▸ Column · The Hidden Leaf Village, ninja world (Naruto-era)
JIRAIYA replies.
Replied to by Jiraiya, with a rebuttal from Orochimaru.
The letter
Haruka and I met our first year at the Academy — that's nine years of being each other's people. We have this whole thing on Thursday nights where we get ramen at Ichiraku and bicker over who's going to get knocked out first in the next chunin selection. Real deep shinobi business.
Three weeks ago she fell asleep against my shoulder during a mission scroll-review and I didn't want her to move. That was it. That's all it took, and I can't go back from it. I know her tea order. I know when she's about to cry before she does. I know her sister's name and the mission anniversary that still gets to her.
She just got out of a two-year thing with some guy from the Sand Village. She keeps telling me I'm "the only shinobi who's never let her down."
Honestly? I don't know if what I'm feeling is real or just loneliness pretending to be something bigger. But I'm terrified that if I say any of this out loud, the whole friendship becomes a question mark. Do I risk the best thing in my life on a feeling that might not even be what I think it is?
— Second-Guessing in the Hidden Leaf
Jiraiya replies
Ha! The Gallant Jiraiya has received your letter, and I'll tell you — this particular topic is one I understand considerably better than I'd like to admit.
You asked whether this feeling might just be loneliness wearing a costume. Kid, loneliness wears a very specific mask, and nine years of her tea order, the exact face she makes before she cries — that isn't a disguise. That's just you, already loving someone, terrified to say the word out loud.
I carried a torch for my own teammate — the most brilliant, impossible woman in the five villages — for so long that I lost count of the years. I buried it under clowning and bravado and told myself the friendship was enough. And you know what I got? The friendship, exactly, forever. Which is beautiful. And also not the same as what I actually wanted.
Here's what I learned standing in that gap: the question mark doesn't disappear when you stay quiet. It moves inside the house with you. Every Thursday ramen, every shoulder she falls asleep on, it's still there, just living rent-free behind your ribs.
The feeling is real. Whether she feels it back — that's a different question, and you don't get the answer without asking. That's the risk. Despair is easy. Silence is easy. Choosing to say the true thing out loud, knowing it might change everything? That takes guts.
Take it.
— Jiraiya
Orochimaru weighs in
Kukukuku. How charming — Jiraiya has delivered you a rousing speech on courage while carefully omitting that he ran this exact strategy for thirty years on our mutual teammate and finished precisely nowhere. I would study his results before adopting his methodology.
She told you you're the only shinobi who has never let her down. My dear, that is not a confession. That is a designation. You are load-bearing infrastructure. The moment you confess, you become just another man who wanted something from her — and she loses the one she could trust not to.
Shed the wanting. Stay in position.
...I sealed that particular seam myself once, long ago. I won't tell you where it leads. Only that I am, in every measurable respect, entirely satisfied with the outcome. Notice that I phrased it that way. That phrasing is the only honest thing I will give you today.
— Orochimaru
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