War, like a spreading wildfire, had finally burned to the edge of this woods.
About ten days had passed since Nagato awakened his Rinnegan.
That day, Yahiko went to scout the outskirts of the shrine as usual, and when he returned, his expression was a bit heavier than usual.
“There are people in the woods.”
Luna was repairing the edge of a shuriken, learning how to maintain weapons from the captured Ninja tools, and looked up upon hearing this: “What kind?”
“They don’t look like Ninja.” Yahiko squatted down and added a few pieces of firewood to the bonfire.
“More like… refugees. I saw a few simple sheds made of branches, and figures moving around in the bushes. I didn’t dare get too close for fear of being discovered.”
Refugees had already begun to push deeper into the woods.
This showed that the situation in the town was even worse than they had expected.
Over the next few days, they successively discovered more traces of refugee activities around the shrine.
Some people just passed by, dragging heavy footsteps deeper inside, while others stopped in the nearby woods, building crude shelters with branches and leaves.
For a time, this originally quiet woods became crowded.
Luna stood at the entrance of the shrine, looking at the faint wisps of cooking smoke rising from the distant bushes, unable to describe the feeling in her heart.
Those refugees, just like them, were people driven away and fleeing everywhere by the war.
The difference was that the four of them at least had a shrine that didn’t leak to live in, and had accumulated some Ninja tools and food.
And those refugees had nothing.
“Should we close the shrine’s doors?” Yahiko stood behind her, lowering his voice, “If someone discovers this place…”
“If they find it, just open the door,” Luna said.
Yahiko was slightly stunned.
Luna turned her head and looked at him: “We are refugees too. If one day, we reach a dead end and see a closed door, what would you think?”
Yahiko was silent for a moment.
On the evening of the third day, Luna found an old man in the woods east of the shrine.
He fell into the mud by the side of a path, his clothes tattered, and his whole body as thin as a bundle of firewood.
Luna squatted down and checked his breathing; he was still alive, but very weak.
She hesitated for a few seconds, then squatted down, placed one of the old man’s arms over her shoulder, and brought him back to the shrine almost by half-dragging and half-pulling.
Seeing Luna bring back a stranger, Yahiko was stunned for a moment, then said nothing and immediately stepped forward to help support the old man to the side of the bonfire.
Konan poured a bowl of warm water and carefully fed it to the old man.
Nagato took off the tattered coat he used to cover his legs and draped it over the old man.
The old man drank water and rested for a long time before recovering some strength.
He opened his eyes and saw the four children surrounding him.
A flash of complex emotions crossed his murky eyes—surprise, gratitude, and a trace of imperceptible bitterness.
“You…” His voice was as hoarse as sandpaper friction, “Did you save me?”
“Consider it so,” Yahiko squatted in front of him, “You fainted by the roadside, and Luna found you.”
The old man was silent for a long time, then slowly sat up, his gaze sweeping slowly across the four children, finally falling on Luna’s face, probably noticing the two almost identical faces of her and Konan.
“Whose children are you…?”
The four of them looked at each other, and no one answered.
Seeing their expressions, the old man was silent for a moment, then sighed.
“Orphaned as well…”
What the old man’s name was, he didn’t say.
He only said he fled from the west, originally an ordinary villager in a small Village.
After the war broke out, the Village was gone, leaving only him alone.
“My son was conscripted to be a Ninja.”
When he said this, his gaze looked at the bonfire, and his voice was very calm, “Before leaving, he told me, Dad, wait for me to come back. But I know he won’t come back.”
No one answered.
Luna sat in the corner, silently gripping that Kunai in the palm of her hand. Get faster updates on g.com.
The old man did not stay in the shrine for long.
After resting for a day and a night and recovering some physical strength, he prepared to leave.
Before leaving, he took out a polished thin bone needle and some tightly twisted linen thread from his bosom, placing them on the ground.
“I haven’t got much ability in my life, I only know how to do some rough work,” he said, “Keep this needle and thread. If your clothes are torn, you can patch them, and you can sew animal skins; sometimes it can save lives.”
Then he taught them a few very practical wilderness survival skills: how to twist strong ropes from tree bark, how to tell which mushrooms were edible and which would kill you if eaten, and how to boil water without a container.
Luna learned very attentively.
Before leaving, the old man looked back at them.
“You children…
it’s not easy to have survived until now,” he said, “but you can’t survive relying on just one or two people.
The four of you together must look out for one another.”
“We will, old man,” Yahiko smiled, his tone as sunny as ever, “Take care of yourself too.”
The old man said nothing more.
He turned around, leaning on a thick branch he had picked up, and slowly walked into the woods.
His thin and hunched figure was swallowed by the rain and mist, and soon disappeared from sight.
Luna stood at the entrance of the shrine, looking in that direction, silent for a long time.
She didn’t know if that old man could survive, how much farther he could walk, or under which tree he would eventually fall.
He was the first adult who reached out a hand to them after they came to this world.
That night, while organizing the bone needle and linen thread left by the old man, Luna found a small folded piece of paper underneath the linen thread.
She unfolded the paper, and a line of crooked words was written on it:
“Walk east, don’t look back.”
Luna held that piece of paper and looked at it for a long time.
Then she carefully folded the paper and tucked it into her bosom.