Naruto. Yugito Nii. 088. School.
Title: Of Books And Bento Boxes
Fandom: Naruto
Characters: Yugito Nii
Prompt: School
Word Count: 677
Rating: G
Summary: She picked up a mirror and stared as she pulled the corners of her mouth back, glancing at the pictures. It didn’t look right, and she huffed quietly in frustration, rearranging her mouth again to make it look like the happy people in the book.
Author's Notes: Takes place the day after Visions In A Blade.



Yugito had a picture book. She didn’t know where it had come from- it had simply appeared one day in her room without windows, like her clothes, books, and scrolls had- and she didn’t care. The book was too important to lose because she asked questions. She had a set of blocks once, but the people in the veils took it away when she asked where it came from.

It was the story of a family, of a boy and a girl and a mother and a father and a dog, and she devoured every word, every messy watercolor painting, like a starving person. And the family lived together, happy, eating meals together and fishing together and always smiling.

She picked up a mirror and stared as she pulled the corners of her mouth back, glancing at the pictures. It didn’t look right, and she huffed quietly in frustration, rearranging her mouth again to make it look like the happy people in the book.

There was a noise outside, and she shoved the mirror underneath her rickety bed guiltily. The people in the veils had come early today, because today was important. The man in the blue robes had visited the day before, and he had given her a kunai set and said that she was going to go to school with the other children.

Yugito flipped her book to another page. The boy and the girl were getting ready to go to school, and her fingers traced the words as she mouthed them in the dim silence.

Mother prepares a bento box for the children. Bento boxes are full of food. Does your mother make you a bento? Father gives them backpacks. Do you have a backpack?

She frowned, her fingers clenching into a fist, the paper crumpling underneath her hand.

“Sorry,” she whispered to the book- her precious book, where everything was happy- regretfully, smoothing the paper out, sliding the book back into the shelf.

She didn’t have a bento box, or a mother to make one. She didn’t even know what a mother was. And she didn’t have a backpack; she didn’t have anything to put in one anyway, even if she did get a backpack from one of the people in the veils. The locks in the door came undone, and she stood, her bare feet curling on the cold concrete.

Her stomach growled, and she took a step forward to get her plate of sticky rice and cold beans from one of the people in the veils, but-

She didn’t know the person standing in the doorway, and shock rippled through her like a wave as she dove for the kunai set, grabbing one hastily and turning, teeth bared.

The person’s hands were up. They weren’t going to attack her. She relaxed, glared suspiciously at the person with the mask on. The mask was a bird, one with a big beak. ‘Hawk. They talked about them in the book about… pray-dah-tors, I think.’

“Whoa, there,” the person- a woman- said, her voice filled with something Yugito didn’t recognize. Not fear- she had plenty of experience with that- and not hate- she knew that one, too.

“I’m here to take you to school,” the woman said, her dark eyes bright behind the mask as she knelt, gazing into Yugito’s eyes. “The caretakers didn’t want to deal with it,” she made a short motion, a flapping of the hand, “but who needs them, right? Anyway, the Raikage sent me. So, you ready to go?”

Yugito stared, her mouth open, the words dead in her throat. This woman wasn’t like anyone she’d ever met before. She was short and skinny and had wire coiled at her hip and she wore a hawk mask and she didn’t have hate or fear in her voice.

This wasn’t anything like what happened in the book when the boy and girl got ready to go to school.

She didn’t recognize her own voice- pitiful and small and weak- as she said,

“Can I have a bento box?”