The days continued to pass in a regular routine of arduous training. Shira's life ran like clockwork: morning practice with Gaara, learning at school, and working for Chiyo in the evening in exchange for medicinal dregs.
He and Ameno, whom he had only recently met, maintained a cordial but distant friendship, as though a veil hung between them. As for most of his classmates, their paths still ran parallel, never meeting.
But that carefully maintained peace was soon broken.
One day after school, Shira had just stepped through the gates and was about to head to the training ground as usual when two figures blocked his path.
It was Temari and Kankuro.
Temari stood with her arms crossed, her blond ponytails swaying gently in the wind. Her face showed undisguised scrutiny and a trace of tension that was hard to detect.
Kankuro stood slightly behind her. The purple markings painted on his face made him look somewhat older than he was, but his evasive gaze betrayed his unease.
The small Crow puppet wrapped in bandages on his back stood out in particular.
"Hey, you're Shira, right?" Temari spoke first. Her tone was far from friendly, more like a condescending interrogation.
Shira stopped and looked at them calmly. "What is it?"
"We've heard," Temari said, lifting her chin slightly, "that you've been spending a lot of time with Gaara lately."
"We train together." Shira admitted it succinctly, neither denying it nor offering any unnecessary explanation.
Kankuro couldn't help cutting in, his voice carrying a hint of bluster. "Training? Do you know what he is? Do you know how dangerous it is to get close to him?!"
He seemed to be aiming for a stern tone, but it sounded more like an outpouring of fear.
Temari shot Kankuro a glare to shut him up, then turned back to Shira. Her tone softened slightly, but her words were even more direct. "We don't care why you aren't afraid of him, and we don't care what you're training in. Father... Lord Kazekage has already taken notice of you."
She deliberately paused, hoping to see Shira's reaction. But his face showed neither fear nor surprise. He simply listened in silence, which surprised her a little.
"Listen," Temari continued, lowering her voice further. "Stay away from him. Don't put any strange ideas in his head, and don't try to 'change' anything. His condition is fragile. Any outside stimulus could have unpredictable consequences. Those consequences aren't something you-or even we-can bear."
Behind her warning, there was indeed a trace of concern for the village's safety. But deeper down, it came from the will of their father, Rasa, and the fear of and alienation from their younger brother deep in their own hearts.
Shira fell silent for a moment. He understood Rasa's concerns. An unstable Jinchūriki was like a bomb that could explode at any moment, and any uncertain variable needed to be strictly controlled. From the Kazekage's perspective, warning him or even eliminating him was reasonable.
But understanding didn't mean he agreed, much less that he could accept the way Temari and Kankuro treated Gaara as though he were a harbinger of disaster, someone they couldn't avoid fast enough.
He raised his head, his gaze clear and direct, and spoke words that were utterly unlike those of someone his age, cutting straight to the heart of the matter:
"Unpredictable consequences? You mean he'll lose control, go berserk, and hurt the village, right?" His voice was frighteningly calm. "I understand Lord Kazekage's concerns. But what about you two?"
He pointed at Temari and Kankuro.
"You're his older sister and brother. You're afraid of him, you distance yourselves from him, and you even hate him? Because his existence has exposed you to pressure and criticism too? You dump all the responsibility and fear on him alone, then demand that everyone else keep their distance from him just like you do, as if that will ensure everyone's safety?"
Shira's voice wasn't loud, but like an icy Kunai, it cut open the wound they had always tried to hide.
"The real danger has never been whether anyone gets close to him, but just how deep the loneliness and pain inside him have grown! You think isolating him will solve the problem? That'll only make the bomb's fuse burn faster!"
Temari and Kankuro were stunned by the barrage of pointed words, the color draining from their faces.
Temari remembered when the three of them had happily built castles together in the sand as children. Kankuro remembered playing in the sand with Gaara when they were little, and how he had even asked Gaara if he could make a poop out of sand. How harmoniously they had gotten along back then.
Kankuro instinctively tightened his grip on his strap, while Temari bit her lip. They remembered all the times they had spent with Gaara before, but after their father carried out that plan, everything had changed...
They wanted to argue back now, only to find that his words made a damnable amount of sense and had struck precisely at the truth they were most unwilling to admit.
"You... what do you know?!" Kankuro growled, fierce in appearance but timid inside. "You don't know anything at all!"
"I know he's hurting." At last, a trace of feeling entered Shira's voice: a clear, undisguised disgust directed at their attitude.
"I know how much it hurts him every time he sees you two avoid his gaze. I know how it feels inside to be seen as a monster by everyone, including your own family!"
He stepped forward. Though he was shorter than both of them, his presence was no weaker.
"I won't leave. I won't put any strange ideas in his head. I'll just train with him, so he'll at least have someone he can talk to normally."
Shira's gaze swept over them both. "As for the rampage you're afraid of..."
He paused, then spoke with absolute conviction, with a certainty beyond his years:
"As long as I'm still training with him, as long as I still treat him as a friend, I'll never let him reach that point. I'll make him 'stable' enough in my own way!"
With that, he paid no more attention to the dumbstruck Temari and Kankuro. He walked straight between them and headed toward the training ground.
The setting sun cast his shadow long. His figure was slender but upright, like a desert poplar rooted firmly in the sand.
Temari and Kankuro stood rooted to the spot, speechless for a long time. Shira's words echoed endlessly in their ears like the most grating wind, exposing how they had deceived themselves all along.