For a while after the Sound team disappeared, the clearing sounded like breathing and not much else.
Lee was still out cold, propped against a tree with his limbs arranged in a way that made every basic anatomy diagram in my head scream. Naruto slept like he owed the forest money. Sasuke sat with his back to the trunk, one knee up, head tipped forward just enough that his bangs hid most of his face.
Team 10 lingered in that lazy triangle of theirs, the one that said "we've done the math and we're all out of good options." Shikamaru lay flat on his back staring at the canopy like it had personally wronged him. Choji was half-heartedly nibbling on what had to be his emergency-emergency chips. Ino paced.
The breeze finally picked up, tugging at my clothes, my ribbon. Something tickled the back of my neck. Short hair. Weird. The ground around my feet looked like a salon floor after a nervous breakdown—scattered tufts and long, uneven strips of bright pink with the old light-brown roots showing.
I tried not to look at it. Or at my hands.
The burns along my chakra lines had gone from screaming to a nasty, throbbing ache. Every time I flexed my fingers the skin tugged, tight and shiny. The Squad Marks on my wrist were warm under the bandages, quieter now that Sasuke wasn't a walking curse bomb and Naruto wasn't…whatever that fox thing had been.
"Troublesome," Shikamaru muttered to the sky. He sounded more tired than annoyed, which was saying something. "We should've stayed in bed."
"You would've failed the exam in bed," Ino snapped.
"Would've died less," he countered.
Choji swallowed. "We're all still alive," he said quietly. "That's…something."
My laugh came out thin. "Forest of Death: buy one scroll, get trauma free."
Ino stopped pacing long enough to look me over properly. Her eyes caught on the hacked edge at my nape, the way my hair stuck out in uneven spikes where it used to fall to my mid-back. Her mouth opened, closed, re-opened.
"I am reserving judgment," she said finally, in the exact tone of someone looking at a crime scene and waiting for the police report. "Until after I make sure you still have a scalp."
"Cool," I said. "Can't wait."
She huffed, then glanced at Shikamaru. "So? What's the plan, oh mighty strategist?"
Shikamaru groaned like thinking physically hurt. "We're low on chakra, our formation's blown, and we used half our tricks just staying alive. If we babysit them till the end of the exam, we're the ones who fail."
"Wow," I said. "Tell me how you really feel."
He rolled his head just enough to give me a look. "You know what I mean. You've got a cleared campsite and extra traps. We stay, we turn one crippled platoon into two."
…He wasn't wrong. I hated that he wasn't wrong.
Ino folded her arms, mouth pinched. "We can't just leave them."
"You think she'll let anything else touch them after all that?" Shikamaru jerked his chin at me. "Look at the ground, Ino."
She did. Her shoulders eased a fraction as she clocked the ink stains, the tags, the little invisible web I'd spun around our patch of hell.
"Fine," she said. "But if anything happens to my client, I'm billing you."
"Client?" I croaked.
"Hair client." Her eyes narrowed at my uneven bangs. "Don't get ideas."
Choji looked between us, then dug in his pouch. "Here," he offered, holding out the chips. "For you. You look like you need salt."
"Thanks," I said, taking a handful mostly so he'd stop worrying. My stomach was a tight, sour knot. The chips tasted like cardboard and relief.
Shikamaru pushed himself up onto his elbows with a monumental sigh. "We're heading out. We'll circle back near the tower in a day if we can."
"That's not how the exam works," I objected weakly.
"Yeah, yeah," he said. "Don't die. Send up a flare if you're about to, or whatever."
He got to his feet. Choji followed, shouldering his pack with a grunt. Ino stayed where she was, staring at me like she couldn't decide between hugging me and hitting me for what I'd done to my head.
Behind me, someone groaned.
Every nerve in my body pivoted toward that sound. I spun.
Naruto's eyelids fluttered. His face scrunched up, nose wrinkling like he'd smelled something awful. He lifted a hand slowly, as if gravity had tripled, and scrubbed at his eyes.
"Ugh," he said. "Did somebody…run me over with a building?"
My heart did a weird, sharp little flip. "Hey," I said, dropping into a crouch beside him. "You with us?"
He blinked at me. Then past me.
The clearing came into focus for him in slow, ugly layers: the broken trees, the crater from Lee's Lotus, the scattered ink tags, Lee crumpled against a trunk, Sasuke hunched in the shadows.
His gaze landed on me again.
On my hair.
His brain clearly took a second to process it. You could practically watch the thought load: good morning, forest, blood, Sasuke is sulking, Sylvie is—
He shot upright so fast he nearly headbutted me.
"WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR HAIR?!"
Shikamaru flinched like the volume physically hurt him. Choji dropped his chip bag. Ino made a strangled sound that could have been laughter or heartbreak.
Heat crawled up my neck. I fought the urge to reflexively grab for non-existent ponytail.
