Pakin opened the door to the inn and peeked his head outside. He looked left and immediately spotted Gera leaning casually against the side of the inn. The glow of a burning ember revealed a deep grimace and a pair of stormy eyes. She stayed like that for a moment, but as she blew a cloud of smoke into the wintry night air, the frustration seemed to fly away with it. Pakin moved fully out of the door and started towards her.

  Gera turned to look at him, a sad smile complementing the cigarette between her lips. “Hey, kiddo.” She said, pulling the cigarette from her mouth with one hand and tousling his hair with the other. Her touch was light, more a brush than her usual tousle, and when she finished, her hand didn’t leave his head.

  She left her hand like that for a good second before removing it and asking Pakin, “Lemme see how that doctor did.” Pakin lifted his chin and angled his face so she could see the sutures better. “Oooh yeah, that’s good. A handsome shinobi always has one or two scars on his face, so you’re ahead of the curve.” She reached out, as if to touch his wound, but pulled back instead.

  Pakin wasn’t sure what to say to her. They hadn’t known each other long; she was a completely different person from old Pakin’s babysitter, and Pakin was literally a different person inhabiting the body of a boy she used to know. Still, in all the time they’d traveled together, Pakin had never seen Gera lose her cool like that. Her every word and action, whether goofy or serious, always exuded a sense of control. Back in the inn, she looked nothing like that.

  “Wanna see mine?” Pakin snapped out of his thoughts as Gera asked him the question. “I got a lot of them healed up when I became a Chunin. It cost a pretty penny, too, but I was practically covered in the things.” She chuckled, “Working with blades means you end up getting cut a lot more than other people, and that leaves its fair share of scars.” She motioned to herself and said, “I did tell them to leave a few, though. The special ones. Those I can show you.”

  He’d never really considered it, but Gera had been a shinobi for a long time, and he knew she’d seen combat. So, in hindsight, it made sense that she’d at least have some.

  “Yeah.” He told her. “How many did you keep?”

  “Five. One for each year since I left Fuwayama.” She pulled her left pant leg past her knee and pointed at a short, thick, pale line at the bottom of her thigh. “This one’s from when I was first learning to wield a katana. Stabbed myself trying to do a backwards jab. Horribly impractical move, by the way, I mostly did it cause I thought it would look cool.”

  Pakin chuckled at the story, but grabbed at his stomach when it started to hurt. Gera dropped her pant leg and moved towards him as if to catch him. He waved her off and said, “It’s okay, just sore.”

  Pakin could see she looked visibly upset, but once again, she did her best to wipe it away and keep her outward mood light.

  Gera nodded and lifted her right sleeve, pulling the chain mesh underneath along with it, to reveal two gnarly scars. One crossed her entire bicep in a jagged line leading to her shoulder, and the other was a puckered-looking star on her forearm. She pointed to her bicep first and said, “This one was from a bandit. I overextended on a slash, and he made me pay for it with his scimitar. Started wearing my mesh after that mission.” Moving down her arm, she pointed at the star-shaped scar, and twisted her forearm around to show that it went through to the other side. “This one is from a stiletto dagger. You’ll learn about it in the academy, but shinobi from Kumo tend to use a lot of lightning jutsu, and also tend to be blade users. Put the two together, and you get a lightning-covered dagger in your arm.”

  Pakin remembered a bunch of different people being able to do the same thing in the anime, but he’d never thought about how bad it’d hurt to actually get stabbed by something like that. He also realized how much damage a move like that could do, it’s like jabbing someone with a live power cable.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Pakin asked Gera, “That’s crazy, how can you still move your hand? Wouldn’t the lightning fry your nerves and burn your arm?”

  Gera pulled her sleeve back down and replied, “If it were regular lightning, probably, but because it’s made of chakra, it has to beat the chakra in my body to do a lot of damage. So, cause I had stronger chakra than the guy who stabbed me, it wasn’t a massively damaging move.” She flexed her fingers and said, “Still hurt like hell though, and my hand was all clawed up for the rest of the day.”

