A night at the bottom of the cliff and the old shadow emerges
The night was thick as ink, completely soaking the narrow cliffside. Uchiha Aoi dragged her exhausted body, feeling as if it were filled with lead and pierced by countless icy needles, through the nearly pitch-black gloom, searching with a painstaking pace, one foot deep, one foot shallow. The aftermath of the day's torrential downpour still lingered, the air saturated with moisture, the gravel and mud beneath her feet slushy. Every breath carried an icy chill that penetrated her lungs.
The search for firewood proved far more difficult and frustrating than she had imagined. Everywhere she looked, almost everything was damp, reeking of decay and coldness. The exposed branches, already soaked by the rain, felt cold and slippery to the touch, impossible to ignite. Relying on the dim light and the feel of her hands, she laboriously scraped through corners obscured by larger rocks, like a foraging mole, or burrowed deep into low, relatively dense bushes, hoping to find a few dry, thin, dead branches that hadn't been completely soaked by the rain.
Her fingers were scraped by sharp rock edges and pricked by thorny dead branches. The tiny wounds, stimulated by the cold air and filthy muddy water, sent waves of sharp stinging pain through her. But she didn't dare stop, or even dwell on these insignificant pains. Not far behind her, in the darkness of a rocky depression, a pair of cold, red eyes seemed to follow her every move. That gaze wasn't physical, but it felt more oppressive than anything else, like a sword hanging over her head, silently urging her on and warning her against any potential misconduct.
Besides firewood, she also hadn't forgotten Tobirama's horrific injuries. She searched her memory, trying to unearth useful information from the dusty ancient scrolls containing herbal lore, once stored in the Uchiha Clan's Dizang Library. Sanguisorba officinalis can stop bleeding, madder can reduce inflammation... these names flashed through her mind, but facing the unfamiliar and tangled vegetation at the bottom of the cliff, matching the diagrams in the book with the real world was a challenge. The light was dim, and the shapes of the plants were blurred in the night. She could only rely on rough impression and touch, collecting a few unknown plants that looked thick and thick, or with tough roots, and might be useful, but she felt uncertain.
When she finally stumbled back to the huge rock that provided some shelter from the cold wind, carrying a small bundle of half-dry, half-wet, and unevenly thick firewood she had managed to gather, along with a few blades of grass she couldn't even name, she was almost exhausted. Cold sweat mixed with the lingering rainwater stuck to her hair and neck, making her look even more disheveled.
Senju Tobirama remained in his previous position, leaning against the cold rock wall. The flickering embers of the dying fire cast flickering shadows on his face, making his already pale complexion appear even more lifeless in the twilight, as cold and rigid as a marble sculpture. However, when he raised his eyelids and looked at her with his deep red eyes, the sharpness and clarity within them pierced Aoi's heart, instantly dispelling some of the trance brought on by fatigue. He glanced at the meager pile of "results" she had brought back, and the corners of his mouth seemed to twitch slightly, but in the end, he made no comment, only silently and with some difficulty moving his fingers.
Even gravely wounded, his movements remained shrouded in the precision and efficiency of a ninja. A remarkably simple fire escape technique, requiring almost no hand seals, was executed from his fingertips. A small, faint yet tenacious orange flame, emitting an inestimable warmth, erupted with a puff and landed precisely in the center of the pile of half-dried firewood.
At first, the firewood emitted only thick, acrid smoke and a reluctant sizzling sound, seemingly ready to go out at any moment. Aoi's heart leaped into her throat. But Tobirama patiently poked the fire with a thin branch, guiding the air. Finally, after several struggles, the flames overcame the dampness and began to burn steadily, emitting a reassuring crackling sound. The flames gradually grew larger, dispelling the darkness and the deep chill that surrounded the small area.
The warm light danced, illuminating the two men's exhausted and disheveled faces, and enveloping them in a small, relatively bright and warm circle of light. This firelight, in this hopeless night at the bottom of the cliff, became the only symbol of life and hope.
Aoi quietly sat on the other side of the fire, deliberately choosing the spot farthest from Tobirama. She hugged her still-cold knees and curled up. She vigilantly watched the man across from her from the corner of her eye for any subtle movements. She furtively and rapidly rubbed her nearly frozen hands, greedily absorbing the precious heat from the flames. The warmth slowly seeped into her skin, bringing a faint sense of life, but the coldness at her core was not something the small fire could easily dispel.
