"You're bleeding again."
The words come from outside the window—soft enough to be mistaken for wind, gentle enough to feel like a lie.
My body freezes before my mind finishes translating what I already know.
That tone.
Polite. Controlled. Almost kind.
Haku.
The tether under my wrist gives a slow, warm pulse, like a distant heartbeat answering the sound of Naruto's name—except Naruto isn't even in the room. He's outside somewhere with the others. The connection doesn't care about walls.
It just cares that I'm close to the story's spine.
I keep still. I don't breathe.
The room smells like damp wood and old smoke, but underneath it is my own iron-sweet blood. The splint on my wrist is heavy, awkward. My fingers twitch against wood—weak, useless—and then go still again.
I tell myself not to move.
Movement is attention. Attention is leverage. Leverage is how people die in this world.
The window paper shifts.
Not torn. Not ripped.
Just… lifted, as if the air itself decided it could enter.
A shadow slides into the room.
Silent.
Too silent to be a civilian.
The lantern light catches the edge of a mask—white, striped, animal-blank. Hunter-nin.
Haku's mask.
My mouth goes dry.
The tongue seal tightens, a reflexive warning coil, like it senses danger and wants me quiet more than it wants me alive.
Haku steps closer. His movements are smooth, careful. Not like a predator in a rush.
Like a professional who has time.
He stops at the edge of the tatami where I'm sitting half-slumped against the wall.
I don't look at him too long.
I can't afford the pressure that comes from staring directly at important pieces on the board. I don't know if Haku triggers that the way Naruto does, but my body doesn't distinguish cleanly between "main plot" and "major threat."
My ribs tighten anyway.
The mask tilts, and I feel his gaze settle—precisely—on my wrist.
On the bandages.
On the splint.
On the seal ring under my skin.
Then he speaks again, voice still gentle.
"That's not a normal seal."
My stomach drops.
Of course he can tell.
He's trained to retrieve bodies, extract secrets, and leave nothing behind. A subtle ring under the skin is still a ring. A leash is still a leash.
I try to answer.
The tongue seal bites hard, pain sparking under my tongue like a needle.
My jaw jerks shut.
Haku goes still.
He doesn't react with surprise. He reacts with understanding.
"Ah," he says softly. "You can't."
It isn't pity.
It's recognition of a mechanism.
He takes one step closer and kneels—careful, respectful, as if I'm not an enemy, as if I'm something fragile he doesn't want to break by accident.
The mask is close enough now that I can smell him through it: damp cloth, cold metal, and something clean—soap or antiseptic. A scent that doesn't belong to someone who kills for a living, which makes it worse.
He reaches into his sleeve.
Senbon glint.
Thin needles catching lantern light like hairline fractures.
My heart tries to climb out of my throat.
I flinch back, shoulder scraping the wall. Pain spikes in my stump. My breath hitches.
Haku pauses.
"You don't need to be afraid," he says, like that sentence can erase the fact that he stabbed Zabuza into sleep on a road ten minutes ago.
Then, quieter: "If I wanted you dead, you wouldn't have heard me."
My ribs tighten at the truth of it.
He extends one hand, senbon held between fingers with delicate control. The needle tip hovers near my wrist.
I try to pull away.
My right hand doesn't cooperate. My fingers twitch, but they can't curl into a fist. The splint keeps them straight, obedient. Even my body feels leashed.
Haku's voice stays calm.
"You're bleeding through the wrap," he says. "If you keep losing that much, you won't wake up again."
Wake up again.
Not "you'll die." Not dramatic.
Just… you won't return.
I swallow. The tongue seal pricks.
Haku's senbon touches my skin.
Cold point. Tiny pressure.
Then a sharp pinch—pain so small it would be nothing in any other context, except my entire existence has become a list of things that hurt.
He places one senbon, then another, precise and fast.
My blood flow slows.
Not immediately. Not magically.
But I feel it—pressure shifting, bleeding easing, the frantic warmth leaving my wrist more slowly. The pain in my hand changes too, going from tearing fire to a tighter ache, like he's pressing a bruise from the inside.
Acupuncture, a distant part of me thinks. Pressure points. The same technique used to paralyze… to numb… to control.
Haku withdraws his hand.
My wrist still throbs.
But the bleeding is less.
My stomach twists with a sick gratitude I don't want.
