Hospitals at night were a different village.
The windows turned into black mirrors. The daytime noise shrank down to footsteps, soft voices, the occasional distant wail when someone forgot their painkillers schedule. All the bright-bleached white felt slightly grayed out, like someone had turned the contrast down on the world.
I liked it better.
Less pretending.
"Hm, no last name, just Sylvie," Migaki said, mostly to himself, flipping through a clipboard as we walked. "You finish your chakra-rest protocol?"
"Tea, food, sitting still," I recited. "Yes, sensei."
"It's doctor, not sensei," he said. "I don't get paid enough to be anyone's sensei."
Migaki was the hospital the way Kakashi was Team 7. Thin, sharp-faced, dark hair going to gray at the temples, permanent smudge of ink on his thumb from writing notes during surgery prep. His chakra felt like those notes: steady black lines layered on top of each other. No flash, no fire. Just there.
He didn't sugarcoat things. I respected that, even when it made me want to throw up.
"We'll start with diagnostics," he said. "Simple cases first. If you burn your chakra out before we get to Rock Lee, I'm banning you from this floor for a week."
"Yes, doctor," I said.
He cut me a look at my tone and snorted. "Sarcasm detected. Good. Means your brain's firing."
First stop: a middle-aged chunin with a broken wrist and a sprained pride. Migaki handed me the chart, then folded his arms.
"Well?" he said.
I swallowed, pressed my fingers lightly above the injury, and let a trickle of chakra slide out.
Diagnostic ninjutsu felt like very polite trespassing. You didn't force your way in; you asked, then put one foot over the threshold. My own chakra was a small, smokey-pink ribbon that threaded into his arm and lit the edges of his own.
His chakra tasted like dull brown and metal fatigue. Overused, under-rested, the way kunai looked when they'd been sharpened too many times.
I followed the flow down the arm until it hit the fracture. White static fuzzed around that spot, flickering; above it, the pathways were swollen, bottlenecked.
"Transverse fracture," I said quietly. "Incomplete. The… pathway looks kinked. Like traffic jammed around a collapsed bridge."
Migaki grunted. "And?"
"And if we force a full flow through there now, it'll probably tear the scaffolding the med-cast is trying to build," I said, breath getting shaky with the effort of putting feeling into words. "Better to keep it low. Gentle circulation exercises instead of full-strength usage."
A beat of silence. Then another grunt.
"Acceptable," he said. "Log it."
I pulled my fingers back, let my chakra snap back into me. Headache flickered behind my eyes already. Great. First patient.
We moved on. I focused on the next chart, the next little body-map. Migaki corrected my language once ("Don't say 'it feels gross'; say 'disordered flow'"), then stopped correcting at all. That was somehow worse.
By the time we reached Lee's room, my hands were trembling.
Iyashi was already there.
He lived up to his name. Round face, soft voice, wiry hair pulled back in a loose tail. His chakra felt like warm yellow gauze: thin but layered, all drift and no spike.
He stood at Lee's bedside, explaining something to no one in particular.
"—and the muscles are like any other hardworking army," he was saying. "They need supplies. Oxygen, nutrients, time. You don't send soldiers marching on broken roads and then get mad when they trip."
Lee didn't answer. He lay there, still as a photograph, eyes closed. The machines next to his bed clicked and hummed. One slow, steady drip of fluid into his veins.
I hovered in the doorway for a second, throat thick.
Seeing him like this always hit harder than watching him get wrecked in the arena.
In the fight, he'd been motion. Velocity wrapped in green spandex and sincerity, hitting Gaara again and again even when it stopped being rational.
Here, he looked small.
"Ah, Sylvie-chan," Iyashi said when he noticed me. "Good timing. Migaki-san says you're cleared to look at the chakra damage."
"Within reason," Migaki said from behind me. "You are not to attempt repairs. Just observe."
"Yes, doctor," Iyashi murmured.
There was a chair on the other side of Lee's bed, packed with a familiar green shape.
Gai was asleep sitting up, back against the chair, arms folded over his chest. His head lolled to one side. He snored softly, brows still furrowed even in rest. His flak vest had been unzipped and draped over the back of the chair. His hands were bandaged from punching the wall after the surgery briefing. (He'd apologized. To the wall.)
His chakra flickered around him—ridiculous bright green, grass-on-fire, refusing to dim even when his body demanded it. If everyone else's chakra were candles, his was a bonfire someone had locked inside a single human frame.
