Date: May 27th, 13 years aNb
Days since Team 11 left Mizumiyo Palace: 24
Time: 9:50 AM
Nakahito wandered down the hall to the cafeteria area attached to the kitchens on the lower level; as a guest of the Lord Daimyo, he could have had room service, but the Genin needed to stretch his still itching legs. As he reached the back of the line, he spotted Sho Inugami sitting by himself in a secluded corner with a platter of cold food. The medic's dual-colored gaze was looking into the distance at an otherwise featureless wall; a sign that he was lost in his own thoughts…
His own hunger abruptly forgotten, Haruno walked over to his teammate; not willing to risk him slipping off again. As he got closer, though, the Genin felt a sudden reluctance to get any closer and even started turning aside before his determination stopped him.
'Why am I..?' Nakahito began to question as he noticed the other staff try to approach Inugami only to stop short and veer away. 'Oh… He's set up some kind of Genjutsu barrier…' Haruno's hands quickly rose in the Ram seal. "Release!" The fire specialist muttered under his breath. Instantly, the urge to leave Inugami alone vanished and he was able to take a seat opposite his teammate.
"Hey, Sho; can we talk?"
The medic blinked as he realized he had company. "Good morning, Nakahito. Sure, we can talk; how's your Roshsyan?" Inugami replied. His tone sounded polite, but Nakahito had no clue what his teammate just said. Was that even a language or was his teammate just messing with him further?
"Sho, could you please be serious for a moment, okay? I'm trying to be…"
Sho's face turned sour. 'Hito had known this conversation was going to be difficult, but how was he already losing ground?! "Oh, so when it suits your desires, you want to be serious..." He crossed his arms, making a stirring gesture with the index and middle finger of his right hand. "Well, go on, show me what 'serious' Nakahito Haruno looks like."
'Okay, still no clue what the hell he's saying, but that gesture… He wants me to continue..? I think?' The red clad ninja was starting to feel overwhelmed. "Come on, man, this is hard enough as it is; could you take a break from busting my balls?" His emotions were starting to overwhelm him and tears started to form in the corners of his eyes.
"Gods, you gotta suck out all the fun by turning on the water works." Inugami sighed, looking vaguely annoyed and rolling his eyes.
Haruno's hand wiped away the barely formed tears. "Look, I fucked up, okay? I shouldn't have mentioned Momo when I was giving you crap about the whole Shion thing. Please, will you accept my apology so I can take Kanna-hime out when the Festival starts? I need your help and support here, buddy… Please?"
"Of course I support you, my foolish teammate." The medic said with a smile as he clapped both of the fire specialist's shoulders for emphasis. "Just because you and our third member are too dense to know how you really feel about each other doesn't mean that you and Princess Kanna couldn't work."
"Sho, look, I don't understand a thing you're saying, and can't understand why you're doing this, even though all that just now feels like it was a 'Yes.'" He sighed. "I'm not the stupid knucklehead I was months ago when we first became a team…" Inugami arched an eyebrow. "Okay, I'm not the SAME stupid knucklehead; I'd like to think I've grown up a bit. Reiyuriko-hime helped me see things from your perspective last night, so I guess what I'm trying to say is…" He took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, okay, and not just for what I said about you and Momo, but for everything asshole-ish I've done to you in the past, too."
"I don't know what really happened that day with the boar years ago, but Kimi and I both know we shouldn't have turned our backs on you like everyone else did, something you could have easily done to us with this whole Akechi thing… And if you had, Kanna…" Nakahito rubbed his chest, which was suddenly aching. "I would have lost her and never known how much she would have meant to me… So, I'm sorry… I feel like I should be saying it differently or something, but I don't know how else to express it…"
Inugami was silent for a long minute. The silence was as palpable and oppressive as fog in a nightmare.
