The new king Nanara set a bouquet of blue poppies on the memorial and pressed his hands together in prayer.
Engraved in the polished granite were the names of sixty-two prisoners, all those who had died in the terrible incident that happened in this place the previous year.
There was no sign of the former astronomical observatory. The buildings had been destroyed along with the ancient texts and expensive astronomical measuring instruments, and the rubble was still strewn about everywhere.
Lowering his hands, Nanara turned toward his two attendants. “Where’s my sister?”
“She says she will finish her inspection in the north and arrive here tomorrow perhaps,” replied the attendant with the chestnut-brown hair—Margo.
“I see.” Nanara nodded. “I’ve been so focused on the capital and Nagare that I’ve completely put off rebuilding this place, even though astronomy is an important discipline for the Land of Redaku. We’ll have to set it up again so that we’ll be able to study not just the heavens but also excavate fossils. Do you think my sister would be angry if I said I wanted to establish an archaeological institute alongside the observatory?”
“She might get angry. She’ll say, ‘Do you think money grows on trees? You have to think more seriously about how to use tax revenue!’” Margo sounded so like Marina that the attendant beside her laughed out loud.
She grinned and continued.
“But it’s fine if she gets angry at you. So go ahead and suggest it.”
“Right. You’re exactly right, Margo!” Nodding vigorously, Nanara ran over to where his horse was resting under a tree. He set a foot into the stirrup, vaulted onto his horse’s back, and turned to look back at his attendants.
One was the woman who had long taken care of him. And the other was someone he had brought along specifically to show them around this area, a model prisoner serving a life sentence.
“Let’s go look at the lake next. Come on, Margo! Jiji!”
✦ ✦ ✦
At a sunny table on the open patio of the popular Japanese-style café set up inside the traditional sweet shop Tami in the old city, Sakura met up with Ino.
They were both busy with work and home, but even so, a couple times a month, they would rearrange their schedules and meet for tea. They were close friends with plenty to talk about—the children, their work, their husbands.
“So the other day, I had some fun with Inojin’s hair and the curling iron.”
“What? Inojin must have hated that.”
“He did, but I sort of forced him to let me. I mean, that boy takes after Sai—his hair’s bone straight, isn’t it? I went to all the trouble of styling it for him, and then it goes right back to the way it was.”
“Huh. If he doesn’t get bedhead, I might be a little jealous, actually. Oh! That reminds me. Temari told me that Shikamaru’s bedhead is absolutely wild!”
“I know, I know. I saw it so many times when we were on missions. He looks like a porcupine.”
They chatted excitedly about nothing in particular, while sampling the new menu item of anmitsu crepes topped with sanshoku-dango dumplings and anko sweet beans. Ino suddenly turned her face to one side. “Ah! It’s Sasuke.”
Was he on his way home after stopping at the Hokage’s office? He was just walking along empty-handed, but his looks and the way he carried himself were so cool that he attracted attention no matter where he went.
Sakura watched him walk away and then threw herself down on the table, groaning, “Sasuke really is so hoooooooot.”
“Huh? You just got the memo?” Ino turned exasperated eyes on her. “I mean, true. Sasuke is as hot as he ever was. But how many years have you been married exactly? You’re only now feeling the hotness?”
“I mean …”
“And weren’t the two of you on a long-term mission until just yesterday?”
“We were, but in the middle of a mission’s no time to stare and drool,” Sakura complained. “There’s this switch in me that flips as a shinobi, so I’m not always just gawking stupidly at him. But when we got back to the village, it’s like … It felt so fresh and new.”
“Yeah, yeah. Fine. Mm hmm. Thanks for the crepe.” Ino teased and cut into the chocolate-sauced crepe with a knife, and then grinned and leaned forward. “Hey! You never wear jewelry. What’s with the ring?”
“Oh, this?” Sakura dropped her gaze to her left ring finger. Looking at the small red stone with fresh eyes, she giggled.
Ino narrowed her eyes in a smile. “That’s great.”
Strictly speaking, it was not really the definition of a present. But this ring was now Sakura’s treasure.
Sasuke had made it by manipulating the ingredients in Earth Style, and mixed in with those was his own chakra. This ring was the reason he’d been able to find her when she was pinned down by that pillar and unable to move. He’d picked up on the faint amount of chakra the ring contained and worked his way down to where she was.
