Rikku knocked on the locked door but there was no reply. She waited for a couple of moments before knocking again, but again, there was a response.

“Go away!”

The voice was muffled, which meant that Iori was still in bed, hiding underneath the covers. It had been three days since they had returned from the Gojiro Gold Mines, and Iori had spent most of her days in bed, rarely getting out of her room, and not once had she stepped out of the dormitory—even on a clear day with ample sun—and Iori loved the sun.

Being in bed itself wasn’t a problem. They had just returned from a deadly operation, and they deserved the rest. Iori had her fingers severed and reattached rest was certainly recommended. But she refused to eat more than one meal a day, which was left barely touched at her door as she didn’t come to the mess hall. She bathed only once after returning to the base and refused to do any cleaning except letting Rikku do bandage work on her fingers.

None of it was healthy, and Rikku knew that it couldn’t be allowed to become the norm.

“Right, I’m coming in,” she announced.

“W-Wait—no!”

Rikku ignored her and kicked open the locked door. A wave of must slammed into her, and she waited for a moment, mind whirling. She glanced at the closed curtains and back at the door, where the light from outside pierced through the room’s darkness.

After resting for a day, cleaning their gear was the first thing every shinobi on the Gojiro Gold Mine operation did upon their return. Dirt, grime, and blood needed to be scrubbed off from everything. As Iori’s hand was injured, Rikku did it for her. The clean clothes and gear were still exactly where she had put them, completely untouched.

“Get out!”

Rikku moved to the curtains and pulled them apart, flooding the room with light, and then opened the windows to let some much-needed air in. Iori pulled the covers over her head and shrunk into herself, assuming a fetal position.

Rikku didn’t say anything and sat on the bed beside Iori. A silence sat with them as Rikku said nothing and simply sat on the bed with her feet on feet on the ground. Rikku didn’t mind the silence, but she knew that no matter how much Iori wanted to ignore her, she would find the silence awkward.

It was just who she was—even in this state.

Rikku was right; after a few minutes, Iori pulled the covers down from her head and stared out the open window listlessly. Her right hand was bandaged with a splint to keep her fingers in the correct position for healing.

“Let’s get you out. A walk around the base will be good for you. Please. come on,” said Rikku softly.

“I’m not in the mood, Rikku. Please leave alone,” Iori croaked, turning her back to Rikku.

Rikku knew what to say to get Iori moving in her current mood. There was only one thing her teammate cared about right now. “It’s time to have your hand checked out by the iryo-nin. Come on, get up. I will be waiting outside, so wash up and meet me downstairs. We leave in forty-five minutes.”

Rikku got up and left without waiting for a reply.

An hour later, Iori was bathed, dressed, and downstairs, ready to visit the iryo-nin.

———

.

“This is coming along nicely,'' Iryo-nin smiled. “It’ll be maybe another week or two before it’s completely healed and you can start rehab.”

Rikku stood to the side as the iryo-nin checked Iori’s hand.

“…W-Will there be any complications?” asked Iori, desperation in her eyes.

The iryo-nin’s smile was comforting, but there was also a hint of something that told Rikku Iori had asked that question multiple times before.

“The re-attachment was done properly, but it depends on how long the fingers were detached before the reattachment,” explained the iryo-nin. “There’s no infection, and the swelling is low, which are excellent signs of a full recovery… but we will only know for sure after it heals completely.”

Iori’s body shook for a moment. She closed her eyes and then calmed down before nodding and leaving the room. Rikku nodded to the kunoichi and then followed after her. She caught up to Iori who was heading toward the dormitory , but Rikku steered her away onto another path in the complete opposite direction.

“One hour. We stayed out for one hour,” she said. “You can’t fixate on your injury like this.”

Iori seemed reluctant but nodded slowly.

They walked around, the ground drenched and muddy after another night of  rain. Rikku didn’t know anything meaningful to say to Iori. From her perspective, Iori was right to be worried, but she was overreacting. Her recovery period wasn’t even over and she was so down in the dumps that Rikku could barely recognize her from the well-spoken, the social girl she knew before the injury.

She’d understand if Iori had definite confirmation that her hand was ruined for delicate work, but she didn’t know that and already lost all hope. That bothered her more than anything—but she didn’t know how to say it.

“How does a storage seal work?” asked Rikku.

If her words couldn’t bring hope, then perhaps Iori’s passion would do that itself.

Iori glanced at Rikku but then continued to walk in silence until a minute later when she started to speak.