From the depths of his seemingly endless bag of ninja tools, Tobirama pulled out two more flat, compressed rations, tightly wrapped in oil paper. Without even glancing at them, he casually tossed one across the fire. It landed on the stone in front of Aoi with a dull thud. His movements were crisp and decisive, without any unnecessary gesture, as cold as if he were merely feeding a tool that needed to maintain its strength to continue its mission, or, in other words, a collaborator who needed temporary survival.
Aoi looked at the hard, unremarkable piece of dry food, and her throat tightened. Reason told her that she had to eat it and replenish her energy. But emotionally, accepting food from Senju Tobirama made her feel an indescribable humiliation and awkwardness. She hesitated for a few seconds, and finally stretched out her cold and stiff hand to pick up the dry food. She opened the oil paper and revealed the dark brown, dense food inside. She chewed it mechanically in small bites. The taste was bland and dry, like chewing sawdust, but she still forced herself to swallow it. It tasted like chewing wax, but the slight feeling of fullness in her stomach made her feel a little better.
A heavy silence once again fell between them, more unbearable than the previous darkness. Only the crackling of the burning fire and the ever-present, dull rush of the distant river served as background music to the eerie stillness. The firelight danced on their faces, illuminating the complex and incomprehensible nature of their thoughts.
To re-treat the inaccessible wound on his back, which had begun to bleed again due to his previous crude treatment, Tobirama had to turn slightly to the side, exposing the side of the wound to the flickering firelight. The hideous wound, with its flesh tucked away and an abnormal red tinge at the edge, looked even more terrifying in the light. The dark red scabs mixed with freshly seeped blood, emitting a faint smell of blood.
Aoi's eyes stumbled across it, and her heart suddenly tightened, her stomach churning. She subconsciously turned her eyes away, not daring to look again. The wound reminded her of the day's tragedy, and also reminded her of the man before her, both strong and vulnerable.
"Where is the grass you picked?" He suddenly spoke, his cold voice breaking the silence, with a hint of imperceptible fatigue.
Aoi was stunned for a moment before she was pulled back to reality from her thoughts. She quickly handed over the few grass leaves that she had placed haphazardly on the stone.
He passed the drooping plants between the doors and, by the light of the fire, examined them closely. He twisted the leaves between his fingers and sniffed their distinctive scent. A flash of professional assessment flashed in his red eyes. He then selected one or two that looked promising—one with jagged leaves, another with a faint earthy root smell—and, using the end of his kunai, he pounded them slowly but steadily on a flat stone, squeezing out some of the herbal juices to form a paste.
Then, he turned sideways, facing more of his back towards Aoi, and said briefly in an unquestionable commanding tone, "Help me apply it."
Aoi's body froze instantly, her blood seemingly frozen. Asking her to... touch the wounds of this Thousand-Handed enemy with her own hands? To touch the tangled flesh of the enemy? This was simply... this was beyond her mental endurance! A strong sense of rejection nearly made her refuse immediately.
As if sensing her hesitation and resistance, Tobirama's voice rang out again, colder and more realistic than before, carrying a naked threat: "If you don't want my wound to worsen and I die here, or if I don't want to be left to feed the wolves when danger comes because of my limited mobility, then hurry up."
These words were like a bucket of cold water, extinguishing the tiny shred of perseverance and dignity within Aoi. He was right, cruel, but true. His life and death were now strangely tied to her own. If he collapsed from an infected wound, or if his restricted mobility prevented him from responding to the danger, then her chances of survival, alone in this desperate situation, would be slim to none.
Humiliation, helplessness, fear... a chorus of emotions mingled, causing her fingertips to tremble slightly. She bit her lower lip so hard it nearly drew blood, but ultimately succumbed to the cold reality. With legs that felt like they weighed a thousand pounds, she slowly approached him and took the mashed paste, which smelled like a mixture of grass and earth.
Her fingers were icy cold from the cold and nervousness. When her trembling fingertips inevitably touched the scorching (clearly already feverish) skin on his back, and the even hotter, even sticky edge of the wound, an indescribable touch made her shudder, her stomach churned even more violently, and her face turned pale. It was a living, other-kind pain and vulnerability, clearly transmitted through her fingertips, forming a sharp conflict with the deep-seated hatred in her heart.
