Yakumo Kurama's Wonderful Ability

Yakumo stared at the rabbit in her arms, her fingers still frozen in the posture of stroking its ears.

"You can talk?" She was incredibly surprised, yet she still kept her voice very soft.

"I can." The rabbit tilted its head up, "But only you can hear me."

Yakumo blinked.

She lifted the rabbit from her lap, held it level with her eyes, and examined it carefully from head to toe.

White fur, red eyes, and a split lip currently chewing on a small blade of grass it had picked up from somewhere.

This was completely just an ordinary rabbit!

"Why can only I hear you?" Yakumo placed the rabbit back on her lap and wiped a bit of dew off its ear with her sleeve.

"Because I only speak to you." Escaping Rabbit's tone remained soft, sweet, and unhurried, "Others can't hear me."

"Can you control who hears you?"

"Mm. I couldn't before, but I learned how recently." Escaping Rabbit scratched the fur behind its neck with its hind leg, and only after finishing did it remember to add—

"I've made progress."

Yakumo didn't know what to say.

She realized that the rabbit before her must be some kind of high-intelligence ninja rabbit, though she had never encountered one before.

She slid her fingers into the soft fur on the back of Escaping Rabbit's neck and slowly combed downward.

Escaping Rabbit narrowed its eyes in comfort, and a purring sound began to emanate from its throat again.

"Then why did you come to find me?" Yakumo lowered her head, looking into Escaping Rabbit's eyes, "I don't have any friends here. Everyone is a bit afraid to get close to me."

"Kei sent me."

"Kei?"

"Mm."

Yakumo's fingers stopped. "Is Kei a girl?"

"Kei is Kei." Escaping Rabbit lifted its head from her palm.

"Kei doesn't want to tell you who he is for now. You just need to know that someone cares about you, and you can communicate with Kei through me."

The wind blowing across the lake swept the stray hair on Yakumo's forehead over her eyes, but for a moment, she forgot to brush it away.

Someone cared about her.

Not because of whose daughter she was, not because of her Kekkei Genkai, and certainly not because the village sent someone to monitor her for fear she would lose control.

It was simply—

"Care." Yakumo repeated the word very softly.

"Mm." Escaping Rabbit washed its face with its front paws, "Kei knows you aren't very happy here. I'm not very happy either, so I came."

"Why aren't you happy?"

"Kei left, but still wants me to do things for him; I don't really like working." Escaping Rabbit's tone was uncharacteristically fast, carrying a hint of unhappiness.

"But he said someone here needed me. So I left a clone behind. This body right now is a clone."

"A clone..." Yakumo looked down at Escaping Rabbit, suddenly feeling that this rabbit was smarter and more candid than she had imagined.

"Then where were you before?"

"Running around everywhere with Kei. All the rabbits in the village are me."

Yakumo opened her mouth.

The rabbits in the village?

Those rabbits that appeared suddenly and were everywhere in Konoha, "Those are all you?" Yakumo couldn't help but smile, "I thought some experimental animals had escaped."

"I am not an experimental animal." Escaping Rabbit stood its left ear up, "I am Kei's ninja rabbit."

After saying this, it lay down, rested its chin on Yakumo's knee, and looked up at her with its red eyes.

"Those things you draw, could you change them up a bit?"

Yakumo's smile froze on her face.

She remembered everything she had drawn over the past few days.

The bird strangled by tree roots in the courtyard, the hands reaching out from cracks in the ground, and that monster with a silhouette resembling a human figure.

She hadn't drawn those pictures—at least, not entirely.

Every time she picked up a paintbrush, those images would pop into her mind, and then her fingers would move on their own.

Often, before the paint was even dry, she would hear someone laughing behind the canvas.

It was Ido.

She didn't dare let anyone see those drawings.

"How... how did you know I drew those?" Yakumo spoke slowly, her voice much lower than before.

"I saw them," Escaping Rabbit blinked. "Didn't you spend a long time in the studio before coming out? You still have paint on your hands."

Yakumo instinctively flipped her right hand over.

A small trace of dark red paint indeed remained on the side of her index finger.

"That wasn't what I wanted to draw. I couldn't control it." Yakumo's voice trembled slightly. "Every time, he..."

