Katsuko propped her elbow on the table and pasted on a smile. “What, they didn’t tell you during the recruitment spiel? All of us get report cards. It’s like being back in Academy again, except this time we can’t fall asleep during lecture.”

Ryouma didn’t look at her. He focused instead on the scattered sesame seeds on the table, picking some of them up with his fingertip. "I never read my report cards. You gonna read me this one and embarrass us all, lieutenant?"

Genma shook his head. "I don't know what kind of awful teachers you had, but this won't be that bad. I'll go over each of your evals with you one-on-one, I'm sure we can find another room here somewhere."

"The ones next door are free," Kakashi said. "On both sides. I checked."

Katsuko couldn’t have cared less about the damn evals. There was no way Genma’s assessment could be worse than Raidou’s one year ago, when she’d been a baby rookie and Raidou her long-suffering lieutenant.

What mattered was that Raidou was coming back. All Team Six needed to do was put up with the interim captain until Raidou’s training with Yuuhi Benihime-sama was done.

They wouldn’t send in just anyone as Team Six’s replacement leader. It would have to be someone with no personal connections to any of them, someone Sagara-sama would trust not to embellish their reports on how well Team Six functioned as a unit. Someone the higher-ups thought could handle a squad with Hatake Kakashi on its roster.

There was a queasy feeling in her stomach that had nothing to do with food. Katsuko shifted, still smiling, and reached over to give Ryouma a gentle pat on the arm. Then she heaved a sigh full of exaggerated martyrdom and turned a nobly suffering face in Genma’s direction.

“I can go first, lieutenant,” she said. “To set a good example for my cute little kouhai.”

She’d gone through enough evals to know what Genma’s judgment would likely be: excellent performance on the field, subpar displays of maturity off of it. It had cut deep when she was a rookie, the first time Raidou had sat her down and laid out her professional faults with firm honesty, but she’d gotten over herself. She could take whatever Genma had to give and trust that he only wanted her to improve.

And maybe, with the rookies out of earshot, he’d be more forthcoming about the details of Raidou’s suspension.