The pressure settled into my spine long before the incline began.
Rice, packed dense, slid against the woven reed walls with every step. It refused to sit still; the downward force grinding into my shoulders and pulling at the muscles in my lower back. Each tiny slide tugged at my footing, forcing continuous readjustment through my spine. Sweat refused to run off my forearms, slicking the fibers where my fingers hooked into the bunch, the salt working into the places where the weave bit into my skin.
"Why didn't we just carry one big one?!" Naruto complained from behind me, his voice bouncing up the staircase in uneven echoes.
I didn't answer immediately, my attention pinned to a riser that looked smoother than the rest. I tested the edge with my sandal, watching a fine layer of salt-mist flake away.
"Because," I said, adjusting my grip as I committed to the step, "you would have dropped it."
"I would not have—!"
"You absolutely would have," Idate cut in, his breathing broke rhythm. He climbed ahead, posture low, anchoring the incline in his hips. The dark fabric of his tunic pulled tight across his thighs, his alignment breaking at the lower back from the way he favored his right side. "You can't keep a single mass from sliding on these risers. It'll take you over the edge."
Naruto huffed, the zipper tabs on his shorts clinking against his thigh. "I could totally—"
His footing sheared sideways.
A sharp, dry strike of rubber against salt-slick stone followed, then a full-body flail. The mesh of his tank top clung unevenly to his ribs as he overcorrected to keep the basket from tipping, the dark netting rasping against raw, salt-abraded skin. Recovery came late, Naruto hugging the wicker to his chest while his breath caught at the top of the sudden exertion.
"…Okay, maybe not totally," he muttered.
I didn't turn. The stairs demanded every scrap of my focus. Ancient slabs of volcanic rock stacked into a relentless incline, weaponized by the environment. Humidity latched onto exposed skin, refusing to evaporate, turning the climb into a struggle against fabric and stone.
Above us, the torii gate loomed—dark timber cutting a hard line against the washed-out sky. The thick fibers of the shimenawa rope sagged, swollen with moisture.
The forest closed in. Firs rose in tight intervals like vertical bars. Light fractured between them in rhythmic bands—bright, dark, bright—dragging my vision into a sequence. Edges smeared into continuity. Movement masked. The treeline offered a series of potential ambush points where someone could stand perfectly still and simply vanish into the pattern.
I adjusted my glasses with my shoulder, but the frames slipped asymmetrically, the salt film on the lenses catching the vapor from the heights to create smeared halos. Behind me, metallic chatter followed Anko's yawn, the interlocking rings conducting the midday heat. Deep, red indentations marked Idate's shoulders where the straps had sunk into the skin, the flesh refusing to rebound.
"You know," Anko said lazily, her voice carrying despite the incline, "Ibiki used to overcompensate for the incline just like that. Made him predictable."
Idate's head turned in a stiff, guarded arc to look back, his neck muscles locked.
"That was the Chūnin Exams," he bit out, his voice flat. "Not a race."
Anko hummed, a sound that cut through the hiss of the needles overhead. "Pain is transferable across contexts, Wasabi."
Crossing beneath the torii gate hit my system like an inversion. The sweat on my neck, previously a warm slick, turned into a needle-sting of cold as the mountain air funneled through the timber. I took a deep draw of air, expecting cedar, but a sulfurous bite settled at the back of my tongue, stalling the inhale.
I stepped onto the level ground of the shrine approach, but the volcanic ash didn't support my weight like the stone risers. My foot expected resistance and found none; the ash compressed three inches deeper than I anticipated. I reacted before I processed it, stumbling as the ground gave way. A jagged stone bit through the thin sole of my sandal, and I compensated past center, my weight tipping until I jammed my heel into the grit.
Steam vents exhaled in a constant, grinding exhale. Pale columns twisted low across the ground, and as I walked through them, moisture accumulated instantly on my skin, the heat gradient making the space feel grainy.
Space collapsed inward. Ten meters felt like five. Noise didn't carry past a few meters, my own footsteps returning out of sync, making the ground feel further away than it was. Naruto misjudged the dampening, his next word coming out as an accidental shout that dropped out before it carried.
"Where is—!"
The sulfur burned behind my eyes, pulling tears out of them; my blinking frequency spiked as the structure was dragged out of alignment. Idate leaned on his knees, his calf wraps darkening unevenly with fresh sweat as he fought to realign his breathing.
Out of the rolling vapor, a silhouette sharpened.
A woman stood at the edge of the main hall, her robes layered in muted tones. Her eyes tracked the spacing of our feet on the ash, then lingered on the way Naruto's frame folded inward at the top and my own torso was pitched to the left.
I stepped forward first. My fingers felt locked in a clawed position. As I released the wicker, my tendons recoiled with a sharp ache. The force leaving my frame nearly threw me off balance. My muscles overcorrected for a pressure my body hadn't let go of yet, and even though I stood upright, my posture refused to come back upright. The straps had left grooves across my chest, restricting the depth of my inhale even after the strain lifted. My hands trembled, the fingers refusing to fully extend.
One by one, the others followed. A packed, shifting knock followed Naruto's drop, but as he moved to speak, a dense wall of vapor cut across the space, making him disappear for a full second before the cloud broke apart. He tried to reset his frame, the salt crust forming unevenly along his collarbone. Idate placed his down with a grip reset that showed a micro-tremor in his forearms.
Iresu's eyes stayed on the baskets, her gaze drifting toward the red marks on Idate's neck. A small smile touched her lips.
"You divided the mass," she said. Her voice was soft, but the direction was eaten by the vents, making it seem as if she were speaking from several feet to the left. "Not evenly. But functionally."
Naruto adjusted his stance mid-motion, rubbing his lower back. His next question was a half-whisper, swallowed by the steam. "Does that... points?" He cleared his throat and tried again, undershooting the volume needed to reach her. "Does that mean we get extra points?!"
Idate groaned, his head moving in that same restricted, stiff arc. "It's not about points, Naruto—"
Iresu laughed. Her gaze lingered on the way Naruto and I had unconsciously stepped in to flank Idate as we arrived, our stances mirroring each other's exhaustion.
"It is never about points," she said.
A rolling bank of steam washed across her, briefly turning her into a grey ghost.
"You carried what you could sustain. And adjusted when you could not."
Naruto blinked, ruffling his salt-crusted hair. He waited for a heavy bank of steam to drift past, then opened his mouth to speak just as the wind swirled a fresh cloud into his face. "…So… no points?" he muttered, mistiming the gap.
Iresu's smile widened as the steam shredded into strands. "If you require numbers to validate effort, you will always be chasing something that moves faster than you."
Naruto opened his mouth, then closed it as his zipper tabs clinked against his chest. He looked at the baskets, then back at the empty space where her face had been obscured a moment before. "…That sounded like points," he muttered.
I forced the image to settle, my vision pulling back into alignment. My breath finally began to sync with the stillness of the shrine, and I finally lifted out of the defensive hunch.
Behind us, the staircase was a grey descent into shadow. The air sealed in, a sharp tension building in my eardrums as the barometer dropped. A hollow ache formed in my sinuses, the smell of wet minerals pushing out the sweetness of the rice.
My pulse hammered a slow, heavy rhythm as I looked at the bruised sky.
The blue was gone—just grey layered over grey as the sky closed up.