Written: 11/2/22
Word Count: 2,550
Mentally calculating the fastest time I could reach my workplace, I decided I had about eight minutes to convince Kakashi Hatake he was a fictional character and figure out what the hell was going on.
I paced back and forth on my sky-blue carpet stained by mysterious tenants of the past. My hands stuck in a tight hold on my forehead, I tried to figure out where to begin.
Kakashi stood, peering into the box of two happily-mewling kittens. Hable and Sintar didn't care about the one-eyed gaze staring down at them from an impressive height, his silhouette very much like his namesake.
I could almost hear the clock in my bedroom that I kept solely for the usually-calming ticking sound counting down the moments until I'd be late for my day of being harassed by strangers and overworked until my thigh joints screamed at me in pain.
This is an emergency situation, isn't it? Should I just call in? It would be okay just once, wouldn't it?
I thought of the lined faces of the older ladies I worked with as a cashier. Each line punctuated their hard years of labor, of service. Thankless work that they'd become the unappreciated masters of.
If I didn't show up...who knew if Amanda, my usual Service Coordinator, would be able to take a break. She'd be busy covering everyone else's fifteens and lunches, right on the hour.
All it took was one person not showing up, and everything was thrown into chaos. The schedule always had tons of names listed, but when you figured in breaks, the reality was much more dire than it let on.
I blew out a sigh, finally facing the ninja silently observing the wiggle beans on the couch.
"Look, can you level with me for a moment?" I asked, a restless, nervous energy building within me full of fire.
Those measly flames petered out once I took in the sheer size and breadth of this man, who always looked so skinny and harmless on my tiny iPad screen.
I took several steps back, edging my back on the corner of the wall leading back into the kitchen.
Swallowing, my mind was a mess. Did it have to be someone as handsome as Kakashi? Did it have to be a male character, of all people?
Fictional men were all well and good, and I could love them with my entire heart. With distance. There was always a screen or the pages of a novel between us.
I didn't have to deal with the sheer size of them. Not in real life.
Men were something I tried to avoid, mostly for no reason at all. Everybody's got their mysterious quirks, don't they?
Sometimes people just are the way they are. No rhyme or reason to it.
"You want me to level with you?" Kakashi asked. Without me noticing, he'd pulled his Hidden Leaf headband up from where it covered his eye.
He stood with his left side—his Sharingan side—facing me, that red iris decorated with tomoe, another term for commas, or what the Boruto novels called "magatama," which was the official name for the beads often seen on medieval or ancient-era anime characters.
The dark, cloying colors of all the blue pressing against this figure, who seemed to carry a cloak of darkness around him at all times, would have unnerved anybody who didn't know the true heart of Kakashi.
He wasn't harmless by any means, but he wasn't some wild monster who would lash out at anyone for no reason at all.
"You're," I wet my lips, my fingers digging into the sharp corner of the wall behind me, "the real Kakashi Hatake, right? You're not a crazy-amazing cosplayer, are you?"
"Cosplayer?" Kakashi asked, shaking his head. He turned from the box of kittens to face me fully. I tried not to inch away from the tall ninja man standing across from me in my tiny living room, my fingernails nearly bending on the wall in my firm grip. "Is that something like play-acting?"
A stone settled in my stomach. This was the real deal. No doubt.
But how had he gotten here?
"Do you know how you got here?"
Kakashi shook his head. "No. Do you?"
"Excuse me?"
Kakashi's crooked posture suddenly loomed closer as he'd crossed half the span of the room within a heartbeat. My breath stalled in my chest, a feeling like confused anticipation sticking in my lungs.
On the screen, I always knew Kakashi would do the right thing. He would always help the kids, help his fellow shinobi, and look badass doing it. On the screen, the plot was laid out in a series of interconnecting twists and turns, all paved on a dazzlingly-brilliant yellow-brick road.
It finally occurred to me the seriousness of the situation.
Kakashi Hatake was a menacing shinobi to all of his enemies. Just because he wasn't part of the Anbu any longer, didn't mean he wasn't still feared by all the nations outside of the Land of Fire.
