STIN: Chapter 92/93

Chapter 92: Best Friend Takes the Lead

Ryo's lashes jolted, and his cracked eyelids dragged open. Harsh light sliced his muddied vision into wavering motes.

Every breath tugged at pain like torn flesh. His bones felt filled with cold, sour lead. The thick smell of medicine and blood clung in the back of his nose, a stubborn reminder of the battle that had nearly ground him to dust.

His sight struggled to focus. The first thing he saw was a calm swath of deep violet cloth, faintly damp. Above it, a slightly pale profile, exhaustion barely hidden beneath carefully kept softness. Her black hair was a little damp with sweat, clinging to her clean cheek.

Uchiha Mikoto.

Back to him, she was half-kneeling by a small brazier, carefully wiping the rim of a clay medicine jar with a damp cloth, gentle, almost devout. Warm, yellow firelight cast a small, tremulous shadow beneath her lowered lashes, softening the hard edge of the tang of drugs in the air.

Sensing the gaze behind her, Mikoto's hand paused.

She turned slowly. In the obsidian of her eyes, worry had not yet faded. Surprise flashed, and was swiftly pressed down beneath the composure of a clan's daughter.
"Ryo-kun? You are awake." Her voice was deliberately softened, pleasantly husky, as if she had kept vigil a long time. "How do you feel? Do the wounds still hurt badly?"

"…" Ryo tried to speak. Fire raked his throat. Only a hoarse breath escaped. He twitched his neck. Pain shot through the numb, heavy hole in his left shoulder. His brows knit on instinct.

"Do not move." Mikoto set the jar down at once and stepped to the bedside. As she leaned in, a clean wintergreen scent mixed with salve came close. A cool fingertip gently pressed down his wrist when he tried to lift it. "Tsunade-sama said your injuries are severe, you must rest. Especially your left shoulder, it almost…" She did not finish. Her long lashes trembled, just the right hint of aftershock.

"W… water…" Ryo rasped at last.

"Okay." Mikoto rose smoothly, with no wasted motion. She picked up a rough clay cup from the low stand, tested the temperature, then topped it from a sealed waterskin, stirred, and brought it to his lips. Her other hand slid under his nape with gentle, unarguable strength, lifting him a little. "Slowly. Do not choke."

Warm water slid down his throat like rain into cracked earth. After a few swallows, the near-dry exhaustion inside him eased a fraction.

"How long was I out?" Still hoarse, but at least coherent.

"Over three days." Mikoto set the cup down and carefully brushed away a tiny bead of water at the corner of his mouth, quick as a blink, her fingertip's touch so brief it felt imagined. "Everyone is worried. Especially Kushina. There were several messages from her side. I did not tell her exactly how serious it was. I was afraid she would rush here."

"What is the situation outside?" Ryo's gaze drifted past her shoulder, as if to pierce the white canvas to the battlefield he had just carved his way through.

Mikoto paused, then took a warmed cloth from the brazier's edge. She wiped his brow and the line of his neck, lifting the clammy sweat with a practiced, feather-light touch.

"The front is the same, entangled fights, attrition. Not much change. We are still holding the main points." Her voice was even, like stating a mundane fact, sanding down the brutality of war. "The reinforcement to Ridge B-7 was canceled. Iwa took heavy losses that day, I think. Their attacks have eased a bit these past two days."

"Jiraiya?" Ryo remembered the extra cargo he had dragged back, the man with the caved-in chest.

Mikoto's hands did not stop, working around the unbandaged skin of his arm, avoiding the intersecting abrasions and the borders of the dressings.

"Jiraiya-sama pulled through. Tsunade-sama and Orochimaru-sama watched him all night. Several broken bones, organs badly hurt, but he will live. He is recovering now." She paused, a true note of relief woven into her tone. "Ryo-kun, thanks to you."

Ryo listened in silence, eyes unreadable. Jiraiya surviving, good. His only target had been Tsunade. Saving Jiraiya and Orochimaru had been a natural side effect. With the objective secured, and no large-scale battle imminent, the wire inside him loosened the faintest bit.

"In addition…" Mikoto set down the cloth, lifted a bowl of thick, dark brown medicine she had been warming, and stirred it gently to let the steam thin, speaking as if offhand. "Hokage-sama signed an emergency promotion."

