#okiya thread

-----------------꩜-------------------꩜-----------------------꩜--------------

By dusk, the western guest house shone like a lantern above the river. Its balconies had been opened to the summer air, and music drifted through rooms fragrant with cedar, incense and roasted fish. Silk cushions ringed a small indoor stage. Lanterns painted gold along the polished beams. The gathered nobles reclined with the loose confidence of men accustomed to being agreed with, while attendants moved between them bearing sake, sweet bean cakes and small lacquered dishes.

Minato entered with the other maiko to the soft chime of shamisen strings.

He had done more humiliating things for Konoha.

Probably.

The trouble was that he could not presently remember any.

He knelt, bowed, smiled and allowed himself to be admired by three men whose tax records he had reviewed two nights earlier. One of them praised the cranes on his sleeves. Another asked whether he danced. Minato answered in the airy, careful voice Okā san had drilled into him for hours.

From the edge of the room, Rin lowered her head to conceal a smile. Obito was less successful. He turned his cough into a bow, caught his foot beneath his hem and nearly poured sake into a magistrate’s lap.

Kakashi saved him by appearing soundlessly at his shoulder and tipping the bottle upright with two fingers.

The magistrate never noticed.

Obito did. His glossy smile promised murder.

Then the musicians struck a bright chord and the master of ceremonies stepped onto the stage.

“My honored lords,” he announced, “tonight, the Matsukawa players present a tale of courage, brilliance and profound historical accuracy.”

A ripple of laughter moved through the room.

Minato, who had just accepted a cup from a court official, paused. The painted screen behind the stage rose to reveal three actors frozen in heroic poses.

One wore an enormous white wig and had stuffed so much padding beneath his costume that he appeared to possess the shoulders of an ox. Another had green paint streaked beneath his eyes and a wooden snake wrapped around his neck. The third actor wore a blond wig, an embroidered robe, and breasts of such architectural ambition that the entire audience applauded before she spoke.

“The Legendary Sannin!” cried the master of ceremonies.

Rin’s eyes widened.

Obito clapped one hand over his mouth so quickly that the lacquered sake bottle knocked against his teeth.

Kakashi went still beside the serving table. Only for half a breath. Then he bowed his head and bent over the arrangement of cups with the grave concentration of a priest receiving revelation.

Onstage, the actor playing Jiraiya planted one straw-sandaled foot upon a papier-mâché boulder. It gave a soft, betraying crunch.

The actor ignored this. He had been built broad with wool padding and false muscle, his white wig rising around his head in stiff, heroic spikes. Red paint ran from his eyes nearly to his jaw, lending him the appearance of a man who had lost an argument with two tomatoes. A scroll the size of a fence post was strapped across his back.

He threw out both arms “I am Jiraiya the Gallant!” he boomed. “Sage, spy, warrior, philosopher, irresistible jewel of the shinobi world, and celebrated author of seventeen scholarly works.”

The wooden snake around Orochimaru’s shoulders slowly raised its head. The movement was accomplished by a plainly visible string.

“You have written one book,” Orochimaru said.

The actor had powdered his face almost white and painted his eyes in long, poisonous slashes. Every word came in a hiss, whether or not the word contained an appropriate consonant.

Jiraiya puffed out his chest, “seventeen editions.”

The room erupted. A lord near the stage slapped his knee. Someone behind Minato choked on plum wine. One of the magistrates laughed so violently that a server had to rescue his cup before it overturned into his lap.

Minato lowered his face behind his sleeve. It was necessary - his mouth had betrayed him.

The actor playing Tsunade strode between the men in a green robe cut indecently low and padded even more indecently high. Her blond pigtails bounced against her shoulders. She looked at Jiraiya, looked at the audience, then bent and lifted the papier-mâché boulder above her head.

The stagehands produced an enthusiastic drumroll.

Jiraiya had enough time to say, “Now, Tsunade, let us not resort to--”

She struck him with it. The boulder collapsed and Jiraiya collapsed beneath it.

A puff of grey dust rose around his sandals.

“Tsunade” placed both hands on her hips.

“I am the greatest medical shinobi alive.”

From beneath the flattened rock came Jiraiya’s muffled voice.

“You broke my spine!”

“Then I have provided myself with work.”

The laughter boomed. Rin’s shoulders jumped. Obito made a wet, strangled noise behind his hand. Even Kakashi laughed, though he managed it without sound, his eyes narrowing while he turned respectfully toward the wall.

