The sun beat down hard against Juyo’s light skin.  He hadn’t gone too far from the gates of Sunagakure no Sato but already the heat was bothering him.  The sweat started to irritate his chest that was wrapped up with medical tape.  Every step made him wince a bit as his ankles hadn’t completely healed up yet.  The sandy road wasn’t too hard, yet the wounds he had received from the Senju girl were still recent.  He rubbed his hands over his chest, feeling the cuts beneath the bandages as he walked.  He remembered the girl’s flowing green hair and green eyes not unlike his as she drove two sharp bamboo sticks into his chest.  Pressing into the wound he winced again as he remembered the pain that she had caused him.

The match with the Senju girl played a heavy toll on Juyo.  He hadn’t lost to a girl before, and now that he had, he wasn’t sure how to take it.  His whole life he didn’t really care for women, the ones he’d met were beneath him and not worth his attention.  Yet this girl had beaten him, outsmarted him, and was just overall a better shinobi than he.  As Juyo continued his long trek back to Kumo, he thought back on his fight with Ukiyo and replayed it in his head.  A long journey home would give him plenty to think about.

The cooler air was much more pleasant to Juyo as he found himself nowhere near a desert anymore.  He was about two thirds of the way back to his home village by this time and he continued his march.  Birds were chirping in the trees and there were even a few travelers along the same road as him.  One group was a family heading the opposite way, probably to some small town, one of the many he had passed by on his journey.  

The father was ignoring his wife’s plea to read a map as she tried to hand it to him.  He didn’t budge as the woman tried to get him to look at it.  The man acted like such a child, turning his head this way and that to keep the map out of his view, as if the very sight of it would ruin his reputation as a man.  Then Juyo caught the gaze of their little daughter.  She must have been only seven or eight years old by the look of her, and she giggled and skipped alongside her mother as her parents fought over directions.  The little girl looked up at Juyo as they crossed paths and she had the most adorable look of wonder as she noticed Juyo’s hitai-ate on his forehead.  Smiling back at the little girl, Juyo waved.  The little girl waved back at him as they were parting, going separate ways.

Just as the girl closed her eyes in a big grin as she continued to wave back at Juyo, a flash of the sun poked through the trees.  Just then, Juyo could have sworn he saw the face of the girl that had died back during the Chuunin Exams.  The face burned into his eyelids as he tried to close his eyes and forget about her.  But he couldn’t.  Her face was imprinted forever in his memory.  The dead girl’s eyes closed, dried blood staining her face and mouth, and an awful gash through her neck.  The pain was too much for Juyo’s psyche and he soon fell to his knees.  The fall reminded him of when he had reached the Ivory Tower, the girl falling limp before him as he gave into exhaustion.  She was there, lying before him, her eyes opened up at him as if pleading for him to save her.

The tears began to flow as his eyes stayed glued to the dead girl’s stare.  “I’m sorry,” he whimpered, heaving in eratic breaths as he cried.  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”  Bending his head down over the girl, he let out all of his emotions.  He had never even gotten to know the girl, but even so, it had been his fault that she had died.  A chill ran down his spine as he cried, making him sniffle for a moment before going into another fit of tears.  It was a very strange sight to anyone else, as Juyo was just crying on the side of the road, but to him, the dead girl was there and he was crying over her.  A slight brush of wind played with the back of his hair and Juyo felt the dead girl’s hand resting on his head.  He looked into her eyes, her glazed, dead eyes, and he apologized once more.  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “If only I was stronger…”

The dead girl seemed to sit up somewhat at his last words, slowly making her way up until her upper body was up.  She looked down at him and petted his head.  “For the strength to save, you need only ask.”  Her voice was eerie and cold, a sound as if a hundred different voices were whispering softly in his ears all at once.  A chill went through his spine again, but Juyo was too lost in his own emotions to notice the girl’s strange voice or the chill and change in the wind.  He stopped his crying, slowly looking into the girl’s eyes.  They had lost their shine and gleam, he could tell there was nothing there, and blood covered her body just as it had when he had been holding her the day she died.  “Ask what?” he asked the girl.  “What is it that I must ask? Tell me, please!”  The girl smiled wide at this, her blood stained teeth gave no shine from the sun.  “You know the words, but you must speak them with your soul.” The girl got to her feet before Juyo and he lifted his head to keep looking into her eyes.  She was standing with the sun behind her so it was hard to see her face, but it looked different.  Her hair seemed darker and her eyes seemed to have become gray.  “Ask us when your soul is ready.”

The sun flashed brightly around the girl and into Juyo’s eyes, making him blink and turn away from it.  When his eyesight came back from the blinding of the sun, the girl was gone and he was alone on the road.  He slowly got up and saw that he was much closer to his village than he could last remember.  What just happened?  His memory was a blur and he couldn’t recall correctly what he had just been doing.  Oh, right, I had passed the little girl and her family.  Juyo walked forward to the village gates of Kumogakure no Sato, still feeling a bit odd but he tried to remove his thoughts and focus on the present.  He had made it home safely, and now he could tell his parents all about the Chuunin Exams…