“At least Sakamoto pays,” Ryouma pointed out, tilting a significant look Kakashi’s way.

Apparently the expensive red drinks of last night had not been forgotten.

“His family is made of money,” Kakashi said. “That’s not a character strength. That’s… breeding.”

Genma made an amused sound. Raidou muffled a cough behind the back of his hand.

Ryouma snickered. “I don’t think they pay for that.”

Given some of the clan views on strict bloodline purity — with the carefully negotiated marriages and dowries that went along with them — Kakashi was reasonably sure they did, but he wasn’t privy to the Sakamoto clan’s personal finances.

Now that he thought about it, it was actually a little strange for a Sakamoto heir to be in Konoha’s most dangerous profession. Maybe Ginta had a cousin the family liked better stored away for marriageable purposes somewhere. Or he’d just scared away all the likely prospects with the force of his personality.

Kakashi liberated another strip of pork belly and enjoyed the superior freedom of not having to deal with these issues himself for a few minutes, before he realized he was spending far too much time thinking about Ginta.

“Well, to be fair,” Genma said, “Hatake is paying for lunch.”

“When do you learn how to heal bruises?” Kakashi asked Ryouma, before Genma got traction.

Ryouma straightened in his seat. The sun — they’d been made to sit outside because of the dogs — caught his eyes, turning the black to deep, rich brown. “Once the lieutenant’s satisfied with my work on wound-sealing. I haven’t graduated from fish yet. Though at least they don’t usually explode anymore.” He tilted a wry smile at Genma.

“The fish explode?” Raidou asked.

“They do. At first, when you’re learning,” Genma said. “It’s like Ueno having an easier time making a hundred clones than a single one.” There was the beat of silence that always followed Katsuko’s name, getting shorter now as they got used to the sting. “I probably exploded my first fifty fish before I figured out how to regulate the chakra flow for healing. Tousaki’s making good progress. You wouldn’t think it, but bruises are a lot harder to heal than cuts. You can fuse tissues together and stop someone from bleeding to death with a fairly simple jutsu. It’s not pretty; you get scarring like this—” He slid his t-shirt sleeve up, showing them the step-ladder scar left from Iebara’s blood jutsu. “Or worse. Maybe even do additional damage, like I did to my leg, but at least your patient doesn’t bleed to death before they can get treatment at a hospital. Healing a bruise is an order of magnitude more delicate.”

That made sense. The finer jutsu were almost always harder to control.

“The fish explode?” Raidou said.

“Well, not like a thermal detonation,” Genma said. “It’s more like they burst. Explosively.”

“Mine rot, too,” Ryouma offered. “At least, the first one did.”

Kakashi propped his chin on his hand and watched, entertained, as they ganged up on the captain.

“Are the fish alive to start with?” Raidou asked, like he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know.

“No live fish until you can consistently heal a cut in a dead one without exploding it,” Genma said. “And we do eat the ones that aren’t in too small pieces to be worth the effort.” He glanced at Ryouma. “Or in Tousaki’s case, aren’t too decomposed.”

“We ate a lot more fish, the week before you came back,” Ryouma told Raidou. “Then Kakashi started exploding pigs, but we didn’t get to eat those.”

Raidou blinked twice.

“Practicing Iebara’s jutsu,” Kakashi said.

“Oh,” Raidou said. “Successfully?”

Kakashi see-sawed his free hand. “The last one didn’t explode. I think I’ve used up my pig allotment for the quarter, though. I’ll have to go after some wild boar for the next test.”

“We better get to eat those,” said Pakkun, under the table.

“I’ll let you do that test with me upwind, this time,” Genma said.

Raidou’s brow crinkled. Ryouma mimed a localized explosion with one hand. “Ah,” Raidou said.