The Way Through Stone Village (Naruto)

70: Fireflies

[OP: "Like The Dawn"--The Oh Hellos]

Ino was sure that Camie had ditched them deliberately using glamour after they had looked for her for longer than 5 minutes and she hadn't been around any corners.

"I know we passed her and she was just keeping quiet," Ino was a little annoyed. "I'm surprised Bakugo would do it thought...unless he just wanted to be alone with her."

"It seems strange to ask us to join them at all if their goal was to be alone," Sai said.

"Yeah, exactly!" Ino fumed. "I mean, just go alone, right?"

"Yes...and our Rain Village escort seems not to care," Sai didn't even see her following them.

"Which way were Shikamaru and Temari again?" Ino suddenly realized they'd wandered further away from them than she  thought before.

Sai pointed to the right. "That way...but it was a while ago. Will they still be in the same spot?"

"I hope so," Ino said.

But they weren't. In fact, they'd just missed them, but they didn't know that.

"I guess we could just go back to the lodgings," Ino said, not quite liking the idea of doing it without help, at night, in the rain, but...

"That would be safest," Sai didn't like the idea much himself.

But they did...however they  must have turned on the wrong street along the way because the soon found they were heading down one that led to the edge of the village instead of the center.

"All of these buildings look the same!" Ino began to get frustrated. "I was sure it was left at that crossstreet, but it must have been right...or was it the next street down? They both had tall, shabby buildings on them, so how can anyone be sure?"

"It sounds as if you're getting upset," Sai said, as if he was trying to win a guessing game.

"No, you think?!" Ino shouldn't have snapped at him, but she did anyway.

Sai was getting better with sarcasm, and he suspected that had been it.

A bit embarrassed, he went quiet.

But after a moment Ino's temper cooled.

"Sorry, that was...unnecessary," she said, more subdued. "Of course I should be calm. It's easy to navigate...just need to find somewhere to get a better vantage point."

"I could use my drawings to scout." Sai offered meekly.

"For this? I don't know know, that seems like a waste of ink," Ino shook her head. "No...since we're already nearly outside the Village anyway, why don't we just walk around it?"

"That sounds unsafe," Sai said.

"Nothing's attacked us here so far," Ino pointed out. "As long as we avoid the piping, they said that was where there might be people hiding. It'll be easier to find the right building if there's nothing in the way. I think I know what the top of it looks like now."

Sai nodded.

They went all the way out to the edge.

Ino began to wonder if Sai had been a little quieter than usual. Maybe he hadn't wanted to leave the building at all after earlier.

Then she wondered at what point she'd gotten so attuned to his  patterns that she'd even notice, he was quiet all the time anyway. But it did seem a little more than usual...

Sai privately was thinking of earlier also, but he was having more of a sense of shame about it.

Self awareness was a double edged sword, he'd come to see. He was now starting to notice when he came embarrassing errors and to wonder if people secretly thought he was just too stupid with both emotions and with social awareness to even bother telling him what he did wrong.