Land of Water

Rumble—

Thunder rolled, and the storm that had raged all night showed no sign of letting up in the early morning. If anything, it was growing more violent. The sky was dark as night.

I felt warmth returning to my body. Little by little, I regained consciousness, and gradually I could smell the heavy scent of rain.

"..."

I parted my lips. At last, I had enough strength to slowly open my eyes.

A hazy fire flickered before me. Looking up, I saw Kusama Shigeo's face. A bandage was wrapped around his neck as he poked at the branches. He was unusually quiet—so quiet it felt strange.

"Where... am I?"

My whole body hurt. I slowly pushed myself upright, then suddenly realized something was draped over me. Looking closer, I saw it was a long black cloak.

My heart clenched as I abruptly remembered what had happened before I passed out. Alarmed, I asked, "Where's the captain? Where did he go?"

"Don't worry. If anything had happened to him, we wouldn't be here."

Kusama Shigeo looked dispirited. He kept his head bowed as he spoke, as though he'd been through some terrible blow.

At his words, the strength drained from my body. I felt a little more at ease.

Whatever else happened, at least everyone was all right. That was all that mattered...

After calming down a little, I looked at Kusama Shigeo, who was still silent, and noticed the bandage around his neck. I hurriedly asked, "Are you hurt?"

My expression changed as I looked at him. Then I remembered that he'd been in the ship's hold beneath the water—the very place where that deafening noise had first come from!

"You were below deck. Are you all right?"

At that, Kusama Shigeo shuddered for no apparent reason. The branch in his hand snapped with a crack.

"That thing..." Kusama Shigeo's eyes were vacant. His back was hunched, and he unconsciously clenched the firewood in his hand, tense and on guard.

"That thing... it didn't seem like any normal creature..."

That was right. It was a monster!

You could even say it wasn't a creature of this world at all!

"You... you saw it too...?"

Seeing the fear on Kusama Shigeo's face, I remembered that he'd been in the hold at the time and hurried over to grab his shoulders.

"Did it attack you? How bad are your injuries?"

As he recalled it, Kusama Shigeo's brows twisted together, his expression pained. He looked both terrified in hindsight and furious at his own helplessness.

"I wasn't in the hold. After you went out, I followed you." He paused, as though he'd pictured that hellish scene again, and his whole body trembled.

"I hadn't even made it up to the deck when the entire lower hold was breached in an instant. Blood seeped up through the cracks in the floor, and even the screams stopped... No one—no one could have survived..."

"How could that...?"

I stood there, stunned. After a long while, I suddenly shuddered and looked around. We were in a place like a cave. Anxious, I asked, "Then where are we? Are we still at sea? And the captain... where did the captain go?" I rasped out a string of questions, but Kusama Shigeo kept his head down and said nothing. After a long wait, he answered only the last one—

"He went to scout ahead."

At that, I looked toward the cave entrance and tried to stand. The moment I moved, my right foot felt numb. Looking down, I saw that the place on my ankle where the snakes had bitten me was covered with herbs. They felt cool, and the pain had eased quite a bit.

"You'd better not move." Kusama Shigeo looked at me and explained what had happened. "Hyuga Makoto said this is a small island belonging to the Land of Water, not far from where the merchant ship went down. We're in a cave."

"He brought us here?" I asked quickly.

At that, Kusama Shigeo's eyes dimmed. As if forcing the word out through gritted teeth, he said, "Yes."

"After I woke up, Hyuga Makoto handed you over to me while you were unconscious. Then he went out to find a way forward on his own."

I stood there in a daze. After a long while, I sank down beside Kusama Shigeo, holding my cold body close and saying nothing.

What we'd experienced at sea had gone far beyond anything we could comprehend. Even now, my body was trembling without my control—

How could this have happened?

Outside Konoha, it really was impossible to take a single step in this world...

No. It was only impossible for us.

If our teacher had been here, that monster wouldn't have even registered as a threat.