Ryo looked up. A question flickered in the black of his eyes.

"Congratulations, Ryo-kun," Mikoto said with a poised, gentle smile, eyes subtly watchful. "You are a Konoha chūnin now." She dipped a spoon, blew on it softly, and raised it to his lips. "Decided while you were unconscious."

"Mm." Ryo's noncommittal sound carried no ripple. Titles did not move him. Power was the only measure. That gray forehead protector, he had long since outgrown it. His gaze fell back to the dense liquid in the bowl.

"No need to feed me." He tried to lift his right hand for the bowl. The simple motion triggered a wave of intolerable sour-numb pain in his left shoulder, like steel needles driven into bone seams. The muscles of his right arm slumped with an uncontrollable heaviness. His wrist managed a few inches off the cot, trembled hard, and dropped. Fine cold sweat sprang on his brow.

His body had never felt so strange, so heavy. Those battlefield outbursts that wrung out every reserve, the life-burning flying slashes and Flying Thunder God, the wounds forced shut, now the backlash came like a landslide and a tidal wave.

Mikoto missed none of it, every flicker of expression, each bodily response. In her heart, a hidden hope grew another ring.

Watching the man she admired, a thread of fierce possessiveness rose, silent and wild. She crushed the untimely thrill. The worse the injuries, the longer this beast would be chained to the bed.

The longer he stayed, the more likely her invisible threads could set a mark deep in the soul beneath that iron shell, Uchiha Mikoto's mark.

As for her best friend Kushina, safe in Konoha, far away. Guilt had already thinned beneath day-after-day closeness and the quiet swell of possessive desire.

"See?" Her voice gentled further, an almost indulgent scold, soothing a stubborn child. "I said do not move. If your wound splits, I cannot answer to Tsunade-sama." She held the bowl steady, gaze kind but firm. "Let me. Kushina asked me to take care of you. She is most worried about your health."

"Kushina," raised so naturally, like a well-timed flag, wrapped all her nearness in perfect justification. It made every act, every touch, feel like it carried the warmth of their faraway red-haired friend.

A spoon of hot, bitter medicine crossed his lips. Strong earthiness and domineering bitterness detonated on his tongue. His throat bobbed hard. He swallowed.

Watching his tight brows and rigid endurance, something like a micro-smile flickered at the bottom of Mikoto's eyes, like a hunter savoring a trapped beast's struggle.

She stirred patiently, voice soft and distracting. "Nawaki-senpai came by twice. Clumsy as ever, knocked over the basin and nearly soaked you again. I sent him to quartermaster duty to sort supplies. At a time like this, someone careful is better company, do you not think so, Ryo-kun?" Her tone was easy, with a girlish, teasing judgment, quietly casting herself as the most suitable caretaker.

Ryo did not answer, he just shut his eyes against the indescribable bitterness.

Mikoto's lip curve deepened by a hair. She set the bowl down, crossed to a small deep-violet wicker chest she had brought, and opened it.

Bending at the waist, back to him, knees together, the curve from slim knee to small ankle traced a gentle line beneath her skirt. When she turned back, there was a tiny plate in her hand, oiled paper wrapped around a few dark preserved fruits, a rare luxury with supply lines tight.

"Open up." No spoon. Two slender, pale fingers lifted a piece and brought it directly to his lips, subtly intimate, quietly irresistible. Her fingertips brushed the cracked edge of his lower lip, hardly there at all.

A strange sensation sparked. Ryo's body tightened, barely. This closeness, this way, was past the usual line.

Only the occasional crackle from the brazier, and the sudden awkwardness of two breathing rhythms, filled the tent.

He hesitated, gaze dark on the fingers and the sweet. The bitter aftertaste in his mouth clung like a parasite. In the end, survival, and flight from the taste-hell, won. He parted his lips and took the morsel.

As her fingers withdrew, they grazed his lip again, lightly.

"Sweet?" Mikoto asked, the exact right note of gentle expectation. Her eyes flicked to his moving lips, deepened a shade, then shifted away, natural as breath, as if that moment never happened.

Ryo hummed vaguely and swallowed.

Time ran thick in the little square of canvas and wood. Ryo's face stayed expressionless, words few.

Mostly, he closed his eyes and tried to coax his near-dry chakra to crawl, mending shredded muscle and nerve, fighting the lingering numbness of poison.

