| [Aug. 16th, 2010|01:19 am] |
Conversational partners, though, did talk back, apparently. Hiro avoided Ginta's eyes and gazed out at the pond, watching Tanuki Fish's round fish-mouth open and close around the floating pellets, gulping them away from the other fish that crowded around. "I imagine we're no more refined than anyone else in that respect. Biology is biology." He didn't particularly want to talk about it.
"There's a koi pond in the Hyuuga gardens, too. Some of the fish there are ancient. Older than Konoha, for sure." He paused, flicking another handful of pellets out onto the surface of the water. The blue fish lumbered towards them, but the shiny golden fish edged out in front, followed closely by an agile, deep red fish with black spots. "Sometimes I think that koi breeding is as far as discussion of sexuality ever gets, in my family."
At least he hadn't broken anyone's heart himself, Hiro thought, or even had the opportunity to. Of course, in his family the penalty for stepping outside the lines was much greater. Just the threat of discipline seemed to be enough to twist the natural paths of interactions between people, sculpting an insular and fundamentally suspicious culture, bounded on all sides.
It was easier to think about his family anthropologically, Hiro realized, now that he wasn't living there. Harder to recall the feeling of being insignificant, of being somehow less.
He took a breath, breathing in clean spring air and scented flowers, the delicate sense of damp rising off the water. "You must be pleased to be in ANBU, able to go your own way," Hiro ventured finally, turning to Ginta with an open look. "It seems that you've really carved yourself out some freedom."
I admire that, Hiro didn't add aloud. He thought it went without saying. |
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