We were simply too weak.

"..." I stared blankly at the dancing flames, so cold I could barely feel my body.

—Crackle.

The damp branches popped and hissed in the fire. As the warmth gradually returned, Kusama Shigeo slowly calmed down. Seeing me huddled beside the flames, he actually reached into the fire and pulled something out, then handed it to me.

I looked. It was some food that had been cooked in the embers, along with a jug of water.

"The water's fresh, and the food's from the ship. It's safe to eat."

That was all he said before going quiet. After a moment of surprise, I fell silent too.

The entire merchant ship, which had carried all our gratitude—including Uncle Kina, who had let us aboard—had sunk beneath the sea. No one had survived except us.

How... how could this have happened?

My eyes stung at the thought. I wiped them with the back of my hand, but there were no tears. Kusama Shigeo lowered his head too, without saying a word.

The hardest part was that we couldn't even protect ourselves. How could we talk about saving anyone else?

—Weakness.

We were still... too weak...

We sat in silence for a long time. Then Kusama Shigeo suddenly looked at me and said hoarsely,

"Let me treat you first."

Green light shimmered in the cave as the healing technique covered my back. The wounds faded one by one. It hurt and itched so badly that I bared my teeth, stubbornly refusing to make a sound—until I was nearly in tears and couldn't take it anymore. I grabbed his sleeve—

"Can't you be a little gentler?"

Were you just trying to get back at me?!

"Did you fall into a pit of snakes? How many times were you bitten?" Kusama Shigeo looked grave as he took hold of my arm and carefully lifted the back of my shirt, revealing a line of bloody marks across my skin. His brow furrowed even more deeply.

"Don't move!"

That was when I remembered how I'd scrambled toward the water on the beach, heedless of everything, while coils of black snakes kept surging up around me. I'd even passed out in the midst of them. I couldn't help shuddering.

Only then did I realize how frightened I was.

Thankfully, the injuries were all superficial. I broke out in layer upon layer of cold sweat, and at last most of the wounds on my body healed. Only my right foot, where the snake's fangs had pierced through, remained, mottled blue and purple and impossible to heal.

"So you're saying the senior went out to scout after you woke up? He told you to stay here and keep watch over me, especially not to leave the cave?" Once the treatment was finished, I put on my clothes and questioned Kusama Shigeo about Hyuga Makoto's whereabouts.

"Yes. He set up a barrier at the entrance. You couldn't get out even if you wanted to. Just wait here."

I blinked, puzzled. "Was the senior not injured?"

"Injured?" Kusama Shigeo thought for a moment, then firmly shook his head. "From what I could tell, he was completely unharmed."

At that, I felt as though a piece of my memory was missing.

Because in my last conscious moments, I remembered the senior hadn't come ashore with us... For a moment, I'd even thought he was dead.

My heart began to pound wildly, with no rhythm at all.

Anyway, as long as the senior was safe, that was all that mattered.

"..."

Still, the wait was so long...

I heard thunder rolling incessantly nearby, so I slowly moved to the cave entrance. The storm outside drove down like silver needles, pelting the rocks with hollow thuds. I didn't dare take even one step out. I couldn't believe anyone would keep traveling in weather like this.

"..."

Leaning against the rock wall, I hugged my knees and waited anxiously for that familiar figure.

Behind me, Kusama Shigeo curled up beside the fire, most of his body hidden in shadow as he drifted toward sleep.

By then, all the doubts and misgivings I'd had about Hyuga Makoto when we set out had turned into trust and dependence.

Because there was no one else we could rely on.

The skills we'd learned at school were like trying to sail across a desert. They were completely useless here.

It felt awful.

"Sure enough... no matter how good a student is at school, they can't compare to even a single Genin on the battlefield." I murmured to myself, feeling as though the rain had grown even colder.

I didn't know how long had passed when I opened my heavy eyes and suddenly spotted a dark figure approaching through the rain.