"It lost a fight with my survival instinct," I said.
He gaped. His eyes darted to the pink mess on the ground around us, then to the jagged edge at my jaw. His mouth opened and closed, giving extremely convincing goldfish impression.
"You— but it was— and Ino and the— you LIKED it," he managed.
Wow. So that was the part his brain latched onto.
"I like being not dead more," I said. "Turns out it's a package deal."
Ino strode over before he could say something even worse. She grabbed my chin between finger and thumb, turning my head side to side like she was inspecting a defective product.
"Hold still," she ordered.
"Bossy," I muttered.
She parted the shorter strands with her fingers, checking my scalp. I tried not to flinch when she brushed over a sore spot.
"No bald patches," she said eventually, mostly to herself. "Some split ends. We can work with this."
"I was going for 'forest goblin chic,'" I said. "Glad we're aligned."
She ignored me. Her fingers were gentle now, less tug, more smoothing. Bits of hair clung to my clothes; she started picking them off with brisk, precise movements.
"When we get out of here," she said quietly, so only I heard it over Naruto's continued sputtering, "I'm fixing this crime against style. Proper tools. Actual scissors. Maybe layers."
"That sounds expensive," I said, because if I didn't joke I was going to cry again for no reason.
"Relax." She flicked a bit of hair away. "I'll put it on your tab."
My throat tightened.
Her hand stilled on the back of my head for a second, fingers spread over the place where Kin had yanked, where I'd cut.
"You know," Ino added, voice dropping the last inch into something surprisingly soft, "being a girl isn't about how long your hair is."
I froze.
"It's about the person wearing it," she finished. "You're allowed to be you even if some Sound-bitch makes you hack off half of it."
The forest went a little blurry at the edges.
I swallowed hard. My eyes burned for a completely unrelated and deeply stupid reason. "You're gonna ruin your cool queen image if you keep saying things like that," I warned her.
She clicked her tongue. "Shut up and let me preen, gremlin."
She smoothed a few short strands over my ear, stepped back like she was done, and then flicked my forehead lightly. "And don't you dare let any of those assholes make you feel fake," she added, louder. "You hear me?"
Naruto blinked. "Feel fake about what?"
"Nothing," we both said.
He squinted between us, suspicious, then got distracted by his own hair falling in his face. It was a little longer than regulation, messy as always. He shoved it back with a scowl.
"Seriously, though," he said, turning back to me. "You really cut it off? Yourself?"
"Kunai is a multitool," I said. "Highly recommend, zero stars."
He made a face. "But I thought you liked all the…girly stuff. The salon. The ribbons." His ears went a little pink, like he was suddenly aware of how that sounded. "I mean—I'm not saying you're not girly now, you just—"
"Incredible save," I said dryly.
He flailed, hands windmilling a little. "I'm trying to say—!" He stopped, dragged a hand down his face, and huffed. "Look, whatever. Short, long, whatever." He rubbed at his nose, a little pink smudge of embarrassment. "You're still the one who smacks me when I'm being dumb."
A crooked grin tugged at his mouth. "That's the important part."
The stupidest little fizz went off in my chest.
"Oh my god," I said. "That was almost sweet."
He scowled harder to cover the blush crawling up his cheeks. "Shut up. Your head looks like a fuzzy tomato."
"Wow," I said. "There goes your compliment quota for the year."
Choji snorted. Even Shikamaru's mouth twitched.
Behind Naruto, Lee made a faint sound, somewhere between a groan and an inspirational speech warming up. I filed that under "problems for ten minutes from now."
I risked a glance toward the tree.
Sasuke hadn't moved much. He sat with his back pressed hard into the trunk, one knee up, arm draped over it. The bandages around his neck were fresh, white against the dark fabric. Underneath them, I could still feel the curse mark through the Squad Mark link—a black, irritated throb, like a brand that hadn't decided whether to scar or burn again.
His chakra, which used to feel like a focused, sharp-edged blue, was different now. It had a jagged fringe to it, dark veins of something ugly threading through the core. Restless. Pacing. Like a cage with an animal in it and no plan for what to do if the door opened.
He was watching us, but only from the corner of his eye. Every time Naruto's voice spiked, his jaw tightened. When Ino's hand had been on my head, smoothing my chopped hair, I'd felt his chakra twitch.
Guilt sat around him like a second shadow.
A part of me wanted to go over there. To put a hand on his shoulder again, see if the mark would behave, say something like you stopped or I'm still here or he doesn't own you.
Another part remembered the way he'd looked with the curse flared—eyes wild, voice shredding at the edges, power boiling under his skin that felt too much like snake-teeth and white-haired monsters.
He needed space. Or time. Or a therapist. Probably all three.
I didn't have any of those to spare right now.
So I met his glance for half a second, just enough to let him see that I saw him, that I wasn't flinching away—and then I looked back at Naruto's stupid, earnest face.
