Yuzuya squinted, eyeing the last bit of ginger on his plate. "Hmm. I don't know. At the risk of sounding like a mother?" He pushed the bits of ginger into the soy sauce, thoughtfully. "Just be yourself and work? If he notices you he does, if he doesn't he doesn't? Not much you can really do about that."

Incidentally, as Yuzu sat there with the teenage boy's wide, dark eyes looking up at him, he felt the generation gap looming wide between them. When he was Kotetsu's seventeen years, he'd spent his time picking weapons off of rotting corspes, dodging land mines, crying himself to sleep in holes in the ground. Then he'd lost Kodachi and Aya both in one horrible day, both his firsts, and he hadn't had any sweet and happy lovey-love wishes after that, cause those sort of bonds you made could be so easily torn right out from inside of you. And you were left to go through your day with a silent scream issuing from somewhere inside your chest.

Such was life. Go figure. He didn't begin to assume that Kotetsu had led an easy life either.

"Some things you can't control." Yuzuya remarked, and he pushed the last maguro Kotetsu's way. "Finish this. I'm stuffed."

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"Yeah." Well, that had been his take on it, and Kotetsu dredged up a smile from somewhere and picked the last morsel from Yuzuya's plate. "Thanks."

Sometimes, he thought he was rather lucky. He was aware of shinobi just a few years older than himself having gone through something so terrible, so horrible that he knew he wouldn't be able to understand it unless he himself had gone through something just like that.

The sensei in the Academy hadn't been very much older then them, but with a missing leg he hadn't been able to go to the front lines. And while he was a kid just starting school, the graduates had disappeared once they were assigned jounin sensei - graduating had been a frightening yet much-craved goal, if only to see what would really happen.

But by the time Kotetsu had graduated, however, the war was over, the hardest of fighting and losses had happened, and kids weren't sent to the front lines. Not immediately.

From the detached look in Yuzuya's eyes, Intel or not, Kotetsu understood that the older ANBU had been from that time, when genin were packed off to the front lines with jounin-sensei who were more commanders than teachers, where the Academy teachers were war veterans who couldn't fight anymore but were too alive to throw away.

Sometimes, Kotetsu thought, chewing on delicately flavoured rice, he was really lucky.

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"Whatever. Well one thing is for sure," Yuzuya sighed, looking at the empty plates in front of them. A bit of a smile appeared at the corner of his mouth. "You can at least eat like a man. If not drink like one. You get enough to eat? You want dessert?"

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Kotetsu shrugged cheerfully, shaking off his melancholy mood like so much dust. "I'm kinda full," if only because desert in a place like this was probably expensive, and he was already starting to feel just a tad bad. He could buy some dango from a stand on the way back or something. "Unless you want some."

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Yuzuya paid for the entire check despite Kotetsu's protests. "It's fine, seriously," he insisted for the third time. Had the kid forgotten his silence was being bought here? If he had, good for Yuzu, but... "You can get the check next time."

Outside, the dinnertime village streets was dying down into the quieter pace of night. Yuzuya nodded to Kotetsu, his gaze shying away from the younger ANBU's. The thought of his dead teammates brought up things he hadn't remembered for months. He felt like being alone for a while, and the sooner the better. He stretched his neck a little as if tired, and gave Kotetsu a half-smile. "Well... I'd better be going, got a mission leaving at 0500 tomorrow and I need some rest." He started to walk away, a lone figure in the crowd, and raised a hand in a parting wave. "Thanks for the company, Hagane. See you."

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"See ya," Kotetsu said, "thanks for the dinner!"

Yuzuya faded into the evening crowds; evening fell quickly in winter, and Kotetsu exhaled in a puff of white fog that obscured the streets for a moment, and when he looked again, Yuzuya was gone.

Kotetsu hummed briefly, "Dessert, I guess." And he started off in the opposite direction as dark fell over the streets, blanketing everything in quiet.

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