The dried water stain by the training ground was carried all the way back to the clan compound by Che.
That evening, the wind in the clan compound was a little dry.
It was neither cold nor hot, just the kind of dryness that made it feel as though both indoors and out had lost a little moisture when the wind brushed past the paper windows. When Che returned from school, a crumpled workbook tucked under his arm, he had just reached Nao's courtyard gate when he heard someone speaking softly beneath the neighboring eaves.
The voices were muffled by paper windows and wooden latticework, and he could not make out full sentences. Yet a few words slipped through like pebbles falling to the ground.
"Fire Release initiation..."
"Uchiha Itachi..."
"The police force..."
Che stopped walking.
Nao came out carrying a washbasin. Seeing him standing by the gate, her brow twitched. "Eavesdropping again?"
Che immediately held up his workbook. "I was just passing by, and the corner took the initiative to entertain me."
"The corner isn't that free."
"Then maybe it's in a good mood today."
Nao glanced at him without pressing further, then set the basin beside the veranda. Her movements were perfectly ordinary, but Che noticed her fingers pause for a moment as she put it down. She had heard those words too.
Itachi.
The name was not unusual in the clan compound, but neither was it an ordinary one. To Che now, Itachi had not yet reached that weighty place in his old memories. He was still the boy many in the clan saw as too outstanding, too mature, too quiet; the brother Sasuke spoke of with shining eyes; and a thread in Che's memories that would sooner or later rip the entire clan compound apart.
But