As for Tobirama, the moment her cold fingertips touched his wound, his entire back stiffened imperceptibly, his muscles tensing instantly like a cheetah under attack. But his immense self-control immediately took over, forcing him to suppress any potential groan of pain or instinctive evasion. He simply clenched his hand, which had been resting on his knee, into a fist, his knuckles turning white from the strain, clearly revealing the immense pain he was silently enduring.
Aoi endured the discomfort, holding her breath as she applied the paste to the wound and surrounding area as quickly and gently as possible. The entire process took only a dozen seconds, but to her it felt like hours. Once she was done, she quickly withdrew her hand as if burned by the flames, retreating almost as if to her original position across the fire. Her heart pounded in her chest, as if she had just experienced a life-or-death struggle.
The night deepened. The chill from the cliff bottom surged in from all directions like an invisible tide, constantly eroding the warmth of the small fire. Both men huddled as close to the fire as possible, but the biting cold was still difficult to withstand, let alone sleep. The extreme fatigue of the body and the constant tension of the mind formed a contradictory tug-of-war.
Perhaps it was this extreme exhaustion, this eerie silence, far from the hustle and bustle of the world, where only the sounds of nature remained, that lowered her (and perhaps his) ever-so-high defenses. Fragments of memory, deliberately suppressed by reason and hatred, buried deep within their hearts, like submerged bubbles, quietly and uncontrollably surfaced to the surface of their consciousness.
Aoi hugged her knees, resting her chin on them, staring blankly at the flickering orange flames before her. The light flickered in her dark eyes, as if igniting some forgotten image. Unconsciously, her thoughts drifted back to a cold night long ago, when moonlight poured down like mercury... Atop the towering walls of the Left Minister's residence, she had first seen up close the young Senju ninja, with his rare silver hair and piercing, blood-red eyes. That brief, brief conversation was laced with caution, tentativeness, and a hint of... an inexplicable curiosity about the world beyond the walls and the people on the other side. Back then, he was just as cold and distant, exuding a sense of seclusion, but it seemed... not as though he was now, filled with naked, almost tangible murderous intent and a suffocating, cold distance. What had brought everything to this point? If... if fate wasn't so cruel, if they weren't born into families with generations of blood feuds... As soon as this thought emerged, she extinguished it in horror, as if she had touched some taboo.
Across the fire, Tobirama's eyes closed, seemingly resting, but his slightly fluttering eyelashes and uneven breathing betrayed that he wasn't asleep either. His mind, too, replayed images uncontrollably. The clearest was the image of that day, at the clifftop, when Uchiha Aoi turned and leaped. Those dark eyes, filled with utter terror, despair, and an incomprehensible complex of emotions, suddenly darted back at him, like a bottomless vortex. This image, strangely, overlapped and intertwined with those eyes from earlier, on that moonlit night, atop the wall, distant and wary, yet strangely limpid and curious. Two distinct gazes, belonging to the same person, yet pointing to two completely different destinies and relationships.
This chaotic tangle of thoughts unsettled him, like a boulder dropped into a calm lake. He habitually tried to suppress these inappropriate "stray thoughts" with deep-seated family hatred, unfinished tasks, and rationally calculated pros and cons. He told himself she was an Uchiha, an enemy, someone who must be eliminated. Any extraneous thoughts were a sign of weakness and danger. However, these attempts to stabilize his defenses now seemed futile. The images and the questions that followed, like the weeds that stubbornly grew on the bottom of the water, soft yet resilient, silently entangled his sanity.
Why her?
Why did the body make the decision to jump before the mind at that moment?
Why... even when she raised the hairpin, he didn't actually kill her in the end? (He told himself it was just for the sake of survival, but somewhere deep down in his heart, he knew that wasn't entirely true.)
These unanswered questions lingered like ghosts in the silent night, with only the low whimper of the night wind blowing through the cracks in the rocks and the constant, hypnotic crackling of the fire before them to keep the couple trapped in a desperate situation and in a delicate relationship.
This night was destined to be long and difficult. The cold and pain of the body, the vigilance and struggle of the mind, and an indescribable, subtle atmosphere that quietly grew amidst despair, a blend of hazy memories of the past and the cruel entanglement of reality, all combined to form this special night at the cliff bottom. The shadow cast by that brief encounter, almost forgotten, was tightly intertwined with the reality of deep hatred and existential crisis, filling this seemingly peaceful moment of respite with invisible tension and inexpressible complex emotions. No one knew what the future held, but the experience of this night had undoubtedly left an indelible mark on the hearts of both.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com