With a jolt, I suddenly wondered: is this the Kakashi after his time in the Anbu or...during?
"Do you know the name Naruto Uzumaki?"
Kakashi's presence loomed over me, piercing me with that unfathomable look of warning that belied the true depth of his fierceness.
"Uzumaki? Like Kushina Uzumaki?"
The stone sank deeper in my gut as his words gave way to clarity.
This was the Kakashi before he met the kids. The sad one, drowning in his failures and grief, spiraling further and further away into darkness.
This was the Kakashi before he met the three children who brought him back into the light.
I held my hands up, uselessly, waving them and shaking my head all at once. "I'm not an enemy, I swear! I have no idea how you got here! I promise! You can probably tell I have no chakra or—or strength—or anything that could harm you. I swear!"
Kakashi seemed to consider this, that characteristic intelligence tilting his head in thought. I felt his gaze peer inside of me like he could see each and every embarrassing thing I'd ever done in my life, tossing them to the side like the trash-can memories they were.
Finally, his head tilted back, his gaze narrowing even further as he regarded me.
"If all that's true," he drawled, the sound sending shivers of warning racing up my spine, "then how do you know who I am?"
I was surely going to be late at this point. Being late one time wasn't anything to get so upset about—life happens, after all—but it felt wrong all the same.
"Just, just a minute, please." I held up one trembling finger, turning from the living room to put my purse on my kitchen table.
As soon as I showed Kakashi my back, I froze. My heartbeat pulsing through my veins in an incessant call of danger, I peered behind me at the unmoving warrior.
He'd moved so fast earlier, yet now he was just a statue. Not a bare twitch of his torso, not a shifting of his weight. Swallowing, I gave him my best attempt at a placating smile.
By the look on his stony expression, my placating smile resembled a thieving frog. My shoulders slumping, I wondered for a moment where the falsely-smiling Kakashi from outside had gone, but soon refocused on what was important right now.
"I have to take care of something first."
Calling off to my workplace for the first time while Kakashi Hatake watched my every move was a rush, let me tell ya. If rollercoasters didn't give you the adrenaline that made you feel like you were both flying and dying, then give this a try.
After scrambling around for the right number, I quickly dialed, then keyed in the right extension number.
"Hey, uh, is this Amanda?" I looked at the ancient, white stove to the clock that was two minutes behind. 7:42 it read, the green numbers glaring at me accusingly.
"I—I can't come into work today. I thought I'd be able to make it, but...I had a bit of a—family emergency this morning. I think it would be best if I take care of this right—right now..."
"Yeah, yeah. No, everyone's fine. Well...you know. Yeah. It's like that. I understand. Thank you so much. I'm so sorry. I'll see you tomorrow. Yeah, okay. Okay, bye. I will. I will, thanks. Yeah—bye.."
Setting my phone on my table raised to the height of a counter or a bar, I took a seat on one of the peeling chairs sitting around the little rectangle.
Without looking at Kakashi, I steepled my fingers on the table, already feeling strange about wearing my work uniform and being at home at this time of day.
"I don't have anywhere to go now, so we can talk things out. Properly."
Kakashi's dark shadow walked into the lighter blues of my kitchen, lit from the sunlight shining against the flimsier kitchen curtains. He stood in the lit shades of the cool blue tones, as out of place as a mountain in the middle of a city.
"Yet you say you have nothing to do with my being here?" Kakashi's voice was as disbelieving as it could be, and I rushed to explain.
It wouldn't be good if dark-Kakashi thought of me as an enemy.
"I—I didn't bring you here. Honest. I have no idea how this was possible at all. It just—things like this don't happen in this world, so I don't know. I'm not sure science is actually this crazy...I guess there was always the chance that magic was real, but this feels a little too much like a novel to feel normal..."
Kakashi grew tired of my rambling. "How do you know who I am? What world is this, if not the Land of Fire? Are we in the Land of Waves? The Land of Clouds?"
"It's not, it's..."
The words got stuck in my throat. I was always alone, but I suddenly wished I didn't have to be the one to explain this whole thing. Whenever I got nervous, the words either came out all stuttery with bad grammar or...or I would say things that didn't make sense or sounded too callous and...And.
