>>5808103You open your eyes. You are currently face down in the water of the rice field, sunk into the mud underneath the shallow water. Your immediate instinct is to try and breathe, but you can’t. You attempt to rise, fingers clawing uselessly at mud. You can’t find the strength. You must have used a huge amount of chakra during that whole experience. You start to go dizzy when hands roughly seize you and yank you out of the water.
It’s Masami.
“Are you okay?! What the hell was that?!” She says, slapping you on the side of your cheek to elicit a response and make sure you’re alive.
You weakly slap her hands away from you, swiftly growing in strength. “I had my chakra sapped by a… spirit. I’ll be fine. I’m sure glad I called you over first.”
“Doesn’t sound like any spirit I’ve ever heard of…” She explains. Dimly, you realize she’s cradling your head in her thighs while annoyingly pinching your ears. “You really had me worried! You just reached out and then the rice jolted upright! I jumped away because I thought we were being attacked! I felt so bad that I just left you behind, especially when I saw you just faceplant! I was worried you just died or something and I didn’t help you!”
“You’re helping me now.” You say, closing your eyes and gathering your strength to get up. “More than you could possibly know, you’re helping me now.”
You remain like that for only a few seconds before you squirm out of her grip and stand. Yeah, you seriously didn’t have much left. A bit away you can see that Hotaru is holding Kenji by the back of his shirt while staring at you like a hawk. Naoki is wading through the water towards you, probably sent to check what was going on while Hotaru kept Kenji safe.
Realizing that there’s a chance your near KO out of nowhere might jeopardize the mission, you turn to Masami. You’d only have a second to set the record on what happened just now in a way that was palatable for Hotaru not to pull the plug out of an abundance of caution.
>Honesty. “Look, Masami, I just got completely exhausted doing battle with a demon in the spirit realm. I’m not sure if I’m able to continue.”>Lie. “Don’t tell them about the spirit, just say that I tripped and fell because I made a bad call to practice a jutsu or something innocuous like that. I’ll be fine, I just don’t want Hotaru to get worried and cancel the mission or anything.”>Write in 