It made my teeth ache to look at.
I slipped past him, trying not to wake him, and took Lee's hand.
His skin was warm. Not fever-warm, just human.
"May I?" I asked Iyashi.
He nodded. "Slowly. His coils are… delicate."
That was one way of putting it.
I let my chakra seep down into Lee. A thin trickle, like dipping a brush into water you'd already used a few times.
Inside, his chakra network lit up in ghost-lines. His natural color was hot green, like his suit, but right now most of it sat thick and sluggish in his core. The pathways out to his limbs were a mess.
Micro-tears everywhere. Little white cracks in the channels, like dried mud after rain. Scabbed-over places where the Gates had ripped him open and the body had tried to slap a bandage on from the inside.
Near his left leg, the flow tapered off completely around the worst of the damage. No movement. Just scar-like clumps of gray.
My stomach lurched.
"Don't push," Iyashi said softly. "Just look."
"I am," I whispered.
I followed one line from his center down toward his right arm. It zigzagged around breaks, jumped tiny gaps where the body had bridged it with thin filaments, like desperate spiderwebs.
"How is he even… still here?" I breathed.
"Good genes," Migaki said dryly from the doorway. "An insane amount of training. And, I suspect, sheer stubbornness."
Of course. Will of fire, but make it Gai-flavored.
I pulled back, releasing Lee's hand.
"Document what you saw," Migaki said. "Every time. Make yourself a library."
"I am," I said automatically, pushing my glasses up with the back of my wrist.
Iyashi smiled, moving to adjust Lee's blanket with small, precise motions. "You should tell him what you see next time when he's awake," he said. "In terms he can understand. Think of it like… training notes."
"I don't want to…" I swallowed. "I don't want to weigh him down with more bad news."
"Patients aren't glass," Iyashi said gently. "Especially this one. Information helps some people bear weight better."
Migaki checked the monitors, made a note, then stepped back. "Five minutes," he said. "Then we move on. Don't argue."
"I wasn't going to," I said.
He stared at me.
"Fine, I might have tried to argue a little," I amended.
He snorted and left.
Iyashi followed him, humming quietly under his breath.
The room felt bigger with just me and Gai and Lee.
I sank into the chair on the other side of the bed and pulled my notebook out of my pocket. It was already getting thick, corners bent, pages crowded with little stick-people and scribbled color-codes.
Page forty-three: Rock Lee – post-op.
I sketched a quick outline: torso, limbs, rough circles where major coils sat. Then, slowly, I filled in what I'd seen.
Green core. White micro-cracks. Gray clumps.
My handwriting got smaller and smaller as the page filled.
"If you can hear me," I said quietly, "this is the part where you yell at me for taking crappy notes."
Lee didn't move. Machines hummed.
Gai snorted awake with a strangled sound and jerked upright. "Lee!" he gasped, then blinked blearily. His eyes found me. "Ah. Sylvie of Team Kakashi."
"Hi," I said. "Sorry. Didn't mean to wake you."
"You didn't," he said, with the sincerity of someone who absolutely had been woke up by his own snoring. "A ninja's rest is always light."
He leaned forward, looking at my notebook. "What are you drawing there? Training plans? Perhaps a new youthful regimen to aid Lee's recovery?"
"Kind of," I said. "Body maps. Chakra impressions. So I don't forget what I saw."
Gai's gaze sharpened. His chakra flared brighter for a second, then settled.
"And what did you see?" he asked quietly.
I hesitated. "A lot of damage," I said. "But also… a lot of structure that's still intact. His system didn't collapse. It bent and cracked, but it's still… Lee-shaped."
Gai's eyes closed for a moment. When he opened them again, they were wet.
"Thank you," he said.
"For what?" I asked, startled.
"For speaking of my student as someone who is here, not a lesson in consequences," he said. "The other jōnin— some of them mean well. They bring their teams to look through the window and say, 'This is what happens when you overreach.' They talk of Lee as… as a warning sign."
His mouth twisted.
"You," he added, "bring notebooks and talk to him like he is still Rock Lee, who will complain about your handwriting."
I looked down at the messy page. "He would," I said.
Gai laughed once, a small, broken sound. His chakra flared again—green, wild, stubborn. It refused to dim, even wrapped around grief.
I couldn't look at it for long. It felt like staring into the sun.
