Impossible to Forget

Chapter 24: You're Ruthless

The next day of the journey was far from comfortable, to put it lightly. The friendship and easy conversations that I had always had with Kakashi were now feeling a bit strained, and I had no idea why. He continued to run next to me like before but only spoke when spoken to and made no effort to start up a conversation of his own. It was really pissing me off. We had a day and a half left to the journey, and I was not going to spent it feeling like I was walking on hot coals and eggshells the entire time.

When we stopped for lunch, I picked at my food slowly. Kakashi was facing away from me, which wasn't too much of a surprise since he likes to hide his face under a mask at all times, but today it felt like a personal insult.

God, I was so done with this whole thing, and luckily since I lack any sense of tact whatsoever, I decided to get right to the bottom of it.

"Are you mad at me?"

"Hm? Why would you say that?"

I scoffed, "Who do you think that you are fooling? You've had a stick up your butt all day, will barely even talk to me, and are more sullen than Anzu on her moody days. Since you're not a teenage girl, I'm guessing that there must be something going on that's making you upset, unless of course you are a teenage girl. In which case, I'm really sorry for you."

"I'm not a teenage girl."

"So you're mad."

"I'm not mad."

"Really? Yeah, I don't exactly believe you."

"I've just been... deep in thought, okay? It's really nothing."

"Well, since I still don't really believe you: I apologize if I said something that offended you, I really wasn't trying to, and can you please stop acting so distant and moody? It's definitely starting to grate on my nerves."

Kakashi sighed, "Sure."

I may have been mad at him, but I wasn't too worried. We had worked through twenty-five years of hate and avoidance so I wasn't afraid that one day of getting on each other's nerves would be the end of our friendship.

He stood up, "Well, we should get going again if we don't want to be late."

I stood up as well, "That's rich coming from you."

Kakashi winked, "I know."

With a laugh and a gentle punch to his shoulder, I knew that we were good. And the rest of the journey proved this. We fell right back into conversation the moment that we started running again.

Kakashi glanced over at me, "I've been meaning to ask, how did the lunch go?"

"Not well."

He sighed, "You're just saying that. I'm sure that it went fine."

"No," I gave a humorless laugh, "it really went horribly."

"How so?"

"Well... Sadao and I got into an argument, and I got really mad at him."

"Aren't you always mad at him?"

"Yes, but I got way, way madder than usual. I kind of stood up and yelled at him in the middle of the tea house. I think that I gave our poor waiter a heart attack when he came by to ask if we wanted any food."

Kakashi laughed, "So what did you say that made it so bad?"

"Oh, he was going on and on about how much he suffered in ANBU. About how he was left for dead in enemy territory and that Jukouro had no right to be sad about losing Yokoito, his Inuzuka ninja dog, and I got really pissed off at him. So I told him that in the big picture, he didn't have that much to complain about."

"That's not that bad."

"Uh," I gave another nervous chuckle, "at the end of my rant, I may have told him to shut the fuck up and, um, to... you know, grow a pair."

Kakashi stopped running and froze for a few seconds. "You said what to him?" Then he laughed so hard that he had to put his hand on a tree for support. "You're ruthless."

I was now the shade of a tomato.

One of the ANBU agents materialized next to Kakashi. "Are you alright, Lord Hokage?"

Taking deep breaths to collect himself, he wiped the tears of laughter leaking from his eyes, "Yes, I'm perfectly fine. Just remind me never to piss her off in public." Kakashi turned back to me as he still shook with silent laughter (I didn't know what was so funny about this whole thing) as he placed a large hand on my shoulder. "And how loudly did you state that he wasn't a man?"

"Well, the whole tea shop heard, I think."

"You know, Kaiyo, that was a low blow." He then descended into another fit of laughter at his own joke.

I let out an undignified snort as I tried not to laugh along with him. I mean, seriously, it was just a really crappy pun, and I should not have found it so funny.

"Kakashi, I think that we're on a schedule."

That sobered him up pretty quickly.

"Oh, yeah, you're right. Let's not waste any time, then. I hate to think what you might say about me to all of the Kages if we're late."