Kurenai opened one eye, dark scarlet in the blue shadows, and looked thoughtfully at Ryouma. She closed her eye and sank back. “I’ve always wanted to be an indulgent grandmother.”

“Half of everything there is to eat at a festival is fried,” Genma said. “For starters, we’ll get you one of everything.”

There was a ripple of air-currents. A swirl of steam. The water level raised a scant half-inch. On the other side of the bath, a little closer to Ryouma than Kurenai, Kakashi sat with a wash-cloth over the lower half of his face and a small, damp folded towel on his head. He was presumably naked, but convenient drifts of steam made it hard to tell.

He said, “The games are best. You can win goldfish.”

The look Genma gave Kakashi nearly made Raidou duck his own head underwater. In part because he shared that baffled curiosity: We have a childhood memory in common? One that’s normal?

Ryouma, on the opposite shore, looked excited and a little overwhelmed. “Do you eat the goldfish?”

“No,” Genma said, horrified. “You keep it. In a bowl. Or you let it go in a pond.”

“Goldfish are not sushi grade,” Kurenai murmured.

“Wouldn’t survive the journey home, either,” Kakashi said. “You can win other things.”

This entirely diverted Ryouma. The remainder of bath hour was a volley of questions and answers, until Kurenai splashed them all and demanded quiet to soak. She got about four minutes before the hostess knocked quietly on the door and informed them their time was up.

Genma and Kurenai slid seamlessly back into their henge before they’d even left the bath. Raidou followed suit once he’d towelled dry. It was frankly strange to watch Ryouma slip into a body that was so clearly his, just younger. A clean-faced boy with the promise of height and muscle, even more expressive than Ryouma was now. At thirteen, Raidou would have taken one look and fallen hard.

Looking now, he could only wonder at the people who should have seen that promise, and—

Well. Died.

Ryouma’s jounin-sensei had tried. A youngster herself, a branch-house Hyuuga, wrangling teenagers in a war. Fun would not have been her priority.

Kakashi, transmuted back into his slip of a teenage girl body, informed Kurenai obnoxiously, “Tousaki looks adopted.”

With a smooth ripple of chakra, Genma’s hair darkened and the shape of his eyes angled narrower. Subtle changes that the spa-owner would likely miss, but enough that Ryuu was clearly Gendou’s son.

“Really, Ka-chan!” Gendou said. “Stop picking on your brother.”

Kaede gave him an approving look. Her eyes, too, seemed suddenly darker. Ryuu stepped closer to his father. Ka-chan tossed her head and made for the door.

Hastily, Raidou swirled his own henge into place before the latch could click. There was an awkward second of adjustment — shorter, curvier, balance in all the wrong places, don’t forget the obi — and then all five of them were clean, dressed, and festival-ready. Raidou borrowed an old memory to make his yukata brightly floral: a pink-and-purple plum blossom design Ume had been especially taken with one year. Gendou and Ryuu were both handsome in blue and white koi; Kaede, elegant in her black kimono with dancing scarlet petals.

And Ka-chan, in blazing sunset orange.