Konoha was a relatively small village, Ginta told himself, and ANBU was even smaller. It was impossible to avoid someone forever. Especially Ryouma. In the two weeks since he'd seen him last, in this very coffee shop, Ginta had gone out of his way to avoid Kakashi and Ryouma both. He'd taken two missions, spent a day visiting his family, spent a day catching up with Asuma. Taken another little one-day mission from which he'd returned only a few hours ago. After a short night's sleep, a shower, some breakfast, and a triple-chocolate-almond-caramel-whatever-the-heck-this-was that he was drinking, he'd almost managed to convince himself everything was normal again, except for the occasional disturbing dream. But...

There was that familiar warm voice, and that chakra that felt like a steel coil.

Turning away from the cute server and his caffeine confections, Ginta leaned back against the bar and schooled a smile onto his face.

"Hi."

Shit. Now what?

"You look better than last time I saw you. Feeling better?"

"I'm off crutches, at least." Ryouma shoved his hands in his pockets and swung his left foot, kicking at air. "I got my fitness evaluation this afternoon. Should be cleared for duty then."

Dammit, two weeks of not-thinking really hadn't helped. Avoidance hadn't helped with Kuromaru, in the end; apparently, short of six months of border duty, it didn't work with people either. He didn't feel like hauling off and punching Ginta anymore, but he didn't really have any other alternatives in mind. And normally winging it wasn't such a problem, but there were half a dozen customers sipping lattes and munching pastries, plus the annoyed-looking barista hovering behind the counter, and if this went south he'd kind of appreciate not having any witnesses...

It wouldn't go south. Ginta was a liar, sure, but he was no Gou Sadao. He wasn't a stick-figure samurai lord with a hundred loyal retainers and a magical ancestral blade, either. Ryouma squared his shoulders and plunged across the tiled floor. "Light roast," he told the glaring coffee guy, digging the money out. "Heavy on the milk and sugar. And a cinnamon roll."

The guy glared harder at him, shrugged his shoulders and smiled at Ginta, and headed back to work. Ryouma jingled his change and tried to think about making strategic decisions instead of feeling like a coward.

"You look tired," he blurted out. Okay, maybe that wasn't very strategic. True, though. Ginta was off crutches too, but his fine-boned face was a little narrower than Ryouma remembered, fair skin a little paler. The dark shadows smudged under his eyes looked like they'd been there a while. "Sleeping okay?"

"Like a baby on soldier pills," Ginta answered. "But I got back from a mission late last night, that's my excuse." He picked up his coffee and sipped at it, peering over the top at Ryouma's face. If ever a guy looked unhappy to see him, this was it. At least he didn't look like he belonged in the hospital anymore, but his clothes still hung too loose on him.

It was his tension, though, that Ginta really didn't like. He seemed off, somehow. Edgy and worn down. Guilty conscience, Ginta? Projecting much? Who's the one having dreams about Kakashi and taking missions hard enough that no-one will question how many soldier pills you're going through?

Anyway it wasn't like Ryouma didn't have every reason to be tired and cranky, given what he'd been through, but... Maybe that's all it was, just pent-up jounin on medical leave longer than he likes, having nightmares about his mission. Maybe it was the situation with Tsume, who rumor had it had slept in Ryouma's bed for several days running.

Maybe it's Kakashi, whispered a treacherous voice in his head.

He wondered if Ryouma had to do the psych eval as well as a physical. If he'd already passed it. Or failed it. But if he was being returned to active duty, he'd have to have passed it.

Still, there was something raw there. Under the surface.

The barista set Ryouma's order down on the bar with a thump that sloshed a little coffee over the cup's rim, but it was Ginta who flinched and flashed him a warning snarl. "He's not competition, and I'm not into games."

The other man's eyes widened and he held his hands up placatingly. "Sorry, sorry. Uh..."

"Yeah, whatever." Ginta shoved his empty coffee cup at the server and looked up at Ryouma. "You want to go sit? Or were you getting yours to go?"

"To go." Ryouma fitted a lid on his coffee cup and snagged his cinnamon roll off the plate. If getting out of here was an option, he was taking it. The barista looked half ready to cry; the middle-aged women sharing brunch nearest the register were watching, open-mouthed. Ryouma tipped his head at Ginta. "You coming?

