They kicked me out of the med ward the second my pulse stopped doing jazz solos.
"Up," the nurse said, snapping the chart shut. "You're stable. We need the bed."
I sat up very carefully.
The world tilted anyway. Bandages tugged at my ribs where the seal had backfired through my nerves. My head throbbed with the kind of headache that felt like a grudge.
I swung my legs over the side of the cot, bare feet touching cold stone.
The med ward was a stripped-down version of the hospital—beds in a row, screens half-pulled, the smell of alcohol and sweat and stress. Ino was two beds over, arguing weakly with a different nurse about how she was "fine, really, totally fine, just a little dizzy." Her ponytail looked like it had lost a fight with an electrical socket.
"You can go sit in the stands if you want," my nurse said, already turning away to grab the next chart. "No more fighting today. Take it easy."
"No more fighting," I echoed. My voice sounded like it had been left out in the sun too long.
I found my sandals under the bed, stuffed my feet into them, and slid off the mattress.
The ward door creaked when I opened it. The hallway outside was cooler, quieter. The noise from the arena was a low rumble, like someone shaking a box of rocks far away.
I took a few careful steps. The stone floor felt too solid.
My chakra sense floated up on autopilot, half out of habit, half because every nerve I had was still ringing from having another person in my head. The corridor unfolded as a spaghetti tangle of little presences—medics moving back and forth, other genin dumped in other side rooms, a few chūnin guards posted at corners.
Under all that, something else brushed me.
Cold lilac-gray.
I stopped.
It was faint, like the after-smell of smoke long after the fire's gone out. But the shape of it—the way it ate color instead of giving any off, the way it sat in the air like a wrong note—was familiar.
Forest-floor memory flashed: trees bent like teeth, tongue voice in my ear, chakra like void swallowing the world.
My hand went to the wall without asking me.
The sensation wasn't right next to me. It was… down the hall, around the corner. A kind of residue, like someone had dragged chalk along the air and left dust behind.
I swallowed, throat dry.
You could turn around, some quiet, sensible part of me suggested. Go back. Go sit with Naruto and yell at the board and pretend this is still about kids playing at war.
My feet kept moving anyway.
The corridor turned left. The lilac-gray smear got stronger for a few steps—then suddenly thinned, like someone folding the edge of a blanket away.
It felt like watching a shadow pulled back from a wall. The cold receded in one smooth motion.
By the time I reached the next doorway, the void had mostly vanished.
The door was half-open.
Through the crack, I saw Kakashi.
He stood with his back angled toward me, one hand on the frame like he'd just finished bracing himself. His hitai-ate was down, but the eye visible above his mask looked… different.
Hard. Sharper than the usual sleepy half-moon. Like all the softness had been scraped off, leaving only wire underneath.
He turned his head a fraction and saw me.
In one blink, his expression shifted from razor-edged to lazy-and-bored, like someone flipping a sign from CLOSED to OPEN.
"Ah," he said. "Sylvie. Walking already."
His voice wasn't quite right either. Just a hair too level.
I pushed the door open the rest of the way.
The room matched the med ward decor theme of "we put the bare minimum in here so no one gets attached." Cot, small table, single chair. Smell of ink still hanging in the air.
Sasuke lay on the cot, out cold. His shirt collar had been tugged up, but not before some ink had dried on his skin; faint lines showed around the edge where Kakashi had drawn something.
His chakra felt… smoother. Tired, yes, but not jagged the way it had when the curse mark was gnawing at it. Underneath, buried deep, there was still that dark twist of Orochimaru's brand. I could sense it pulsing like a bruise trying to bloom.
Kakashi shifted slightly, blocking a clearer view of Sasuke's neck without making it obvious.
"You should be resting," he said mildly.
"I was," I said. "They kicked me out. Bed shortage."
He hummed, like that was a completely normal sentence.
"I felt something," I added, before I could talk myself out of it. "Out there." I jerked my chin toward the hall. "Like the forest. Just now."
His eye held mine for a long moment.
There was something like regret in it, maybe, way down under the layers of professionalism and habit. And something like apology.
Then it was gone.
"I took care of everything," he said, perfectly casual. "Just needed to adjust a seal, that's all. Sasuke overdid it with his eyes. He'll be fine after some rest."
He said it like someone talking about a strained muscle. Like he hadn't just wrestled with the spiritual equivalent of rusted barbed wire wrapped around a twelve-year-old's spine.
