▸ Column · The shinobi world of the Hidden Villages — a traveling matchmaker's introductions standing in for the dating app
OROCHIMARU replies.
Replied to by Orochimaru, with a rebuttal from Tsunade.
The letter
A matchmaker passing through the village arranged three introductions for me in a single week, and against every reasonable expectation I fell for all three. Suzu sends me terrible puns in the dead hours of the night. Daichi took me to a pottery wheel on our first meeting and just told me he's stopped seeing anyone else "now that this is going so well." Mei cooks meals I dream about for days. Nobody has spoken the word "exclusive," so I've broken no promise — yet I lie awake feeling like a swindler. I keep a guilty little mental ledger of which stories I've told to whom, and last week I nearly called Mei by Suzu's name. I'm in no hurry to settle, and I honestly couldn't tell you which one I'd choose — but the guilt is souring the joy. Am I a villain for courting all three, or just a coward for not saying it aloud?
Orochimaru replies
Kukukuku. How fascinating — you've brought me a problem you believe is about morality. It is, of course, about a ledger, and you've already begun keeping one. A guilty little mental record of which story went to whom: my dear, that is the most honest line in your letter, and the most familiar to me. I have kept such a ledger my whole life — which secret I shared with which promising specimen, which potential I was cultivating, which liability I was quietly managing.
Strip the sentiment away. You've broken no vow, three remarkable people delight you, and the cold move is to keep cultivating all three until one proves most worth your patience. Mechanically, flawless. So why does it curdle?
Because last week you reached for Mei and the name of Suzu fell out. The seam is showing. Guilt is merely your body reporting that you've stopped treating them as interchangeable columns — that an attachment is forming whether you authorized it or not.
Here is the careful sentence, the only one I'll grant you: I optimized every person I ever met into potential and liability, kept each ledger immaculately, and acquired all of them save the one thing I phrased this sentence to avoid naming. Choose, my dear — or become a man with a perfect ledger and no one written in it.
— Orochimaru
Tsunade weighs in
Of course Orochimaru tells you to study your own guilt like something pinned to a slab. Listen, kid — that guilt's the one straight thing you've got, so quit examining it and act on it. You're not a villain and you're not a coward. You're one honest conversation short of being either. And here's who I'm actually worried about: Daichi. He folded his whole hand thinking the game was already over. Tell him the truth before he builds a life on a bet you never agreed to place. That's not cruelty, brat. That's the decent thing — and it's already overdue.
— Tsunade
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