The play tore through the Second Shinobi War with the confidence of men who had not been there. Orochimaru communicated exclusively through snakes. He consulted them for battlefield strategy, weather forecasts and restaurant recommendations. One of the wooden reptiles advised him to betray everyone immediately, though Orochimaru complained that the timing lacked elegance.

Tsunade defeated an Iwa commander by arm-wrestling him through a table. She ended a siege by gambling the enemy supply lines on a dice roll. Each time she lost, the narrator declared it a tactical feint.

Jiraiya wandered into an enemy encampment while searching for a bathhouse, mistook the commander’s tent for a changing room, and defeated an entire battalion while trying to preserve his towel.

At one point, the towel fell.

The stage went dark.

The audience screamed with laughter.

Minato found himself enjoying it despite the small, cold instinct telling him that men who laughed at shinobi legends often knew more about them than shinobi preferred.

The actors were shameless. The costumes creaked. The dialogue had clearly been assembled from tavern songs, mission gossip and the vindictive recollections of people who had once been inconvenienced by greatness.

Yet there was affection in it. The Sannin had become too famous to remain human. Their mistakes had swollen into anecdotes, their habits into folklore. The audience mocked them with the ease of people certain that the subjects of the joke were far away, impossibly powerful, and therefore incapable of being hurt by it.

Their names were monuments. A little ridicule only encouraged the pigeons.

Then Jiraiya returned to the stage dragging a young blond actor behind him by the collar. The boy’s wig was the yellow of fresh egg yolk and appeared to have been cut with garden shears. A blue scarf wound three times around his neck before trailing behind him across half the stage, where a stagehand had to keep nudging it out of the candle stands with a broom.

Obito made a choking sound.

Rin’s tray trembled. The porcelain lids gave a tiny, betraying chatter.

Kakashi stared.

The actor had blue eyes painted onto his closed eyelids. Jiraiya threw one arm around the boy’s shoulders and nearly knocked the wig sideways.

“And this,” he announced, “is my brilliant student, Minato!”

The stage Minato opened his eyes and the painted eyes disappeared into his eyebrows. He smiled with all his teeth.

The real Minato carefully set down his sake cup before his fingers crushed the porcelain.

A noble beside him sighed admiringly. “Such a pretty boy.”

Minato’s smile deepened.

Rin saw it from across the room and immediately became interested in the floor.

“Sensei,” said the actor brightly, clasping his hands beneath his chin, “I have invented a secret technique.”

Orochimaru slithered in from behind a painted screen. He did not walk. Two stagehands pulled him along on a wheeled platform hidden beneath his robe.

“Is it forbidden?” he hissed.

“Not yet.”

Tsunade leaned through the opposite screen, already holding the ruined boulder.

“Will it explode?”

“Only if I do it wrong.”

Jiraiya beamed at the audience.

“He has learned everything I know.”

“That explains the danger,” Tsunade replied.

The noblemen roared. One leaned against Minato’s shoulder in his mirth. Minato endured this with the saintly calm of a man calculating exactly how far he could launch another human being without using chakra.

Onstage, the blond actor produced a fistful of yellow ribbons from his sleeve.

“I call it---”

He sprinted around the stage. The ribbons streamed behind him. Stagehands rang bells, beat wooden clappers and kicked bowls of flour into the air. The actor vanished into a cloud of white dust, collided audibly with a screen, emerged from the wrong side and continued running as though this had been intentional.

“The Flying--”

A gong crashed.

“--Thunder--”

Another gong.

“--Extremely Secret Technique!”

He disappeared behind a painted tree.

A pause followed.

Then he crawled out from beneath Tsunade’s robe.

Tsunade looked down.

Stage Minato looked up.

“I may have placed the marker incorrectly,” he said with all the confidence of a Daimyo.

She hit him with the boulder. The boulder, having already suffered greatly, split into three pieces.

Obito’s shoulders shook so hard that sake spilled over the mouth of his bottle and ran across his fingers.

Kakashi drifted close enough to Minato to murmur, “The resemblance is unsettling.”

Minato turned toward the lord at his side. His powdered face was serene. His lips curved sweetly. The silver ornaments in his hair chimed when he inclined his head.

It was a beautiful smile.

Kakashi stopped laughing and very briefly, feared for his life.

Onstage, Jiraiya seized his student by the scarf and hauled him upright.

“One day,” he declared, “this boy will become very important.”

Stage Minato planted one foot on the broken boulder and struck a pose copied badly from a memorial engraving.

“A great hero?” asked Tsunade.

