During his time as a ninja, Kizashi didn't wear the standard headband on his head, as the headband would interfere with his family's exaggerated hairstyle. Instead, his headband was embedded in his clothing, similar to an armband.
However, after retiring, he chose to switch back to the head-worn style of the headband as a keepsake. He thought he'd never have the chance to wear it again. But today, he's about to fight with that headband once more.
He grabbed a bottle of water from his bag, then poured it over his head and put his hair back. In a flash, he transformed from a friendly dude to a villain.
Time to become who I once was. Who I still am, deep down.
His pink hair fell over his shoulders as he tied the headband onto his head.
"Old friend, we've got work to do. One last mission," he murmured as he touched the metal plate.
After leaving a mark on the carriage to guide the following ninjas, he ran into the forest.
"Follow quickly, my friends," he whispered to the wind. "But not too quickly. This is my fight."
The dark woods, concealed by the canopy above, allowed only faint starlight to pierce through. In this dim environment, his eyes needed a moment to adjust.
Breathe. Focus. Remember your training.
Fortunately, the forest had plenty of low bushes. When someone recently passed through the bushes, the tight branches wouldn't immediately spring back to their original position. Using these traces, he methodically tracked the dwarf.
They're moving fast, but careless. Good.
However, the deeper he went into the woods, the fewer bushes there were, replaced by tall, towering trees that were harder to leave obvious signs on. This change made tracking more difficult for him.
Stay sharp, old man.
Before long, he lost the trail of the dwarf in an open clearing.
"Damn it!" Kizashi hissed under his breath. "Where did you go?"
With no visible traces in the area, he had to slow down and carefully search for subtler clues.
There's always a trace. Always. Just need to find it.
Next to a tree, he finally found an overturned patch of grass. This patch had been turned over by something stepping on it, an abrupt change about the size of a fist, with the depth varying from shallow to about two centimeters at its deepest.
Tracking was one of the most basic skills taught at the Ninja Academy, and although it had been years since he was a ninja, he hadn't forgotten the fundamentals. The marks on the turf were from the pressure of a footstep, and because human feet aren't flat, the depth of the imprint varied accordingly.
But a human foot is about one-seventh the height of the body, while the dwarf stood about as tall as Kizashi's elbow, meaning their feet should be roughly the size of two fists.
Yet this footprint was only the size of one fist.
Looking closer, it became clear that this wasn't a full footprint. Only the ball of the foot had touched the ground, leaving a partial impression - as if someone had been standing on their toes.
This meant that when the dwarf left this print, they were standing on their toes. And standing on tiptoe generally serves the purpose of reaching something higher. But what exactly was the wildman trying to reach here?
Kizashi looked up, and in the dark canopy above, a row of sharp objects was hidden.
Gotcha! You can't hide from me that easily.
Carefully parting the branches, he uncovered a crudely made wooden spike trap. A row of sharpened wooden spikes was tied to a flexible branch, connected to a hidden trigger mechanism on the ground by a tripwire.
From a ninja's perspective, it was a poorly constructed and crude trap, something that would only be made by a student still learning trap-setting techniques. However, when set by seemingly uncivilized wildmen, the trap seemed sinister and deadly.
With their ugly appearance and inability to communicate, it was easy to underestimate these wildmen, assuming they lacked the intelligence to set traps. If he had recklessly followed the dwarf here, he would have triggered the mechanism and been impaled by the spikes from behind.
Underestimating these creatures could be fatal.
Kizashi carefully dismantled the mechanism, muttering, "Let's see how you like having your toys broken."
However, since the wildmen had set traps along this path, it indicated that they had gone this way. He resumed his pursuit, now moving more cautiously, constantly on the lookout for more traps.
It didn't take long for him to encounter another trap.
This time it was a rusty iron trap, equally crude and poorly disguised under out-of-season dried grass, easily spotted by him.
Did they really think this would work?
But just as he was about to walk around it, he noticed a glimmer of silver in the moonlight filtering through the leaves. He immediately halted and carefully examined the silver thread, realizing it was part of yet another trap.
This one was another wooden spike trap, but much more sophisticated than the previous one. The wooden spikes were connected by an almost invisible silver wire instead of a coarse, blackened rope. This type of wire was akin to what ninjas would use to trigger traps.
Additionally, to further disguise the spikes in the trees, the wildmen had set a decoy iron trap on the ground, easily spotted by anyone. Most people, upon seeing the decoy trap, would instinctively walk around it, unaware of the hidden trap nearby.
After encountering a series of traps, he was taken aback.
Even an experienced ninja would struggle to create such traps using only primitive materials. It was astonishing to think that these traps had been set by the supposedly primitive wildmen.
Realizing the kind of adversaries he was facing, he grew increasingly worried for his wife and child, fearing what these depraved dwarfs might do to them.
"Mebuki, Sakura... Please be safe. I'm coming as fast as I can."
I will find you. And I will save you.
As he moved forward, Kizashi became even more vigilant, repeatedly encountering traps in the forest. Like the previous spike traps, these traps came in two forms: a crude version to lower one's guard and an upgraded version to catch victims off guard.
But after recognizing the wildmen's nature, these traps no longer posed a threat to him. Using the skills he had learned as a ninja, he skillfully avoided each trap.
"Another one?" Kizashi growled. "How many of these are there?"
A twig snapped underfoot, triggering a nearby trap. He rolled to the side, barely avoiding a swinging log studded with sharpened stakes.
"Too close," he panted. "Stay focused, you old fool. They're counting on you."
Eventually, he arrived at a place. It was a gap between mountains, with the ground at the entrance worn and devoid of life, indicating frequent use.
This must be the lair of the wildmen.