Mikoto's presence grew.

Like a silent shadow, she always occupied the exact spot within his sightline. When he felt dry, water of just the right warmth met his lips. Before sweat could mat his hair, a warm cloth wiped it away. When pain broke his focus mid-heal, a folded strip of clean cloth appeared for him to bite.

Each approach, each brief brush of skin or cloth, each exchange that let fingers touch for a heartbeat, became a drill Mikoto practiced and refined.

She fused a noble girl's reserve with an almost selfless "I was entrusted" stance, making everything she did seem proper, unassailable.

(To be continued.)

Chapter 93: Big Mistake?

The tent reeked of herbs and blood, a mix sharp enough to make one's skull ache.

Ryo reclined against the pillow, eyes shut, his breathing deep and steady. The last dregs of chakra inside him surged again like a maddened bull, humming through his bones.

The gore-rimmed hole in his left shoulder, almost his undoing, had begun to sprout new flesh under Tsunade's unforgiving Mystical Palm Technique and his own monstrous recovery. The skin looked pink and tender. The bone had set. The numb ache rose, like countless ants gnawing at his bones.

But that itch was good, life.

Strength, strand by strand, seeped back into the body that had nearly come apart. He tested the fingertips of his left hand.

Good. The shackle of injury was loosening. Outside, the battlefield's iron tang mingled with shouts of slaughter and burrowed into the tent, teasing his dormant killing intent until it stirred, itching to break free from the coffin of death.

Shra.

The flap snapped up. A gust of cold wind rode the camp's metallic reek inside. Tsunade strode in, hem of her field medic robe spattered with mud. Her domineering presence rushed in and blasted the sticky stench of medicine out of the tent.

"Kid, tough life you have, huh?" Her voice was loud, that impatient kind of concern. She flatly ignored Mikoto, who hastily stepped aside, and flashed to the bedside. Quick as lightning, she yanked open the ragged bandage on Ryo's left shoulder. Emerald medical chakra flared in her palm like a tiny sun and, with no ceremony, pressed into that torn wound, hot enough to make the air tremble.

"Hmph." Ryo did not bother lifting his lids, answering through his nose. When his eyes did open, a cold light had already pooled within, sharp as a freshly honed boning knife. Fresh from the battlefield, his feral edge never slept, not even with a single breath left.

Tsunade's rough fingertips skimmed with surgical precision along the edge of that fresh, pink, hideous scar. The feel beneath her fingers made her heart jolt, skin stretched over coiled, dangerous power.

Her brows knit tight.

What made her heart leap was not only his freakish self-healing.

It was also that, beneath flesh and blood, something stirred that made her instinctively, deeply uneasy, and strangely moved.

Just now, in those zero-point-something seconds when her fingers brushed the searing edge of his wound, the feeling struck again. Like a jolt arcing through her heart, making some corner she had buried on purpose seize tight.

"Damn, that again…" Tsunade's mind flashed uncontrollably to days earlier, hauling a scar-latticed Ryo into her arms, his weight pressed against—

Back then she had focused only on his injuries and had not thought further.

But when last night's cold crept into the lull between fire and blood, her tired body had suddenly remembered the pressure against her chest, the heat, the feel of his rapid breath against her skin.

She snapped her head to the side, golden hair slashing a violent arc, as if to whip the intrusive fluster and panic out of her skull, then forced all attention back onto treatment.

"Bone's set, chewed up like a dog had it." Her voice was rough and husky. Smack. She slapped a slab of sticky, stinging dark green salve onto the wound, hard, almost too hard.

"Tendons and meridians, though, solid. A hundred times sturdier than that useless Jiraiya. Lie still for a few days. If you dare hack your bones to pieces with that move again, I will drag you out and bury you." She cursed as she worked, but her bandaging hands moved so fast they stirred wind. In no time it was tidy.

Done, she turned to leave and stopped at the flap.

Her eyes cut like knives, first over Mikoto, standing there like a wooden post, then back to Ryo, eyes closed and regulating his breath, but already fierce again.

That look was too complicated to read, assessing, irritable, and laced with something she could not even name herself.
"Hmph. Mikoto, not bad." She tossed the words out abruptly, like dropping a tool as she walked by.

Before the words had settled, the heavy flap went whack as she yanked it open and strode out into the cold wind, steps that recognized no kin, almost like she was fleeing something.

