Bento Blues [P]

Absence, Ichika once read, made the heart grow fonder. It strengthened ties through furtive thoughts, empty moments, and imagined interactions played on repeat in one's head—lovers, friends, and family all knew it well, supposedly. How strange a concept to think that being apart might bring two people closer together. And yet, stories abounded of just that: people torn away from each other by circumstance only to be reunited years later with a bond stranger than anything that came before. Authors, historians, and poets all sang of such wonders as if they were facts of life in the shinobi world, it all sounded so perfect in their stories.

But, if all this were true, then why did the young teen's heart ache so?

With her mother away on extended business to the north and her father, well, her father somewhere, the raven-haired girl found that the books she read each night rang hollow. Absence, it seemed to her, made the heart grow colder. She woke up to an empty home, shared her days with faceless strangers, and fell asleep to the beating of her lonesome heart. Then, each day the cycle repeated itself in the same numbing way as it always did, life rarely reflected literature.

Today, in an attempt to break from the monotony of it all, Ichika took her lunch on the road and to the small park beneath the heads of Hokage long past. Though it also doubled as a training ground, the park had a certain secret beauty to it in that it rarely saw use. Its many benches, slender trees, and shallow pond made for something of an oasis amid the hustle and bustle of Konohagakure's urban sprawl that the girl was more than happy to avail herself of.

Sitting on one of the many free benches, Ichika appeared as little more than a lone kunoichi on her lunch break. The symbol of the Leaf hanging loosely about her neck proudly declared her loyalties, the bold insignia of the Uchiha on the back of her sweatshirt announced her bloodline, and the oversized bento box by her side told of the breakfast she missed earlier in the day. Appearances, Ichika had long since learned, meant very little in the shinobi world, but today she had nothing to hide and, even if she did, she doubted she would be able to. Despite her academy instructor's best efforts, she never quite excelled at being anything other than what she was.

Across the park from her, a singular old man with his back turned to the Uchiha practiced what appeared to be some type of slow-moving martial arts. The man flowed from stance to stance like water moving from vessel to vessel and taking on a different shape each time. Though the genin did not bother too much with the more physical arts, she could appreciate a master at work and found herself entranced by the man's slow yet steady movements. There was, Ichika would admit to herself, a certain beauty in having such discipline over one's body—something the awkward teen could only aspire to.

In spite of her rumbling stomach, her eyes soon burned red with her birthright. Her crimson gaze traced each of the distant man's movements and even, at times, seemed to provide wraithlike insight into his next stance. So absorbed in her strange act of voyeurism, the rest of the world fell from the fore, and she lost track of time and space, her lunch almost entirely forgotten.

---

WC: 584
TWC: 584