A New Wind from the Northeast

The numbness in the fingertips of his right hand had not fully faded when Che was assigned to familiarize himself with the route to the new residential area ahead of time.

Uchiha Che first saw the new residential area five days before the relocation.

That day, the clan arranged for a second group to learn the route in advance. The children followed behind the adults, holding wooden tags with their names written on them, like a string of wind chimes hastily strung together. The wind blew from Konoha's northeast, emptier and colder than it had been near the old clan grounds.

Kiyo kept asking along the way, "Are we there yet?"

Nao answered him three times. The fourth time, Uchiha Che answered for her. "Ask again, and the road will get longer."

Kiyo immediately shut his mouth. After walking a few steps, he asked quietly, "Really?"

"Psychologically."

"What's psychologically?"

"It means the more impatient you are, the farther your feet think it is."

Kiyo lowered his head to look at his feet. "Are they arguing again?"

Che nodded. "This time, they're arguing with great rhythm."

Nao turned around and glanced at him from ahead. She seemed as though she wanted to say something, but in the end, she merely sighed. Several children in the group laughed, and the tension in their steps eased somewhat.

The newly planned area lay on Konoha's northeastern side, near a patch of forest that had not yet been fully cleared. The road had just been flattened, the earth still a fresh color, with the pale edges of overturned stones visible here and there. Several houses stood in the distance with only their frames completed. Their wooden beams were unpainted, and their roofs were only half laid. Farther away stood a row of temporary fences. Beyond them were members of the Military Police Force, as well as people wearing ordinary Konoha shinobi vests.

Uchiha Che raised his head and saw that Hokage Rock in the center of the village had become very distant.

It was not out of sight.

It was simply far away.

That distance was more tangible than the words "northeastern side" on the notice. Though the old clan grounds had also been divided by post-disaster ruins, they had at least still clung to Konoha's breathing. Here, the wind was emptier, and sounds scattered faster. When the children spoke, it was as though the forest swallowed their words almost immediately.

Kiyo stood at the intersection, his face a little pale. "We'll live here from now on?"

Nao said, "We'll see how the assignments are arranged first."

Saori held her doll in her arms. She had sewn the broken bell back on, though it still made no sound. Looking at the row of unfinished houses, she asked, "Will they leak when it rains?"

A clansman responsible for guiding them forced a smile. "They'll be fixed."

Che said nothing.

He was studying the roads.

The main road in the new area was very straight, running from the entrance to the new Military Police Force office. Residential houses lined both sides. Straight roads made patrols easier, and surveillance easier too. The spaces between houses were more orderly than in the old clan grounds, with fewer alleys and fewer blind spots. The advantage was that children would not get lost so easily. The disadvantage was that it would not be easy to avoid being seen.

He looked toward the forest.

A shallow ditch ran along the forest's edge, filled with leftover lumber and stones from construction. Beyond the ditch was unorganized brushwood. It was chaotic for now. Chaos meant danger, but it also meant gaps.

A Konoha shinobi stood at the intersection, watching the group enter. His gaze swept over every child's wooden name tag before lingering on Che for a moment.

Uchiha Che immediately turned to look at the pebbles by Kiyo's feet and crouched to pick one up.

"Don't kick them," he said. "If you hit someone, they'll hold a grudge."

Kiyo looked baffled. "I didn't kick anything."

"Preventive measures."

The Konoha shinobi looked away.

Nao walked to Che's side and asked in a low voice, "What did you see?"

"Pebbles," Che answered.

"Uchiha Che."

He looked up and lowered his voice. "Someone at the intersection was watching the name tags."

Nao's expression did not change. She only said, "There will be a lot of things like that in the future."

"I know."

"Even if you know, don't keep staring back."

"I was looking at pebbles just now."

"That's why I didn't scold you."

Che felt that this style of education was very shinobi-like: you had been noticed, but you handled it well enough, so you would not be reprimanded for the time being.

They were led to a temporary clearing. Several completed houses stood beside it, numbered wooden tags hanging from their doors. The clansmen began explaining the future housing assignments, water collection point, training grounds, temporary medical station, and registration office.

"The orphan group will live in the two rows of houses closer to the inside," the person explaining said. "It'll be easier for Nao's group to look after you. The training grounds will temporarily be set up in the eastern clearing. The permanent grounds are still under construction."

Uchiha Che looked east.

The clearing was larger than the old courtyard, but the ground was uneven, with several newly driven wooden stakes. Sandbags and targets had been placed beside them, clearly prepared in a hurry. Beyond the clearing stood the fence, and beyond the fence, Konoha shinobi patrolled.