"Better," Haku murmurs.
Then the mask tilts again.
"And that seal," he adds. "That is not from my village."
Not Mist.
Not enemy.
Something inside Konoha.
Root.
The name rises in my mind and my tongue seal coils so hard it hurts, warning me away from even thinking it too clearly in front of him.
Haku watches the micro-flinch like he's reading a book written in muscle.
"You're being used," he says softly.
The sentence lands like a weight on my chest because it's true in every direction.
Used by Root.
Used by fate.
Used by the story that bends weapons away from Naruto and into me.
Used now by a hunter-nin kneeling in front of me with needles and a voice like kindness.
I try to nod.
My neck moves stiffly.
Haku's posture relaxes by a fraction, as if confirmation satisfies him.
Outside the room, faint voices drift—Naruto arguing with Sakura, Sasuke's clipped responses, Kakashi's calm instruction. Close enough that I can almost picture where they're standing.
Haku heard them too. He chose this moment anyway.
He chose the thin seam between attention and neglect.
The seam where background characters get erased.
His hand slides into his sleeve again.
This time he doesn't pull out senbon.
He pulls out a small folded cloth.
He wipes a smear of blood from my wrist—careful, almost tender—then pauses, cloth held still.
He isn't cleaning.
He's taking something.
A sample.
My stomach drops.
He folds the cloth back up and slips it away.
"Who are you?" Haku asks quietly.
I open my mouth.
The tongue seal bites.
I wince, eyes watering.
Haku watches.
Then he asks a different question, one he knows I can answer without being punished.
"Are you one of his teammates?"
Naruto's.
Team 7.
My ribs tighten faintly at the thought of Naruto, warm pressure blooming and then receding.
I shake my head, small.
Haku's voice stays gentle. "A friend?"
I shake my head again.
His head tilts. "Then why are you here?"
Because the story dragged me, I think.
Because Root shoved me.
Because fate doesn't protect me.
I can't say any of it.
I stare at my pinned sleeve.
Haku follows my gaze. For a moment the mask's blankness feels almost cruel, because I can't see what he feels behind it.
Then he speaks, and the softness in his tone turns the words into a knife.
"Someone took your arm," he says.
Not a question.
A statement that makes my phantom hand clench in pain as if remembering.
I don't answer.
Haku's voice lowers. "And now they're taking your hand."
My stomach turns.
Because he's right.
Because even if the wrist heals, the tendons won't knit clean. Even if they do, the poison already made my fingers unreliable. The story is stripping away my ability to reach, to grab, to interfere.
To matter.
Outside, Naruto laughs briefly—forced, too loud—and the tether pulses warm and heavy in my ribs like a reminder that the center of the story is still fine.
Still protected.
Haku's mask turns slightly toward the sound.
Then back to me.
"You're close to him," he says. "The boy."
Naruto.
My ribs tighten hard, involuntary.
My nose tingles.
A faint warning pulse from the world itself: careful.
Haku notices the reaction instantly.
His posture stills.
The air in the room feels tighter, as if the fog outside has seeped into the house through the cracks.
"You react," Haku murmurs. "When his name is near."
My blood goes cold.
He knows about the tether.
Not the words. Not the mechanism. But he sees the effect.
He leans in slightly. "Why?"
I try to pull back.
My spine hits the wall.
There's nowhere to go.
The tongue seal coils like a fist in my mouth, preemptively punishing me for any attempt to speak.
Haku lifts one senbon again.
He doesn't aim it at my throat.
He aims it at the side of my neck.
I recognize the angle.
Paralysis point.
A gentle way to silence without killing.
Haku pauses, almost apologetic.
"I won't hurt you," he says. "Not more than necessary."
Necessary.
A word that has never once meant safety for me.
He places the senbon.
A sharp sting.
Then a spreading heaviness creeps down my shoulders—different from poison. Cleaner. Faster. Like my muscles are being told to stop cooperating.
My right arm goes heavier.
My legs tingle, then begin to numb.
Panic spikes hot and immediate.
I try to gasp.
My chest tightens, not choking—just limited, like the world is clamping down because panic makes scenes unpredictable.
Haku steadies me with one gloved hand on my shoulder.
"Be quiet," he whispers. "If you make noise, they come in. Then I have to move differently."
His glove is warm through cloth.
His voice is calm.
My terror doesn't care.