"You know, I actually think you genuinely mean that…" His teammate said, finally shifting back to the common tongue. "And as someone who nearly fucked up his chances with the girl of my dreams it would be remiss of me to block you…"
Nakahito could suddenly feel himself breathe again. "I meant every word, Sho, I…"
Inugami raised his hand. "Slow your roll, Haruno; I wasn't done yet… I'll accept your apology IF you can figure out one of the reasons I had for answering you in Roshsyan just now… And trying to see if I could piss you off for my own amusement doesn't count."
"Rosh… Wha..? No, never mind; question for another time…" Nakahito shook his head. He opened his mouth to answer, but Kanna's warning to do some further soul-searching before taking to his teammate – something he had not done during his effort to track the elusive medic down – sprang to mind. Sho always had multiple reasons to do things, no matter how annoying they could be at the time… But there was one reason, above all, that was a CONSTANT behind it all…
And that's when an answer came to him like the ringing of a gong.
"I don't know if this is what you were thinking of, but I'm going to say that you're trying – in your own frustratingly annoying way – to help me be better… And no matter how much I complain about it, I can't deny the simple fact that it's been working! When I look back to where I was just four months ago to where I am now, I can see the differences that have happened thanks to how much you've pissed me off even as you taught me things that Miho-sensei either didn't realize I needed or simply hadn't gotten to yet. I'm still a knucklehead when it comes to letting my temper get the better of me, as last night proved, but I want to be better… I want to make something of myself so I can be worthy of someone as special as Kanna-hime; the boy I was when Team 13 formed was too short-sighted and narrow-minded to be that. I NEED you to keep pushing me, to keep busting my balls, because only going through that fire will I come out the man that she deserves."
"Well, I'll be damned more than I already am..." Inugami breathed; clearly so shocked by Nakahito's answer that he slipped back into that weird language again. A slight smile crossed his face. "There might be hope for you after all, Haruno. And that hope deserves a chance to flourish…" Inugami did a rapid fire hand seal sequence and the other Genin thought he saw a second copy of the medic before a gust of wind made Nakahito instinctively block his eyes.
"What was THAT?!" The confused red-clad ninja asked.
"What you asked for…" Haruno's face scrunched up in confusion as Sho brought his hand near his plate of cold food. There was a brief flicker of flames in the palm of his hand as the ninja altered his chakra to produce enough heat to warm his breakfast sandwich back up.
The medic took a bite. "You managed to make the right call in not insulting the language I was talking to you in… It's my mother's native tongue from a country far to the west. Doing that or trying to bring Motoko-sa up for anything other than an apology would not have ended well for your long term health prospects…"
Nakahito let out a breath of relief. "I can't take full credit for the second part of that… Kimi pointed that out to me last night."
"Umh…" Inugami made a noise mid bite and quickly set his food down. "Right..! About that…" His hands began to glow green again as he put his hand on his teammate's forearms.
The pain in Haruno's arms and legs disappeared.
"Ohhh…" Nakahito moaned as he finally felt a measure of relief; he hadn't slept all that well last night because of the partially repaired breaks. "So now what?"
The medic smirked. "Now that." He said pointing behind the Genin with one hand as he took a bite out of his sandwich with the other.
Haruno turned in time to see Princess Kanna enter the cafeteria, the staff members nearest her bowing deferentially as they saw her. Beside her was a ghostly looking version of Inugami that faded away like a dream as the fire specialist looked on. It had only been four days since he'd seen her last…
It felt like it had been four lifetimes.
"So can we pick this up…" Haruno began as he turned back to his teammate; only to find an empty seat. "…another time then...?" He finished dumbly.
Nakahito rose to his feet and walked over to the white-haired woman that had been filling his thoughts more and more in the last few weeks. There was a look of pride and happiness to her features that swiftly banished his memories of her emotional tears. He began to bow, but she threw her arms around him in a hug that caused a minor stir amongst the staff.
"I knew you had it in you to be better than you were behaving, 'Hito…" Kanna's dulcet tone whispered in his ear without including the usual honorific.
"Kanna-h…" One of her carefully manicured fingers pressed against his lips, cutting him off.
"Kanna. Just Kanna, Nakahito."
A smile crossed his lips. "I think I can get used to that, Princess."