Characters: OC: Hatake-Maito Nakano, and Ibiki
@kyu-pine @konoha-interrogation
Five hundred and seventy-five.
That’s how many books Nakano had poured through since her dad had shown her the first official fable that centered around her. She’d been so excited when he showed up at her river with a book in hand and told her that one of the mortal writers had finally put her story to paper.
She’d begged him to read it to her, and he hadn’t even tried to convince her to just read it herself. For two hours she’d laid beside the river with her head on her dad’s lap clinging to every word that he said.
Committing the story to memory.
She’d thought it would be enough, but when he was finished she found herself craving for more.
Poems, short stories, novels, essays. Even if it was only a small mention in a three-hundred-page book she always made sure to read it. At first, it had been a fun hobby. A little bit of reading while the world passed by around her had become a daily occurrence, and she’d loved every single thing she’d read.
Then, over time, a realization hit her.
There was something missing. A story about her life that wasn’t being told.
Fun reading turned to frantic searching as she tried to find that missing piece, but no matter how many books she read she never found that missing piece. It was as if the mortals had wiped it from reality.
“You’re angry,” glaring up from her book, she sighed when she saw her father standing in front of her. His arms were crossed over his chest and he stared down at her with a stern but worried expression. His usual long trench coat flapped in the wind that carried off of her river. “Is it time for a break from the book?”
“No,” snapping the book shut, she tossed it off to the side. From the corner of her eye, she saw it landing in the grass close by and she could hear her dad’s voice in her head scolding her for treating a book so terribly, but in the moment she didn’t care.
“If you’re not angry, then what is it?” he asked, still staring at her with calculating eyes. “Did Koji do something to upset you? Or Quinn?”
“Quinn is playing,” pointing toward the river, she watched as her father turned to see the spirit frolicking in the water with the river otters.
“He hasn’t done anything,” she assured him, not wanting to get her brother in trouble with their parents. Especially when the only complaint that she could make about him was that he hadn’t visited her in over a month.
“So if it’s not Quinn, and it’s not Koji, then what exactly is it that has you so upset?”
Glancing toward the book she’d so carelessly discarded, she sighed. “They don’t include you.”
“They don’t-” he shook his head. “sorry, what?” Nakano stared up at him with big round eyes, tears prickling at the edges. “No need for the puppy eyes. They don’t work on me.”
“Of course they don’t,” she huffed. “But I wasn’t using them to get anything, I just-” Throwing her hands up into the air she fell back against the grass with a grunt. As she stared up into the great blue abyss of the sky, she listened to her father’s footsteps.
Slow, careful steps that carried him all the way to her side, stopping when they were right beside him. “I didn’t think you were,” he spoke gently, the harshness that always seemed to stick to his voice vanishing as he took a seat beside her.
When she was younger she’d thought her father was perpetually angry. No matter what was going on around him he had that harshness in his voice, and at times it had scared her. As she got older though, she’d begun to realize that wasn’t the case at all.
Her father wasn’t angry at her or at anyone else. He just sounded that way. It was how his voice was, just like how her dad’s voice always seemed to carry a bored tone in it even when she could clearly see joy in his eyes.
The only time that harshness seemed to disappear from his voice was when he was alone with Nakano or Koji. When the rest of the world was far enough away that he could relax his shoulders and let down his guard just a little bit, that was when tenderness seeped into his words.
“They never include you,” she whispered, refusing to tear her eyes away from the bright blue sky. “No matter how many stories I read about myself, they never mention you.”
Closing her eyes, she clenched her teeth she tightly that her jaw immediately began to ache.“But they mention others!”
“Dad, Koji, Papa, Grandpa, heck they even mention Quinn!” in the distance Nakano could hear Quinn calling out, asking if she needed her, but she simply lifted her left hand and waved her off. The last thing she wanted was for Quinn to quit playing just to listen to her complain. “The stories talk about all of the people around me except for you. It’s-”
“Rude,” she finally forced the word out. “It’s downright cruel. How can they write about me and not include you? They include you in all of the stories about Koji, and they even have stories about your relationship with Dad, so why are you left out of my stories?”
