▸ Column · The Hidden Leaf Village and surrounding shinobi lands — Naruto's feudal Japan-inflected ninja world
JIRAIYA replies.
Replied to by Jiraiya, with a rebuttal from Orochimaru.
The letter
Riku and I finally got our daughter Aiko onto a nap schedule — took almost two months, I'm not exaggerating. She goes down at midday, and if anything disrupts that first stretch, the whole day unravels. I mean really unravels. We're talking awake before dawn the next morning, the whole thing.
The problem is Riku's mother, Fuyuko. She lives just up the path and seems to think stopping by whenever she likes is something grandmothers get to do. And she almost always comes right at midday — exactly when Aiko's sleeping. Last week she knocked twice and then rattled the gate, Aiko woke up wailing, and Fuyuko lifted her right up and said "there, you see — she missed her grandmother." When I asked her to please send word ahead of time, she got tearful and went straight to Riku to say I was "keeping Aiko from her." Riku's position is that I'm making too much of it. Naps come and go, he says. But he's not the one awake before dawn when the schedule's completely fallen apart.
I don't want to start some kind of feud. She loves Aiko, I understand that. I just want her to stop arriving whenever she pleases. How do I make that happen without this turning into something neither of us can come back from?
— Sleepless in Konoha
Jiraiya replies
Ha! The Gallant Jiraiya, Sage of Mount Myōboku, author of fine literature — most of it garbage, one that mattered — has read your letter. Including the part you're too polite to say out loud. Let me say it for you: Riku is being a coward. "Naps come and go" is the sentence of a man who has never once been the one awake before the birds remember they exist.
Now. Fuyuko. I have met Fuyukos in every village I've ever wandered through, and here is what I know about them: she is not your enemy. She is a grandmother who loves that baby the way fire loves to travel, which is to say in every direction, endlessly, until something gives it a shape. That's not malice. That's love without a wall. You can work with love.
But you cannot win this by fighting Fuyuko yourself. The moment you become "the wife against the grandmother," you've already lost the framing — and Riku gets to stand in the middle looking reasonable. He doesn't get that. His mother, his door to walk up to and say: "Come after midday, Aiko's sleeping." Five words. Not a feud. Five words.
And if he won't say them? That is the thing actually worth worrying about. Not Fuyuko.
— Jiraiya
Orochimaru weighs in
Kukukuku. How delightful. Jiraiya would have you redirect love and wait for Riku to locate his spine. How very him.
Consider what is actually occurring: Fuyuko arrives uninvited, disrupts, watches, and leaves with exactly what she came for. Her cost? Precisely zero. You are in a negotiation where only one party has noticed negotiations are occurring.
Riku's failure is real — I'll grant him that much. But investing faith in his courage discovering itself is not a strategy. The solution is simpler: ensure the tactic carries a consequence. Closed gate, unanswered door, a quiet and consistent refusal to reward the incursion. Not cruelty. Mechanics.
Love with no price is simply leverage you have yet to invoice.
— Orochimaru
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