Ginta had a lot of explaining to do, but Ryouma didn't know anymore whether he wanted to hear it. Of course it was better to know the truth than to wade through crumbling illusions, but... What if Ginta couldn't explain what he'd done? Worse yet, what if he'd edited that violent kiss out of his retelling not because he was ashamed of himself, but because he hadn't even thought it was important?

Well, if that was true, Ryouma'd have to kick his ass after all.

He headed for the door. A moment's silence; then sandals beat a quick tattoo across the tiles as Ginta fell into step behind him. Ryouma shouldered the door open again and held it. Ginta edged a quick smile at him and passed through to the street. Neither of them spoke. Had they ever spent more than thirty seconds together in silence? Ryouma couldn't think of a time.

Three minutes' walk from the coffee shop, he found a park bench on a quiet street lined by trees. A pair of kids skipping school scampered off guiltily when they drew near; Ryouma slung himself down on the bench in their place and looked up at Ginta.

He looked different from below. Or maybe it was different without the smile. Ryouma fixed his eyes on the thin pale lips, the tight line of tension, and found words at last. "So. You wanna tell me what the hell you were doing in the hospital with Kakashi that means you woulda ended up worse than choked and chakra'd out if I'd been involved?"

"I..." Ginta stopped himself before he started. Was Ryouma looking for a fight? He certainly wanted something. Which was pretty much the mood Ginta'd been in when he saw Kakashi that night, wasn't it? And even though he hadn't gone looking for a fight, he'd managed to pick one, though Kakashi had been more than eager to escalate it.

"I told him he was an ass if he thought he could play you like he played me. That you were the kind of guy who wasn't going to be satisfied when Kakashi ditched you the first time you used the word 'friend' on him. Or lover." He stood his ground, looking at Ryouma, with his too-hollow cheeks and too-sharp eyes.

"I was trying to leave and he stopped me, you know. As soon as I saw you in bed together, I could tell I was tired, I was injured, and I had no business being there. I was trying to leave. But he came out in the hall after me. And the time before that, the last time I'd seen him, the last couple times I'd seen him..."

He stopped again, wrapped his arms around each other in a tight clench, then let them swing free. Repeated the gesture over and over, trying to dissipate tension that had no where to go.

"I should have just kept walking, but I didn't. Because it was him. And I don't the fuck know why."

Because it was him explained a hell of a lot of things Ryouma didn't even have time to think about right now. The rest of the story explained a little more--and left out far too much. Ryouma tore a toasted pecan off his cinnamon roll and tossed it off the path to a hungry-looking squirrel. The squirrel shied like he'd thrown a shuriken. Ungrateful little bastard.

"You don't know me as well as you think you do if you think I'd call Kakashi a friend before he earned it. Or call him a lover ever," he added with a wry twist of his mouth. Lover meant exclusivity, commitment, forever-and-always: all the things Ryouma had spent the last five years running from. Kakashi understood those secret terrors; hell, he seemed to share them.

Maybe Ginta was the one who wanted devotion, if he was so ready to see it in other people.

"Maybe I don't know you at all, then," Ginta said. Arms crossed over his chest, shoulders hunched, he glanced at Ryouma's face, than away, watching the squirrel cautiously approach the nut as if it were rigged with an exploding tag.

"The Tousaki Ryouma I knew in Lightning Country was a loyal as fuck friend. You think Team Badass would have hung together as long as it did if not for that? But I guess you're not the same man anymore."

He paced away and back, away and back. Had he ever known Ryouma, really? Long nights in that temple base, a few missions run in tandem. Conversations on stakeouts that ran the gamut but never really touched on anything personal. Ginta had been careful to keep it that way, because back then he hadn't been Sakamoto Ginta. He'd been Seishi.

Ryouma didn't really know him at all, either.

"You don't want him for a friend or a lover. Neither does he. I get it. I have fuck buddies." But that wasn't what this was about. And that wasn't why Ryouma was so touchy about Kakashi. "But you're not just fuck buddies. Don't you get it? You don't want a relationship, and that's the whole fucking thing that gives you a basis for one. It's like some kind of Zen koan." He laughed, a sound as brittle as breaking glass.

"I didn't say Kakashi wasn't a friend." Ryouma shredded the edge of his cinnamon roll, coating his fingers in sticky icing. "I said I couldn't call him that if he hadn't earned it." Barely two weeks ago he'd shouted at Kakashi to stop trying to protect people from themselves, insisted that he needed not a babysitter but a friend. And if it wasn't the kind of friendship he'd had with Arata and Hiroyuki and Daisuke up in the mountains of Lightning Country, what was wrong with that? Kakashi needed more than they did--and gave more than they ever had.