“Storage seals are an application of space-time ninjutsu. They work by creating an artificial space parallel that can be used to store objects, with the seal itself serving as the access point for the artificial space. There are restrictions, of course; weight and size of the load need to be within the parameters of the created artificial space, otherwise there’s a risk of the seal failing—which is dangerous.”

Rikku asked. “What dangers?”

“There are two fail states,” Iori replied. “The good failure state is that the seal spits out the stored items as the artificial space deteriorates and the seal goes bust—it’s annoying and bothersome, but doesn’t do much harm. However, the not-so-good failure state is that the artificial space deteriorates, destroys the stored items, turning everything inside a dangerous flux of matter that, in many cases, is spat out with an explosion. It was a huge problem back in the day.”

There was a time when ignorant shinobi would stuff storage seals beyond the recommended load, thinking that a little over the limit wouldn’t do any harm—but it did do harm, a lot of it. Whichled to the popular belief that storage seals were inherently unreliable, which was false, but people blamed the storage seals anyway rather than accepting it was their own fault.

The First Hokage had to issue a state-wide order to fix the ‘unreliability’ problem. The fuin-nin around the Hidden Leaf village and the Land of Fire got to work. After three years of intense research, someone figured out how to implement constraints to storage seals. The constraints added a weight and size restriction to the seals, which made it so that any attempt to put a load beyond the storage seal’s capacity wouldn’t be allowed to enter the artificial space.

The unreliability problem was solved as shinobi could no longer misuse storage seals.

“However, the Hidden Leaf didn’t figure out a solution,” said Iori, her dull eyes now holding a glimmer of admiration. “The Hidden Whirlpool, our allies, figured out the solution to the problem. Their Uzumaki clan, renowned for their fuinjutsu, are the ones to be praised. Lord First and the clan head of the Uzumaki clan were close friends, and when Lord First told the Uzumaki clan head about the problem, he asked the experts of the Uzumaki clan to look into it.”

Rikku didn’t care about any of that, but seeing the light return to Iori’s eyes was all the reason for her to continue the conversation.

Iori held her index finger and thumb at a small distance away from each other. “When a fuin-nin creates a storage seal and primes it, the artificial space is the size of a small glass marble. The chakra provided by the fuin-nin is enough to sustain that marble-sized space for a long time, but it’s not infinite—the space will collapse eventually, rendering the storage seal useless. When a user wants to use the storage seal, they provide chakra and activate it to expand that small space to its intended dimensions. Same as before, storage seals have finite lives—especially when in use as the dimensions are expanded and utilize more chakra. They will die down and spit everything stored out once the chakra sustaining it runs out.”

“Why can’t you just pump more chakra in?” asked Rikku.

“It’s not currently possible. I prime the seal; you activate it. That’s the only two times the formulae and the ink can handle chakra input,” Iori replied.

Rikku made an ‘is that so’ expression.

They continued to wander around and chat until they reached a small field where they found Kameko sparring against Anko.

“… I didn’t know Kameko was sparring with Anko,” said Iori.

“Today’s the first day,” Rikku replied. “Kameko wasn’t happy with how she did in the mines, so she asked Anko to spar with her once a day.”

In fact, there was an increase in training all around the basebase—fear and a close encounter with death had driven people to put in more training. Rikku had seen this behavior before from other shinobi before, which was why she knew most would stop training and return to normal before the month ended. She didn’t know if Kameko would be the same, but hoped she’d keep going.

She glanced at Iori, who was staring at Kameko desperately trying to fend off Anko’s attack. Rikku had no idea what Iori was thinking but she could sense that she shouldn’t disturb her. Rikku alsowatched Kameko and Anko—focusing on the chunin’s every move in the hopes of catching some useful insight into her style of combat that she could integrate into her own.

In the middle of the fight, Rikku noticed Anko look in their direction. She flashed Rikku an almost imperceptible smile, which she knew was for bringing Iori out of her room.

“Let’s go,” said Iori.

They continued to walk in silence, and Iori immediately headed home at the end of the hour.

Rikku didn’t expect Iori to make a complete turnaround with just a walk and some talk—but she did hope that it would elevate some of her gloom but Iori returned to her room and shut the door.

Rikku sighed before continuing with her day. She would try again tomorrow. However, that evening when she passed by Iori’s room, the door was open and Iori was at her desk, flipping through a book on some obscure fuinjutsu script that Rikku couldn’t make heads or tails of—but it brought a smile to her face.

She didn’t disturb Iori and let her continue reading.