界王和 - Grandma's Garden

Mission:

It was the strangest thing, Kai felt as if he was walking briskly, tall and with a newfound confidence down the open road. What sensations his threads could give him told him that he had just been on the march, but oddly enough he found himself hunched over in a patch of cultivated grass now strewn with holes and soil. He saw his threads were acting as extensions of his hands, digging the roots out while he pulled the weed by its stem, and could not quite articulate why this was not right. What he remembered was a sense of determination that came from something stuffy, almost suffocating and definitely mocking. The heat, the blazing yellow, the laughter.

”Oh dearie, do you need some water to help cool you off?” the client asked, snapping Kai back to reality. The reality that was this one, where he was pulling weeds out of the ground, presumably for her and probably for money.

”Oh, yes, cooling off sounds like just the trick,” Kai replied, taking the glass and letting the icy coolness fall in his mouth, on his face, through his hair even. ”Say I, uh, think I’m done with these things,” he raised a dead weed in his hand as he raised his eyebrow before tossing it aside. ”Remind me again what all else it is you need help with? I fear the work has cleared my mind a little too well.” he managed to talk himself into line, hopefully in a way that didn’t totally betray his utter lack of context.

”Well after you’re done weeding the place, which you’re not done with by the way there are still some in that corner,” she began, pointing to an edge of the grass that more clearly defined the boundaries of which Kai severely underestimated. ”then comes the mulchin’, which everyone says is the worst part but you’re one of those Earth fellows, right?” she made a Snake sign herself and Kai quickly nodded to affirm, despite not actually knowing any Earth Release jutsu, but part of the shinobi life is working with the optimal amount of truth. ”Oh wonderful dearie, you just sprinkle that mulch all over the grass and give it a cheeky drink with the hose, you see there? Yes, that’s all I need today dearie.”

”Gotcha.” Kai replied succinctly with a thumbs up, a smirk, and with a spin on his heels he went back to his task of extracting the bastard weeds. Alright, a little bit of orientation, he was on an easy job he didn’t remember signing up for, just some simple gardening, but fucking how did he get here? Whenever Kai tried to think back to anything after his departure or before just a few moments ago it felt as if it was slipping away, almost like he had to grab onto the wind using his literal bare brain. He had felt something like this before only too recently, when she was there.

Kai’s threads had wrested the last weed from the earth, the sandy soil falling from its roots almost like liquid. Kai felt his tongue twitch at the idea of something like the soil being a source of hydration, of coolness, of relief. Almost without realizing it, Kai had already taken the weed and put it halfway to his open mouth before the earthy taste in the air snapped him out. He tossed it aside and stood back up to grab the mulch on the other side of the yard. He ripped the bag open at the corner and began to sprinkle the grass with a veritable rain of mulch. Kai began to notice how he was viewing loose earth today and realized just how thirsty he still was and how loud that ringing in his ear was.

He knew it deep down in his heart of hearts, he knew that the sun was just overhead, the one bringing the heat down and watching Kai toil in the mortal coil with disdain. His body was luckily pulling itself through the task while Kai’s mind was desperately trying to distract itself from any idea that she was still watching. After all, he took that knife to her head himself, he felt the steel and flesh connect, the laughing face before him burning away into cooking flesh, to charred bone and finally to fine ash. As if that weren’t enough he found a rotting body in the underground of his temple where no one else could go, sealed off by a boulder. In the end Kai managed to squeeze through it and see her in all her decaying glory, dressed in yellow, perhaps sending the message that she didn’t need this body anymore.

She had shed her skin, and become the sun.

It was a sudden jump in weight in the mulch bag that snapped Kai back and let him see his haphazard work, hills and valleys of mulch everywhere. He kicked it around to even it out, doing his damndest to not let the earth on his feet call memories of graves dug for former contestants to the front of his mind. His last task was to get some water for this thirsty bitch called a garden, and Kai had just the tool for the job; knowledge of where the hose was. This was a much better portion of the labor, as Kai could share the cold and hydration with the garden. One drink for him, one for the garden, and so on as long as Kai had to be under the horrid sun’s supervision.

The client came out about half an hour later with a tall glass of lemonade as a little gift for his hard labor. Though she was grateful she couldn’t help but express a mix of exasperation and inquiry as Kai was soaking just as much as the garden was.

”Ooh, that would also hit the spot right now.” Kai simply reached out for the lemonade and began a grand sip of the drink while letting the hose run its water down Kai’s long shaggy hair in an imitation of a shower.

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