"I'll do what I can," I said. "I can't promise anything. But I'm… working. On things. Tags. Stabilizers. Ways to support patched pathways. If I find anything that might help…"
"You tell me," Gai said fiercely. "Even if it is only one more degree of movement in a finger. We will celebrate every victory of youth."
He reached across the bed and squeezed my wrist, just once.
"Thank you, Sylvie," he said again, softer this time. "For not giving up on him."
I nodded quickly before my eyes could do anything embarrassing.
After he settled back into his chair, I slipped out, notebook clutched to my chest.
Kumadori found me in the hallway ten minutes later, hiding near the linen closet.
"What are you doing blocking the sheets, brat?" he grumbled, balancing a stack of folded blankets on one shoulder. His hair was a dark shaggy mess; his chakra felt like a pile of stones—solid, heavy, perpetually annoyed.
"Nothing," I said. "Avoiding crying at work."
"Terrible time management," he said. "Do it on your break."
He shuffled past me, then paused when he saw the three tags in my hand.
"What's that?" he demanded.
"Vibration dampeners," I said. "If we stick them under Lee's bed legs, it might help keep external shocks from jostling his stabilizers. The floorboards creak every time someone stomps by."
Kumadori snorted. "Or you just want an excuse to tape your scribbles all over my clean floors."
"Also that," I admitted.
He grumbled something impolite, then held out a hand. "Give me two," he said. "I'll put them on the underside so Migaki doesn't yell about aesthetics."
I blinked. "You'll… actually help?"
"Less noise means less paperwork when machines dislodge," he said. "I'm lazy, not heartless."
I handed him the tags before he could change his mind.
"Don't screw up the seal lines," I warned.
He glared. "Who do you think cleans up your misaligned talismans when they fall off?" he retorted, then trudged away.
I grinned despite myself.
Later, when the rounds slowed and the hallways got that deep-night echo, I ducked into Hinata's room.
She was half propped up on pillows, bandages peeking from under her hospital gown. The monitors next to her beeped steadily. The room smelled faintly of medicinal herbs and the lavender soap someone had snuck in for her.
Her chakra was calmer than before. Still fragile—threads of pale lavender with tiny dim spots where Neji's fingers had shut things down—but not spiraling.
Her eyes fluttered open as I slipped in.
"Sorry," I whispered. "Did I wake you?"
Hinata blinked, then relaxed a little when she recognized me. "N-no," she murmured. "I was… just thinking."
"Dangerous habit," I said, pulling the visitor's chair closer. "Doctors ought to put a warning label on that."
She smiled, tiny but real.
"How are you feeling?" I asked.
Hinata's gaze went distant for a second, like she was checking inside herself.
"Tired," she said. "But… lighter. Kurenai-sensei says my chakra is… um… 'responding well.'"
"She's right," I said, letting my senses brush against hers. "You're knitting. Slowly."
Hinata's fingers twisted in the edge of her blanket. "That's good," she said. "I… want to be able to stand up properly when we… when the next part of the exams happens."
"You will," I said. "We've got a month. Your body likes you. It's working hard."
She looked down at her hands. "It didn't feel like it liked me very much," she said quietly. "Before."
I knew what she meant. The way your own skin could feel like a punishment. A traitor. A thing that didn't match who you thought you were supposed to be.
"You stood up anyway," I said. "That's… kind of the definition of courage, you know."
Her cheeks flushed. "I wasn't…" She trailed off. "Maybe a little."
We sat in silence for a moment. The monitor beeped, a slow, steady metronome for our thoughts.
"Um," Hinata said suddenly. "Can I ask you… something embarrassing?"
"Absolutely," I said. "Those are my favorite kind."
Her fingers twisted harder. "How do you… know," she whispered, "when you… like someone?"
"Like them how?" I said, even though I already knew exactly where this was going.
Hinata's flush reached her ears. "Like," she said. "When you see them and you… get nervous. But happy. And you want to… be near them. And you want them to… see you. Even though they already do. Or… maybe they don't. But you think they do. And you want to be… braver. Because of them."
She bit her lip. "Hypothetically," she added, which was adorable.
I picked at a loose thread on my sleeve.
My brain helpfully pulled up three faces: Sasuke's profile during training, sharp and unreachable; Lee's stupid earnest grin; Naruto standing in the arena, panting and grinning, sunlight turning his sweat into sparks, my heart doing something weird in my chest.