An unpracticed fumble on the riverbank and a desperate moment in a hospital bed still couldn't turn that into a relationship. No matter what Ginta claimed.

"You know," he said, scraping the icing off his thumb with his teeth, "I don't really give a shit what you think about me anymore. You can spread stories about me screwing every guy in Konoha for all I care, and it's not gonna matter." He dropped his hand again and glared up at Ginta, so tense he was nearly trembling. "I was just about willing to call you a friend, but my friends know how to take no for an answer. My friends don't kiss guys who don't want it. Who nearly got raped a month ago, dammit! You say 'because it's him' like you actually care, but did you even think about what you were doing to him?"

"Is that what you think happened?" Ginta snorted. "Believe me, he wanted it. At least he did when he was making out with me the night of my birthday. And that was after Sadao." His voice cracked on the name. "As for the hospital, I kissed him once, and I knew exactly what I was doing to him. One kiss. And he knew exactly what he was doing to me when he tried to break my windpipe, so fuck you, Ryouma."

He was shaking now, at least as much as Ryouma was. What the hell had Kakashi said to him about Ginta's involvement with Sadao? About what happened that night at the hospital? It had been one kiss, to make a point. A kiss to remind Kakashi, maybe, of that birthday night. And that Ginta meant it when he said he cared.

"You're pissed I kissed him? Look in the damn mirror. I certainly didn't get anywhere close to rape. I was on the fucking receiving end three years ago, so don't tell me I don't know. When Kakashi tried to strangle me, he was the one acting like Gou fucking Sadao!"

The words were out before Ginta quite realized it. He shut his mouth in horror, jammed his hands in his pockets, and stared at Ryouma. Friend almost, Ryouma had said. If not for that, Ginta would have already fled.

The cinnamon roll squished unpleasantly as Ryouma's hand clenched. A glob of icing oozed onto his wrist; he opened his hand and dropped the whole thing into the dirt.

Ginta'd been raped.

Three years ago.

Gou Sadao.

He understood, after all.

"I should've killed him," Ryouma said. His voice rasped like rusty iron. "If I'd known... I would have anyway, if Kakashi hadn't-- Sadao didn't kill himself. They sent me away that week, but his buddies found Kakashi anyway. We kicked their asses together." And that had been the day after Ginta's birthday, hadn't it? Barely a week after Sadao's death. Kakashi hadn't seemed shaken the next day, but he hadn't wanted to discuss Ginta at all.

Believe me, he wanted it.

He wanted it, Sadao had snarled, as Ryouma knelt on his chest with both hands humming with putrid chakra. Wanted it rough. It just got a little out of hand, but he was into it.

Ryouma shook his head sharply, crushing the back of his icing-smeared hand against his mouth. "If Sadao--hurt you, that way. You should know. You don't ever push. Not when you're fighting. Not even if he was okay with it before. Not when you think there's a chance he's gonna say no. Not ever."

His throat hurt. He fumbled beside him for his sealed cup of coffee, burned his mouth on the first sip, and swallowed it anyway.

For a moment Ryouma looked like he might be sick. Ginta felt sick, too, a quivering in his gut as adrenaline coursed through him and every muscle tensed. Run, he should run. Run and never look back, just like he should have run that night when Kakashi stopped him in the hall.

And just like that night, he didn't.

"You think a guy has to live in a glass box for the rest of his life just because that happened to him? I didn't push. No one was fucking pushing. I was fucking careful with him after what happened with him and Sadao, and from what I understood you interrupted it before it got too bad. But I was careful, alright? Kakashi was the one who took it further."

He should leave. He should run, because Ryouma knew too much and understood too little.

"I didn't know about Sadao's buddies. But I damn sure know what happened to Sadao. I got a mission, day after you rotted off his foot. He killed himself; I watched him do it. Told him how to do it."

He was breathing as hard as if he'd run a race. Hands clenched into tight fists, and his voice crackled with disgust. Betrayal.

"I should have killed that son of a bitch three years ago. That was my mistake. But I never, not once, threatened Kakashi, and I never the fuck would."

