I ran almost blindly through the village. I had no idea where I was, but the sounds of the bells beckoned me. I simply ran. I pulled away from the village and into the surrounding forest. Then as my eyes came into contact with what I was running towards, my heart stopped. It was her back, the back of my sister from long ago…
“Arame!” I yelled.
My sister turned and changed into Raiju. My heart stopped again. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t…my sister…. I felt the cold of the winter far more harshly. It was cold and freezing my blood killing me. The image of Arame’s face was imprinted in my mind, the calm relaxed sister that I would never get back. I began to fight back tears, but it was to no avail. My sister….My head went down trying to hide the tears. I saw Raiju running towards me.
“Hachi-kun!” Raiju said when he was less than a foot away, “Hachi what are you doing out here?”
“Why are you out here?” I retorted.
“I asked first,” Raiju answered. I sighed.
“Aname,” I said quietly, “my Arame, I lost her again, my ssssister……Arame.”
“Hachi-kun, you’re mumbling and hissing and…….,” Raiju stopped for a moment when he saw my tears. “I can’t hear when you do both. Hachi what’s wrong? This isn’t like you at all,” Raiju said.
“My ssssissster Arame, I losssst her again,” I answered growing a tad louder.
“Hachi what are you talking about?” Raiju asked, “You always said that you never had a family until Kai. What are you talking about?”
I sighed and closed me eyes.
“It was years before I even entered the mountains that would become my demon home for the better years of my life. It was not that I had a rough childhood or any of that. It was not that my human parents beat me for being a demon. It was not that the village hated me for being what I was. It was not that I was ostracized and called a demon child. There was no time for that. We had work to do and money to be made to put food on the table. What truly made me hurt was that for me, time stood still.
I grew up in a small village with kind parents and an older sister named Arame. I looked out of place in the family with my hair brown and theirs black, but no one questioned it. I was the youngest in the family, but it didn’t matter. I was born and raised to grow rice. It was simple. You want to eat then you work.
As a child I hated water for reasons that I could not comprehend and got exhausted easier than the other children when I was near it. It didn’t matter; work needed to be done.
And for a time I grew up and was happy. Everyone was kind because there was no time to be mean. Work needed to be done, and it would be. At the biological age of four I started working. Arame helped. She was relaxed and kind. I grew to love and respect her beyond anyone else.
Then one day when I was about seven a ninja came to the village in search of another rouge ninja. No one in the village had seen a rouge ninja, but the man stayed a while just to be sure. I had a day off a few days before the man would leave, and I hunted him down. He fascinated me beyond reason. I watched him silently as he drank sake with himself across the table.
“I know you are there,” the man said still sipping his sake.
“How did you know?” I asked coming out of my hiding place.
“I can sense chakra, and yours is very odd,” the man started, “so what is your name kid?”
“Hachi,” I said quietly.
“Eight? That is a weird name for a kid, but whatever,” the man chuckled.
“Are you going to tell me your name?” I asked.
“And why would I do that? I’m a shinobi; it’s not like I give my name to just anyone,” he laughed.
“You are mean,” I laughed.
“You are just a kid,” the man laughed back.
“Can you show me some cool ninja moves?” I asked childishly.
“And why would I do that?” the man asked leaning back to look at himself.
“Because I gave you my name,” I answered.
“You are a quirk you know that?” the man smiled, “but fine I’ll show you a few. Now first you have to understand what chakra is…”
The man explained everything and showed me hand signs. He did a clone jutsu and explained to me how to do it. I copied the hand signs and made a perfect clone. The man seemed impressed, but he continued to show me harder and harder moves which I mimicked easily. Soon the man said that he was almost out of chakra and that he needed to get some sleep. I was sad that he was leaving, but I had work to do. I didn’t get a day off until after the ninja left though….I never saw him again….
But as time went on, I grew up and often experimented with chakra and jutsu. It was a game figuring out what worked and what didn’t. My parents rejected this calling it child’s play and told me to work. I worked sixteen hours in the fields, but even then I practiced and learned.
Then one day I unlocked the power of doppelgangers. It took a while teaching myself, but there was always something inside telling me if it would work or not. When I did the jutsu for the first time, I was inexperienced and made four hundred clones. It exhausted my chakra and I fainted. But it had worked. I woke up in Arame’s arms and she asked what had happened. I lied and said I didn’t feel well. Like our parents, she didn’t like me playing with jutsus. She told me to go home and rest the rest of the day.
After that, I practiced with doppelgangers to make just enough to be able to work after making them. I found that one hundred was a good amount. And I worked….far faster than I could ever do before. I worked and managed to finish ten fields in what would take me a day in ten minutes. I worked and worked hard. And my family made money. We became rich in terms of what we thought was a lot. From then on, my mother began to lavish my ability and saved money to send me to a ninja school in a village far off.
I learned a lot then. New worlds of jutsu opened to me, and I embraced them easily. They came easily and I learned and taught myself. I excelled in classes and became a powerful ninja. I stayed for two years and finished my school. I was ten then. But then my father unexpectedly died. I returned home to take care of the family. I began to use what I had learned to make more money. I worked until my sixteenth birthday.
That was when time stopped for me. After that year, I stopped aging. I continued to work but I was stuck in time. I dated a few, but after a while I gave up. No one wanted to marry a man that would never age. My sister grew up and got married, but I remained sixteen. Biological years flew by, but I was still young. My sister had four children and they had children. My mother died quietly at the age of ninety two. I remained frozen. Then my sister began to grow old. It hurt me to watch for I remain as old as her grandchildren now.
“Hachi,” Arame said quietly on her death bed, “Hachi, you are going to be alone now.”
“Arame, please don’t talk like that,” I said.
“You are stuck in time Hachi. And I know why….I’m sorry…it was forbidden to talk about,” she said softly.
“What do you mean?” I asked caught between telling her to save her energy and wanting to know.
“You weren’t born here Hachi. I don’t even know where you were born. A ninja came and asked our family to take you in when you were so small. He was the same one that came to the village so long ago who taught you your first jutsus….Hachi there is something else. The ninja also said that you were Hachimata the snake demon. He said you would have no memory of anything and you would grow up normally and help us. And you did Hachi….”
Before she could finish, Arame, my sister, passed from the world of the living. Frozen in fear and pain at losing her, I transformed for the first time. It was my true form, and eight-headed eight-tailed snake. People ran in fear for their lives, and in my grief, I left that place forever seeking sanctuary in the mountains. There I trained with the understanding of what I was. There I learned what humans do to precious things. There I learned how much I disliked humans….”
“Hachi,” Raiju said, “Hachi…why didn’t you ever tell anyone?”
“I didn’t need to bother them,” I said, “or you for that matter….I’m ssssorry Raiju….I don’t know….why……”
“Hachi, you can’t just lock stuff like that up. I also lost someone close to me…..and it’s not good for your health to lock that kind of thing up,” Raiju.
“I sssshouldn’t have even told you….it wasssss sssuposssed to ssstay a sssecret….Why would it even come up now….”
“Hachi I can’t answer that,” Raiju answered.
“Why!???” I yelled. I elbowed Raiju and ran off further into the brush. The bells were still ringing in my ears.