  Gera pulled the neckline of her shirt down to reveal a scar right below her collarbone. “This one was fucking scary. Dude threw a kunai with an explosion tag at me, and it got stuck under my bone. He’d thrown it hard enough that it pierced my chain mesh. The kunai was stuck deep and probably would’ve killed me. If I managed to tug on it fast enough to toss it away before the tag could go off, I probably still would’ve died.” She pointed to a jagged part of the scar leading away from her sternum. “Luckily, one of my teammates slashed the tag before it could go off, and I made a mess of the wound later trying to get the kunai out. It wasn’t a particularly painful wound, but the scar reminds me to stay on my toes.”

  “Woah.” That story scared Pakin a little. Explosion tags went off all the time in the anime, but he imagined their effect was more devastating than depicted in the show. Having the equivalent of a claymore flying at you sounded terrifying.

  Gera let go of her shirt collar and turned around. “This is the last one, and the biggest. It used to be a lot worse and a lot more painful. It’s actually the reason I decided to do the scar removal.” She gripped the back of her shirt and lifted it up to show her entire back. Pakin had thought the other scars were crazy, but this one took the cake. It was about three fingers thick at its widest point and stretched up the entire left side of her back, from lumbar to shoulder. “I was standing on a boat when it exploded. A jonin hit us with a super powerful jutsu and blew our ship to pieces. I don’t even remember most of it, just woke up in a tent a couple of days later. Apparently, I got blasted right onto another ship, the iryo-nin caring for me said if I’d been standing anywhere else, I probably would’ve died.”

  She let her shirt drop and turned back around to face Pakin. Her eyes were stormy again, and this time she didn’t hide her frown as she said, “They still hurt. Even though they’ve healed, they still hurt.” She reached out without hesitating this time and cupped his face under his stitches. She brushed her thumb gently along his jaw and told him, “It took me a long time to start using my katana again after I stabbed myself. Scimitars and stilettos make me anxious to this day, and I sometimes feel a phantom shock run down my arm. I can’t get on boats anymore. ”

  She let go of his face and reached down to pull him into a hug. “Now, you’ve got two scars that’ll hurt you for a long time, and it’s my fault. First, in Yoshiwara and now here with that missing-nin. I was tracking him this whole week, that’s why I kept disappearing every now and again during training. I was corralling him back into town so he wouldn’t get away. Then, I guess he got desperate enough to try and ambush me in my sleep.”

  Pakin was a little upset to hear Gera’s words. He didn’t think it was her fault that a pervert and a desperate criminal decided to hurt him. He’d been the one who put himself in those situations anyway. He shouldn’t have gone into the red light district, and he should’ve just left the room without his weapons.

  “I’m sorry that man got to you, Pakin. I’m you’re teacher, and that means I’m supposed to keep you safe, and I’ve been doing a very poor job of that lately.”

  Pakin felt a sadness and anger building in his chest. He’d been the one to fail her, for as much as he prided himself on being an adult, he’d acted like a dumb kid since coming to this world. Now, his carelessness had hurt himself and his teacher. It wasn’t fair, but he knew saying that wouldn’t make Gera feel better.

  “That’s gonna change from now on. Whatever you want to do, I’ll help you do it. If someone’s bothering you, I’ll take care of them. If you need a million ryo, I’ll go find it for you. If you need a shoulder to cry on, I’ll always offer mine. As long as I’m alive, you can come to me for anything you need. So, when we get to Kumo, I’m gonna take care of you, okay? Even if you don’t want to be my student anymore, just know that I’ll you can come to me whenever you need something.”

  Pakin shouted with panic, “No!” causing Gera to look down at him in surprise.

  He realized how loud he’d shouted, and with a blush coloring his cheeks, added, “I still want to be your student. Even after I’m out of school.”

  Gera smiled sadly, her eyes a little misty, and said, “Okay, kiddo, if that’s what you want.”