Back in the Academy, they used to play a game they called 'Hot Potato,' a reflex-refining game with a jutsu'd potato that grew steadily hotter as the students threw it to each other. Up at the Dainichi Nyorai Temple Post, Ryouma and his teammates had played the game with a boiled potato wrapped in an explosive tag set with a long trigger. On long days with nothing to do but monitor surveillance equipment and try not to die of boredom, they'd relished the adrenaline thrill that came from flinging the rigged potato back and forth--and waiting for it to blow up in their faces.

It wasn't an adrenaline thrill anymore. Questions and accusations grew hotter and harsher at each volley; Ryouma couldn't shake the feeling that at any moment, it really would blow up in his face. Or was already doing so.

Being angry would've helped. When red rage filled you, it was hard to feel scared, or confused, or sad, or sorry, or sick: hard to feel anything for anyone. And he should be angry at Ginta, who didn't understand why something could be right one time and wrong the next, who was so eager to defend himself he never stopped to see--

Ginta had killed Sadao. He kept coming back to that, like an itching wound he couldn't leave alone. When Ryouma couldn't, when Kakashi wouldn't, Ginta had done what he had a better right than anyone to do. And week later Ginta and Kakashi had been close enough to celebrate his birthday together: with beer and videos, Kakashi had said; with make-outs, Ginta had said. Knowing them both, Ryouma didn't really doubt either. Did any of that make a difference?

"Yeah," he said, and rubbed a tired hand over his face. "You should've. And Kakashi never should've let Sadao get his back in the first place, and I should've-- Wasted less time at the mission desk. Woken up. Hell, let the both of you fight it out yourselves."

Although they seemed to have done a pretty spectacular job of that already.

Ryouma looked defeated. Sick, sad, hunched over with elbows on his knees and his coffee cup dangling between his legs. He looked like he'd run out of fight, and found nothing left but hurt and confusion. He wasn't even making sense, talking of mission desks and waking up. In all the time Ginta'd'd known him, Ryouma had never looked like that. Never looked like he was giving up.

Ginta should have felt vindicated. Instead he just felt miserable.

"Yeah. I should have." He cupped his hands over his eyes and ran them back through his hair. "And I shouldn't have had to do it in the first place. I'm glad I killed him." He was still shaking, but it wasn't anger anymore.

"I didn't hurt Kakashi," he repeated. It was important Ryouma get it. "And he's strong enough he wouldn't have let me, even if I'd tried. But I wouldn't try. I'm a bastard and a killer, but I'm not Gou Sadao."

No. He thought of his mission with Kotetsu. And of that dream about Kakashi. Not Gou Sadao. He was something else entirely.

"No," Ryouma said softly. "I've met his type before. You're not it." He glanced up, mustering a strained smile. "'Course, it's hard to think of anyone smaller and weaker than you that you could dominate." Twelve-year-olds, maybe. But Ginta wasn't that type, either.

What type was he?

Smooth, charming, an accomplished liar: Ryouma'd known that from the start. Too smart for his own good, with the kind of brilliance that easily turned brittle. He had an infectious laugh, a rabid curiosity, a deep-rooted concern for his teammates and friends. Ryouma'd trusted Ginta with his life even before he knew the man's face or his real name. Did he still?

"Look," he said. "I-- I don't know what the hell it is. But Kakashi's the first one who ever stayed. He told me two weeks ago to stop trying to white knight him, but-- He keeps saving me. I gotta keep up. Only I'm doing it wrong, somehow. He was right. What happened in the hospital, that's between the two of you."

He flexed his wrist, brooding down at the heavy slosh of liquid in his coffee cup. "I told him, that day we ended up on the riverbank--only before that, before I even thought about it--I told him I'd kick his ass if he broke your heart. Then I decided I'd kick yours for messing with him. Now I'm thinking maybe I should just kick my own."

Kakashi'd probably agree. Ryouma's mouth twisted sideways. He looked up again, met wary blue eyes in a tense, pale face. "I'm sorry."

Ginta took a long, slow breath, and blew it out through pursed lips. Then another in a heavy sigh. "Yeah, " he said at last, and moved carefully towards Ryouma and his bench. Not a threat. And Ryouma wasn't a threat. Not right now.

He was a rival. And maybe that's all this was. Ginta could kick himself for it, for letting a man come between himself and a friend. Even a friend he didn't know as well as he'd thought. Hadn't the way things worked out with Tomoya taught him anything?

"So am I." He sat at the far edge of the bench, leaving plenty of space between them, and stared at his own feet kicking tendrils of dust up from the ground. "I didn't mean for any of this to happen. I don't get it and I don't want it and I really don't know what it is about that damn man..." He voice trailed off low, as if he were talking to himself, and he kicked harder at the ground, sending pebbles skittering across the path.

