Bonded and Broken

Chapter 42

Sumire's POV

"We'd be at my destination before nightfall," said our strange female client.

The woman introduced herself as Chihara. No surname, no long backstory about her life, no small talks. Nothing.

Just simply Chihara and her unexplained reason for not wanting males as her guards for this mission.

Actually, we're not quite sure if our client detests the opposite gender or she simply prefers to have female company. But if we were to judge her lack of interest in mingling with our little girl group and her very obvious attempts to distance herself from the rest of our party, we can say with confidence that she simply hates everybody.

It's rare to meet somebody who hates people more than I do.

I guess that's an achievement on my part because I just found somebody who is more socially inept than I am. Not really something I should be proud of, though.

We understood Chihara's very apparent aversion to people, so we stayed out of her hair as much as we could since she's the boss until this mission is over. 

"That's great," replied Kurenai with a smile, filling in the silence since she knows Anko and I won't even bother to respond to Chihara's dry statement. "I actually thought we'd have a longer journey."

"Hmmm." The client only hummed in response.

Kurenai is a sweetheart. Much too kind and very soft spoken. Among our temporary team, only she had the patience to actually try and connect with our client, but her attempts were proven ineffective.

Anko and I had an unspoken understanding during this ongoing mission. We hardly talked to each other, and the times we attempted to converse with Chihara could be counted on one hand. Our minds were like two peas in a pod, tuned to the same wavelength. We're just zipping through our own designations and tasks for this C-rank with just the bare minimum of what was required of us. Our chats? Mostly one-worded conversations. Why spout out lots of unnecessary blabber when one could just convey the message by just saying little? That's my vibe and she gets it.

It's either that or she just didn't like me enough to actually put in an effort to talk to me more. Not that I mind, as I am perfectly fine with people not liking me at all.

Anyway, if Kurenai wasn't here to hold this peculiar unit together with some sense of normalcy, I think we'd actually go through this mission on mute.

Now I get why the ANBU uses hand signals in communicating with each other. I sometimes see Kakashi do that on multiple instances with the people he knew from the black ops. At first I thought it was rather unconventional and complicated since words are easier said than interpreted through signs, but now I think it is actually ingenious, not for the same reason as everyone else though. In my opinion, people are more tolerable when you don't hear their stupid ideas or irritating voices all the time. And I think I'd function better in a world where that's the standard.

I mean no hate on my current team, but that's just how I generally view people as a whole.

And I know I have to change that because I gave my word to the Hokage that I'd at least try my best to work on my people-skills. I know I should start doing that right now with my current team, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it at the moment as I am putting my focus entirely to something else rather than doing that.

There was something off with the vibe of our traveling party that I just couldn't quite point out, and I wanted to prioritize addressing that above anything else at the moment.

Is it from the inharmonious relationship between us and our client? Or was it because of the negativity that I could sense from Chihara? She had that kind of energy coming off her.