Ain't That a Kick in The Head?

24 - The Proctors' Day Off

By the time poker's finally grown old, the late afternoon sun streams in through half-closed blinds and casts the lazy players spread about the room in a golden glow.

Sakura sits with her back to the headboard of the bed, next to Tenten. Lying sprawled out on the floor, staring at the ceiling with legs reaching up the wall, is Omoi. Karui sits beside him on one side, back to the wall, in a spot just out of reach of the fading sun. Kankuro is on his other side with his feet pressed to the bed frame. Her teammates are lying on the bed.

Lee does push-ups in the middle of the room's empty wooden floor and Neji sits cross-legged, watching him intently.

They've collected their clothes. Everyone's mostly dressed. (Nudity has never been a thing scandalous to Shinobi.) Mostly, in a sense that there's a shocking sense of quietude that has befallen the temporary residents of this tiny room. Headbands have stayed discarded after the poker game, or have been traded flippantly. Some have even swapped parts of, or their entire outfits.

She could kill everyone here a hundred different ways if she really wanted to. And they, her. And yet...they all have chosen to trust each other with their lives. It's...

Really nice, actually.

Sakura can't remember the last time she actually relaxed, let her guard down like this.

The door creaks open and the Kazekage re-enters the room with several bottles of sake.

Omoi slithers up into a proper sitting position. "Hey, where'd you get all of that?" his voice then drops into a whisper. "You should really close the door! What if someone sees us? We're all underage!"

Amused, Gaara slips off his sandals. The door shuts behind him. "I pulled rank."

"Wait, how are you a chuunin and still not allowed to drink?" Kankuro asks. He gets up and sprints over to his brother. He takes a couple bottles out of the bag that Gaara holds in his arms.

"It's set at eighteen. For everyone. Lord Raikage doesn't want one of the three shinobi prohibitions influencing us while we're too young to realize how weak it will make us." Karui says. She eyes them distastefully.

"Fascinating! I was not aware that the different cultures of the villages led them to develop different drinking ages as well!" Lee cries.

Beside her, Tenten leans in close to whisper into her ear. Her breath is warm and tickles Sakura's neck. "Oh God, I can already see this becoming a disaster."

"In Konoha you can drink as soon as you become a genin. Once you're old enough to go on the field, you're old enough to make your own decisions," Sakura says. She feels the room staring at her. "Doesn't mean you should, though."

Briefly, she remembers times during her training with Tsunade, when her sensei had called it a day and decided to give her a different kind of education. She remembers the hangovers, and how her ruthless master made her do paperwork even as she desperately wanted to puke, or curl up into a tiny ball.

"Suna had a similar law to Kumo," Gaara says. He sits down on the floor and places the surplus of bottles by the bed frame, next to Tenten. It appears he was also courteous enough to purchase glasses for them all.

"Had?"

"I changed it. It turns out the only thing that could keep Shukaku moderately placated was alcohol."

A brief, awkward silence falls over the room as people move back into a circle on the floor. Naruto, leaning over the edge of the bed instead of moving with the rest of them, breaks the tension with a very earnest, "Kurama says 'that sounds exactly like his shitty little brother.'"