114)
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-Through the Looking Glass chapter (56, 57, 58, 59)
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- Kunoichi amongst Benders (Avatar x Naruto crossover) (18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24)
-Kunoichi amongst Heroes WHAT IF SPIN OFF: Dorms and Exams
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