Chapter 25: Sourness is the Proof of Frustration
"Um… if you don't mind, you can have my bento."
Turning around, they saw Pakura standing behind them, looking extremely conflicted. She was fidgeting, rubbing the hem of her clothes, unsure where to put her hands. When she met Hiiro Rinko's flat, emotionless gaze, she grew even more embarrassed, idly tracing circles on the ground with her toe.
"Don't get the wrong idea! This is just an apology for acting so despicably earlier—"
Stared at by Rinko's inorganic gaze, Pakura's embarrassment levels shot up. Before long, she shut her eyes, her face bright red, and shouted in resignation.
"Haaah…"
Although he had just been thinking about how he didn't care what others thought, seeing this, Rinko felt he had to explain.
Feeling a bit exasperated, he raised a hand to rub the bridge of his nose. "Pakura-san, I don't think you did anything that requires an apology to me."
"Eh?"
Because their perceptions were completely different, Pakura let out a sound of pure confusion.
Paired with her "what's-going-on" expression, she looked just like a marmot whose burrow had just been dug up.
Speaking of which, don't rabbits and marmots both have breeds that live in the desert?
As he assessed Pakura's reaction, Rinko's mind had already drifted off somewhere else.
He felt his current symptoms were no different from being hit by Gold Experience—like his spirit was running wild from an excess of life energy, wasn't it similar?
Though it wasn't so bad that his spirit was leaving his body; he was just easily distracted.
"I'm saying, your actions just now were not a problem at all."
Facing the girl, who was still confused by his words, he tapped his own cheeks to focus and said flatly, "As a shinobi, if it's for the sake of victory, anything is permissible on the battlefield."
"But if you've already confirmed you cannot win, then your first priority is to ensure the enemy also doesn't get to win."
"Your plan and your actions were not wrong. Your only flaw was in not considering what to do if you failed. But for an impromptu counter-attack, it wasn't bad."
"But... then... um... You were the one who called me despicable..."
Pakura felt that Rinko's logic was somehow different from the education she had received, but she didn't know how to refute him. The girl, who was never very good with words, just mumbled in distress.
"Ah, that was also part of my tactic. To see if I could disrupt your focus, make it so you could never beat me."
Rinko gave a casual wave of his hand, dropping the line lightly, and then turned to leave.
Karura, his deskmate whom he saw every day and found pleasant to talk to, was an exception. He had no desire to waste extra energy on social interactions.
Rinko was not the type to be considerate of others' feelings. He was, however, very good at thoroughly infuriating people with just a few words.
Given that he had no intention of changing his ways, social interaction was, for him, basically synonymous with 'trouble.'
And Hiiro Rinko hated trouble.
"Hiiro-kun, what you're saying sounds like you're just bluffing~"
Karura, walking beside him, had crescent-moon eyes, smiling cheerfully.
He seems so cold, but he can spout such nonsense with a perfectly straight face. Hiiro-kun is such an interesting person~
"Did I miss a joke in there somewhere?"
"Noooope, nooothing~"
Karura drew out her words, her tone full of bright laughter.
Seeing her brilliant smile, Rinko's own mood lightened a bit.
Smiles really were contagious. That was a fact.
"Eh? Wait..."
After freezing for a few seconds, Pakura—realizing she had probably just been played by Rinko—watched the two of them walk away, laughing. A complex, sour emotion rose in her heart.
'Did a good job? Not bad? What was that supposed to mean…?'
The girl, who had been called a genius, reached out a hand, only to have it stop in mid-air. The mouth that could spew fatal fireballs couldn't utter a single, simple syllable.
She couldn't accept Rinko's logic as sincere; she could only see it as him letting her down easy. But the more she thought that, the more she felt her own cowardice.
And Rinko's appearance as he boasted of his own talent, so genuinely proud and confident in it, was just so... dazzling.
'After beating me so effortlessly, to just brush it off like that… doesn't that just make me seem even more despicable and insignificant?!'
'Hey! Look at me again! Even scolding me is fine!'
The girl, interpreting that sour feeling as pure frustration, bit her lip and chased after them again.
"Wait for me!"
"?"
Why are you back again?
Although Hiiro Rinko said nothing, that meaning was clearly written in his eyes.
"What is it? As a girl, Pakura-san, shouldn't you be a little more reserved?"
But no matter how blunt his gaze was, Rinko's words were still relatively calm.
While being unreasonable was a child's prerogative, this kind of harmless willfulness was fine.
But when he remembered that Pakura had just been saying "clinging men are annoying," her current behavior seemed particularly humorous.
It was a bit... awkward.
Though he prided himself on his keen insight, a girl's mind was truly hard to guess. Add in a child's characteristic moodiness and whimsy, and it became even more unfathomable.
Rinko felt his processing power shouldn't be wasted on something that probably had no answer.
"Right! A thank-you gift! That's it!"
Feeling as if her mind had suddenly cleared, Pakura found an excuse almost without hesitation. "This is to thank you for speaking so quietly just now, for not letting anyone else know what I did."
By the time she finished saying it, she had almost convinced herself.
"...Fine, whatever."
Staring at the girl, who was acting righteous despite not having a leg to stand on, Rinko felt he wasn't going to get past this. He pursed his lips and let out a sigh that was clearly two parts more helpless than before.
"But let's skip the lunch. In terms of appetite, I estimate both of your bentos combined probably wouldn't be enough for me."
This wasn't an excuse. His superhuman stamina couldn't just be squeezed from his body out of thin air; it required a large intake of food.
Besides, taking food from two little girls... Rinko didn't think he had fallen quite that low.
He casually pulled two pills from the ninjutsu pouch at his waist and tossed them into his mouth. Chewing, he added in a muffled voice:
"Anyway, I've been eating this stuff for over a month. One more day won't make a difference."