"If I win a second time, you'll let me touch you anytime and anywhere." Kenshin declared with a sly smile.
"WHAT?! Never! No, no, and no again! Do you even realize what you're proposing to a daughter of the Nara Clan?! That will never happen!" Kasumi refused outright.
"Fine, I'll raise the stakes. If you win—you can be free tomorrow morning." Kenshin offered, spurring the young kunoichi's excitement.
Hearing such a generous offer, Kasumi silently thought for several seconds, then said: "No, that won't do. No one should touch me 'there.' Even if you offer to release me immediately, I won't agree to that. I simply can't." Kasumi sighed and shook her head.
"Fine. I'll be able to touch you everywhere except your intimate holes. Okay?" Kenshin said with a smile. He enjoyed embarrassing the proud daughter of the Nara Clan and was having a great time.
Hearing "intimate holes," Kasumi flushed crimson and called Kenshin an "idiot." Then she fell into thought. She recalled the first game and, upon careful reflection, became more and more convinced that Kenshin had simply been lucky. Either that, or he memorized every move from the start and in five seconds managed to calculate hundreds of combinations to turn everything in his favor. Even the great elder didn't possess such intellect, so she decided Kenshin had definitely been lucky.
"Ugh… Fine, but besides not being able to touch me 'there,' you're forbidden from removing or reaching under my clothes in any way. If you break this rule, I'll bite off my tongue and die, understood?!" Kasumi said seriously.
"Okay, okay, no need to do anything to yourself, dear. I want nothing to happen to you more than anything." Kenshin said and stroked the girl's hand.
Kasumi calmed down a little, and for some reason Kenshin's words made her feel so warm and soft inside that the prospect of letting him kiss and touch her body no longer seemed so terrible—though still far from pleasant.
The second game went almost exactly like the first, except Kenshin had to apply a little more effort and concentration. Kasumi fully lived up to her clan's prestige one hundred percent.
This time Kenshin began outplaying Kasumi not at the end but in the middle, cornering her with every move. It was very difficult for him to maintain x100 concentration to think through each next move, but in the end he again delivered "checkmate," and Kasumi almost cried from frustration. She was a very proud girl and hated losing terribly, especially to such an insolent bastard who was only waiting to pin her against the wall again and grope her young body with impunity.
"How did you do that?! You couldn't have been lucky twice!" Kasumi blurted out.
"Everyone has their secrets. Let's just say my mind is stronger than the vaunted Nara Clan mind." Kenshin answered with a smile, planning to prick her pride and set up another round.
"You bastard! If my uncle Shikaku were here, you'd lose in twenty moves!" Kasumi exclaimed. Anything concerning the clan—especially intellect, which everyone was so proud of—was an absolute taboo. Every clan was incredibly proud of its features and couldn't stand them being mocked.
"Sigh… If your uncle Shikaku were here, proof of his great intellect would be that after losing to such a 'nobody' in your understanding as me—he would kill me with one strike, and no one would ever know about his loss."
Kasumi had nothing to say. She was no longer a child and perfectly understood how everything related to achieving goals worked. In the clan she had been taught manipulation, cunning, and deception, explaining that sometimes it's much easier to kill an enemy with poison than fight head-on, or to take hostage someone dear to them. This was practiced everywhere, and noble righteous people ended up in ditches.
Shikaku had several times used as an example for young Kasumi the great man and no less great shinobi—Minato Namikaze, who was one of the decisive figures ending the Third Shinobi World War and a great benefactor of Konoha, saving it from the strongest tailed beast, the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox.
However, at the very moment he repelled the horrific Nine-Tails attack, Shimura Danzo—a Kage-level shinobi with plenty of aces up his sleeve—never made his move. And after Minato and his wife sacrificed their lives to repel the Nine-Tails, Konoha repaid its benefactor by registering all of Minato's personal assets as Hokage assets and writing them off to the treasury, while the newborn son of this hero remained an orphan in a cheap orphanage.
Shikaku himself didn't like the situation, but it was beyond his authority. He didn't tell his young niece many secret details, but after little Naruto's birth, his father's teacher—the great Toad Sage Jiraiya—nearly started a real bloodbath in Konoha, furious at Danzo and the high council.
The heads of all clans and all council members with Elite Jonin strength arrived at the potential battlefield. Jiraiya didn't want to fight comrades he had fought shoulder-to-shoulder with in two previous wars, so Hiruzen put an end to the conflict, promising his student to care for the Fourth Hokage's young son to the best of his ability and not let him be turned into a weapon or experiment subject.
After this incident Jiraiya was forced to leave Konoha almost forever, performing the most difficult intelligence missions for the village for years, occasionally returning to check on little Naruto. He clearly threatened Danzo that if he dared involve the child in his vile plans, he would stake his life to arrange a "second Nine-Tails attack" on Konoha, and they would have to decide which Kage would give their life to eliminate the threat.
Shikaku, like many leaders of other clans, lacked the authority to decide issues of this level. If all clans dug in their heels, they could overturn any village council decision, but most clans frankly didn't care about the fate of some jinchuriki of the Nine-Tails. They respected the feat of his father and wouldn't mind raising him, but only if it didn't involve quarreling with Danzo and half the village council.
For Kasumi, the case with Minato was more than a vivid example that one should die only for loved ones or one's own clan, but never for an entire village. She could imagine the consequences of the death of the "Great Grandfather" and current clan head. After that the Nara Clan would face nothing good, just like the Uchiha Clan after geniuses with Kage potential stopped being born for a long time.
Of course she couldn't know this was a deliberate policy first by Senju Tobirama and then by Shimura Danzo, who did everything to destroy Uchiha Clan geniuses in the bud. As a result the last clan head—Uchiha Fugaku—could barely be considered an Elite Jonin and was even weaker than Hatake Kakashi, after which their clan was "completely accidentally" entirely wiped out.
Kasumi was certain of only one thing: nothing was more valuable than the clan's needs, and if for the clan's prosperity she had to sacrifice herself, she must do so without delay. After meeting this mysterious guy, this conviction began to crack. Kenshin told her what no one before him dared: that she wasn't obliged to live for the clan and could do whatever she wanted, finally being the little girl who loved sweets and beautiful clothes. But for now this thought was only in the corner of the young kunoichi's mind, while the principles instilled in her from childhood were still strong.