"So," Naruto said, somewhere between sheepish and smug. "Do I gotta, like, stand guard tonight while you sleep, now that you're all…uh…"
"Hairless?" I offered.
"Vulnerable," he corrected quickly. His eyes flashed with something fiercer, just for a heartbeat. "You pulled a stupid, dangerous thing to keep me and Sasuke from getting blown up. I owe you."
"You already owe me at least ten bowls of ramen," I said. "Add it to the tab."
He grinned, and for a second, under the bruises and exhaustion, he looked like a kid again. A loud, annoying, impossible kid who'd decided my continued existence mattered.
My knees wobbled. The adrenaline high was wearing off; the crash was coming fast. I sank down onto my butt in the dirt, back against the tree between Naruto and Sasuke, feeling the rough bark dig into my shoulder blades.
Ino stepped back, satisfied for now. "We're going," she said, louder, pitching her voice so it covered the clearing. "We still need a Heaven scroll, and we wasted enough time saving your butts."
"Hey," Naruto protested. "I could've—"
"You were unconscious," she said. "Shut up."
Choji waved shyly. "Take care, okay?"
Shikamaru shoved his hands into his pockets and started walking, looking like a kid on his way to take out the trash. "Try not to cause any more international incidents while we're gone," he said over his shoulder.
"No promises," I called.
Ino hesitated at the edge of the clearing. She glanced back once more, eyes catching on the scattered hair, the bandages, the way I sat between the boys like I'd grown roots there.
"Remember what I said," she told me. Her voice had that same fierce little edge from before. "About the hair. And the rest."
I nodded, throat too tight to trust my voice.
She nodded back, sharp and queenlike, then turned and jogged after her team.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The forest swallowed them quick. Leaves rustled. Branches swayed. The sound of their footsteps faded into the bigger hum of bugs and distant bird-cries.
Silence settled over our wrecked little clearing again. Different silence this time. Less waiting-for-death. More hangover.
Naruto had slumped sideways while they were arguing about plans, the last of his adrenaline burning out. He snored now in soft, hitched breaths, cheek mashed against his own arm. Every so often his fingers twitched like he was punching something in a dream. Typical.
I sank down onto my butt in the dirt, back against the tree between Naruto and Sasuke, feeling the rough bark dig into my shoulder blades. The Squad Marks throbbed faintly: Naruto's chakra flickering tired but stubborn; Sasuke's pacing behind its new scars; Lee's steady, bruised pulse a little further off.
We were alive.
We were a disaster.
We were, somehow, still in this exam.
"If anyone tries to mess with us again today," I muttered, "they're clinically insane."
The hysteria hit me sideways.
It bubbled up out of nowhere, a weird, high giggle that caught on my ribs and wouldn't stop. Not the nice kind of laughter. The too-sharp kind, a little too close to crying. I slapped a hand over my mouth, shoulders shaking.
Something shifted by the next tree over.
I glanced that way, still half-laughing into my palm.
Lee's fingers twitched first, then his eyelids. He peeled one eye open like it weighed a kilo, gaze unfocused and full of painkillers he definitely did not have.
"Sylvie…san…?" he croaked.
My heart lurched. "Hey, hey, don't move," I said quickly. "You did a triple backflip into the ground. Ten out of ten, zero out of ten, you know?"
He blinked slowly, like his brain had to process that in subtitles. His gaze drifted past me, caught on the pink wreck around my feet, then climbed up to my hacked-off hair.
For a second he just stared.
Then—because of course he would, because the universe has a sense of humor—his expression softened into pure, dazed delight.
"Your…hair," he murmured, voice rough but earnest. "Short…like this…"
He swallowed, forced the words out around whatever internal screaming his bones were doing.
"…it looks very cool," he finished, with the solemn weight of a lifetime vow. "Extremely…youthful."
Heat shot straight up my neck into my ears.
"You're concussed," I said, a little too fast. "Your taste cannot be trusted. Go back to sleep."
He tried for a thumbs-up. It got about halfway before his hand flopped back to his chest.
"Even…injured…" he whispered, eyelids drooping again, "I can still…recognize beauty…of spirit…"
"Lee," I said, voice wobbling between a laugh and a sob, "if you finish that sentence, I'm sedating you."
He smiled—small, lopsided, stupidly bright—and let his eyes close. His breathing evened out, deep and slow.
The giggles finally ran out of me, leaving that shaky, hollow feeling behind. I wiped at my eyes with the heel of my hand. Naruto snored on. Sasuke stared at nothing. Lee dreamed whatever heroic nonsense lived in that head.
Short hair, long hair, no hair—whatever.
I was still here.
And until this forest killed us or we staggered out the other side, anybody who wanted to touch my boys was going to have to go through the pink-headed gremlin in the slightly-too-big school uniform first.