(っ－＿－)っAM N. NOT.
Nemuri guided her car through the quieting streets, Tsunade silent beside her in the passenger seat. Neither spoke a word—both lost in thoughts that felt too heavy to voice.
For Nemuri, disbelief still coiled tight in her chest. Maki? Handling a void crack? It was unthinkable. He'd spent years barely stepping foot outside the condo; she'd joked more than once that he'd stay put even if the building caught fire. The idea of him facing down Anomalies, carving massive wooden statues, and saving who knew how many lives… it simply didn't fit the man she'd come to know.
Tsunade, meanwhile, stared out the window, her brow furrowed in concentration. When she'd first spotted the wooden pyramid from a distance, she'd dismissed it as just another ability—impressive, but nothing extraordinary. But the closer she'd gotten, the more she'd felt it: a faint, familiar hum of chakra weaving through every splinter and grain. Her punches—strong enough to shatter solid concrete—had barely scratched the wood, and she'd known at once it wasn't reinforced by raw power alone. It was alive, in a way only one person's work had ever been.
Her mother had told her stories of the ancient forests her ancestor Hashirama Senju had grown—living, breathing structures forged from his bloodline ability. Now, standing in the middle of a city street, Tsunade had felt that same chakra pulse beneath her fingertips. Wood Release. A kekkei genkai thought lost to the Senju clan for generations. Not a single member had inherited it since their founder's time—so how could a random UA student wield it with such precision? Questions swirled through her mind: Who is he? Where did he get this power? Is there more to his connection to the Senju than meets the eye?
The car glided onto a stretch of road that had escaped the worst of the damage, though if one looked closely, deep indentations—like footprints left by something far heavier than a human—scarred the asphalt. Neither woman noticed; their attention was fixed on the high-rise condo looming ahead.
Inside that very condo, Maki moved with the fluid grace of a master craftsman. His hands danced over the counter, working in perfect rhythm as he shaped ingredients drawn from his Cook-Cook ability. He was recreating suaasat—a dish he'd once tasted, thick and rich with the flavors of whale and reindeer, usually thickened with rice or barley. But Maki wanted more: he was crafting noodles that would carry the same earthy, starchy chew of grains, infused with every layer of flavor the original dish held. A suaasat soup noodle, twisted entirely to his own design.
His Sharingan spun steadily in his eyes, each tomoe tracking every tiny movement—from the way the broth simmered to the exact pressure needed to stretch the dough. He didn't blink. The world around him had fallen away into silence, leaving only him and the dish taking shape before him. He was like a painter lost in their canvas, or a sculptor merging with their stone—utterly consumed, completely untouchable by the noise of the world beyond his focus.
He didn't hear the front door unlock. He didn't catch the soft shuffle of footsteps crossing the living room floor. He didn't register the sound of a voice calling his name.
A little earlier, Nemuri and Tsunade had pulled into the condo's basement parking lot, the Porsche's engine falling quiet. They climbed out, moving in tandem toward the elevator. As the lift rose through the building, the silence between them held fast—each lost in their own tangle of questions. When the doors slid open to their floor, they stepped out in sync, their footsteps quicker than usual despite their attempts to move calmly.
Nemuri unlocked the door with a soft click. "Sis Tsuna—just leave your sandals here. Help yourself to any slippers you want," she said, kicking off her own shoes and padding inside in warm leather-and-cotton house slippers.
Tsunade nodded, sliding off her sandals and choosing a pair of white slippers from the rack. "This place feels… quiet," she noted, her eyes sweeping over the tidy living room.
"Always is," Nemuri said, raising her voice slightly. "Maki? I'm home!"
No answer came from down the hall.
"Is he not here?" Tsunade asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Impossible," Nemuri said with a small shake of her head. "He's the kind of guy who'd make an introvert lifestyle look like a full-time job. That's why I couldn't believe it when they said he'd handled the void crack. I'd sooner think the sky was falling."
Tsunade crossed her arms, her full curves pressed together beneath her haori—a reminder of the raw power she hid behind her elegant bearing. "So—that's why you're very shocked, when you heard Toshinori's revelation ".
As they moved deeper into the condo, a soft sound drifted from the kitchen: the gentle bubble of simmering broth, the faint scrape of a spoon against ceramic.
"Oh," Nemuri said, a small smile touching her lips. "He must be cooking. Come on—you'll see what I mean."
"What do you mean?" Tsunade asked, following her toward the open doorway.
"He gets like this sometimes—hyper-focused. When he's into something, nothing else exists for him," Nemuri explained, stepping into the kitchen first.
There, bathed in the warm glow of overhead lights, they saw him.
AM N. NOT.(っ－＿－)っ