Slapping her on the back, Genma sat back up and waited until she’d stopped spluttering. “Usually you want to swallow the food and inhale the air,” he said helpfully.

“Screw you,” Katsuko gasped between coughs. “The Uchiha kicked you in the ’nads?”

“Actually, Raidou kicked me in the ‘nads,” Genma allowed, and was rewarded with fresh incredulous choking from Katsuko. “I can explain.”

She turned an impatient glare on him and crammed another mouthful of rice ball between her teeth, gesturing with her free hand for him to spit it out already.

“So there was this drunken bar brawl. Well, Rai was drunk, but I was sober, which really sucked, actually. Anyway, he was having a shitty day—” which was a little like saying the Fox’s attack had been an inconvenience “—and he went out drinking alone, and I found him playing civilians for suckers at darts. So I tried to get him to come back home with me, ‘cause we were supposed to have dinner together anyway, and I knew what he was getting drunk about.” He looked up at the horizon, remembering Raidou’s bandaged face that day, raked by Tsume’s nails. Raidou’s snarl for him to get away... “He fights dirty when he’s pissed, and I wasn’t wearing a cup, ‘cause I was in civvies.”

Katsuko’s scrutiny intensified. “And then he kicked you in the nuts, and then you got schooled by the Uchiha?”

“Kind of. I think someone broke a chair over my back first, and then Raidou got me where it counts right when the Uchiha were coming in to bust up the fight. The whole bar was pretty much fighting by that point—any excuse, you know?—So they came in and saw him get me good, and I was going down, but then one of them went after him, aiming for his face...” Genma gestured at his left cheek, stroking parallel lines from his nose to his jaw in imitation of Raidou’s scars. “And that pissed me off. So I broke the cop’s collarbone, and he Sharinganed me, and next thing I knew I was sitting in the precinct with an ice bag between my thighs and a pretty firm conviction I was never gonna be a father.”

Katsuko howled with laughter, rocking back and forth. The wrapper from her rice ball fell from helpless fingers, and she clutched at her abdomen, gasping for breath.

“And then,” Genma went on, talking over her, “they threw me and Rai both in the drunk tank overnight, even though I was stone cold sober.”