My stomach went ice-cold.
"Right," I said.
Kakashi's chakra brushed against mine—light, testing. He wasn't pushing, just… checking. Measuring how rattled I was, maybe.
"I need you to do two things for me," he said.
There it was. The shift from "lazy sensei" to "actual jōnin under the mask."
"Okay," I said slowly.
"One," he held up a finger, "keep what you felt to yourself. No telling the other genin, no dojo gossip. Especially not to Sasuke. When he wakes up, he doesn't need more fuel for whatever narrative he's building in his head."
I thought of Sasuke's eyes on the Sound trio. The tight anger when he'd asked me about Zaku's arms. The way his voice had sounded when he'd said, I'll do what I have to.
"Yeah," I said quietly. "Okay."
"Two," he held up another finger, "go back to the others and support your team. And the rest of your class. This is still an exam. They're still up there thinking the scariest thing in the building is each other."
"It's not," I said.
"No," Kakashi said. "It's not. But until they have to know that, their job is to fight hard and survive. And your job, for the moment, is to stand behind them and make sure they come back in one piece. Emotionally included."
"Emotionally included," I echoed, because my brain had decided repetition was safer than screaming.
He watched me for another heartbeat, making sure it was landing.
I glanced back at Sasuke.
He looked oddly fragile like this. Without the frown, without the constant tension in his shoulders, he was just a kid on a cot. The seal on his neck pulsed once under my perception, then sank back down under whatever Kakashi had painted over it.
"You'll bring him back?" I asked. "Later?"
Kakashi's eye softened. "Of course. Once he wakes up and I'm sure the seal is stable. For now, he's benched."
"Benched," I said. "He'll hate that."
"I'm counting on you and Naruto to distract him with loud bragging when he gets grumpy," Kakashi said dryly. "Maybe argue over who's going to win their matches so he has someone else to glare at."
A small, unwanted puff of laughter escaped me. It felt rusty.
"I can do that," I said.
"Good." He stepped aside, giving me a clearer path to the door. "Back you go, then."
I lingered one more second, letting my senses brush the room again.
The Lilac-gray void was gone, but its absence felt like a thumbprint pressed into the air. Orochimaru had been here. In here. Inside the village, within arm's reach of my teammate, talking to my sensei.
I nodded once, but didn't move. I felt stuck.Kakashi gave me a little head tilt and stepped forward, putting his hand behind my back and ushering me into the hall.
I stopped. There were two Anbu in hall, but they didn't look at us.
They were statues in porcelain and grey armor. But I knew that posture.
The one with the Boar mask shifted his weight, the floorboards groaning under a mass that didn't match his frame.
The Eagle mask was cleaning a kunai with a lazy, rhythmic motion that reminded me of a deer grazing.
I frowned. "Sensei," I whispered, leaning toward Kakashi. "Those two. In the Forest... they were the ones who hauled the bodies out. And they grabbed Anko-sensei."
Kakashi gave me a little push and started walking besides me.
He offered them a lazy two-fingered salute as we passed.
The Eagle Anbu nodded back—a barely perceptible dip of the chin.
"Maa. They get around," Kakashi said lightly.
"They felt familiar," I pressed. "Like... school familiar. But sharper."
Kakashi's eye curved into a smile, though he didn't look back at them.
"Well," he said, his voice dropping to a casual mumble. "Shadows and boulders run in families, Sylvie-chan."
He shoved his hands in his pockets.
"They're just the ones who do it for the Tower instead of the clans."
He stopped and ruffled my hair.
"Go cheer your friends on, Sylvie-chan."
The noise from the arena got louder as I walked, like someone was slowly turning up a radio. My sandals scuffed the stone in uneven rhythm. Grown-ups lying to protect you and grown-ups lying to control you felt the same in my stomach. My head still pounded, but the pain helped anchor me in my own skin.
Don't talk about it, I told myself. Support your friends. Pretend, for a little while longer, that the only monsters you have to worry about are kids with bugs and puppets and mirrors.
Up ahead, the corridor opened onto the staircase that would spit me back out near the stands.
I put my hand on the rail.
From beyond the walls, through layers of stone and shouting, I heard the board spin up again.
Click-click-click.
Names blurring. Futures being shuffled.
I took a breath that didn't quite reach my stomach and started climbing.