Chapter 37: It All Comes Crashing Down

As Ino’s alarm clock went off both girls groaned, neither having slept well after Sakura’s latest dream involving a nightmarish child turning dead bodies into puppets. Sakura, in her glorious might, had of course defeated the mythical supervillain.

Zombie-stumbling the entire way they slowly got ready for school. It was the third week and that meant mandatory sparring. Ino had tried to spar one time last week and had quickly lost. It hadn’t been an encouraging experience.

As they went downstairs for breakfast, Ino noticed that her parents were both sitting upright at the dining table, backs perfectly straight. Something was up. Sighing she turned to get bowls and spoons. She knew that they’d either tell her when they wanted to or wouldn’t at all no matter how much she asked, so she simply focused on her congee. They ate silently, or while having stilted conversations until there was a knock at the front door.

“I’ll get it!” Ino yelled, jumping up, only to freeze as she heard, “No.” Despite how quietly the one-syllable word was spoken, her father’s tone communicated many things. It said, “No you won’t go get the door”, “you will calm down right now, it’s not the time for cheerfulness”, and “you will sit back in your chair this instant missy.” Inoichi left to go talk to whomever was outside, after exchanging a glance with Fuyumi.

“Girls, we’re going to talk about something serious in a few minutes, but I wanted to let you know that neither of you are in any trouble ok?” Fuyumi said, earning an exhale of relief from Ino.

“Won’t we be late for school Fuyumi-san?” Sakura asked.

“No. Don’t worry about it, we’ll take care of everything.” Fuyumi smiled at her.

To their surprise, Sakura’s parents were the ones who had shown up, and they seemed to need reassurance about something as they gave Sakura a long-than-normal hug.

“Girls?” Inoichi began, once they had gotten settled. Ino’s brain immediately set to work cross referencing his tone and body language. Regretful? Is that his you’re-not-gonna-like-this voice?

“Something bad happened in the village last night.” He opened his mouth and then stopped again and seemed startled that he had already run out of things to say.

“Because of the bad thing, school has been cancelled this week. However!” Fuyumi said, before either child could get excited, “However. As this is a result of the bad thing, you will not celebrate or get excited. Understood?”

“Yes ma’am” and “Yes mom” echoed back to her.

Mebuki spoke up then and judging from their body language Ino suspected that her parents had been expecting to do all of the talking.

“Ino, Sakura, do you remember when I caught you two sneaking extra cookies out of the tin last week?” Mebuki said, but not in her scolding voice. The girls nodded sheepishly. “And do you remember the conversation we had afterwards? Good. What do you remember?”

As usual, Sakura looked to Ino to respond. “We talked about how there are different levels of bad. Like stealing a cookie wasn’t as bad as stealing lots of money from someone. Or how there are some bad words that are worse than other ones?”

Mebuki raised an eyebrow. “I don’t remember discussing bad words but that is a very good example sweetie. And Sakura,” she said deliberately, “Which is worse between stealing and saying bad words?”

“Umm… Usually stealing but not always?” Sakura tried.

“Very good dear.” Mebuki smiled at her. “Saying disrespectful things to the Hokage would be much, much worse than taking a cookie even though I said not to.” Both girls nodded.

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“The ‘bad thing’ that happened last night is at the worst end of the scale of bad things.” Mebuki said solemnly. “If sneaking a cookie is a 1, and being disrespectful to the Hokage is a 5, this is a 10.”

It wasn’t like they hadn’t been paying attention before, but this seemed to drop the temperature in the room by 15 degrees and cause time to slow.

“You both know what death is.” Mebuki continued bluntly, unnerving Ino’s parents, but the girls nodded, seemingly unfazed. “Death is a normal and natural thing that happens to all of us eventually, when we are old enough. However, there are many ways of dying that are worse. Sometimes it can be an accident. The reason we tell you two that you can’t go out alone is because you could get lost, and a dangerous animal could kill you.” Again, Ino’s parents flinched slightly, looking worriedly at the girls. Ino hoped they would make some progress toward treating her like Mebuki-san did; certainly not equals, but not like a hapless child either.

“Worse than an accident is when one person’s actions indirectly cause someone else’s death.” Mebuki continued. “That’s why you’re not allowed to use your throwing weapons without an adult around Ino. Although we know that you would never try to hurt one of your friends with them, sometimes accidents happen, especially when there isn’t an adult to keep everyone calm and careful.”

Mebuki’s voice became increasingly steely with each sentence. “Worse than that is when one person loses control of their temper and kills another. Maybe two shinobi get into a fight and forget how strong and dangerous they are. And one is so angry that they want to hurt the other one. Before they know it, they have gone too far and the other has died.” Ino’s parents were watching her with fiercely protective looks in their eyes.

Mebuki paused, allowing the silence to signify an important moment. “Worst of all is when one person plans to kill another and does so. The word that the adults use for this is premeditated, which means that they had time to realize they were doing a bad thing and did it anyways.”

A small errant thought began trying to wiggle its way into Ino’s brain.

Kizashi took over so smoothly it was like the two of them had rehearsed. “It goes without saying that if doing one of those things once is bad, doing it twice is worse, three times is worse than two, etcetera.” He paused, looking at the adults and getting some sort of confirmation.

The medium errant thought in Ino’s head was growing in urgency, but Ino instinctively knew it was an unhappy thought, so she pushed it away again.

“As I’m sure you have both begun to suspect, this is the bad thing that happened. Someone repeatedly did the worst kind of killing last night, many times. They did it all to one clan.”

The titanic errant thought in Ino’s mind would be denied no longer, and although she did not know the words at the time, she began to feel the grip of what she would someday be able to identify as existential horror.

“Last night, almost all of the members of the Uchiha clan, the policemen and policewomen, were killed.”

Later, Ino would berate herself for immediately staring at Sakura, but she wasn’t in control anymore. She felt dizzy, and like the room had lost focus slightly. She was struggling to breathe. Reality warping realizations were crashing into each other with such frequency that she let out a small cry of pain. It was like one of the basic truths that made up the foundation of her mind had exploded, and the structure it had supported was now collapsing.

She was dimly aware that she had been staring at Sakura the entire time. The adults watched them intently and Sakura stared right back at Ino, with what Ino guessed was the same expression on her face.

“…Girls?” Inoichi said hesitantly, clearly expecting a different reaction. Ino’s face turned towards his, and after a moment registered that he was expecting her mouth to also make noises back at him.

“Wha… umm…” shit shit shit oh! “One of our classmates was an Uchiha.” She tried not to say the words too fast, like she’d figured out the answer to a game show question. She must have done a good enough job because all the adults’ expressions changed from worried-confused to worried-understanding.

“It’s being kept secret for now, while the crime is investigated, but I think I can trust you two not to tell anyone.” Inoichi said softly. “Your classmate is still with us. He might be the only one.”

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