I can't lift my hand. I can't push him away. The paralysis spreads down my back like cold ink.
Haku's masked face moves closer to my wrist.
His fingers hover near the seal ring under my skin.
When he touches it lightly—just a brush—my ribs tighten violently.
Warm density surges.
Cold depth rises beneath it like deep water swelling toward the surface.
For an instant, I feel that vast, caged attention behind Naruto's seal turn, lazy and amused, as if something inside the boy noticed the leash being tugged again.
Haku freezes.
Not in fear.
In… acknowledgment.
Like he felt it too.
He withdraws his fingers immediately.
The pressure in my ribs eases, but the cold undertow remains, patient.
Haku exhales softly.
"So it's true," he murmurs. "There's something… looking back."
My skin goes slick with sweat.
He knows.
Not the manga. Not the meta.
But the reality: Naruto is not just a child. Naruto is a container.
And I am connected to the container.
Haku straightens.
His voice becomes very gentle, and that gentleness makes it sound like a threat spoken in prayer.
"If you're tied to him," he says, "then you're tied to what matters to him."
My stomach drops.
"Which means," Haku continues, "you can be used."
The sentence isn't cruel.
It's honest.
My paralysis deepens. My fingers twitch uselessly against the splint. My tongue seal coils like it's laughing with him.
Haku leans closer.
"I don't want to kill children," he says. "I want to end this quickly. My master wants the bridge builder."
Zabuza.
He says "master" the way Naruto says "Gramps"—with genuine attachment.
That attachment is what makes him dangerous.
Haku's mask tilts.
"But if your Copy Ninja keeps interfering," he adds softly, "I'll need leverage."
He reaches into his sleeve again.
For a heartbeat I expect another senbon.
Instead, he produces a thin strip of paper—smaller than a tag, pale and nearly transparent. A sealing strip, barely inked.
He presses it to the underside of my splint.
My skin prickles as the ink sinks in.
Not a restraint like Root's.
Something else.
A marker.
A whisper of chakra that makes my tether pulse once, warm and heavy, like it recognizes a new thread being tied to my thread.
Haku withdraws his hand.
His voice is close now, almost kind.
"If you live," he says, "don't chase the boy's fate. It will crush you."
The words hit harder than they should.
Because they're my own rule, spoken by an enemy who shouldn't know it.
Haku rises silently.
He steps back toward the window.
My paralysis holds me still. I can only watch his outline blur into the paper screen's shadow.
He pauses at the threshold.
"Also," he adds, as if remembering something trivial, "your teacher is watching you."
Teacher.
Kakashi?
Or Root?
My blood turns to ice.
Then he's gone—sliding out into the mist like he was never there.
The room is suddenly too quiet.
My heart hammers against ribs that still feel slightly clamped, as if the story is listening for what I do next.
I try to move.
My fingers twitch. My shoulder strains. Nothing.
The paralysis is still settling in.
I can't scream.
I can't stand.
I can't even knock the bowl over.
Outside, footsteps shift—closer.
The door slides open.
Kakashi steps in.
His visible eye takes in the room in a single sweep: me pinned against the wall, pale, sweating, wrist splinted, blood on cloth.
His gaze locks on my neck.
On the tiny puncture point.
Then flicks to my wrist.
On the splint.
On the underside where Haku pressed something.
Kakashi's eye narrows until it's almost a line.
"Senbon," he says quietly.
Not a question.
A verdict.
My tongue seal coils as I try to speak. Pain bites. My throat tightens.
Nothing comes out.
Kakashi moves closer, kneels, and examines the puncture with two fingers.
His voice is calm—too calm.
"Who was here?" he asks.
I try to answer.
The tongue seal bites harder.
My vision spots.
I make a broken sound that isn't language.
Kakashi goes very still.
Then, slowly, his visible eye lifts and turns—not toward me.
Toward the window.
Toward the thin paper screen that looks untouched.
His killing intent doesn't leak like Zabuza's.
It snaps on like a switch.
Outside, the air seems to hold its breath.
Kakashi's voice drops to a whisper that is all threat.
"If you're listening," he says to the empty room, "come back."
The tether under my wrist pulses—warm and heavy—
and beneath it, cold depth stirs, amused.
Because Haku doesn't need to come back.
He already left something behind.
And I can't even lift my hand to show Kakashi where it is.