The Siblings

Chapter 3

I followed the black-haired woman and the piglet named Ton-Ton around the village, as they were leading me to the village's hospital. They finally stopped in front of a two-storey building surrounded by a tall fence. We entered the green doors of the building and Shizune led me through the hospital to the archive.

"Why is this place so deserted?" I asked, completely taken aback by the fact that there wasn't a single person all the way from the Hokage's office to the hospital.

Shizune answered without turning to me, walking through the halls with long strides. "Most of them our ninja are on missions, and the rest are probably just enjoying their day off somewhere else"

I nodded silently and followed her to the basement of the building, where she entered a dimly lit room with endless rows of shelves and drawers aligned carefully.

"Here's every documented activity this hospital has had in the last eighty years" Shizune explained. "Here are the files from sixteen years ago" she directed me to a row of drawers.

I nodded and started taking them apart, scanning every piece of paper carefully before putting it back where it came from.

Hours went by and I still couldn't find anything. I looked through everything. Pregnancy test results, birth certificates, nothing. I was starting to lose faith when something caught my eye. It was a thick folder labeled 'Deceased'. So I decided to scan through it as well.

I skimmed through the pages in the hopes of finding something. Every page was dedicated to one ninja that has lost his life that year. Nothing caught my eye until I reached the letter 'N'...well, a certain page in the 'N' section.

"Namikaze Minato" I read out loud.

I recalled something that Baki said earlier that day. 'Namikaze Minato, the Fourth Hokage' No wonder it seemed kind of familiar, so I read the content of the page. In the far right corner of the page, there was a picture of him. He had spiky yellow hair and a pair of astonishingly blue eyes. His life had been fast-paced, becoming a high-ranking shinobi and, eventually, the Hokage, at a young age. He served in the Third Shinobi War, had been in charge of a squad, and even started a family. When I reached to the family-box, however, I started wondering. It said, and I quote, Uzumaki Kushina – wife; Uzumaki Naruto – son; *blank* - daughter. This man had a missing daughter probably no one knew about. I made a mental note to tell Tsunade-sama about it and moved on.

Then I stopped again, this time at a page in the 'U' section.

"Uzumaki Kushina" again, I read out loud the name.

In the picture, there was this fiery red-headed woman with piercing blue eyes and a fierce gaze. I looked just like her. Reading the bio beneath the picture, I came across the same information. Namikaze Minato – husband; Uzumaki Naruto – son; *blank* - daughter. That meant she did not give birth inside the hospital, since no one knew the whereabouts of their daughter.

I put everything back where I took it out from and stomped out of the archive room, finding my way to the Hokage's office. And even though it was close to  midnight, Tsunade-sama was still buried deep within stacks of paperwork.

"Ah, I see you've finished your search. Have you found anything worthwhile, Naoto-chan?" she asked, lifting her head up, gazing at me with her big brown eyes.

I nodded. "Yes, but it's more of a curiosity..." I trailed off.

"Go on" the woman urged me and I gulped.

"Well" I started. "I found this deceased folder in the archive. And within it there were the files of two interesting shinobi: Namikaze Minato and Uzumaki Kushina. They were husband and wife and had two children, a son and a daughter. The part that threw me off was that there is no mention of the daughter. Was she not born in the hospital?" I asked.