The Beauty of Imperfection

Chapter Two

Sensei wasn't in his resident hospital room.

I felt a brief moment of alarm and spun around, ready to call for a nurse or doctor. Then I give a sharp shake of my head, internally scolding myself. What would that help? I would search for him myself before creating a panic over a missing patient.

Taking a deep breath, I reach out my senses, searching for chakra signatures. While I wasn't particularly gifted at tracking and recognizing chakra I could do it as well as most anyone who didn't have a kekkai genkai or specialty in that area.

I wouldn't know Sensei's chakra signature, having never felt and memorized it before, but I was fairly confident that if he was nearby I would be able to find him. Stretching out, I immediately sense the nurse outside the room. I reach further, and gasp when the largest and brightest chakra I had ever sensed came into my field of awareness. To be fair, I hadn't ever really tried to look at many people's chakra--even among ninja it was considered rude--but I could tell that this chakra was larger than most.

It was on the roof for some reason.

I poke my head out of the window and look up, immediately spotting a pair of legs dangling over the side. Any doubt that it was Sensei left me. Departing the room, I hurry up the stairs to the roof. Amazement courses through me: he must have been mostly inactive in any ninja duty or training for almost two years, and yet he had a spectacularly bright chakra signature.

I burst through the door that led to the roof, spotting him almost immediately; he was sitting on the edge of the roof. Feeling slightly more hesitant than I would have liked, I meander over. I stand just to his left but he doesn't bother to glance at me. Without invitation, I join him on the edge.

"Fuzen," he greets, turning his head to regard me.

My mouth twitches slightly but I can't quite bring it to a smile. "Sensei," I murmur. The moment is oddly removed from the world, full of nostalgia and regret and hopes and doubts.

Sensei, of course, is the one to break it. "Fuzen, have you ever watched the path of the moth? I mean, really watched it? How it meanders along at night, looking for light after light, only to often be burned by it's source of comfort and warmth and protection? It's oddly beautiful, don't you agree? And then--"

I blink in surprise, missing his next few sentences. I come back and he talks about moths? I study him closely, wondering if this was one of his "good" days. I felt something break, and I realized that some part of me, no matter how small, had wished for Sensei to have returned to normal. To be the steadfast, unbreakable shinobi that I knew so well yet didn't know at all.

"Fuzen. Fuzen, are you listening to me at all?"

I'm jerked back to reality by Sensei's childish whine. For the first time in nearly one year I found myself suspiciously close to tears.

"Yeah," I reassure him softly. "Yeah, I'm listening."

Sensei doesn't start talking again, opting instead to study me with cloudy blue eyes-- so different from the once clear and sharp ones that could call you out on any lie from a mile away. "You left, Fuzen," he suddenly seems to recall. "You went away."

"Yeah," I concede quietly.

He furrows his eyebrows. "You didn't say goodbye."

I closed my eyes briefly. Why did this have to be so painful? "No," I admit, barely more than a whisper.

"Why not?"

Because I'm weakweakweakcowardscaredweak--

"Fuzen!" Sensei's eyes clear suddenly and he smiles. I'm caught off-guard, realizing that I'd remained silent for far too long. "Welcome back," he finally says with another grin.