Chapter 7 – The Taste of Rust
"Love and hate are born from the same wound. One heals you. The other keeps you alive."
The fire had died long before the morning rose.
Karin woke to the chill of the empty room.The air was heavy with the smell of rain and ashes. She reached out instinctively, her hand brushing against the cold tatami beside her — but there was nothing there. No warmth. No trace.
Just absence.
She sat up slowly, her breath shallow, her heart still beating too fast for reasons she couldn't name.For a moment, she thought she was dreaming.But the silence told the truth.He was gone.
Her gaze drifted across the small room — the cloak he had folded for her, the faint footprints in the dust, the embers turned gray. Each detail was a cruel echo of what had happened, and what it had meant.Or rather… what it hadn't.
Her lips trembled, and for an instant, she laughed. A hollow sound, sharp as glass.
"Of course," she whispered. "Of course you'd run."
She stood, pulled the cloak over her shoulders, and faced the door. The rain had stopped, leaving the world drenched and colorless. Her reflection stared back at her in a puddle — disheveled hair, tired eyes, the faint mark of a kiss that already felt like a scar.
She hated him.And she hated herself for still feeling everything else.
She stepped outside. The fog was fading, the road stretching endlessly through the marshlands. Each step was heavy, her boots sinking into the mud. But she didn't stop. She couldn't.
The air smelled of iron and wet earth — the scent of blood and memory.Her thoughts swirled like a storm: anger, longing, humiliation, something deeper she didn't want to name.
"He always runs," she muttered. "From Konoha. From me. From himself."
The words tasted like rust on her tongue.
She clenched her fists until her nails bit into her palms. The pain grounded her. Reminded her that she was still alive — and that she would not break again.
By noon, she reached a cliff overlooking the valley. The clouds were beginning to clear, letting thin shafts of sunlight pierce the mist. She watched the light move slowly, timidly, across the horizon.
Her voice, when it came, was soft. Almost a prayer.
"You can keep running, Sasuke… but you'll never escape what you do to people."
A tear rolled down her cheek, but her smile — faint, bitter, defiant — stayed.
She turned away from the valley and began walking north.Her steps grew steadier, her shadow longer.
Maybe she would never forgive him.Maybe she didn't have to.
But she would survive him.
And that, she thought, was its own kind of victory.