You are eight years old and you learn that people are cruel.

You are eight years old and you are your grandmother's heir: you will one day be the Aburame matriarch, leader of one of Konoha's few Noble Clans, head of a crucial part of the village.

And yet...

You are eight years old and you have never felt more alone.

No, worse than alone: isolated. Shunned. Deliberately made to feel separate and different and disgusting. As if what you are (who you are) is less than. When really who you are (what you are) is so much more. More than what those girls say, more than what they have made you feel.

You are Aburame. You contain multitudes. You are never alone.

But you are only eight years old and it feels that way, hiding and in pain, the night gone dark and quiet. Mr. Cranberry is your oldest, closest friend (maybe your only friend, what with how terribly today has gone) and, while you are not bonded to him in the same way you are to your kikaichu, you know him well enough to make yet another terrible realization:

He's not going to make it.

The clan doctors could fix him. But something's wrong with your ankle and your family won't think to look for you because you were supposed to be at a sleepover at Yumi's house and--

You are eight years old. The night is long, dark, and quiet, save for your crying because Mr. Cranberry doesn't make a sound. And by the time someone finally finds you, buttercup yellow coat catching the early morning light, it is far too late. Your tears have already dried.

You are eight years old and this dishearteningly formative night will stick with you for the rest of your life.

“Yumi-chan invited me to a sleepover!”

It bursts out of your mouth, excitement bubbling up and impossible to control. Mum pauses mid-sentence, caught off-guard but not displeased, indulgent in her nod for you to continue. The reports of the clan’s apiaries are important, but they can wait: you hardly ever have news to share at the dinner table and your family spoils you.

“Tomorrow after kunoichi class,” you add eagerly, somewhat unnecessarily, your hive buzzing in tandem.

“I am surprised yet happy for you, Chiya-chan,” Shino-nii says, and his mouth twitches into his nicest smile, “Surprised because before this I did not know you were such close friends with your classmate Yumi.” Shino-nii does not explain why he is happy for you. He doesn’t need to, you already know: Shino-nii is the best big brother, he is always happy when you’re happy.

But he didn’t have to explain why he was surprised, either. You’ve mentioned Yumi before: she’s the prettiest, smartest, coolest, and most popular girl in class. She has so many friends, you’ve always wanted to be one of them. (You didn’t even know she knew who you were.)

Mum and Dad also express their congratulations, but Grandmother is the one you turn to for approval. Her face is impassive, more so than usual even, but when she reaches a hand towards you, you obligingly guide it towards your own face. Her palm is cool against your cheek.

You don’t understand what, if anything, she is trying to tell you.

(It’s not something that can be taught, you can only experience it for yourself.)

You are eight years old and you learn that people can be cruel.

But they can also be kind.

Ultimately the lesson you learn on this night is that people are people, cruel and kind both. So instead of hardening your heart (chitinous shell to protect your vulnerabilities) you learn instead to surround yourself with people who will be kind to you and save their cruelty for enemies.

Allies who will fight by your side, who will pick you up when you need help, who you could consider friends.

Shino-nii clearly has done so, Shikako-nee a good ally and friend, and you think that you would like to do the same.

You are Aburame, you contain multitudes, you are never alone. But you do not have to turn only to your clan or your hive for friendship.

You are eight years old and you are not as naively trusting as you once were, even just this morning. But perhaps you are not as disillusioned as you might have been.

By the time you suspect something may be wrong, it is already too late.

Yumi-chan and her friends have been smiling at you (laughing at you) all day. And foolishly, naively, you follow them after kunoichi classes have ended.

“Shouldn’t we bring our packs?” You ask as Yumi-chan and her friends bring you further and further away from the Academy.

Yumi-chan smiles (laughs) and responds, “Oh, we’ll go back to get our packs after this.”

Foolishly, naively, you don’t think to ask after what.

But you do think to ask where they’re taking you, as your trek continues, into a part of the village that you know doesn’t have much. No parks to play in, no houses where Yumi-chan may live, no bakeries for snacks--just trees and administrative buildings. When you bring this up, Yumi-chan’s pretty smile edges into something dark and mean.

By the time you make a terrible realization, it is already too late.

“Did you really think I would invite you to my house?” she asks, sneers, her friends circling you with haughty, disgusted looks of their own. “I’m not going to bring bugs into my house, that’s gross! And you have them all the time. I don’t even think you’re human, I bet you’re just a bunch of bugs wearing human clothes.”

Her friends jeer, crowding closer, boxing you in, but not touching you. Not until Yumi-chan reaches out and shoves you. You don’t even think to dodge, too surprised (too hurt) to even brace yourself, and you stumble backwards into the girl behind you who screeches in disgust and pushes you away into yet a different member of the circle.

Maybe it starts as an accident, a quirk of instincts, but soon enough it turns into a sick game, one that you don’t want to play and don’t know how to escape. You’re breathing hard and you’re crying and you’re asking them to stop but they don’t. Your kikaichu try to fly out to protect you, but yours is a small hive and you haven’t been trained fully in swarming techniques, and besides: despite everything, even all this, you don’t actually want to attack them.

Mr. Cranberry doesn’t feel the same, though. When you are shoved back in Yumi-chan’s direction, her pretty face twisted and mean, he jumps from your coat onto her, furry legs scrambling.