“A legendary warrior?” asked Orochimaru.

“A man beloved by every woman in the Fire Country?” Jiraiya suggested.

The master of ceremonies stepped into the lantern light.

“No,” he said. “A team leader.”

Three smaller actors tumbled onto the stage. The first wore a grey wig shaped like an irritated shrub. A strip of black cloth had been tied crookedly across his face, covering his nose, one cheek and neither of the areas a mask was generally intended to conceal. A wooden sword almost as large as he was protruded over one shoulder.

His expression was a masterpiece of theatrical misery.

Kakashi’s amusement vanished.

The second actor wore goggles made from the bottoms of two green glass bottles. They enlarged his eyes grotesquely and forced him to walk with both hands extended. He ran onto the stage, caught his sandal beneath the blue scarf and struck the painted tree face-first.

The tree tipped. A stagehand caught it and pushed it upright.

The audience applauded.

The third actor wore her dark hair in two neat bunches and carried a basket marked MEDICAL SUPPLIES in letters large enough to be read from the road. She bowed sweetly. Rolls of bandages spilled from the basket and unrolled across the stage behind her.

Rin’s fingers tightened beneath her tray.

The audience began laughing before any of them spoke.

The actor playing Minato turned toward the children and his face collapsed into horror.

“These are children!”

“They are shinobi,” Jiraiya corrected.

Stage Minato pointed.

“That one is eating paste.”

Stage Obito looked up from a clay jar. White glue coated his lips “It makes me stronger.”

The room shook.

Obito did not. He stood beside a kneeling lord with the sake bottle cradled in both hands, his smile fixed so tightly that a muscle flickered near his jaw.

Onstage, stage Kakashi crossed his arms.

“I refuse to acknowledge any of you.”

“You have been here for six seconds,” said stage Rin.

“It was enough.”

Several guests clapped.

One called, “A true Hatake!”

The real Kakashi stood motionless beside a cedar pillar, the tray balanced perfectly across his hands. The laughter seemed to reach him from a great distance, dulled beneath the hard beat of blood in his ears.

The mask was wrong. The hair was wrong. The sword was wrong.

Yet somebody had known to give him one.

Onstage, stage Obito leapt onto a stool and announced that he would become Hokage. The goggles slid down his nose and struck him in the teeth.

Stage Rin knelt to bandage his head, then turned and bandaged stage Kakashi as well despite his insistence that he had not been injured.

The blond actor fluttered around them, consulting three scrolls at once and repeatedly tying himself into his own scarf.

Minato’s painted smile faded. The transition was slight. Only the gentle curve of his mouth flattening beneath red pigment. Only his hands settling more carefully inside his sleeves.

The play had been written by strangers, which was its first cruelty. They had built Team Minato from scraps: a market vendor’s recollection, a medic’s complaint, a mission clerk’s loose tongue, the embellished stories of shinobi drinking after dark. They had taken mannerisms that belonged to private rooms and muddy training fields and turned them broad enough to be seen from the back row.

The audience understood the shapes at once.

The genius. The idiot. The good girl.

The exhausted young teacher handed three damaged children and expected to make soldiers of them.

They laughed because each role was familiar, and because none of the actors had names painted across their costumes, yet everyone knew who they were.

They did not see the training ground after rain, the wet soil dark beneath their sandals and steam rising from Obito’s shoulders as he arrived late again.

They did not see him breathless and furious, one sandal half-fastened, carrying an old woman’s groceries in both arms while insisting the delay had been unavoidable.

They did not see Rin splitting her lunch into thirds because Kakashi had forgotten his and Obito had dropped his into a stream.

They did not see Kakashi at five years old, standing rigid before adults twice his height, watching every movement as though competence were not merely admirable but the only quality that might persuade people to stay alive.

They had the details but they had none of the truth.

Onstage, the children began arguing. Stage Obito accused Kakashi of cheating. Stage Kakashi informed him that losing was not evidence of corruption. Stage Rin tried to intervene, became tangled in the trailing bandages and fell backward into Stage Minato’s arms.

The blond actor looked at the three of them, then he looked at Jiraiya.

Then he slowly placed both hands over his face.

Jiraiya patted him on the shoulder.

“Do not worry,” he said. “Teaching builds character.”

“I already have character.”

“Then this will destroy it and make room for patience.”

The nobles laughed again but Minato barely heard them.

Stage Kakashi had turned his back on the others. Stage Obito shouted after him, voice rising with every word. Stage Rin stood between them with her arms extended, wearing the helpless, permanent smile playwrights assigned to girls who existed to make boys less difficult.