"Sounds like liking," I said. My voice sounded funny to my own ears.
Hinata peeked at me. "You… do you…" She swallowed. "Is it… okay, to like someone who is… loud? And reckless? And sometimes… stupid? But also… strong? And kind? And when they say they'll do something, you… believe them, even when everyone else doesn't?"
She didn't say his name. She didn't have to.
A thin, pale voice whispered at the edge of my hearing: Hyūga… vessel…
I shut it out by sheer force, pressing my nails into my palm until it hurt.
"It's more than okay," I said. "It's… painfully normal."
Hinata's shoulders relaxed by a degree. "What about you?" she asked shyly. "Do you… like anyone?"
"Rude," I said. "I thought this was your embarrassing question time."
She ducked her head, but she was smiling again.
I stared at the ceiling.
"I…" I started, then stopped. "There are people who make my stomach do stupid acrobatics, yeah."
"Multiple?" Hinata said, surprised.
"Unfortunately," I said. "Brains are messy. Hearts are worse."
Hinata chewed on that. "What do you do about it?" she whispered.
"Mostly?" I said. "I try not to let it get in the way of staying alive."
That made her laugh, a soft little hitchy sound. "That's very… practical," she said.
"I am a very practical person," I lied.
The not-voice at the edge of my thoughts murmured again, like fingers tapping on glass. Moon… eyes… mine…
I rubbed my temples.
"Do you ever feel like your head is… too full?" I asked abruptly. "Like there's… more in there than just you?"
Hinata thought about it, then nodded slowly. "I feel like I'm… full of things I should be," she said. "Expectations. Clan stuff. Neji-niisan's… anger. Father's… disappointment. But not… other people."
"Lucky," I muttered.
She blinked.
"Sorry," I said quickly. "Ignore me. Long week."
We talked a little longer—about courage, and how it didn't feel like courage when it was happening; about "liking" and how it made everything more complicated and also better. Neither of us said "Naruto." It floated between us anyway, big and orange and impossible to ignore.
When Hinata started yawning mid-sentence, I tucked her blanket tighter and stood.
"Sleep," I ordered. "Doctor's assistant's orders."
"Yes, Sylvie-san," she murmured.
Her chakra smoothed out, settling. I watched it for a moment, just to make sure, then slipped back into the hallway.
At the nurses' station, I sat down and opened my notebook to the back.
New section. Blank pages.
I drew a simple seal on the inside cover—tight, looping lines, keyed to the particular shimmer of my own chakra. Nothing fancy. A locking mechanism, that's all. Enough that if someone who wasn't me tried to open it, the ink would blur.
I wrote a title at the top of the first new page: Weird Head Stuff – Do Not Read.
Then, in cramped letters, I started listing the whispers.
-fight
-vessel
-moon
-eyes
-you will
-we will
No context. No names. Just… evidence.
If the not-voice got louder later, if things got worse, I wanted a record that it wasn't just me making things up. That something had been pushing at the edges of my life long before it burst in.
I finished three pages before my hand cramped.
"Kumadori," I called without looking up. "If anyone but me tries to open this and suddenly gets ink all over their hands, that's not my fault."
"I'll add it to my list of things to ignore," he grunted from somewhere behind a stack of charts.
That was as close to a promise as I was going to get.
I closed the notebook carefully. The seal lines glowed faintly, then sank into the paper.
Everything felt a little more contained.
For now.
The pediatric wing was supposed to be quiet.
Which was why, obviously, Naruto slammed the door open with both hands and yelled, "KONOHAMARU IS BLEEDING TO DEATH!"
Every head in the small waiting area snapped toward him.
Konohamaru was not, in fact, bleeding to death. He stood behind Naruto, clutching his knee dramatically. A single, very unimpressive trickle of blood oozed down his shin.
"It really hurts," Konohamaru said, wincing. "Like, a lot, boss."
"You're gonna be fine," Naruto said, puffing out his chest. "Real shinobi don't cry over little stuff like this."
"I'm not crying," Konohamaru said instantly. "I'm just… leaking."
A nurse at the desk pinched the bridge of her nose. She had light brown hair tied back, light eyes, and the kind of expression adults reserved for "Naruto is here and loud about it."
"Uzumaki," she said. "This is a hospital. Volume down."
"Sorry, Haruno-san," Naruto said automatically, then remembered why he was here. "But Konohamaru tripped while practicing—"
"Sexy Jutsu," Konohamaru whispered proudly.