There was no light inside the cave, an almost complete darkness, making it impossible for Kizashi to enter without any light source.
So, he quickly picked up a thick tree branch nearby, tore off a piece of cloth from his clothes, wrapped it around the branch, then poured some barbecue oil from his picnic supplies over it to make a simple torch.
Holding the torch in his left hand and a kunai in his right, he walked into the cave. It was a dark and damp cave, with the rough stone walls around him covered in tiny droplets of water.
The entrance to the cave was incredibly narrow. While this tight space wouldn't have posed any challenge for the short and small-bodied dwarves, Kizashi had to squeeze sideways to get through.
"If I get stuck here, I'll never live it down. Come on, old man, suck it in."
After walking about ten meters, the cave widened, and he realized that the so-called cave was actually a massive gap formed by a pile-up of enormous rocks inside the mountain. These misshapen boulders created a network of crisscrossing gaps, turning the cave into a labyrinth, with each dark gap potentially leading to an unknown path.
This was the scariest part. While a person of normal size couldn't fit through these gaps, the small dwarves could easily hide in them.
If they hid in one of the gaps, it would be nearly impossible for intruders to notice them, and they could easily be ambushed. With this in mind, Kizashi became more cautious, using the torch to inspect every gap around him.
"Come out, wherever you are. Daddy's here to play."
As he walked deeper into the labyrinth, every shadow seemed to move. Is this fear, or instinct?
---
In the darkness, Sakura slowly opened her eyes.
Her blurry vision scanned the surroundings, and she realized she was in a small corner formed by cold, dark stone walls. Beneath her was a thin layer of straw. Though it couldn't fully block the coldness of the stone floor, it was better than nothing.
Where's Mommy? Where's Daddy?
Five or six meters ahead of her, there was a tiny wooden table, barely the height of a chair seat, with a lit candle on it.
"Where am I?" Sakura wondered to herself, trying to recall what had happened.
"I fell asleep in the carriage, and then… it seemed like someone picked me up in the darkness. After that, I remember hearing Mommy calling me, while I was being carried through a forest."
Bad people took me!
Although Sakura was only three years old, she quickly realized her current predicament.
Where's Dad? Where's Mom? I want to go home!
Sakura wanted to scream but fear choked her voice, and she couldn't cry out. All she could do was stare at the distant candlelight, tears silently streaming down her face.
I need to be brave. Daddy always says I'm his strong little cherry blossom.
Suddenly, a shadow emerged from the darkness, blocking the light from reaching Sakura.
Please don't hurt me.
The figure approached her quickly, crouching down in front of her. Now, she could clearly see the person's face.
It was a hideous face. Half of it was somewhat normal, though slightly twisted, while the other half was horribly disfigured, like it had been burned by fire. The person had almost no hair on their head, just two thin strands falling down either side of the back of their head. Due to the dim light, Sakura couldn't tell what color the hair was.
This person was also wearing nothing but a ragged gray cloth. The cloth had a hole cut out in the middle, through which the person's head poked, serving as a crude form of clothing, barely covering anything.
A monster! Just like in the stories!
"Ah!"
But before she could make another sound, the person quickly placed one hand over Sakura's mouth and the other over their own, as if gesturing for her to stay quiet.
It wants me to be quiet. Maybe... maybe it won't hurt me if I listen?
Somehow, she understood this gesture and, despite her fear, she nodded. The figure slowly released her mouth, and Sakura simply stared at the grotesque figure crouching before her, who made no further moves but just kept watching her intensely.
Suddenly, the figure reached out a hand toward her. Instinctively, she shrank back, trying to avoid the touch. But with the cold stone wall behind her, there was nowhere for her to retreat.
Sakura closed her eyes, bracing herself, but she felt no pain or harm. Instead, she sensed a strange sensation in her hair. Opening her eyes, she realized that the grotesque figure was not harming her but gently stroking her shoulder-length pink hair.
A bony hand lightly caressed her hair, and the figure's eyes were filled with a look of desire or obsession.
Why does it like my hair?
It was clear the person was captivated by her hair, treating it like something precious. Suddenly, heavier footsteps echoed through the gap, startling the grotesque figure, who immediately stopped stroking Sakura's hair.
In the flickering candlelight, Sakura saw another disfigured person enter the space.
This one's scarier...
This figure was taller and more muscular than the first and wasn't empty-handed—he was carrying a bowl of something. Without a word, the tall figure walked over to Sakura, placed the bowl in front of her, and pointed to its contents with his rough fingers.
"Pork… meat. Eat! Pork meat, eat!"
Although the speech was broken, the figure managed to speak words that she could understand, urging her to eat the pork meat in the bowl. But as Sakura saw the thin soup and a few pieces of meat floating in it, she shook her head. She shrank back again.
I can't eat that. What if it's poison? What if it's not really pork?
Seeing Sakura's rejection and retreat, the tall figure raised his hand to strike her, but the smaller figure from before quickly stopped him.
The smaller one shook her head and began speaking rapidly in a language Sakura couldn't understand.
Are they fighting over me?
After a brief exchange, the taller figure lowered his hand, turned around, and left. The smaller figure crouched down in front of Sakura again, lifted the bowl, and, as if to demonstrate, picked up a piece of meat with her fingers, chewed it, and swallowed.
It ate the food. Maybe it is safe?
After doing so, she handed the bowl back to her, encouraging her to eat. At that moment, Sakura's stomach growled. She hadn't eaten much dinner. And after everything that had happened, she was now quite hungry.
Unable to resist her hunger, she took the bowl. She stared at the meat for a long time, and finally picked one up and began to chew.
"It's… delicious!"
To her surprise, the meat was unexpectedly good.