"Come on Isui-oniichan!" Himawari exclaimed. Her blue eyes sparkled with excitement as she tugged the boy towards the giant glass sliding doors of the shopping center: 'Deleafs.'
"Careful were you step Himawari-chan. The streets are already soaked. If you fall and become dirty from head to toe. I am forced to bring you back home."
The black-haired boy was exaggerating a bit. While their foots made smacking sounds against the stone pavement and he could spot the afterimages of where Himawari's footprints had split the wet ground. No big puddles lined their way.
"Isui-oniichan will catch me before I do."
Isui smiled at the willfulness on display as he combed back the bangs sticking to his forehead with his free hand. He wondered how her dark-blue hair managed to stay so overly animatic in such a damp state. With every laughter, the unruly strands of his sister's short locks flew everywhere around her head.
It was only the two of them.
Sarada met with ChoCho today to enjoy the final episodes of some love Drama together. Since he saw no appeal in such a show, he opted to go to the Uzumakis to see if Boruto had time.
Arriving at the gate to the Uzumaki residence, he found Himawari sprawled out on the Doorstep, blowing soap bubbles. It appeared he was not the only sibling ditched by the other because Himawari, upon spotting him, immediately yanked him into her house with a force that left Isui baffled. She did not let him slip off his sandals at the entrance. In the kitchen, Himawari threw herself at her mother's skirt tails. At the end of her staged tantrum, he was pressured to promise to watch for Himawari before Isui was thrown over the tiny girl's shoulders like a rice sack and dragged off.
They had played at the neighborhood playground until the sky had been covered with thick, swirling, grey clouds, and the scent of the wind changed. It was the smell of sudden summer rain on dry grounds and plants.
Not wanting to go home, they decided to go to the Deleafes because of its amusement sector.
As Isui stepped through the glass doors of Deleafs, he was met with a blast of sweat, flowers, and coffee, so much for twenty-four-seven air conditioning. The installation was either defective or the management wanted to save money, hoping nobody would notice with so many people around.
Isui's eyes fitted through the hall. The black orbs scanned the people in the shops, running about the beige flooring and up the jampacked escalators.
He spotted the blue-dressed security guards among the moving masses. A group of shinobi caught his attention. At least three men, fully clad in standard green and heavy with weapons, sat across the place in a cafe. With the Konoha headbands wrapped around their foreheads and abnormal amounts of sweat running down the man's faces, they looked like they came fresh from duty.
He deepened his concentration on the shinobi, trying to find out if he knew them, fully trusting that Himawari and his legs would lead him through the crowds.
He saw no clan insignia nor any special weapons. In lead him to deduce that they were ordinary soldiers. They did not talk with each other, but their muscles were tense. A waiter walked to them, his mouth moving with a professional smile. Two of the shinobi waved him off, dismissing him, but the last one turned in his seat and directly faced the waiter. Isui spotted a red mark on his left cheek. A detail that had been hidden from him until now.
"Isui-oniichan, you doing it again." Himawari waved her hand in front of his face. "We are here to have fun."
"You can never be safe enough," Isui said slowly, now fully aware that they had stopped walking and lingered like two stones splitting a flowing river. His charka tingled through his body as it calmed down. He did not realize it had become dense as if he was readying himself for fighting. Himawari must have felt that. Even at only five years old, the girl had more perception of these things than he did her age. He looked around. It seemed nobody had noticed anything. Luckily humans often tended to be self-absorbed, and he was a child. Naturally, he had a little chakra pool. Dense or not, it was nothing to worry about.
It had happened again, Isui chastised himself. He had dismissed Himawari and the other passengers, his ears stuffed with cotton, and his hands were sweaty.
Isui was always like that, zoning in on what caught his attention, constantly keeping his guard up, even in safe places. The raven-haired boy could not help himself and often needed someone to box him out of his thoughts and back into reality.
Himawari smiled at him.
"Let us go and have fun."
Isui nodded. He was glad that she did not make a scene. But as Himawari started leading him again, her grip was tighter around his fingers.
The playground in Deleafes was on the ground floor. You could see it in the distance at the main entrance.
It looked like the remains of an old sailing boat split in half in the middle. Various nets, platforms, slides, and other climbing installations and the blue square flooring completed the look of a lagoon.
Parents sat on the benches around it and watched their children play.
"Catch me, Isui-oniichan!"
Himawari jumped onto one of the colorful nets and crawled upwards to the six-meter-high platform from where you could oversee the whole ship. On the platform, she swirled around to look down at him.
"Yes, Himawari-chan," he shouted up to her.
Isui bent his knees and let a bit of warm chakra flow into his calves, and then while pressing the energy down through his feet at once, he jumped.
The force propelled him up.
He stretched his arms, his back bent like an ape before gripping the platform's rim and sticking his fingers to it with chakra, his feet dangling against the net before he heaved himself onto the platform straight into a sitting position next to Himawari. Not wanting to play catch with his sister at such a height, he decided to change the game, hoping she would follow his lead.
"What are you seeing, Captain?"
Isui looked at Himawari with a playful gleam in his eyes.
She sat down next to him and fell into the character. Her fingers formed two circles as he held her hands before her left eye, mimicking a telescope.
"I spy something pink," she said, changing the game again.
Isui watched her eye movement as she said it.
Her pupils had detailed as she had spotted something, and he had to swallow a crackle at her obviousness.
She had looked at the ice stand.
The only pink things there were the glasses of a lady waiting for her turn to purchase a sundae, the headwear of the worker, or the pink and forbidden sweet-looking strawberry ice cream.
"It is the strawberry ice cream."
"How do you always know that so fast?"
"Because I want to become a Shinobi."
The little girl's face showed played disapproval at this answer. She always did that when he used that answer.
Like it explained everything.
Under her firey stare, unknowingly messaging him that she had no problems throwing him off the platform with his charka system blocked, Isui craved in.
"Your eyes give it away when you settle too long on something. Try letting your gaze slide over a few different objects, and while you decide what to pick, choose an attribute that preferably many of the things share with each other."
Himawari tried again.
Her vision sharpened a few times on different objects before she turned to him, leaning forward in a challenging manner. Isui patiently waited for her to continue the game as he suddenly felt like he had been slapped across his back and forehead at the same time. His breath caught in his throat.
Isui's trained shinobi instincts alarmed him about danger near them. He was sure of it. The usually unrecognizable pupils in his eyes detailed and became more pronounced as he leaned into his chakra, using it to amplify his senses.
There was an accumulation of many chakra sources behind him and his sister.
No, more accurately, around them. The mall was filled with breathtaking, hostile, mind and space-bending energy.
In a second, Isui's mind went blank.
"What the..."