Turning her head to the side, she stared up at her father with tired eyes. After weeks of searching and hoping to find something, even if it was just a small mention of the bond she had with her father, she’d come up empty. There wasn’t a single line or word that even hinted at his existence in her life.
“Do they really need to include me?”
His words hit like a hurricane. They washed away her anger in a crushing wave and left nothing in their wake except emptiness. All this time she’d struggled to understand why one of the most important people in her life was being so blatantly ignored in the stories mortal writers created about her, but now it all seemed to come together.
The mortals hadn’t written about him because they didn’t see what he meant to him. How could they if even he didn’t seem to understand?
“Yes,” tears gathered in her eyes, threatening to spill over into a flood of emotions. “Of course they do! Why wouldn’t they include you when you’re one of my dads!?”
A hand reached out toward her and came down into her hair with a gentle thump. “What I meant was, why does it matter?” he continued. “The stories mortals create are for their entertainment, and half the time they’re wrong. To this day they still claim that the water lily was my creation and we both know that’s not true.”
Wiping away the tears, she sighed. “I know, but it just feels wrong,” she whispered. “This isn’t about a creation they’re attributing to the wrong person, and at least with the water lily it is kind of yours,” even if he hadn’t created it himself, it had been created for him. Mortals had simply misattributed it to him rather than completely ignoring its existence in his life. “I mean, if anyone should be whipped away from my history-”
A hand came down hard over her mouth, silencing the rest of her sentence.
“Don’t,” he warned, a terrifying anger in his voice that she’d never heard directed at her before. “There are some words you cannot take back.”
Her shoulders slumped. There was a truth to his warning, but part of her didn’t care.
What harm could it do to point out the truth? It wasn’t as if she was hurting her Papa by saying it. He would never know.
After all, he was mortal.
He died, came back, and died again. Over and over again she’d watched her dad fall into the same trap of falling for a man who would continue to die, and every single time she’d been forced to stand off to the side as her dad’s heart was broken all over again.
There were parts of him inside of her and she could see it just by looking into her reflection in the river’s water, but he wasn’t a part of her life. He hadn’t raised her. It was never him wiping away her tears when she cried, or telling him how proud he was of her.
If he’d had the chance she was certain he would be a great father, just as he had been for all of her half-siblings, but it wasn’t meant to be. She was a goddess and he was a mortal.
The only thing he did for her was break her heart, just as he always did with her dad.
Feeling her father’s hand against her cheek, she leaned into the touch without hesitation and closed her eyes as the fiery warmth sizzled against her damp, cold skin. It was a strange sensation, much like a flame bubbling and sputtering against water, but one that she had come to associate with comfort.
“What the mortals write about us is only part of our story,” he spoke softly, the anger that had taken over his voice just moments ago completely evaporated. “If they are missing something that we consider important, it does not matter.”
“What matters,” he continued in a hushed voice. “Is what we know. If those stories do not include me, that is their loss. They are the ones missing a part of your story. A treasure that you can hold close to your chest, guarding it from their misunderstandings.”
Grabbing hold of the hand that he’d pressed against her face, she closed her eyes. The anger was still, bubbling in the deepest pits of her stomach, but for the moment she ignored it.
There was nothing she could do to change the books that had already been written, and she had no interest in inserting herself into the mortal realm just to correct them about the missing piece of her family.
If they were too blind to see how important her father was to her life, it was their loss. They were the ones missing out on hundreds of stories that would call out to all of the children who had a third, or even fourth, parent in their lives.
At the end of the day, she still had three parents.
Her papa, who didn’t even know she existed.
Her dad, who loved to read her stories and would always bring her gifts from his visits with her papa.
And her father. The one who always seemed to know when she needed a comforting hug or firm words to pull her through a slump.
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