Stage Minato gathered all three beneath the spread of his sleeves.

For one treacherous instant, the image resembled something real. Obito leaning in despite himself, Rin warm at Minato’s side, Kakashi allowing contact while pretending not to notice it.

Then stage Obito bit stage Kakashi on the arm and the illusion shattered.

Rin made a small, strangled sound. She pressed her lips together until they disappeared.

Obito’s eyes narrowed.

“Don’t.”

“I didn't say anything.”

“You were preparing to.”

“I was preparing to observe that the casting is unusually perceptive.”

Onstage, stage Kakashi struck stage Obito with the wooden sword. Stage Rin struck both of them with her medical basket. Stage Minato finally seized the boys beneath the arms and lifted them bodily while stage Rin climbed onto his back to escape the wreckage.

He staggered around the stage, one child kicking beneath either arm and the third clinging to his shoulders.

The audience rose into applause. A lord near the front wiped tears from his cheeks.

“The Yellow Flash’s greatest battle!” he cried.

The laughter that followed was louder than any that had come before.

Minato lowered his eyes to his hands. They rested folded in his lap, graceful and pale beneath the lantern glow. White powder softened the scars along his knuckles. His nails had been polished to a faint sheen. The blue silk of his sleeves spilled around his wrists in embroidered waves.

He looked ornamental but he felt flayed.

Beside the stage, Kakashi caught his eye.

Neither of them smiled.

Then one of the magistrates leaned toward his companion.

“That was before the Kannabi business, wasn’t it?” he asked, with the idle uncertainty of a man trying to place a scene in a play.

The words passed between them beneath the laughter - soft, careless, yet sharp enough to enter cleanly.

Rin went pale. Obito’s fingers tightened around the neck of the sake bottle. The lacquer gave a faint creak. Kakashi did not move at all. Minato turned his face toward the stage before the nearest lord could notice the change in it.

The players had already continued. Jiraiya was arguing with a wooden toad over unpaid royalties. Orochimaru had become entangled in his own snake and was accusing it of treason. Tsunade had stepped off the stage and begun demanding wagers from the audience.

The room filled again with easy laughter.

To the nobles, Kannabi had been a title card between comic scenes. A famous mission. A useful date.

The actors had not reached the ending. Perhaps they did not know it, or maybe they knew exactly enough.

From beside the lord, Minato lifted his cup. Across the room, beneath music and lantern smoke, he gave his team the smallest signal.

Stay in character.

Kakashi lowered his gaze. Rin resumed pouring tea, though the first stream struck the rim before she corrected her hand. Obito bowed to a guest with such rigid precision that Okā san might have wept with pride.

They endured the remainder of the play without incident. They smiled when addressed. They refilled cups. They listened while drunken men discussed freight routes, debts and girls as though all three were varieties of merchandise.

-----------------꩜-------------------꩜-----------------------꩜--------------

Near dawn, they walked back toward the okiya beneath a sky thinning from black to pearl. The streets smelled of wet wood, extinguished charcoal and yesterday’s rain. Their sandals whispered over the stones. Minato’s silver hair ornaments chimed softly with each step, absurdly cheerful in the hush.

No one mentioned the play.

They had nearly reached the gate when Obito stopped.

“I did not bite Kakashi.”

Kakashi continued walking.

“You tried once.”

“I was eight.”

“You were thirteen.”

“He had me in a headlock.”

“You were chewing on my glove.”

“It was tactical.”

Rin laughed first. The sound escaped her in one tired breath. She tried to swallow it and failed. Another followed, then another, until she had to catch Obito’s sleeve to remain upright.

Obito looked betrayed.

“You're supposed to be on my side!”

“I am,” she managed. “That's why I'm not mentioning the paste.”

“There was no paste!”

Kakashi glanced at him, “the actor captured your dignity with remarkable precision.”

“I will kill you.”

“You'll trip over a tree first.”

Minato raised one sleeve to hide his mouth.

“Keep your voices down.”

They ignored him. Obito insisted that Kakashi had bitten people first. Kakashi requested evidence. Rin pointed out that neither of them had denied the possibility that Obito ate paste.

Minato attempted to intervene again but his voice broke halfway through the sentence.

The laugh that followed surprised him. It came out small, helpless and entirely unsuited to the painted mouth Okā-san had given him.

The others stared before joining in.

Their voices followed them through the gate and into the sleeping okiya, weary and badly restrained, gathering warmth as they went.