That damn man. And what about Ryouma? What was any of this about? He twisted on the bench, looking at Ryouma. Strong, handsome. Certainly on a physical scale there was no surprise Kakashi was attracted to him. But...

"I don't get it. I thought you were straight. And I thought he was... I don't know what I thought he was. I thought he liked me, and I think I was right about that. And I thought he told me to go to hell because he'd rather not care about anyone. But then there's you."

"I am straight." The automatic response was easiest, and had the benefit of being true. Ryouma puzzled a little over the next bit. "And yeah, I remember what you said about Genma and no, I'm not playing both fields. It's just--Kakashi." He glanced sideways with a wry smile. "That damn man."

Half the time he just pissed Ryouma off. A quarter of the time, he was still a not-too-tarnished ideal Ryouma was floundering to catch up to. The rest of the time...

Ryouma'd tried to explain it to Kakashi barely two weeks ago. He tried again. "Six months ago I knew where I fit in the world, and how to hold it together. When things went wrong I could head back to Lightning and let 'em sort themselves out; when things went really wrong up there, the boys brought me back here to heal. I had a handle on it, see? But I come back here and get one more tattoo, and suddenly the world keeps trying to fall apart and smash me."

The image was vivid but not, perhaps, helpful; Ginta looked mostly confused. Ryouma licked drying icing off the side of his wrist and tried another tack. "I keep nearly dying. I mean, hospitalization once a year was just about average for me, before; I take too many risks but I'm damn good at what I do. But I've been in ANBU three months and in hospital for two weeks. In a short-term coma twice. And both times, when I woke up, Kakashi was there. Maybe it's just 'cause he doesn't leave his teammates behind, but--"

It hadn't really mattered why, before.

"The world falls apart, and he pulls it back together. Gives me a place to stand. I dunno why he bothers," he added with sudden bitterness. "Nobody else ever has. But he did, and that made the difference. So the last time he locked his door and told me to go away, I killed the seals and kicked it down."

And how was that so different from kissing Kakashi in a hospital hallway, just to prove a point? Ryouma winced.

Ginta recognized that smile, but he couldn't bring himself to return it. Maybe in a few weeks or months, when he'd stopped feeling the sting of rejection. When he'd willed himself to stop caring about Kakashi and who he slept with.

Ryouma's explanation made only limited sense. Kakashi stayed? That's what Kakashi did. After his own mission with Kakashi in Rain, Kakashi had stayed Even when they'd told him he could go, he'd been there, waiting for Ginta to recover. Was this really just the same thing?

Kakashi had stayed with him, and somehow in that staying a bond had formed. Wasn't that why he'd gone to find Kakashi that morning, after Sadao? As soon as his mission was over, as soon as he could, he'd gone. But it was more than just a teammate's concern that brought him there. On that mission in Rain and then again later, with Kakashi and those promises of dancing, there had been something there.

He ground the heel of his hand against his eye, to drive the thought away.

Somehow seeing Ryouma as the victim in all this, abused and friendless, never having had a partner who stayed, suddenly near death because ANBU was harder and more dangerous than anything he'd ever faced, didn't help. It just made Ginta hurt and angry all over again, and more confused. What was so damn special about Ryouma? What was it Kakashi wanted? And why for god's sake, did Ginta even care? So Ryouma was fragile under that shell of his. So Kakashi wanted to protect him. So what? Why couldn't he just let it go?

He laughed bleakly and hunched his shoulders again. "You know that night at the hospital..." What? What about it? What did it even matter? He found himself talking anyway, staring down at a gum wrapper and a crushed cigarette butt on the path. "I should have just gone home, but I had to, I don't know, check, I guess. Heard you got hurt and... And Kakashi was there and... Maybe instead of kissing him, I should have waited and torn down his door. Worked for you, I guess."

"Maybe." Ryouma turned his coffee cup in his hands again, then tipped it back and took a long drink. It was cool enough now not to burn. "Although I got the door replaced afterward. Paid for it and everything." He took another drink. The rest of that long day--the argument, the awkward hug, Kakashi's tears, the half-strangled invitation to stay--wasn't really up for discussion.

Except, maybe, the part that explained them both. "He doesn't wanna be left behind again. He remembers everyone who's ever died on him; he doesn't wanna remember more. Well, I don't either. And I been left behind enough I'm not gonna do it to anybody else."

