Ryouma glanced involuntarily toward the bed, then away. Kakashi'd asked for good thoughts, which weren't quite the same. And which were much easier to come up with, anyway. Happiest memory? Who kept those sorts of things labeled in neat rankings?

He couldn't think of much but the bad ones right now, anyway.

But the years on the border had been good, generally. He'd made some of the best friends of his life, and they'd managed to enliven even the long stretches of boredom punctuated with occasional bursts of deadly action. Maybe one of these days he'd take a mission back to Lightning Country, catch up with Arata and Hiroyuki, tour the new base. Remind himself who he'd been, before he hit ANBU and his life turned sideways.

Of course if he was getting nostalgic, there were older memories to return to. One of those rare perfect days with his genin team, when they'd completed a new move to Hitomi-sensei's satisfaction and she took the whole team out to dinner to celebrate. (It was easier to look back on those memories fondly now, when Kenichi wasn't sitting beside him making snide comments and tempting Ryouma to drown him in the miso soup.) Dates where everything went right. The afternoon he'd finally completed the Nikutai Tokasu. The morning he'd walked through Konoha's gates...

"Day I made genin," he said. "I'll never forget tying the hitai'ate that first time. I'd practiced with bandannas before, to get it right, but it wasn't--it's not the same, the way the metal weighs on your forehead, the way you can just catch it out of the corner of your eye if you look up at the right angle." His voice softened. "Like the difference between living some place and belonging."