| [Oct. 18th, 2015|11:56 pm] |
“Is there reading I can do?” he asked Katsuko, who gave him a look like he’d stepped off the nearest sanity curve. He clarified, “About your Hyoho-Niten, or your family’s history?”
Her expression turned thoughtful. “The Scroll of Five Rings is Hyoho-Niten’s manifesto. It’s a book that isn’t distributed much outside of Wind Country or the Land of Iron. I’ll see if I can dig up a copy.”
He hadn’t, actually, expected a yes.
“Really?” he said, inordinately pleased.
Katsuko nodded. “The founder of Hyoho-Niten was a master swordsman who was so paranoid he never took baths. He used all the time he could have been bathing to write the Scroll. I think you’ll like it.”
“I bathe,” Kakashi drawled, hooking his free hand into his pocket. He looked up at the sky, where wisps of cloud made isometric shapes, and added, “But I can appreciate someone who’s honed their craft to a single point.”
“A single point. Like a sword point. Heh.” She grinned to herself for a moment, then asked unexpectedly, “How are you feeling? This is the longest you’ve been outside since we got back to Konoha, right?”
That was never an innocent question. Kakashi glanced at her sidelong, but trying to tease a motivation out of Katsuko was about as productive as interrogating a campfire: you’d just get burned.
“I haven’t fallen over yet,” he temporized.
“You never give a straight answer when you can come at it sideways, do you?” Katsuko said, with blind disregard for the irony of that particular criticism coming out of her mouth.
Kakashi felt his mouth quirk. “How’s your collarbone?”
“Eh.” She made a seesawing motion with her good hand. “Could be worse. I could be on fire.”
“The evening is still young,” he said.
“And that’s why you’re my favorite crotchety fluffball,” she said. “You’re never too happy to indirectly threaten bodily harm.”
“Seemed more polite than direct bodily harm,” he said. “Though that’s always a possibility.”
Just— not any time this week. Katsuko was one limb down, but entirely lethal otherwise, whereas Kakashi was starting to feel aching little shivers run up and down his legs. He took a deeper breath — oxygen helped pain — and glanced down the busy, sun-soaked street, looking for a bench. The ones in view were occupied by tired shoppers, parents with small children, and a young couple sharing an ice-cream.
Katsuko took a sharp right turn off the main road, cutting down another narrow alleyway towards one of the parks that bordered the river. When Kakashi made a complaining noise, she said, “Indulge your old decrepit sensei, I want to put my feet in the water.”
He gave her a suspicious look, suspecting her of some kind of oblique mockery, but Katsuko simply marched out across the grass, side-stepping past a group of academy students on some kind of a field trip with their exasperated sensei, and made for a secluded spot on the river bank. A weeping cutleaf maple offered shade beneath a profusion of deep red leaves. It was a little like sitting under a blood-slick, but cheerfully so.
Katsuko yanked off her boots and socks, and dropped down to stick her feet in the water, yelping theatrically. Kakashi set his bundled swords down carefully first before he joined her. The water was cold, but also clear and refreshing, and it was a relief just to sit down.
He sighed softly and lay backwards on the embankment, folding his arms beneath his head.
“Did I thank you for the swords?” he asked.
“Nope,” said Katsuko, snapping a stick in half to fling the pieces into the rushing water.
Kakashi nodded and let the silence drift back, broken only by the distant sound of the beleaguered teacher shouting at his students. |
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