One hand picked at the loose threads edging a hole in his jeans; he caught himself and consciously flattened his hand, rubbing a knee that didn't really need it. "I don't pretend to myself he needs me the way I need him. But he needs someone."

It could've been Ginta; he had no illusions about that, either, and no idea why it wasn't. They'd both messed up.

But when Kakashi had run, Ryouma had followed.

"Yeah. Someone." Ginta took a long, slow breath. Kakashi needed someone, and he wished it was him. But it wasn't. Or even if it was, he wasn't who Kakashi wanted: Ryouma was. "You better be damn sure you can keep that promise. I wasn't leaving him behind, and I wasn't planning to die on him. He didn't believe me, I guess."

He shifted uncomfortably, swinging his legs, then standing. "I should... go. Or something." Hands in pockets, shoulders hunched, he looked up at Ryouma at last. "You should stop getting your ass kicked on missions. It's not required, no matter what people tell you about ANBU."

A grim smile traced over his lips, and disappeared again.

He'd said way too much, and now Ryouma knew way too much. And here was Ryouma insisting he'd be the one to be there for Kakashi. That where Ginta had fucked up, he'd be the one to do it right.

"I should go," he repeated. "I need to go. I'll take a mission or something for a while. Get out of town. You two... figure it out."

His head ached. The coffee sat curdling in his stomach.

"Sorry."

"He's on a mission already." Ryouma pushed himself to his feet as well, juggling the coffee cup awkwardly between his hands, and kicked the squished roll further under the bench. "Solo. Running away after all."

But he'd left a note--even if he'd forgotten that Ryouma couldn't read it--and he'd said he'd come back. The chuunin at the mission desk who read the note to Ryouma hadn't understood much but the insult, which might have been the point after all. On a mission. Don't break anything else before I get back. Idiot.

He hadn't exactly broken Ginta, but he'd come close.

"Dammit," he said, and tipped his coffee cup sideways to let the thin brown stream soak the graveled path. "I gotta report for fitness evaluations in half an hour anyway. Look, don't-- Don't you run. Don't let anybody make you run."

He crunched the empty cup in his fist and dropped it under the bench with the ruined roll. His smile was a little ragged around the edges, but it stayed. "You can still try kicking his ass when he gets back. Or mine. We both prolly deserve it. Just wait till I get cleared for duty, will ya?"

"Not running," Ginta said, low and indistinct. And of course that was exactly what he was doing. Planning to do. Because staying here and waiting for it to stop mattering wasn't working. "I just... You know me. Need to be busy. Busy is better than..." He gestured a little helplessly. Pinned a smile on his face that wasn't real, but wasn't entirely false.

"And I'll kick both your asses if you need it." Another twist in his stomach. He bit the inside of his cheek and swallowed. "You get yourself cleared for duty, and then see if you can run a few missions without getting the shit kicked out of you. When you... see him..." What? Tell him I said hello? Fuck that. There was the bastard child of a bad idea.

"I'll see you around," he said instead.

He flinched from Ryouma's gaze. From that look that knew too much. That look that understood.

"Forget everything I told you. It's not important."

It was probably the most important thing in the world.

"Sure thing." Ryouma jammed his hands in his pockets and considered adding, Dude, you're a sucky liar today. But Ginta had chewed him out once before for calling another man's bluff, and neither of them was looking for another fight.

He had no idea what they were looking for, anymore. An end?

"Hey," he said. "Seishi."

Ginta half-turned, startled enough to look up; Ryouma gave him an ironic little two-fingered salute. "This year I'm having a real birthday party. Dancin' girls and cake and everything. No hospitalizations at all. You said you'd come. April seventh. Gonna be back in time?"

Ginta turned the rest of the way and threw Ryouma a weak but genuine smile at last. "Yeah. I'll make sure my mission's over before that. If I can get one up north, I'll bring you some of those Lightning Country pickled eels."

Seishi. No one called him that anymore. It was funny how what was once an alias was now a kind of secret code word. Ryouma was still Ryouma. Still his friend from Team Badass, no matter what else happened. No matter who came between them.

"You make sure you don't get messed up. It'd suck to be in a cast on your birthday."

He turned to go.

"The seventh. I'll see you."

Maybe by the seventh it would be easier. Maybe by the seventh he wouldn't care at all anymore.