The two of them traveled at a leisurely pace, stopping and starting along the way.
On the evening of the first day, they passed through a village. Cooking smoke rose from the rooftops of a dozen or so homes, winding crookedly into the orange-red glow of the sky.
Qianyu slowed his steps.
Several women drawing water by the well saw them, and the wooden buckets in their hands paused. An old man squatting against a wall to bask in the sun lifted his eyelids but did not get up.
No one came forward to question them.
Nor did anyone greet them.
Qianyu walked past the well.
"Neji."
Neji was at his side.
"Observe more and remember more along this road," Qianyu said. "Forget that you're a shinobi."
Neji looked at him.
"Look at it as someone living in this world."
Neji did not answer.
He looked toward those few households. The women had begun drawing water again, their buckets sinking into the well as the winch creaked. The old man lowered his gaze back to the roll of grass tobacco on his knee, pinching the stems from the leaves with his fingernails.
The cooking smoke was still just cooking smoke.
Yet Neji watched it rise, disperse, and melt into the twilight.
He thought of his father.
Whenever his father returned from a mission while he was still alive, he would stand by the courtyard gate for a while. He would not go inside immediately. He would simply stand there, looking at the eaves, the clothes hanging out to dry, and the crooked chimney rising from the kitchen roof.
Back then, Neji had not understood.
Now he did.
His father had been looking at the thing called "home."
Qianyu stopped outside one of the houses.
An old woman was gathering dried