| Worth the Pain |
[Jul. 8th, 2016|07:54 pm] |
[Takes place the morning of May 20, Yondaime Year 5, an hour or so after When the Last Roll Is Called]
For the first fifty kilometers of the run to Shirakawa, Kakashi and Ryouma didn't talk.
It wasn't exactly a race, like the first few times they'd competed on mission marches. They knew each other's paces by now: Kakashi's eye-blurring turn of speed, Ryouma's staying power. Kakashi set a pace at the very edge of Ryouma's limits, and didn't push it. Ryouma focused on the burn in his lungs, the dull ache in his knee, the perfection of his body moving exactly as he meant it to, and refused to let himself think: This might be the last time I run.
Three kilometers outside Shirakawa, with the thickly wooded hills giving way to gentle meadows and farmers' hamlets, and the town's smoke smudging the horizon, Kakashi said, "Niimi-sensei does good work."
Kakashi was looking at the dusty snake of a road curving up southwest from Tanazaku to Shirakawa, not at Ryouma. He said, "I asked Rin."
"I wasn't thinking about it," Ryouma lied.
Kakashi let the silence wash back. ( Perhaps, for once, he didn't feel the need to point out that Ryouma wasn't fooling anyone. ) |
|
|