| [Dec. 30th, 2008|11:41 pm] |
The comment on his skill made Hayate grin just a little bit, small and pleased. He munched on his warm food--it was getting to the point where he could actually eat it without scalding mouth and fingers.
He glanced up between bites, and caught the tail end of her look. He smiled, more in reflex than anything else. The little polite smile faltered badly when she asked about his family. Hayate winced and looked down at his food.
It still hurt, even after five years. Not as bad, but it was still...tender, and he didn't want to think about it, about losing them both so fast, in such disaster. He folded the sudden ache away and put up his smile again. It felt too thin and brittle to be believable.
"My father...he was a ronin, and my mother met him on a mission. He taught me his school of fighting, the Tennen Rishin style before he...died. Which is well enough, but most samurai don't do well against ninja, so it's not really suited for fighting against shinobi."
His voice ran ragged, and he paused to clear his throat. It was only the talking, he thought resolutely, it was not because of the faded hurt and loss. He didn't often talk this much...but Tsume seemed friendly, and at least marginally interested in what he had to say. He'd grown tired of being ignored at ANBU headquarters as the "nameless rookie," and it was nice to carry on a conversation with someone again. He hadn't realized how lonely one could get being ignored.
"There's a sword style particular to Konoha that combines ninjutsu and kenjutsu, and that's what I'm sort of using now. It's not well known: the katana isn't the usual weapon of choice for ninja. I've had to puzzle it out from a set of old scrolls--there's no one who can teach it to me."
Those scrolls aren't exactly crystal clear, either, he thought with vague annoyance and some pride, munching on a bigger bite of his okonomiyaki. |
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