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By unspoken agreement, nobody ever asked public questions about the parentage of children who'd been born up to three years before Kyuubi and a year or so after. It didn't matter who the child looked like or didn't. It didn't matter if the neighbors remembered a pregnancy or adoption or any child at all. There'd been some reshuffling in the first few weeks as citizens and clans came forward to claim specific children from would-be adoptive parents, but mostly, no one looked too closely as long as the family stayed in-village
The orphanages were full, and with orphanages, there was always a risk of family from outside the village coming in and removing the child from the village. Possibly no loss in the greater scheme of things, but anything that would hold an edge could be used to cut.
And what were the odds that none of the other hidden villages were trying to locate and steal children still listed as missing by their clans? A six month old Hyuuga looked like a Hyuuga, but a six month old Uchiha or Nara or Yamanaka looked a lot like anybody else, and a lot of the village's most recent records had burned.
Or had been burned.
The Aburame had taken in a baker's dozen. That was a lot more than their usual two or three a year, but nobody who paid attention to clan behavior was much surprised. Most of those children would never host hives, but they would all be raised to understand kikaichu and to appreciate their abilities. First generation Aburame, as the adoptees were known, were precious to the clan because the Aburame were too small for exclusive endogamy but also deeply challenged when it came to exogamous courtship.
Most potential spouses couldn't get past their revulsion at the idea of hives and so didn't ever get as far as a first date. Arranged marriages had no more than a thirty percent success rate, even when 'success' was generously defined. Regardless of inducements, adults who weren't used to insects seldom adapted well to Aburame spouses.
First generation Aburame weren't required to marry within the clan. Or to reproduce within the clan. A lot of them ended up doing both anyway.
Shouta had all of that figured out within his first six months with the Aburame. He hadn't even been walking when the Kyuubi smashed through his parents' apartment. Shouta had no idea what happened to his father, but he'd seen his mother hit by debris. Shouta had seen enough death in his previous life to recognize that she was gone.
Shouta's precious people had bad luck with collapsing buildings.
His parents in this life hadn't called him Shouta, but no one had recorded which building they'd pulled him out of. No one recognized him. No one claimed him.
He could have told them that his parents called him Hitoshi, but he'd hated sharing a name with someone from his past life, someone he actually missed, so, when Aburame Tsuki asked him about his name, he said Shouta.
She'd been really surprised that he could talk so well.
Shouta was pretty sure she'd changed her estimate as to his age. He didn't mind. He'd already concluded that being a child was frustrating. Maybe hitting school age would be more interesting. Him being physically behind shouldn't matter for kindergarten.
Except that it did.
The Aburame were a shinobi clan. They were part of a shinobi village. Military training, aptitude testing, it all started in the cradle, and they thought Shouta had missed some physical milestones.
Auntie Tsuki thought Shouta didn't understand the whispered conversations about occupational therapy and about whether or not they should even send him to the Academy. "Even a year or two gives them more options," she said. "We can't send him to a civilian school, and it's so limiting when we raise a child entirely in-compound."
Shouta liked Auntie Tsuki, but there were a lot of words in there that suggested things Shouta needed to know about yesterday.
Mostly, apart from the occupational therapy, Shouta learned about bugs and plants and hives. He got a bit of clan history and village history. Those were the official lessons, mostly disguised as fun activities and ways to help out the adults. He figured out which adults they expected him to want to imitate.
Pretending to nap more often than he needed to let him listen in on discussions of homework by those children already at the Academy. It also let him hear discussions of political and trade matters that were way over his head in terms of context but that gave him fragments of information to start addressing his ignorance. For some reason, a lot of adults were willing to hold him when he acted sleepy, when he slept, and when he pretended to sleep.
He eventually figured out that that was part kindness and part to accustom him to physical closeness with people who had hives. The kindness seemed genuine. No one ever mentioned the possibility of getting rid of him for being defective. No one ever did anything that would let a toddler realize that they thought he might not be normal.
After six months, overheard conversations told Shouta that they knew he was clever and thought he was emotionally mature. They had noticed that he remembered what they'd told him and what he'd observed. They thought the physical slowness might have more to do with deliberation than with developmental issues, and, while they were all quietly glad, they never let Shouta know that there'd been a perceived problem.
Well, they never said or did anything that a toddler would understand; Shouta got it pretty clearly.
"He might still be able to take a hive," Auntie Aya said. "He's so careful and patient."
Which Shouta had thought was simple courtesy given how important the kikaichu were to his new clan. Having a hive was, he assumed, a lot like having a sentient quirk.
He missed his quirk almost as much as he missed his fully trained, adult body. He wasn't old enough to manifest a quirk yet. Maybe he would. Except that no one here had quirks. There were bloodline powers and things that looked like quirks to him but were trained applications of some sort of power field called chakra.
"A hive for the gardens, maybe," Auntie Tsuki said, "or for the borders. The really gentle ones shatter to become shinobi."
And having a quirk here would mean standing out in ways that frightened Shouta. He didn't want to be a child soldier. He wasn't a child, but still. No one else knew that, and people with unique powers were expected to use them to serve the clan and the village.
