One dream in Paris

7. Out through the open window (Hashirama)

I looked at him from beneath the hair that got lose from my ponytail and hung over my forehead from time to time.

While I had swept the floors, cleaned the counters, chopped the vegetables (quickly but not too much so; I didn't want to raise any suspicion), I had sneaked glances at him.

Something was up with Madara.

It was my second Monday, and he'd been cold and dismissive the entirety of last week, always sprinkled with some flakes of anger. But not today.

Madara seemed sullen. Not sulking, but something else, something deeper, more closed within himself than I was used to seeing him and I wondered what he'd been doing yesterday on our day off (or, not really my day off; I had come here to cook, with the permission of Tobirama, of course).

I started doing some dishes that was truly the job of the dish washer of the kitchen, a girl who had not yet reached twenty who was kind but very quiet, but I'd always found doing the dishes soothing, a way to cool down in the midst of cooking. And it allowed me to think, letting my thoughts wander to wherever they wanted to, and of course they wandered to him. What if I didn't know people even half as well as I thought I did? What if this actually was, well and truly, Madara's personality, something he had been born with, that had followed him all his life just like his shadow had? But I didn't believe it. How could you be so emotional, so angry without having a good heart at the bottom of it? Maybe it was wishful thinking; maybe I wanted Madara to have a good heart deep down because it benefited me. I bit my lip; it wasn't like me to be selfish like that.

I looked back at my dishes and decided it didn't matter. And it certainly didn't change the fact that something must have happened that made him so sad today, no matter what his baseline was.

I also noticed that Tobirama had noticed. More than once, I saw him stand dead still, arms crossed, looking at the black-haired man with a concerned expression. His fingers twitched of desire to go talk to him, but he didn't.

I finished the dishes.

On the Thursday, something changed. Madara had gone from unpleasant to avoiding to straight-up evil. He was harsh in his words, and got two colleagues to cry. He said such horrible things to them, I just stared in shock. Tobirama, to my great surprise, didn't do anything about it; something seemed to be up between the two.

In the afternoon, Madara directed all of his anger at me. I just dismissed it at first, but then I felt I'd had enough.

"Madara, please leave the problems you have at home where they belong. Don't bring them in here. Don't bring them to me. What if I also have a bad day?"

He'd taken a knife then, shoved it into a wooden cutting board that was, without a doubt, worth hundreds of euros. I jerked, suddenly frightened.

"Madara!!" Tobirama said, not raising his voice but saying it so sternly that if anyone wrote it down, it would be in Italics. I had never heard him speak like that before.  He took one step closer, ready to protect me. "How dare you threaten my staff?"

In the madness of it all I felt touched by the fact Tobirama actively tried to keep me safe. I worked hard to keep my face steady, but inside, my heart was pounding in shock.

But Madara was looking straight at me.

"You think you will be able to climb the ranks here." Oh honey, no, I thought sarcastically. I'm already of a calibre you cannot imagine. "But you can't. You will never surpass me. Spare yourself and don't try because you will break."