"Then draw me," Escaping Rabbit interrupted, nudging her wrist with its head.

"You're right here, and I'm right here. What a waste it would be to draw anything else."

"Do you seem to know that you're very cute?"

"I've always been very cute," Escaping Rabbit said naturally, though its tone didn't sound like it was praising itself at all.

Yakumo looked down at Escaping Rabbit, at its ruby-like eyes, at its two disobedient long ears—one standing tall and the other flopped over—and at its two soft front paws resting on her palm.

She rummaged through her ninja tool pouch and pulled out a palm-sized sketchbook.

The book was more than half used; the earlier pages were filled with vague outlines of scenery, all of which cut off halfway through.

She turned to the last blank page, placed Escaping Rabbit on the grass beside her, rolled up her sleeves, and pulled a charcoal pencil from her pencil case.

"No need to draw it big, no need to make it exquisite," Yakumo muttered to herself, pressing her palm lightly against the page before beginning to sketch the lines.

She drew slower than usual.

It wasn't the rhythm of being driven by something to scribble frantically, but rather a process of observing, putting pencil to paper, and looking up again, one stroke at a time.

Escaping Rabbit lay on the grass beside her knees, occasionally twitching its ears or nibbling on a blade of grass.

The charcoal pencil made a faint, rustling sound against the paper, while a small fish occasionally jumped in the lake, sending a tiny ripple across the water.

Yakumo finished the final stroke, rested the charcoal pencil on her knees, studied it for a moment, and then handed the book to Escaping Rabbit.

"Take a look."

Escaping Rabbit sat up from the grass, tilted its head, and glanced at the drawing on the paper.

The snow-white rabbit fur had become charcoal lines in the drawing, but those lines captured every one of Escaping Rabbit's features.

"Does it look like me?"

"It does. Just a bit fatter than me."

The surface of the sketchbook suddenly glowed.

Light spilled from the page, tracing rapidly along the charcoal lines and gathering at the outline of the Escaping Rabbit portrait.

Then, that ball of light detached from the page and dripped onto the grass.

The orb of light bounced on the grass; with every bounce, its outline became clearer, until it finally transformed into a rabbit.

A rabbit identical to Escaping Rabbit.

White fur, red eyes, one ear standing and one flopped, even the tuft of hair sticking up on its head was exactly the same.

Yakumo's charcoal pencil rolled off her knees and hit the grass without a sound.

The new Escaping Rabbit that had run out of the drawing crouched on the grass, blinked, then turned to look at Escaping Rabbit before turning back to look at Yakumo.

"There are two now," the new Escaping Rabbit said.

Yakumo stared at the new Escaping Rabbit, her mouth opening and closing, her right hand gripping the sketchbook tightly.

"Wait a second," Escaping Rabbit's voice suddenly lost its softness.

It stood up from the grass, circled the new Escaping Rabbit, leaned its nose in to sniff the other's rear, and then sniffed its tail.

"Did you really become another me?"

"Yes," the new Escaping Rabbit replied lazily. "I was drawn."

The shock finally showed in Escaping Rabbit's lazy eyes: "How could such a thing happen?"

It hopped twice on the spot, then turned toward Yakumo.

So this was why Kei had asked it to find Yakumo!

Yakumo looked down at the two Escaping Rabbits lying side-by-side on her knees, her fingers stroking from the ears of one to the back of the other, repeating the motion twice.

Both rabbits were real.

"Is Kei very far away?" Yakumo asked softly.

"Mm," Escaping Rabbit stopped tapping its tail. "Very far. But he let me stay here just so I could hear news of you."

"Anything you want to say, just tell me."

Yakumo pulled both rabbits into her arms, resting her chin on their backs.

"When Kei comes back... I want to thank him in person."

"He'll definitely say it's not necessary," Escaping Rabbit yawned, "but you can say it if you want to."

The lake shimmered with fragmented light under the afternoon sun, and the two Escaping Rabbits crouching on the grass yawned one after another, burying their heads into their front paws.

Yakumo opened the sketchbook and began to draw on a new page.

This time, she drew a tree in full bloom.

"Kei... if you were a girl, would you like looking at flowers?"