She screams, bats away at him, and the other girls stop their awful game. But they start a new one, as Mr. Cranberry falls to the ground and Yumi-chan stomps.

There is a sound of crunching, of squishing, of Mr. Cranberry breaking. Your heart stops. Your kikaichu buzz, the scents of war on the air, and you rush at them.

By the time you get rid of them, by the time you extract Mr. Cranberry, by the time you hold him close and limp to a tree and cry and cry and cry, it is already too late.

You think you now know what Grandmother couldn’t tell you.

The Aburame clan has always been led by a matriarch. You know that this is, in part, to mimic your kikaichu (queens are life givers, hive builders) but you wonder if the human side is equally as important. The human society and culture that are far less efficient and neat.

You've come to learn through observation that most people think bugs are gross. Bewildering, yes, but true. But where little boys are allowed to think gross things are fascinating, little girls are conditioned to abhor them.

(How do they think all these pretty flowers bloom? Where does the honey in their favorite sweets come from?)

You are not the first Aburame heiress to be treated so poorly by her peers, and you highly doubt you will be the last. Why? Because it is an education, bullying just another learning experience. A microcosm of the world you will face outside of the Academy.

You are Aburame. You do not appreciate smaller things being disregarded. The scale does not make a tragedy hurt any less.

It seems there are no repercussions for what happened: it wouldn’t do for a Noble Clan to throw their weight around in Academy matters, even if it was their heiress involved, but you’re not even sure the Academy teachers know.

The incident happened after classes, off the grounds. They have no jurisdiction. Would they even do anything if they did know?

Yumi-chan and her friends no longer laugh at you. They don’t even look at you.

Good. You don’t need people like that around you, better to have no one at all than to draw your enemies close, beneath your chitinous shell where they can take aim at your vulnerabilities.

You don’t need them. You don’t need anyone. You are Aburame. You have everything you need.

You are more excited than nervous about the invitation, but a fair amount of both just the same. You are excited to see Shikako-nee again, of course, and you've only ever been invited to one other thing before (which didn't turn out as planned, proved Shikako-nee can be trusted. She saved Mr. Cranberry, after all) so you're happy to get another invitation to something.

But you've never really spoken to Moegi or Hanabi. Moegi always seems like she's having fun, always with her friends, while Hanabi tends to have an irritated, furrow between her eyebrows whenever someone approaches her. You've never really had a reason to talk to either of them before.

And it's to a kunoichi club! Of actual kunoichi! Graduated and real and pretty and powerful!

You hope you don't mess up. You're not really sure what you're supposed to do. What if there's a test? What if they don't like your kikaichu or Mr. Cranberry?

(What if they don't like you?)

But Shikako-nee wouldn't be friends with mean people. She's friends with Shino-nii, after all, and Shino-nii is the nicest person you know!

You have faith that it's going to be okay.

But it's not okay.

It’s more than that, it's great! You make friends with Moegi and Hanabi and then with Ranmaru and Konohamaru and Udon, too. Even when Shikako-nee can't make it to the meetings or training sessions, you learn so much and have so much fun.

Your world is still small, but now it's filled with so much more.

Sometimes, your thoughts stray from your chosen path. They are innocuous; it would be foolish to repress them and you have years yet to let them dwindle and decay.

Shino-nii seems happy enough on his team, working alongside others from the village.

(Ah, but you are and Shino-nii are not the same. It would be incorrect to assume that you would have the same emotional response even were you to have the same situation. Which you do not.)

Your great-grandmother, the Aburame matriarch who brought the clan to Konoha in the first place, must have hoped for more than just civil coexistence.

(The world was at war then. Civil coexistence is an obvious improvement from constant battle and destruction. Anything more might have been beyond her scope.)

Surely anyone, just one person, could prove worthy of your trust?

(You chose wrong. You may choose wrong once more. Remember what happened to Mr. Cranberry.)

And so you do not try to make friends anymore. What is the point?

When you graduate from the Academy you will go back to your clan for an apprenticeship, specialize your skills and knowledge to serve your clan. This is only logical: one day you will lead the clan, and you must do what is best for the Aburame.

When you graduate from the Academy, you tell your father and grandmother that you'd like to try for the jounin led teams.

You know that, as heiress, you will be expected to undergo specialized training to become the Aburame matriarch. You are not rejecting that. But your grandmother is still healthy. There is no rush. There is no reason why you cannot be on a team and undergo that training at the same time.

It's possible that you may not even make it onto a team. Perhaps you'll end up with an apprenticeship anyway--but isn't it better to try and fail than to never even make the attempt?

Additionally, the other clans do that with their heirs, so why not you? And you know comparing yourself to other clans isn't equivalent, but surely it would be illogical to dismiss the option just because tradition has always done otherwise.

There's so much you could learn, you tell them, from a team instead of an apprenticeship. Isn't it logical to gain what you can from the wider world so as to benefit the clan?

Your flood of words trails off, your argument travelling in circles as your father and grandmother watch in silence.

Your grandmother doesn't smile, but her hive hums in response to her mood and she nods.

When you graduate from the Academy, you are placed on Team Eight under Hana Inuzuka alongside Hanabi and Ranmaru.

When you graduate from the Academy, you think about what it means to be the heiress to the Aburame, a shinobi of Konoha. You think about friendship and faith and trust and kindness.