Except-- How would Shouta even know if he still had Erasure? No one else had a quirk, and Erasure worked on quirks. It was like having a quirk that would allow him to talk to mastodons. It could be a completely real thing but remained entirely useless in a world with no mastodons.
Shouta needed to hurry and grow up enough to be able to talk to adults like an adult.
"That will be up to Shouta," Uncle Shibi said. "We'll let him visit the Hives and see what he comes back with."
Auntie Aya and Auntie Tsuki both gasped, so Shouta assumed that visiting 'the Hives' was abnormal or dangerous. Most children, from what he understood, received their hives from a parent or godparent or other older relative, a daughter or sister hive. Most children received them in infancy so that they grew together.
"He's too young!" Auntie Tsuki protested.
"Then he'll come back with nothing but a memory," Uncle Shibi replied calmly. "Here. Let me take him for a while. Your arms must be getting tired."
Auntie Tsuki made a sound of protest but handed Shouta over anyway.
Shouta hoped that visiting the Hives wouldn't be too difficult. He was getting better at walking distances, but he didn't have the endurance he remembered. Maybe Uncle Shibi would carry him there?
_____
Visiting the Hives turned out to involve a lot of stairs going down into the earth. Shouta was on his own going down, but Uncle Shibi promised that someone would be waiting 'when you come back' to carry him up the stairs. "You'll be tired," Uncle Shibi said, "but you'll have been to the heart of the clan."
Shouta was deeply suspicious about the fact that Uncle Shibi expected Shouta to understand that sentence. Shouta tried not to let that show on his face.
Uncle Shibi nodded to him then bent and whispered, "You're always awake when I hold you. I think you're ready. If you want to be Aburame. You may or may not come back with a hive, but the clan will know you. No Aburame should be as alone as you are."
Shouta turned back to the stairs. The railing felt alive, green and white like twisted vines, and was just a little too high for him to reach properly. After several seconds, he sighed and sat on the top step. He let himself slide off the edge and onto the next step. Slide, bump. Slide, bump.
Parts of the walls glowed amethyst with bugs that reminded Shouta of fireflies. He thought they were feeding on some sort of fungus. He kind of wanted to stop and look so that he could find out what they were, but if he stopped, he wasn't sure he'd keep going.
The amethyst shaded into a crystalline blue that was being carefully shaped and tended by insects that looked like ants but weren't. The crystals came down far enough that Shouta could brush a finger against one, so he did. It felt hard and a little slippery.
Shouta looked back, up the stairs. He couldn't see the top any more.
Slide, bump. Slide, bump.
The air started to smell sweet. Not honey sweet, not exactly, more like maple syrup sweet. Shouta had only had the real thing once or twice, but he remembered. The walls ahead were amber and looked sticky. If that stuff was on the stairs, Shouta was going to have a hard time going further.
Shouta knew better than to taste weird substances leaking from walls, but he also thought he was on some sort of mystical quest into the underworld. Well, into an underworld. Same difference. Tasting or not tasting might be a test. He thought-- he hoped-- that it wasn't the sort of test that one could fail.
More like one of those which J-pop idol is your soulmate quizzes. Shouta wondered if he'd get the cute one or the brainy one or the rebellious one.
Somehow, it seemed unlikely that Aburame hives sorted that way.
Shouta wanted to know if the stuff actually tasted like maple syrup, and Uncle Shibi had seemed very certain that Shouta would come to no harm on this journey, so Shouta ran his finger along the wall and licked it. Definitely maple syrup.
Slide, bump. Slide, bump.
He felt like he was moving slower. Not because he was tired or because his behind was sore but because the air felt thicker. It was warmer and more humid, but Shouta felt more like he was wading across a fast running creek. The air pushed him sideways, and he had to work just a bit harder to keep his balance.
Did he actually want a hive? That was probably a question he should have considered before he started down. He remembered finding insects a bit creepy in his previous life. Maybe. Or maybe he remembered that a lot of people thought they were and that he hadn't thought they were relevant.
Did he even want to be an Aburame? He sat on one step and considered that. He thought he wanted a place in this world. Wanted people around him. It wasn't just that he was too small to leave and didn't know enough about the world outside the clan compound.
The Aburame needed the children they took in, but it was a reciprocal relationship. If Shouta wanted to be a gardener, they'd let him. If Shouta wanted-- What did Shouta want?
He wanted a world where everyone got to grow old. A world where nobody was murdered or tortured or sold. That was, he admitted, more aspirational than possible, but he wanted it.
Shouta fell asleep, wondering just what he'd do to bring the world he wanted closer.
He woke at the foot of the stairs. He was sprawled in sun-warmed grass; his new hive hummed loud enough to vibrate his bones.
He really should have asked more questions about physiology because it all felt really weird. Except that he hadn't asked because he was two. Two year olds didn't use words like 'physiology.' Two year olds also didn't ask how a hive fit inside a human body without removing all of the other things that really needed to be in there. Presumably, a hive was bigger than a gallbladder or a spleen. He kind of needed his lungs and his liver and...
Maybe hives were in the same sort of looped space that let Shouta start underground and go down a long way only to emerge in that one garden he wasn't supposed to run in.
Eh. It was like having a quirk. He'd learn.