"Was I stacking my questions? I didn't think I was doing that. Well not more than usual. I guess that's why I'm not in Intel." Ginta shifted his restless focus back onto Hiro, who was sitting almost unnaturally still, as if he could somehow be sedate enough for the pair of them. It was a technique Ginta'd seen his grandmother use--in fact as he'd started to recover his energy, he'd seen it quite a lot lately.

"I didn't mean steal as in theft, just, you know, borrow," he went on. "I'm allowed to be up. I was up a bunch yesterday, playing cards and stuff with Ryouma." There was almost no hesitation, no trace of anything other than perhaps a dry throat from the mochi, when he said the name. "And this morning I was over there again, and Kakashi finally woke up, so it's okay if I go out for a while, really."

Please.

"I actually do pretty well with interrogations, when they matter," he added. "But it's not really my best area. I had a mission a month or so ago with this rookie who got really grossed out by the process. He's not in Intel, either. I know torture isn't really the best method for extracting information, but in this case the target totally deserved it, and..."

His last distraction effort wasn't working. Hiro was looking at him as if he'd understood far more than Ginta had said.