He moved incredibly fast without slowing at all, coming straight toward us through the storm like a spirit of the mountain.

"Is that the captain?" I hurriedly shook Kusama Shigeo awake. "Look!"

He opened his tired eyes and glared at me, then turned away and fell back into a deep sleep.

I stood and moved toward the entrance. I'd barely taken a step when someone released the barrier, and damp air and cold wind rushed in together, jolting me fully awake.

Hyuga Makoto was drenched. Each step left a fresh trail of water, proof that the storm outside was still raging.

"Senior!" My eyes lit up, and I started to get up, but he motioned for me to stay still. He walked over to me first, crouched down, and gently took hold of my right foot.

"Can you walk?"

I froze for a moment, then replied, "Barely, but... it still hurts a lot."

"Sit down."

I did as he said. Only then did I notice that Hyuga Makoto was carrying something—a long, dark shape...

A snake!

"Senior, isn't that one of the snakes from the sea...?" I was wondering why he'd brought it back when he took one out and lightly cut it with a kunai. Dark purple blood flowed out. He peeled away the herbs covering my ankle, and drops of snake blood fell onto my wound.

Strangely enough, I felt a cool current enter my body through the wound on my ankle. The burning pain in it eased instantly.

Kusama Shigeo watched the whole thing in silence. For once, he didn't argue or mock anyone. I couldn't tell what he was thinking.

"Senior, this snake's blood..." I watched the purplish-red liquid seep into the wound, still a little afraid, and asked about it. I'd never seen anyone treat an injury this way.

"Don't worry. I tested it first."

I froze, then hurriedly asked, "Senior, were you injured? You didn't come ashore with us. Did something happen to you?"

"And that monster... where did it go?"

"The current swept me to a different beach." Hyuga Makoto continued working, his brow furrowed as he speculated, "That thing probably couldn't come ashore, so it didn't keep chasing us. That's how we managed to escape."

I thought of what had happened. Even though we were on land now, the memory still chilled my back.

"How could something like that live in the sea...?"

If we ran into that kind of monster again on the way back, we'd be doomed.

"Senior, what exactly was the thing we encountered?"

The fire had been lit again. I tried to recall the giant snake's appearance, but all I could remember was its blackish-purple scales and its terrifying fangs.

"Could it have been some kind of deep-sea monster? Why did it attack us?"

Hyuga Makoto fell silent, apparently thinking it over. Kusama Shigeo cut in, "What's there to think about? Snakes are cold-blooded animals. There were too many of us, so it sensed us and attacked." He poked the branches a few times, then suddenly clenched his fingers.

"With one bite, it swallowed more than a dozen people, right beside me. I could even hear... I could hear..."

—The sound of bones snapping in its jaws.

Kusama Shigeo couldn't help shuddering. His pupils contracted as if he'd remembered something utterly terrifying.

"Anyway... we can't go through that stretch of sea again on the way back!"

I looked at Kusama Shigeo, not knowing what to say.

The good news was that Kusama Shigeo had finally learned what fear was. He even seemed willing to follow orders now.

The bad news was that this was the only good news we'd had so far.

No, there was one more piece of good news.

"This island belongs to the Land of Water, and it's not far from the mainland." Hyuga Makoto resealed the barrier at the cave entrance. Looking at how dispirited we were, his tone was as composed as it had been before we set out.

"We'll rest for three hours. Once we've recovered enough to move, we'll enter the Land of Water before dawn."

I opened my tired eyes and answered, "Yes." Kusama Shigeo silently used the healing technique to treat my ankle.

That was right. This was another piece of good news.

We were finally close to reaching our destination.

How ironic. I'd thought entering the Land of Water would be the real battle, but we'd nearly lost our lives before we even got there.

I clasped my healing ankle, unable to say what I felt.

On the battlefield, anything could happen.

All we could do was use our lives and our will to fight back against the blows that kept coming, one after another.

—Until we were utterly destroyed.

I was beginning to understand what kind of place this was.