Beauty and the Beast - An Uchiha Madara Love Story [Edited]

Chapter 5 - The Akatsuki

Harumi pov:

I hummed a slow tune as I molded a vase on the wheel. I dipped my hands in the bowl of water I had beside me every now and then to make sure the clay was wet enough to mold easily.

It's been more than a month since we began our life in the Earth Village and the experience has mostly been pleasant. Business has been as bleak as ever though with barely one or two customers shopping for ceramics in a day but I have had several visits from Kabuto kun.

He was really nice company and I enjoyed chatting with him whenever he visited. He sometimes stayed with me in my stall for a few hours since I barely had any customers coming in which gave me quite a lot of free time and boredom. In the times he visited and stayed for a while to chat, he had told me a lot about himself and I had told him a bit about myself too. He was most curious about my hesitance to show people my power and I had narrated the rather unpleasant childhood I had. I had told him that I had been hated for having a power that no one else had, even insisting that I would bring them bad luck. After being made an outcast, I had hidden everything about this and remained in the fear of anyone finding out about it, which is why I never used it in the open.

Kabuto kun was different. He didn't think I was weird or freakish – he had said that my power was a special gift. He said that having the ability to heal and give life to something that had withered away was nothing short of miraculous. Of course, I could rejuvenate life only if the plant or animal was at least hanging by a thread. Bringing someone back when they had left this world was impossible for anyone – no one could alter nature that much. But still Kabuto kun thought that I was amazing and I now felt honestly important to not just Grandpa, but to Kabuto kun and perhaps the people who thought like him.

Kabuto kun had told me that he served a man called Orochimaru. They lived in the Hidden Sound Village and Orochimaru san was their leader since he was the one who founded the Sound Village. Orochimaru san often sent Kabuto kun on missions to collect important information or to do things that would help protect their village – and I found it to be a very noble thing to do.

Kabuto kun had been kind enough to tell me a little about shinobi because he had noticed that I was absolutely clueless on that topic. He had explained the basic things like taijutsu, ninjutsu and genjutsu – taijutsu was hand to hand combat, ninjutsu was the use of the five elements of nature to attack or defend themselves in a fight and genjutsu was all about creating illusions. Kabuto kun used mostly tajutsu and kenjutsu on his missions.

After hearing about the wide variety of shinobi abilities, Kabuto kun's included, I didn't feel like an oddball anymore. If controlling the elements in nature and creating illusions weren't strange or freakish, it meant that I wasn't strange either.

Kabuto kun still insisted on me not letting any of the villagers see my power because they disliked shinobi quite a bit. They often gave looks of dislike to all the shinobi who came to shop, including Kabuto kun even though he was kind enough to spend time with me in the midst of his missions! The villagers were meanies...

But I was really glad and grateful that Kabuto kun worried for me. We had become quite close over his vitis and I had even invited him home one to introduce him to Grandpa. Grandpa was ecstatic, to put things lightly, and he had nearly crushed Kabuto kun in a hug while thanking him for being kind to me. Well, I had to tug Grandpa away from him before he was really crushed in the hug.

I laughed softly to myself as I remembered that incident, although, I was glad that Grandpa wasn't in the backyard with me because he would have thought I had gone crazy if he saw me laughing to myself. I shook my head and carefully moved the pot I had just finished off the wheel and onto a wooden plank on the ground. After a few hours of drying, it had to dip it in glaze and put it in the kiln with a few other pieces for the final finishing. Giving a nod, I stood up and walked to the bin of water just a little away from where I sat to wash my arms all the way till my elbows. I then washed my arms under the tap with soap.