The training grounds were close to the boundary.

The arrangement made sense. The Uchiha Military Police Force needed to train, and the children needed open space. But if someone watched from outside the fence during training, it would be convenient as well.

Che kept that in mind.

Kiyo suddenly tugged on his sleeve. "Che, there's no old well here."

"There's a water collection point."

"The old well felt more like home."

Che looked at him, unsure how to respond.

Saori spoke instead. "We can use the new buckets for a long time. If we use them long enough, they'll feel like home too."

Kiyo thought about it. "How long is a long time?"

"A very long time," Saori said.

The answer was not precise, but it quieted Kiyo.

Before noon, the group began returning to the old clan grounds. When they reached the entrance to the new area, Che turned back for one last look. Wind blew out from the forest, making the straw ropes on the unfinished roofs sway. Hokage Rock stood in the distance, as though it had been placed inside another painting.

He suddenly realized that geographical distance could change people's hearts.

If they lived farther apart and saw each other less, misunderstandings would grow easily. The adults would pile politics, power, suspicion, and resentment onto this stretch of road. The children would pile homesickness, fear, and discomfort onto it as well. Years from now, this road might no longer be merely a road, but a ditch that became harder and harder to cross.

After returning to the old clan grounds, Kiyo was visibly exhausted. He lay sprawled by the doorway and did not want to move. Saori placed her doll on her lap and said in a tiny voice, "The wind is strong in the new place."

Che said, "Strong wind can blow away some bad moods."

Kiyo lifted his head from the doorway. "Really?"

"Or it might mess up your hair."

Kiyo touched his hair, his expression turning serious.

Nao came in carrying water. Hearing that, she finally could not hold back a laugh.

That evening, Che wrote down the route through the new area, its entrance, fence, shallow ditch, and training grounds in his notes. He had originally wanted to write, "Distance can change people's hearts," but he crossed the sentence out and replaced it with, "The road is long, and Kiyo got tired walking." The crossed-out words remained on the paper, like himself: orderly on the surface, with overturned stones beneath.

That night, he did not practice chakra. Instead, he reviewed the entrance, main road, orphan houses, eastern clearing, fence, shallow ditch, and forest in his mind. The survival map of the old clan grounds was not yet finished, but the map of the new clan grounds had already unfolded before him. In a few days, he would fall asleep to a different sound of wind.

The next morning, Mine had the children write short sentences about what they had seen while learning the route.

Kiyo wrote very slowly. In the end, he only wrote, "The wind is strong in the new place, and the road is long." Saori wrote, "The water buckets will feel like home someday." Her handwriting was neater than Kiyo's, but her pen lingered beside the word "home" for a long time. When Uchiha Che saw that her pen had stopped moving, he shifted his own paper to the side and deliberately revealed a sentence: "The wind will mess up your hair in the new place."

Kiyo immediately chuckled quietly.

Saori's lips curved slightly as well.

Mine walked over and saw the sentence on Che's paper. One eyebrow lifted slightly. "That was your biggest observation from yesterday?"

Che nodded seriously. "The wind is very aggressive."

"The wind will not attack you."

"It attacked Kiyo's hairstyle."

Kiyo hurriedly pressed down his hair. "It did?"

Soft laughter rose through the warehouse again. Mine did not punish him, only told him to add something more serious afterward. So Che wrote:

"The new training grounds are near the fence. The wind comes from the side, so stances need to be adjusted."

The sentence looked like a training note, but it was also a route record. He did not write down the positions of the Konoha shinobi, nor did he mention the shallow ditch or construction debris. It was better to keep those things in his head.

That afternoon, Nao checked the children's small bags. She flipped Che's practice sheets to the page with the route-familiarization sentences, and when she saw "The wind is very aggressive," her finger paused.

"Could you write fewer strange things in the future?"

"Strange things are easier to remember."

"They're also easier for others to remember."

Che paused.

Nao put the paper back, her voice very soft. "You can help others relax if you want. But don't put yourself somewhere too bright."

That reminder carried more weight than criticism.

Che nodded. "I'll rein it in a little."

"I'm not telling you not to speak," Nao said. "You don't look like yourself when you don't speak either. Just know when to make people laugh, and when to make them forget."

Uchiha Che looked down at his practice sheet. The mischief of a modern person could help him live like a real child among the other children, but it could also become the hook that made others remember him. Hiding one's abilities did not mean turning oneself into a block of wood. It meant giving every conspicuous trait a reasonable shell.

On the back of the paper, he added a small line:

"Jokes need to be hidden too."