| [Aug. 29th, 2017|03:45 am] |
The kids were having emotions again.
Raidou didn’t spend the effort untangling Ryouma's dark expression or Kakashi’s porn-cloak of privacy. There was soap and hot water to attend to. The runoff started brown, became grey. When it was finally clear, Raidou dumped a last bucket of water over his head and followed Genma and Kurenai.
The bath was more of a rock-lined pond, sourced from a natural hot spring and dammed by smooth stone. Steam drifted over the surface. Kurenai had sunk to her shoulders, hair carefully pinned up out of the water; she rested at the far end with her head on a folded towel, eyes closed. Genma floated an arm’s length away from her, submerged to his chest. He looked like a man having a quiet religious experience.
Raidou lowered in, hissing at the heat, and reminded himself not to stare.
Kurenai’s cheeks were flushed, but her mouth was bare, make-up sluiced away. Her lashes were dark calligraphy strokes. She was a moonlight woman, pearl and shadows. Genma, scarred and suntanned next to her, looked like a man stolen from summer. Heat glowed on his cheekbones.
Not staring.
Raidou found a ledge and sat on it. Warm granite pressed against his back, easing strain from the long muscles.
Several moments later, Ryouma joined them. In defiance of bathing protocol, he ducked immediately underwater and came up with a splash, dark hair plastered down like an otter. His face was flushed. Raidou couldn’t begin to guess what he was thinking, but it was doubtless unhappy.
Raidou said, “Ever go to festivals when you were a kid?”
Ryouma blinked, swiped water out of his eyes, and shook his head.
“Every year,” Kurenai said, with a faint smile. Her eyes stayed closed. “Even now. My little sisters are fiends for cotton candy.”
“Yep,” Genma said. “Obon especially. I liked the fish-netting game. But when we let the lanterns go, it always made Dad a little sad.”
Raidou didn’t doubt. It was one thing to raise a flame for your ancestors’ spirits. Entirely another to burn one for your young wife. Genma had mentioned his mother only once; he’d been two when she’d died.
In ninja villages, death festivals carried a lot of young flames. After the war, and the Fox, the sky was always crowded.
“You’ve never been?” he asked Ryouma.
Ryouma settled back on a ledge, water lapping at his collarbones, and shook his head again. “Maybe when I was a baby, but I don’t really remember. I didn’t go while I was in the Academy, and afterwards I was always on missions.”
Something, somewhere in there, had not been okay. Raidou had read Ryouma’s file: father vanished at five, mother killed at seven, that grandfather— By seven, Ryouma should have been to a dozen festivals, ought to have seen fireworks.
How do you stay happy? Ryouma had all but asked, only a few days ago. Raidou realized, in answering, they’d missed a very basic step: start with happy memories.
“Call this your first, then,” Raidou said. He glanced, fleetingly, at Genma and Kurenai. “We’ll have to make it a good one.” |
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