>>5890061>>5890075>>5890080>>5890082>>5890095>>5890375>>5890505>>5890561Katsuro shows you all the steps for basic dance. You have a hard time even understanding why people need to ‘learn’ this. All you’re doing is moving in a pattern. It’s not that hard. Just move in a square, and with rhythm. You don’t step on his feet once.
Because you’re clearly good at this, he starts showing you specific dance moves you can execute. In short order you’ve gone from learning from Katsuro to the two of you simply goofing off as you quickly learn and just begin executing moves at a frenetic pace. Soon people are joining you, more and more people joining in as a circle around the bonfire develops, with people essentially doing whatever they want. Naoki has some kind of dance pop playing, which you don’t necessarily care for beyond its facility in providing a beat.
The flame of the bonfire roars, and the circle spins. Somewhere in the midst of it all it occurs to you that you live in the Village Hidden in the Leaves, in the Land of Fire. And here you were. In a forest, hidden in the leaves, and roaring in a circle with your closest friends and allies. A dim signal somewhere deep in the base of your skull ignites and informs you that there are multiple ways of viewing everything, optimistic, cynical, mature, youthful. All kinds of ways for all kinds of folks. And here in this moment, you’re getting to experience what your predecessors experienced when they were young, before the founding of this village and long after, leading up to you. Perhaps it was a moment like this that inspired the concept of the Will of Fire in the first place, before it was refined into a dusty old philosophy for dusty old men.
You can feel your people besides you now, literally and metaphorically. Living, breathing teammates, and the thump of feet from all the faceless dead men that have pounded this same earth in a frenzy of youth and drink. You can’t see them, but you can feel them adding to the rhythm in your heart and the motion of your feet. It feels less like you’re dancing and more like you’re following a pattern that was established over a hundred years ago and would continue for a hundred or more after you’re gone.
You’re all genin and thus most of you had functionally limitless stamina, especially for an activity like this. That being said, heightened emotions give out before your bodies do, and soon Naoki is changing the music to something far more regulated and chill and everyone starts bleeding off to do their own things once again. Soon it’s just you and Masami remaining.
You extend your hand to her.
She takes it.
The two of you slowly waltz in silence around the bonfire.
You don’t look at her face, and you assume she doesn’t look at yours.
Something tells you that this is a moment that would end with acknowledgment, a moment that would require something to change.
Maybe you just lack courage, or you’re just too young, or too unsure.
