“When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.”

― Ursula K. Le Guin

“Shinjiro” my tou-san called out to me, waking me from my abstraction, thinking about the events that were transpiring in front of me.

“Yes to-san?” I replied, wondering what was going to happen now, not missing the looks of amusement on the student’s faces.

“We will now be going on a round of the hospital and examining some of the patients. Do you want to come with us or stay here?”

“I think I will stay here tou-san” I replied wanting to think more about the lesson that tou-san was trying to teach me.

“Very well, we will return in half an hour” continued to-san, in his new, serious voice that was still shocking to me, even after having listened to it for the greater part of an hour.

As tou-san and his three students left the room, I sank back into my thinking and lost the world around me until I heard the sound of the door opening once more. The latest occupant of the room was a tall lady with dirty blonde hair tied into a high ponytail. She seemed not to notice me and instead sat down on the sofa beside me.

“Man, what a drag…”

“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to say?” I asked her in answer to her usage of the Nara phrase.

She looked around, puzzled as to where the mysterious voice was coming from. Eventually, her eyes settled on my form, sitting beside her.

“What did you say, shrimp?”

“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to say?” I repeated, wondering who exactly this person was.

“So, you’re a Nara, huh.” She said to herself, as if I wasn’t sitting right in front of her.

A saviour arrived to save me from the awkward situation in the form of the doctor with the upturned collar and large red mug.

“So, how did your surgery go Tsunade?” the masked doctor asked to the blonde, now identified as Tsunade.

“Mah, same old same old, thanks for referring the patient, I think I needed an easy one after all the difficult cases lately” Once again, it was as if I didn’t exist until the masked doctor turned to me and said:

“Shinjiro, tell your father that Kentaro and I be over later for the meal if your grandfather is cooking” This puzzled me. How did this person know my father and what meal was she talking about? Despite my questions though, I was determined to give a proper response as this seemed to be someone that I would get to know in the future, and I wanted to make a good first impression.

“I will do doctor-san” Hoping that calling her doctor-san would prompt her to give her own name. I was correct.

“Ah, don’t call me doctor-san, I’m Aia Aburame, I was on a team with your Uncle Kentaro.”

So, I would be getting to know her in the future.

“Anyway” she continued, “Tsunade, I need you for a couple of minutes, there is a particularly difficult patient that I need your help with.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

And, as quickly as they had entered the room, they left, once more leaving me to my thoughts.

The next disturbance to my line of thought was the return of my father and his students, who said their goodbyes and left, leaving my father and me. After I told my father of Aburame-san’s self-invitation and asked him why there would be a meal that oji-san and uncle Kentaro would be at, he responded that it was because ka-san had returned from her latest mission.

That definitely got my attention.

After tou-san had signed out from the hospital, we headed for oji-san’s house, gazing at the scenery in the process. About half-way to oji-san’s house, I asked a question that had been bugging me for a while.

“Tou-san, what was the point of bringing me to the hospital today?”

In response he hmphed. He had reverted to his pre-professional state of grunting out unintelligible answers and expecting the other party to do all the talking. Either that, or he wanted me to figure out the answer for myself. Probably a little of both.

After a few minutes more of walking, we had finally arrived at Oji-san’s house, where we could see him sitting outside, talking with his neighbours. Oji-san’s house was a small one, though by no means poor, as he had earned enough money from his many years of missions for the village, even if it was on genin pay. Once we arrived there, we addressed his neighbours and proceeded to follow him into the house, wherein he packed a sealing scroll to carry the groceries in. We had decided to go for a Nara classic, the barbeque, so favoured by the Nara because of how easy it was to make as well as the fact that it was the specialty of our clan allies, the Akimichi. When we had gone to the market and gotten all the ingredients for the barbeque, we turned back home. It wasn’t a long walk back home as the market was in the southern area of the central Konoha area and the compound was next to the wall of the South-Eastern district.

When we returned home, we set up the barbeque as well as taking the rice out of the rice machine which had presumably been turned on in the morning by tou-san before we left for the hospital. The three of us laid out the placemats and set the meat on the portable grill in the centre of the table and waited for kaa—san to enter as she would presumably smell the cooking meat and enter in her own time. As we waited, Oji-san regaled us with one of his famous stories from his experiences as a shinobi.

“I was 21, one year before the end of the war, and I had been assigned to the Kumo border. Now, to understand the story, you have to understand that Kumo has quite the envy for the amount of Kekkei Genkai that we have in our village and are constantly trying to steal them. The station that I was assigned to was luckily, or unluckily, depending how you look at it, the main station on the Kumo border, Nakagusuku fort. There was a solidly built square wall 15 feet tall, tall enough so that we could walk around in the fort without our heads being taken off by a stray kunai as well as not requiring us to run up the wall to get to the top of the wall. The wall was fortified by Mito-sama herself with over 300 seals on each of the four walls, which faced in the cardinal directions. The seals were extremely potent and varied in their application, from fortifying the wall to outside attacks to chakra repulsion (so no enemy nin could run up them), to seals that prevented moss growing on the wall.

As it was a border station, there were only two gates, the Fire gate, and the Lightning gate. Within the compound, there were a series of buildings arranged in two circles. Within the outer circle were targets that would be considered non-primary by any opposing force, such as the privies, canteen, and barracks, whereas, in the inner circle were buildings such as the infirmary, armoury, sealing centre ad command centre. As well as this, the inner buildings were higher than the outer buildings, to allow the inner defenders a better view down on any attackers who had already taken the outer buildings.

For the first week or so of my assignment, nothing all that eventful happened, only a few minor skirmishes and battles here and there. It was only on the 10th day of my stay that things started heating up. The commander of the border was the first Konoha head of the Nara clan, Shikamo Nara, renowned for his clan techniques and known as the Untouchable, ranked a level-B threat in the Kumo bingo book that we had pulled off the body off one of their ninjas the week previous.

That day completely changed my opinion of Nara techniques. I had always thought of Nara techniques as being mainly for support, used only in trapping enemies within shadows, but that day, I was shown that my assumptions were completely false, as well as teaching me that assumptions, as a rule, are very dangerous things. “