Touka sipped her tea coolly as she reflected on her answer. “Nothing besides the usual, I suppose. I wonder how Hashirama is doing with Uzumaki-hime”
Butsuma nodded noncommittally and Touka pressed on.
“He is to come back the next full moon, is he not?”
“He is, if all goes well”
Touka’s mouth quirked involuntarily, despite her current mood. “I have no doubt that it will, uncle. Hashirama may be ostentatious at times, but he means well, his heart is kind and his intentions sincere. The Uzumaki will grow fond of him and he can be attentive and very socially intelligent when he wants. He understands the importance of this alliance; the union between our clans will surely come to fruition.”
Butsuma hummed. He didn’t approve of the aloofness and emotionality his son usually displays and he has tried to beat him out of it multiple times, but eventually he had to stop -reluctantly and making sure to transmit his disappointment-, as it kept growing like an insistent and annoyingly persistent weed. It was unbecoming, he thought reproachfully.
He didn’t verbalized such thoughts; instead, he expressed, prickly, “He better understand it”
“He does” Touka reassured as she glanced around the room casually.
Silence fell again and Touka’s eyes dropped to the floor. Her eyebrows twitched in a frown.
‘White hair?’
There were a few strands of thin, snowy hair just next to the cushion she was currently sitting on.
Her eyes returned to her cup. Butsuma was a man who liked his space clean, scrupulously so. He usually had servants clean his quarters in the mornings and then in the evenings after he would leave. Given her current role, she had a pretty good idea of Butsuma’s schedule and activities and, as far as she knew, both yesterday and today had been quiet days without much movement and no meetings had been held here in the last forty or so hours. Not many people in the clan who were close enough to the clan head to have an appointment here had that particular hair color. They were mainly a few of the elders and… Tobirama.
She gave the hairs a sideway look and, pretending to scratch her leg, grabbed the strands with deft fingers, hiding them inside her sleeve.
Was she reading too much into it?
There was no possible way for that to belong to her cousin. He had been out for over two months. If he had arrived recently she would know by now. Touka tried to sip more of her tea, but her stomach had closed off in her worry. Perhaps he had send one his summons here? Had something happened to him? Could that be the cause for her uncle’s appearance? He seemed as if he hadn’t slept and, despite he tried to cover it, his mood was definitely more foul than usual. There was a current of aggression beneath his every word.
Touka returned the cup to the table, unable to drink anymore, and went with a frontal attack.