"I knew who you were right away because I—I lo—admire you very greatly. You see," my eyes peeked at him from my peripheral while my fingers wound tighter and tighter together in a hold that very nearly resembled a pretzel, "you're a character from an anime. And a manga. Well, the manga was first, but you're also an anime character."
"A...character?" Kakashi snorted. "That's the best lie you could come up with when put on the spot? Why don't you just tell me who you're working for? Let's start there. Then we can bypass the absurdities you're trying to pass off as excuses."
I shook my head, my fingers clenched tightly together. Were all men this intimidating, or was it just Kakashi?
Was Kakashi only acting like this because he was Anbu-era and not teacher-era?
Wait. It made complete sense why he would be so disbelieving. Imagine if I was suddenly thrown into another world. In novels and webtoons, it always looked so fun and hilarious. A grand adventure to save the MC from their boring life in the real world.
But in reality, nothing could be more terrifying than suddenly appearing in a place where nothing is familiar. Kakashi probably thought this whole thing was some kind of twisted genjutsu. A trap from one of his many enemies across the Lands.
"I know it sounds absurd," I said quietly, "but I'm not lying. And," I dared a glance at Kakashi's unmoving face, "I can prove it."
"How?" Kakashi leaned back, crossing his arms in such a way that it brought to mind the slightly-scary but mostly aloof teacher he showed to the kids when he first met them.
Hope flushed up my throat, and I was quick to answer. Any sign of the warm Kakashi was a good one, wasn't it?
"Ask me anything. I know it all."
That wasn't entirely true. I'd finished all 720 episodes of the show...and the ten movies available on streaming services. I'd even started Boruto and read a couple of the novels set during the next-gen tale.
But I hadn't read the whole manga, nor had I read Kakashi's novels, so if there was information about Kakashi that hadn't shown up in the anime, I was screwed.
Curse this fandom pride...this...this arrogance! I should have just told him what I knew about him, not left it open for a verbal test!
Though one of my eyes twitched at my inner turmoil, I kept my expression as calm as I could.
I was glad I was in between breakouts right now.
I wouldn't have wanted to meet Kakashi with the giant ass honkers I could get on my cheeks and chin. Combination acne, I called it, when the cause of said acne was unknown. Could it be the new pills I took to stabilize my estrogen and alleviate my period symptoms, or could it be the bachelor lifestyle of eating I partook in? Could it be my greasy face after a day of working, or perhaps it was the stress of being alive? Could depression cause acne?
I'd always been too embarrassed to even Google it.
I'd put my blonde hair up immediately after my shower, so its wetness was pretty unattractive on my make-up free face. After working for a week in a grocery store and busting my ass, I'd stopped putting on the barest minimum of concealer.
I was a plain-faced girl. The kind that didn't look out of place in any environment and was usually immediately forgotten. Upon closer inspection, some people could concede a certain plainish prettiness to my features, but those aspects were only highlighted when I wasn't mid-breakout or tired and pale from bottle feeding kittens at one in the morning.
I wasn't giving Kakashi my best face, but it's not like it really mattered. A person's face was just an outward expression of who they were, but not in the most obvious of ways. I couldn't decide on my features. Not my green eyes, my yellow-blonde hair, nor my freckled nose. They didn't mean the same to me like the way an anime character's features were completely symbolic to who they were as a person.
Kakashi was a perfect example. For fans of anime—otaku, as the official term—Kakashi's uneven silhouette, his mask-covered face, a flash of that silver hair...all of those things could excite any fan and fill their chests with hope.
Kakashi was the kind of wise-sensei and overpowered previous-gen character that was immediately liked by everyone. The darkness of his past—embodied within the man peering down at me now—was part of his intrigue.
Someone who had lived in despair and somehow found their way out—with their humanity intact, no less—deserved nothing but respect and adoration from anime fans around the world.
I'd just challenged that idol to test me on how much I knew about him.
Who am I kidding? Just how arrogant can I be?
Like the fool I am, I took the first plunge.