"—a totally legitimate transformation exercise," Naruto finished, sweating. "So, you know, medical emergency."
Another nurse—this one older, glasses on a chain, pink hair pulled into a tight bun—sighed. "Boys," she muttered, but she was already coming around the counter with a small tray. "Come here, sweetie. Let me see."
She crouched in front of Konohamaru, inspecting the scrape with professional efficiency. Her chakra felt calm and practiced, hands glowing faint green for a moment as she cleaned the cut.
"Not deep," she said. "You'll live."
Konohamaru relaxed visibly. "Does that mean I get a cool scar?" he asked.
"No," she said. "It means you get a bandage and one piece of candy if you sit still."
His eyes lit up. "Deal!"
Naruto flopped into a waiting chair, huffing.
He should have been at the training ground already. The Pervy Sage—Jiraiya, he guessed—had said "morning," and Naruto had no idea how strictly legendary Sannin kept time.
But Konohamaru had shown up outside his apartment at dawn, demanding Naruto watch his "totally new, super improved Sexy Jutsu," and then there'd been a rock, and bleeding, and…
He glanced around the pediatric wing while Haruno-obaasan put a bandage on the kid. Bright paintings on the walls, cheerful animal posters, a mobile shaped like clouds spinning lazily near the ceiling.
On the wall behind the reception desk, half tucked under a crooked "Wash Your Hands!" sign, was a faded piece of paper.
Naruto's eyes snagged on it.
It was a missing child poster. The kind that sometimes got nailed to bulletin boards for a week, then taken down when everyone quietly gave up.
This one hadn't been taken down.
The edges were yellowed. The ink had bled slightly with age. But the photo was still clear enough.
A little girl smiled out from the center. Maybe five or six. Light pink hair cut in a straight bob. Bright green eyes.
Underneath, in blocky printed letters: HARUNO SAKURA – Missing. The rest of the text had faded too much to read without getting uncomfortably close.
Naruto frowned.
Haruno Sakura.
He thought about the Haruno nurses. He thought about Sylvie's hair—bright dyed pink, roots already starting to show if you knew what you were looking for.
The older nurse followed his gaze, expression flickering for a moment. Her chakra stuttered, then smoothed over, like someone ironing a wrinkled shirt very quickly.
"Old poster," she said. "Don't stare, Uzumaki-kun."
"Sorry," he muttered.
The door at the end of the hall swung open then, and Sylvie appeared, clutching a stack of charts and a mug of something that smelled like burnt tea.
Her hair was a halo of frizz from hospital air. There was pen ink on her fingers and a faint crease on her cheek from falling asleep on paperwork at some point.
She froze when she saw Naruto.
"Oh, good," she said. "The loudest patient is here to ruin my night shift."
"It's daytime now," Naruto said. "So technically I'm ruining your day."
She made a face. "That's worse."
Konohamaru perked up. "Sylvie-neechan!" he chirped.
She softened immediately. "Hey, terror gremlin," she said. "What happened?"
"I sustained a very serious injury in the line of duty," Konohamaru said solemnly. "Training-related."
"He scraped his knee," Naruto said.
Sylvie crouched to check the bandage, her fingers gentle. "Looks like you survived your battle," she said. "Did you at least win?"
Konohamaru's chest puffed out. "Obviously," he said. "The ground never saw it coming."
She snorted and ruffled his hair.
Naruto watched her, something warm and prickly moving under his ribs. Sylvie looked completely at home here, like the hospital had just absorbed her. Ink stains, dark circles, weird notebook and all.
Out of the corner of his eye, the missing poster stared back at him. Pink hair. Green eyes.
His brain, ever helpful, connected the dots in the worst possible way.
"Huh," he blurted. "Hey, Sylvie. Are you a Haruno too, or what?"
The room went weirdly quiet.
Sylvie looked up sharply. "What?"
Naruto scratched his cheek. "Just, you know." He jerked a thumb toward the poster without really thinking it through. "Pink hair, Haruno med-nins, you working here. Kinda looks like…"
He trailed off as both Haruno adults went very still.
The older one looked at Sylvie with an expression Naruto couldn't quite read. Something like pain, something like hope, something like no, don't.
Sylvie's face had gone blank.
Naruto had seen that look before. On her, on Sasuke, on Kakashi. The "my feelings just fell down a well, please do not approach the rope" expression.
