Dawn came late, filtering through the canopy, weak and greenish by the time it reached the forest floor. Ryouma surprised a clan of rabbits feeding in the thin undergrowth and butchered his kill quickly and neatly. He’d eaten raw rabbit before, and been grateful for it, but he took the time now to build a small, smoky fire near a stream and skewer chunks of meat on stripped sticks.

It still felt wrong to crouch in an open glen, with his back to the woods and not a trap or wire laid at the perimeter, and listen for the footstep he might never hear. But while he was (almost) entirely certain he wasn’t alone in the forest, he wasn’t a tracker.

And besides, he was hungry.

The first skewer was done. He slid the sizzling chunks of meat off the stick with the point of his kunai, tumbled them onto the clean inside of the rabbit’s own skin, wrapped the whole bundle swiftly up, and jammed it in his over-full belt pouch on top of his med kit and exploding tags. He laid the next skewers on at an inviting angle, and wished for salt.

Smoke drifted. Steel, cold and sharp, kissed the side of his throat.

“I’ll bleed on breakfast,” he said, without looking up.

That wasn’t, evidently, the expected response. The blade pressed a little closer, but flesh wasn’t quite parting yet. If he jerked, ducked, he might only lose a slice of his jaw and the rest of his ear, instead of his head...

“Sit down,” he said, as steadily as he could. “It’s nearly done.”

The silence stretched out. He could hear fat dripping on the coals, wood popping, spring peepers singing in the distance by a stream. His pulse thumped against the blade.

Mistake, he thought.