[open] Life in a box

[extinguished_hope]

Laying low and being unnoticeable is something every shinobi knows how to do. So it wasn't hard for Neji to just sit in dark corners of the village, watching people bustle around. The bad weather, festivals, celebrations, people- it just passed him by.

He had nothing to do with it. When he was in Konoha, he could freely say that he could pack whole his life in one box. Now he can pack it in his palm. And it doesn't bothers him.

What bothers him is that he still has to wake up in the morning, knowing that he's not dead, knowing that he's stuck somewhere for whatever reason, that he can't go on. He wanted to go on, to just disappear from here.

He lived in clustered neighborhood- the houses were not in too good state. The yard was full with metal scraps and junk, the wooden fence didn't really offer much protection, the clothes hanging around, drying. Yet it somehow didn't fall apart no matter what kind of weather came forth. So as long as his place is not in shambles he sees no need to leave the cluster. People didn't bother him, even if it was noisy throughout the day.

This morning was the same. He woke up to the old lady yelling like every other morning. His eyes stared at the wall, listening as she urged her household to wake up and get a move on to work. He knows she sits on porch, leaned on her cane. She was like alarm clock to him.
After rolling up futon and getting dressed, carefully avoiding mirror when doing so- he's still not used to see himself with big scar on his throat, and his clothes didn't really hide it.

When he was finished tidying up his one-room house, he left the house dressed in green sleeveless shirt and white shorts. There were people out already, talking loudly and yelling in the cluster, but... something felt different in the air. As if he missed out on something. He couldn't really place his finger on it.

Deciding that it was probably another of those things related only to this village, he made his way to the training grounds, again avoiding bumping into someone he knew. He wanted to train and meditate in peace. He didn't notice anyone on training grounds when he arrived and he hoped it will stay that way as he climbed on the tree and taking position to meditate. He doesn't really want to have to leave the grounds because of the others.

Wrong Turn - Open

[nolongeronthesidelines]

She doesn't often get the chance to get out of Konoha. With the way that the team tends to always be busy with individual missions and the way her own hands were usually full helping Shizune or the Lady Hokage, she is assigned missions the least often in her team. It's a nice change of pace, then, when she finally does get a mission. Even if the mission is a fairly simple and uneventful one like this one, where she's carrying sensitive documents from one land to another under cover of darkness.

She's expecting an attempted ambush by a group of rogue nin bandits the Land of Ponds is concerned the Land of Rivers might have hired to prevent the information from reaching the Land of Prairies and potentially inciting a war between the two. It hasn't happened yet, and it's possible the plan of one kunoichi cutting through the mountain and forest has worked as it should and slipped through their ambushes undetected. It's possible, but she's not counting on that.

Then again, she's also not counting on walking through aforementioned forest and then, without any warning, stumbling out of it into a clearing with a village. A village? There aren't any villages of any sort--or indeed any civilization--for miles around the area she'd cut through. That can only mean--only in this case meaning the only plausible answer--that this is some sort of secondary Hidden Village starting up in the Land of Ponds.

It isn't the most reassuring or pleasant thing to stumble on, considering how well most Hidden Villages take to being discovered.

It's in the word 'hidden', really.