She turned, very slowly, to look at the poster.
For a second, she didn't move. Then she stepped closer, charts still clutched in white-knuckled hands.
Naruto watched her eyes move: from the kid's face, down to the name, back up again.
Her throat worked.
"Sylvie," the Haruno mother said, voice tight. "You don't— you don't have to—"
"What's my file say?" Sylvie asked, cutting across her without looking away from the paper.
The question was sharp enough that Naruto flinched.
"You're… volunteering here under Hokage authorization," Haruno-obaasan said carefully. "Genin, Team 7. Migaki-san's notes—"
"My name," Sylvie said. "What does it say. On the chart."
The mother looked helplessly at her husband. He sighed, fetched a clipboard from the nursing station, and held it out.
Sylvie snatched it.
Her eyes skimmed the text. Naruto leaned over her shoulder, squinting.
Patient/Assistant: Sylvie – Genin Team 7.
No clan. No last name.
No anything, besides the one she'd given herself.
Naruto felt his stomach drop in a weird echo. He'd at least had Uzumaki on paper, even if it didn't come with parents attached.
Sylvie stared at the line for so long Naruto started counting heartbeats.
One, two, three—
She laughed.
It was a thin, brittle sound.
"Of course," she said. "Of course it's just… that."
Her knuckles were white around the clipboard. The tips of her ears had gone pale.
Naruto's mouth ran ahead of his sense again.
"I mean, it's not that weird," he said, trying for casual. "I didn't have a clan name on any of my stuff either, not really, not until they started writing 'jinchūriki' in the margins." He snorted. "Last names are kinda lame anyway. I'll just keep calling you Sylvie-chan."
She looked at him like he'd thrown her a rope without realizing she was dangling.
The tension in her shoulders eased by a fraction.
"…That's not how family names work," she muttered, but there wasn't much heat in it.
"Sure it is," Naruto said. "You're Sylvie. That's enough."
Her eyes flicked to the poster one last time.
The girl in the picture—Haruno Sakura—smiled out at the hallway, forever five, forever missing. Naruto watched Sylvie's gaze trace the shape of her face, the line of her hair.
For a heartbeat, he had the idiot, terrifying thought that she might say it.
That she might say, Yes, I'm a Haruno. I'm her. I came back. That she might try to plug herself into that empty space like a puzzle piece, just because everyone in this place seemed to want it.
She didn't.
Her hand tightened on the clipboard until her knuckles creaked. Then she set it down, careful, on the counter.
"I have rounds," she said. Her voice was steady again. "Konohamaru, try not to die of your mortal wound. Naruto, try not to teach him any new terrible jutsu in the next ten minutes."
Konohamaru saluted. "Yes, ma'am!"
Naruto grinned. "No promises," he said.
Sylvie rolled her eyes, but the edge was gone. Mostly.
As she turned away, Naruto caught the Haruno parents watching her. The mother's hand hovered near the missing poster like she wanted to touch it and couldn't.
Naruto shoved his hands into his pockets.
He didn't understand most of what had just happened. He rarely did, when it came to adults and their ghosts. But he understood one thing:
Sylvie looked more rattled now than she had during half the fights in the arena.
"Hey," he called after her.
She paused, glancing back.
"When I become Hokage," Naruto said, "I'm gonna make a rule that nobody gets to write your name without asking you first. Clan or no clan."
She blinked.
"Sounds like a terrible bureaucratic nightmare," she said. "The paperwork will never recover."
He grinned. "Good. Paperwork deserves it."
The corner of her mouth twitched.
"Go to your training," she said. "The pervy old guy's probably already mad at you."
He yelped. "Crap! Jiraiya!"
Konohamaru waved his arms. "Boss, don't leave me—"
"You're in good hands," Naruto said, backing toward the door. "Sylvie-chan's here, and the Harunos, and if you milk it you might get two candies."
Konohamaru's eyes lit up with the kind of calculation that should probably worry people.
Naruto shot Sylvie one last grin and bolted, sandals squeaking on the polished floor.
Behind him, the pediatric wing settled back into its strange, quiet buzz: kids breathing, nurses moving, old posters clinging to walls out of sheer stubbornness.
Sylvie picked up her notebook again, thumb pressed against the freshly sealed back pages.
She didn't take a new name.
Not that night.
But the absence of one followed her down the hallway like a shadow.