Rage and Reassurance (1)

The boat ride was truly one of the most pleasant experiences I had had since coming to this world. Not only for the colors of the magnificent sunset reflecting across the water, but the purity of the air and the emptiness of the vast ocean brought a calming effect to one's heart.

At the same time, however, I was unable to truly enjoy this little taste of life on the ocean due to the pressuring weight of our current objective. I had no idea when Haku's mother would be killed, so I could only hope that we were going to arrive in time to save her. On top of that, a slight anxiety had arisen in the back of my mind as I was once again unsure of the current condition of my mother.

The boat ride ended up being on those odd experiences that feels both too fast, and also too slow. Even as I wanted to savor this seemingly unique peaceful experience, I felt an urgency to hasten onwards.

After a little less than two hours or so, we arrived on shore of the northern island. There was almost no light left in the sky by then, and from the rapidly decreasing amount of activity on the docks, it seemed we had managed to catch one of the last remaining boats going all the way to the island.

The village we arrived at was remarkably similar in scale, appearance and atmosphere to the one we had departed from across the ocean. After thanking the sailors, we jumped off the boat and headed into the village, looking for a restaurant or tavern of some sort where we could gather information.

...................

An hour later, we were heading out of the village in a northeastern direction. Although no one we spoke to remembered Haku or his mother specifically, they were able to direct us to the nearest farming village.

According to mom, Haku's family should be in the nearest farming village. The last time she had spoken to Nayumi was a couple of years ago, but that was the last thing she had heard. All we could do was hope the Nayumi and her husband hadn't decided to move any farther up the island after settling here initially.

After walking some distance away from the village as normal civilians would, we broke out into a full on ninja dash towards the farming village. I had to admit it felt kinda cool. Slightly cringey. But cool nonetheless. It was also more literally getting cool, with a light snow having begun to fall around us at some point.

We had been told the village was around an hours distance away on foot. It appeared in our sight within the next twenty minutes. Slowing back down to normal walking speeds, we decided to simply enter the village and ask around about Haku's family.

But things were not as we expected when we entered the village.

There were no people on the outskirts of the village. Instead, a clamor of angry shouts and calls for blood could be heard from a large grouping of people in the village center. I jumped onto the roof of a nearby house and silently crept froward to better understand what was going on. The others followed my lead, approaching from different directions.

There was a small square in the center of the village. A man with medium length black hair stood grimly on a crate in the middle of the square, with a mass of angry and scared villagers surrounding him.

"Everyone. We will attack at dawn, when they are still asleep. They will have a chance of escaping under the cover of darkness if we attack now. We need to plan this... That b*tch could actually be a powerful shinobi for all we know with the kekkei genkai she's been hiding for all these years..."

'Shit. It's happening now!? We have to get to them quickly.'

The villagers were irrational in their hate and fear, muttering about she had probably been planning on slaughtering the entire village all along and that the village must be purified of the sin of sheltering a kekkei genkai possessor. Their blind hate and fear was frightening. I truly did not want to know what had happened in this land for their to be such a strong hatred towards kekkei genkai clans.

At the same time, I felt an even more intense rage growing inside me. Nayumi had lived here for seven years now, and never done anything to these people. Yet, they would ruthlessly slaughter her and her son just for possessing a bloodline she could not even chose?

But that wasn't the worst part. The man rallying and organizing everyone from the crate in the center, was Nayumi's husband. Haiku's father. I felt an intense desire to kill that man. What kind of disgusting pig would kill their own wife and son because of their bloodline? Did he not remember the years they had spent together? The years of love Nayumi had shown him?

For some reason, images of my own father began surfacing in my mind, compounding my hatred for this scum that would kill his own family. It seemed as if he was going against everything I held in my heart, tarnishing the image of my father in some way. He did not deserve to be alive. People like my father should be alive instead. I would rectify half of this problem at dawn tomorrow.

But Haku needed to see the true face of this world. Needed this experience to grow. And Nayumi needed to see this so that I could convince her to leave with us. As much as I hated knowingly allowing this to happen to Haku, I would allow things to play out a little farther before intervening.

I motioned to Kirihara and the others that we should regroup outside the village, and jumped down from the little house I had been perched on. There was no need to try and find out where Haku's house was. The angry and fearful gazes the villagers constantly threw towards the east were more than enough for me to know.

I stopped under a tree just outside the village, the others arriving soon after.

"We need to hurry over to Nayumi's house. The villagers have somehow discovered that she's a member of the Yuki clan. And you all heard how they plan on reacting."

Kirihara nodded gravely.

"The hatred for kekkei genkai users has reached an irrational extreme in certain parts of the Land of Water due to the wars of the past. Those villagers will not hesitate to kill both Nayumi and little Haku."

"They won't have the chance." My voice sounded cold even to my own ears.