The half-meaning remark, and that iron-scented wind, tore open Pandora's box.

Mikoto lowered her head. In the shadows, her eyes flared with a sudden, startling light.

Tsunade's tacit approval, that was what it was to her, worked better than ten thousand words. The last bar on the beast's cage, at its weakest, had just swung open.

Silence settled again. Only Ryo's steady, powerful breathing remained.

Mikoto's heart pounded louder than a charge horn. She lifted a rough clay cup steaming warm. The air pulled taut, the silence she had engineered stuffing it to bursting.

Cup in hand, steps still light, as if she walked out of a painting, she glided to the bed, a face of impeccably tuned concern.

"Ryo-kun, have a little water, moisten your throat." Soft, gentle, the tail of her words floated, extra clear in the cramped hush.

Her left toe just happened to snag an unseen fold in the ground cloth. Her body lost balance in an instant. Mikoto let out a short, convincing cry. "Ah!"

The world spun. She pitched hard toward Ryo's side, out of control. The cup in her hand, half full of near-boiling water, flipped at a perfect angle, flying with her momentum straight toward the deadliest zone below Ryo's waist.

A hair's breadth.

Ryo's eyes flashed open.

At the same time, his left hand, the arm that had only just regained a faint sense of movement, lashed outward on instinct.

Not a cup shattering, but a heavy thump of impact. Mikoto's upper body, along with her panic-tilted face, slammed squarely, solidly into Ryo's chest, which had thrust up to meet her.

The scalding water he had anticipated did not hit him. His lightning elbow parry barely knocked it aside. Most of it splashed onto the cold dirt and tattered sheet with a hiss. But the more dangerous contact arrived.

Time stalled.

A bundle of soft warmth, honeysuckle-cool and sweet with a girl's scent, pressed flush to Ryo's iron chest.

Worse, zero distance between their faces.

Cold, an unfamiliar, faintly medicinal bitterness and a hint of candied sweetness, soft and cool, crashed onto his cracked lips, hard enough to bump his teeth.

Breath tangled. Everything jammed.

Ryo's pupils pinholed. His nose filled with the girl's scent. The soft, cold press on his lips was as numbing as the most potent toxin, freezing every action and thought. For the first time, utterly stumped.

A battlefield demon who butchered gods without blinking now tasted something called being at a loss. Every muscle locked to stone. His left arm still hung there in that dumb blocking pose.

Mikoto froze as well.

She could feel the heat of his chest through thin cloth, and the heartbeat that seized for an instant. Her lips were tight against the heat-dry shape of his.

In the plan it was a light touch. It became a crash.

The effect overshot the mark. Her mind went white with a buzz. Shame, panic, and the shiver of a plan succeeding melted into a stew. Her heart nearly leapt out of her throat.

But the Uchiha clan's time-tempered bridal drills kicked in. In less than a second of blankness, the actress's instinct rolled over every raw feeling.

Performance, full on. The black eyes inches away, parted in shock, instantly pooled with shine, fluttering long lashes like a scared fawn.

Shyness, grievance, and natural fluster, woven without a seam.

Like she had suffered a terrible fright and slight, she jerked her face up and sprang from his arms.

She staggered back two steps. Her cheeks flamed, red from the pale ear tips down the fine curve of her neck. She scrubbed her mouth with the back of her hand on reflex, then snatched it back as if shocked.

Those lovely eyes darted in panic, landing on Ryo's lips, still a little damp, then skittering away as if burned, head bowed deep. Her shoulders trembled just a hair. A tiny mosquito-weak voice, edged with tears, quavered out:

"I, I am sorry, Ryo-kun. I, I did not mean to. I tripped… I am so, so sorry. I… I offended you…"

Air so still it could suffocate. Only the drip, drip from the wet sheet, and two uneven breaths.

Ryo still held that left-arm block, torso rigid.

His throat bobbed painfully. He wanted to curse, but found his voice too dry to make a sound.

At last, he slowly, stiffly, drew that dead-heavy left arm back.

Mikoto still kept her head down. The hand that had covered her lips dropped. Her fingertips trembled. She did not dare look up. She bent to gather the shattered clay, then grabbed a rag to dab the mess, movements clumsy with panic. The red at her ears refused to fade. Her small, helpless back looked pitiable.

(To be continued.)