| [Aug. 29th, 2017|03:36 am] |
“He knows it’s a shared bath, right?” Genma spun his senbon, watching stars come in and out of focus behind it.
“I’m not volunteering to tell him,” said Raidou. He didn’t move from his comfortable spot leaning against a support column for the covered porch.
Ryouma sighed agreement. “He’d probably stab first and grab a towel later.”
“If there was anyone on this team I would expect to be able to produce a kunai despite being naked as the day he was born, it’d definitely be Hatake,” Genma said. Where Kakashi would have hidden the weapon was a question that didn’t bear scrutiny.
“Jutsu,” said Ryouma, who must have also contemplated where, and come up with a practical solution. “Ice kunai.”
“I’d bet you good odds he was born masked,” Raidou said.
“He could have been,” Genma said. “Sort of. I helped at a birth once, during the war. The baby came out with the amniotic sac still wrapped around its head. The midwife said it meant the baby was blessed by the seven lucky gods.”
“Kakashi must’ve had the seven unlucky gods,” Ryouma said. “Or this is the lucky version and the other would’ve been a whole lot worse…”
Genma laughed. “I was just thinking that same thing. Bishamon seems to have blessed him, anyway.” He touched the the small amulet of protection in battle his father had given him, identical to his teammates’. Like Ryouma, he’d added his to the chain with his dogtags.
Ryouma rolled onto his back, shoulder-to-shoulder with Genma, and joined the star-gazing. The edge of the roof hid half the sky, but the visible portion had shaded deep violet. Genma could just make out the constellation of the leaping dolphin.
“I guess we’re all the lucky ones,” Ryouma said. He sounded less than confident about that.
Raidou smiled, as content as a buddha. “I believe it.”
“I do, too,” Genma said. He let his elbow fall against Ryouma’s. “Look where we are right now. Luck doesn’t mean life holds no hardships. It just means you come through them and find happiness on the other side.”
“Also means we weren’t born in Kiri,” Raidou said.
“Also that,” Genma agreed.
Ryouma propped himself up on one elbow, looking intently down at Genma. “Are you happy, Lieutenant?” He turned the same look on Raidou. “Are you?”
The simple answer was ‘of course’. The unexamined answer. But that wasn’t what Ryouma seemed to want. Genma lifted his head and met Ryouma’s gaze. “Right now, in this moment, I’m completely happy.”
Raidou studied Ryouma for a moment before he answered, “I’ve got a team I’m proud of. Right now, I’m downright delighted.” Before Genma could ask it, Raidou added, “And you?”
Ryouma’s mouth worked as if he was trying to form words that wouldn’t come. Finally he swung up to a cross-legged seat next to Genma, and shook his head. “I should be,” he said. A bitter weight nailed every word down. “You’re right. If this isn’t enough, then—” Dark eyes glinted in the soft light of the porch lanterns. “How do you stay in the moment like that, with what you have?”
“Attend Buddhist school as a kid,” Raidou said, nodding a wry smile at Genma. “Or have a mom who teaches you how to meditate at her knee.” Probably Raidou’s other mom, the Academy sensei Genma hadn’t met yet, Genma guessed.
Raidou pushed away from the pillar and sat up to face Genma and Ryouma both, making himself the apex of a triangle with the other two. “But mostly, feel whatever you’re gonna feel and don’t kick yourself for it. You can’t force yourself happy,” he said. “You can make yourself miserable.”
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