A Kawaki Mini-Fic

The first taste he remembers is that of his father’s liquor, the acrid burn swimming around his teeth, numbing his tongue, stinging the back of his throat.

He’d spit the clear liquid out all over the top of their rough table, gawking at the blue glass bottle in utter disgust.

Couldn’t have been older than three… maybe four years old.

Looked so much like water that he thought it’d soothe his parched throat in the middle of the night rather than opening their back door and tottering out into the blackness, around the back of the house to the big barrel that caught rainwater dripping off their roof.

Disgust was quickly exchanged for fear when he heard his father stirring in his room, the light of his candle casting a line of light beneath the old man’s door.

The cold smell of booze stung his nose and even though he knew he’d never get it time, he tripped over himself scurrying to the raggedy towel balled up on their counter to wipe up evidence of his mistake.

His father slapped him so hard that the second taste he remembers is that of the blood that flooded his mouth as he was hauled into the woodshed, the sound of the heavy bar being dropped into place.

It was the last thing he tasted for two days.

Curled up on the cold dirt floor, he listened to his father curse his name. He held his hand to his throbbing cheek, hot and pink, the ragged inside of his mouth where his teeth had torn his flesh, and he knew he deserved the pain.

After all, he was a bad son.

His father failed to tell the monk who came to their door with a case of money a few years later that he was selling him something defective, something empty: A bad son.

Kawaki followed the monk through the long tunnel leading away from their tiny hidden town. A new world reflected in the boy’s steel-colored eyes as they walked into a village, a true village, with vendors lining the square.

“Get something to eat,” the monk told Kawaki, his voice sonorous and deep. A pool of sound, dragging you down so low you could never escape.

He’d never been told to choose something before. Never had anything he owned before that very week when the monk handed him a goldfish in a plastic bag, which he still hugged closely to his chest.

The smells were overwhelming, fried dough, pungent sauces, fishy cakes, but when he’d began to walk towards a stand selling tri-colored rice flour confections on sticks—he never new food could be cute before—the monk had stopped him.

“Your teeth will rot out of your head,” the monk said, and bought him onigiri instead. He stared at the throng of happy children chewing dango with perfectly intact teeth, but who was he to complain?

He ate the rice balls happily. Rice balls he didn’t have to cook himself after picking out the writhing ivory-colored worms that worked their way into every sack of food in their pantry.

They were salty and strange, the green squares holding them together tasting like something he would identify as the ocean only years later. Inside were little pink sour fruits—Plums the monk told him.

Even his rice balls contained secret surprises.

When they arrived at the hideout, the whole miraculous world he’d just been introduced to was sucked away.

In a dark room, cold stone floor, cold walls, colder men, he curled naked up in a bag so much like his goldfish had been, suspended from the ceiling.

Time had no meaning. Life had no dignity.

A steady drip of nutritional paste was fed down his throat, the occasional burps tasting like the sandy bottom of a riverbed.

He tried not to open his eyes, day by day the children in the other bags going slack, floating to to the top, then being taken away.

After the pain of Karma’s successful implantation washed over him, he thought that perhaps he was free when the old man with the white beard and orange glasses hoisted him down.

But he was about to enter a different kind of hell.

Jigen, the monk, bid him to come to him frequently. To stand at the far edge of the long table in the hideout’s dining room, watching his new father cut off pieces of barely-cooked steak, pink blood pooling on his plate, the wine in his glass deep red.

Kawaki’s mouth watered even as his knees shook.

Meat.

Red meat, too.

Would he ever be allowed such luxuries?

His sustenance came in the form of thick, chalky drinks that the bearded scientist Amado made for him. No flavor. No sweetness. Just perfectly balanced nutrients for his growing body. Nourishment, not food.

One day after training with Jigen had left him bloodied and bruised, another session of proving what a shitty son he turned out to be, Kawaki dragged himself through the hideout, towards the lab to have his wounds tended.

But a smell reached his nose before he got to the lab.

Sneaking near the shadows, he turned down a long hall and peered through a door to see that blonde bitch bent over a frying pan as though glaring at it could make it cook faster.

That night, long after everyone was asleep, he slinked through the cold hallways, back to the kitchen, and gorged himself on everything he found in the refrigerator.

Still doesn’t know how Jigen found out. Maybe it was that red-headed bastard.

But the following morning during training, Jigen beat his stomach with a long metal rod. Over and over until he’d thrown up everything he’d eaten, the only taste in his mouth was that of puke.

Chocolate.

Lord Seventh called it chocolate, the creamy brown paste filling the sweet fish-shaped dough.

He’d never tasted chocolate or anything like it. It was nutty and sweet, sticking to every surface in his mouth. Even when he swallowed, the flavor lingered on his tongue.

Kawaki liked chocolate.

That morning, Lord Seventh’s wife had looked at her with her big opal eyes and asked what he wanted for supper, but he had no answer. Now, he knew he liked chocolate.

And, when evening came, she carried a big, round hotpot to the Uzumaki family dinner table, its surface smooth and unscratched. He was invited to help himself, pick what foods he chose to eat.

“You want to ask me a question?” Lord Seventh looked up from the paperwork spread out on the desk in his study a few days later.

Kawaki’s eyes went wide, then softened as he realized he’d been caught. “You… don’t hit, do you? You and Boruto are always like that?”

He thought it’d been a private conversation, one that led him to begin training to be a shinobi. It wasn’t until a few weeks later when he was helping Hinata carry dishes to the sink that he found out there were no secrets between spouses.

His toe caught on the lip between the dining room and the kitchen, damned thing he hadn’t gotten used to yet after living in a new house. He stumbled, grabbing onto the counter to keep from falling.

Down crashed white bowls, uneaten rice falling among the shards.

(How decadent, not to have finished every single grain)

Hinata spun around, a look of shock on her delicate features, and, on instinct, Kawaki cowered back, hands going in front of his face.

Whatever distress she’d felt from the broken bowls dissolved into frantic panic as she rushed to him, her bare feet crunching over the bits of porcelain without flinching.

“Dear, no,” she said, her warm hands grabbing onto his wrists, pulling his arms down to look him steadily in the eye.

“No,” she said again, eyes boring into him as though she was trying to share something she couldn’t say with words, a distant sadness from her own past, put behind her but not forgotten. “No, that won’t happen here.”

Three plates are arranged on the Uzumaki kitchen table, the smell of frying hamburger steak wafting through the house. Kawaki stares into Lord Seventh’s wide blue eyes. Usually so confident, so caring.

Even now, when the realization of what his adopted son is saying washes over him, he looks more lost than mad. Like an innocent puppy sitting on the train tracks, not moving despite the whistle loudly blowing.

“Do you know what my first thought was… when I found out that Boruto was alive…” he continues, hearing Hinata’s footsteps rounding the table. But, she’s not the one he’s here to talk to. The one who has to understand.

“I felt a sort of guilt… over having messed up. It actually surprised me. But this time, I swear—”

The open-handed slap cracks his face back.

He sensed it was coming. Knew it was coming. As the heated sting spreads across his cheek, he remembers what he’s always known: He’s a bad son.

He turns to the Hinata, Lord Seventh holding her back from getting close to him again. “You’re insane,” she screams, hot tears leaking from her horrified eyes.

The chair creaks as he pushes back from the table, turning to stare her right in the eye. “You’re right,” he says. “Only a crazy person could kill their own brother.”