Naruto Shippuden: girl from whirlpools

A wedding & A Funeral

Chapter Eleven: A Wedding and a Funeral

Minato wasn't sure how he could have gotten through the next few days without Kushina, and this was perhaps the difference in her that left him most in awe.

Although she offered to let him sleep over at her place initially, Minato sensed the reluctance in her voice and decided not to foist himself on her inconveniently. He guessed she wasn't perfectly at ease around him yet, but once it was decided that he would be renting a room out, she showed herself up to be the human incarnation of organisation. She counted the funds from his father's money box after he'd eventually pulled it out from a cupboard, and had taken him straight to a pub which offered rented rooms that would suit his economic needs perfectly, balancing maximum comfort with affordability. When Minato asked just how she'd come to be so well versed with Konoha's temporary accommodation, she admitted to him that after she'd left the social centre, she had bounced around between hotels and inns for quite a few months before she'd come to an arrangement with Mikoto.

And when Minato had told her that he wasn't sure where he was supposed to start making arrangements for his father, she told him it was not as complicated as he probably thought, and then proceeded to give him the run-down of a set of complicated tasks, most of which he forgot by the time she got to the bottom of the list. He was quite glad she stayed with him to search his house for the will, and was there to drag him off to the village undertaker. Minato mostly stood back and let her wrangle the details out and argue the price of a ceremony with simple trimmings down to something that his money box would cover. If ever the undertaker suspected he was being out-manoeuvred and tried to talk the price back up, Kushina just angry pointed back at Minato and said, "Does he look like he's made of money to you?" before reminding him that Minato was a village hero who had taken down one of the seven swordsman. Although, Minato didn't know if she was telling him this to impress him or implying some kind of threat.

Minato wondered where this confidence in her had come from. He could guess that she had been involved with other funerals, especially if her sensei had not been very together after his wife's death, as her letters had inferred. This forthrightness astonished him. She had always been a little like that, but Minato could see that she could take care of herself better than people three times her age could. Having lost her parents and spent so much time alone, maybe it was a matter of necessity to be so devastatingly competent, because although Minato had managed without his parents all his life, he had always had people to rely on – his sensei, his adoring academy teachers, his adoring friends, his smitten (though sometimes murderous) commanding officers. They told him what to do, where to go, did him favours, offered him food and money and a place to sleep when he had none. He knew that once again he was relying on Kushina the same way he relied on them.

He envied her a little, that she'd learned how to cope with life while he'd grown up on the edge of the world, hiding from it.

Outside the undertaker's office, she handed all the paperwork to him, as if he had even the faintest idea of what it all meant. "That's that," she said with finality. "Remember, the funeral will be the day after tomorrow at ten. You may want to talk to an administrator at the Hokage tower about the will. Looks like your dad didn't update it after you were born, and he's left everything to some distant nephew or whatever. I don't know if you can do anything about that, but maybe there's some legal loophole that will allow you to keep something. Oh, and go to the bank. I saw some statements at your house for an account in your name, so your dad kept some savings aside for you at least, probably from all your missions and your military wages."

"Right." Minato thought he should be writing this down on his hand. All he could really think about was the ceremony in two days time. "Are you... going to come?"