This ring had saved her life.
But it might get in the way at work.
After saying goodbye to Ino, Sakura smiled on her way home, took off the ring, and tucked it into her pocket.
Someday, when I’m an old woman, I’ll retire from work. Then I’ll have all the time in the world to wear the ring.
Until then, she’d treasure it and take good care of it. Sakura stroked the ring from the outside of her pocket.
Would Sasuke remember it when he was an old man?
Sarada made supper by herself that day.
She came home, arms laden with shopping bags, and abruptly declared, “I’m doing all the cooking today!”
She had apparently gotten very into cooking while on her homestay at Iruka’s house.
“I made all kinds of things with Master Iruka, and I think my cooking’s gotten a lot better!”
That evening, the Uchiha table was filled with far too many dishes for the three of them to be able to finish.
The main course was beef sukiyaki stir-fry with tomato, complimented with side dishes of stewed root vegetables, tomato and okara tofu salad, boiled broccoli, fried egg, and slices of mackerel pike fried with salt. On top of the rice neatly piled in their bowls was a mix of soy and bonito flakes combined with squash fried with minced chicken meat.
These were the impressive results of Sarada’s full efforts, a sampling menu of all kinds of small dishes.
“Wow! What a spread!” Sakura cried. “And you made lots of Dad’s favorites too!”
“Mm. Well.” Sarada shrugged. “That’s just a coincidence. The tomatoes were cheap today.”
However coincidental it might have been, she had piled Sasuke’s plate high with mostly tomatoes.
For the first time in a long time, the entire Uchiha family sat around their dining table together for a meal.
Sasuke simply ate without commenting on the flavor of anything, so Sakura gently kicked his ankle under the table.
“Hm?” Lifting his face, Sasuke met Sakura’s eyes and froze for a moment before at last figuring out the meaning of the kick and stating his extremely simple opinion. “It’s good.”
“Huh?” Sarada said. “Really?”
“Yeah. It’s good. Great.”
As always, Sakura’s husband’s vocabulary was small. But his message came across.
“Honestly. You don’t have to be nice just because I made it, you know,” Sarada said, looking delighted nonetheless.
While they were eating, the doorbell rang.
“Oh! I’ll answer it.” Sakura pushed Sasuke back down as he started to stand up and headed for the front door.
When she opened it, Shikamaru was standing there with a thick folder in his arms.
“Sorry to bother you during suppertime,” he said.
“Mm mm.” Sakura shook her head. “It’s urgent, I guess?”
“Yeah. Sarada sounds happy,” Shikamaru remarked, glancing down the hallway.
“It’s not just her. Sasuke too. It’s been a while since the whole family was together.”
“Sasuke too, huh?” Shikamaru frowned and held the folder out to Sakura. “Interim report on the analysis of the ultra particles from the institute. I wanted to get it to you.”
“Thanks,” Sakura said and took the folder from him.
Although they’d stopped Zansul, there was still plenty that didn’t quite make sense to her. The sentence “the stars increased” in Map of the Heavens, the Konoha mark. The meaning of the star that never strays and how Zansul was able to see with his glass eyes. Any one of these might have had some connection with the Sage of Six Paths’ illness, and she wanted to scrape together every bit of information she could, given that the target they were facing was an unknown variable.
“How’s Naruto?” she asked, and Shikamaru shook his head.
“Not great. I keep telling him to rest, but he’s there in the Hokage’s office every day. And even when I deliberately give him less work, he finds new work on his own.”
“Maybe it distracts him to be busy. And it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that’s going to get better with just rest.”
“True.”
While they talked, Shikamaru kept glancing down the hallway. He was concerned that Sarada might come out.
They couldn’t upset the children. They couldn’t let word of this get out. Those were the conditions that Naruto had laid out when Shikamaru and the others had forced Naruto to agree to let them help him.
“I asked them to make the analysis a priority at the institute,” Shikamaru said and sighed heavily.
The situation was such a drag that even saying what a drag it was was too much of a drag.
“If this keeps up, Naruto won’t be able to use chakra anymore. We absolutely can’t let that happen.”