Sora stood unresponsive, long enough that Shiu gave up trying to get her attention with his non-verbal gestures. It was a silence that was vaguely reminiscent of how she had refused to look at him at first when he had started speaking to her, needlessly pouring over a map he felt certain she must have already had memorized. He wasn’t sure what the vacancy in her eyes was about, but he didn’t like it, and he made that evident by looking at her with an increasingly annoyed stare.
Before he could decide whether to try verbally prompting her or moving on ahead without her, she finally spoke again, but not in response to the looks he’d been giving her, nor was it something he had expected.
Help them? They didn’t
help bandits, they killed them. Perhaps it was because she had determined that they were not bandits, but if that were the case, why would they go out of the way to help them? It had nothing to do with their mission objective, as far as he knew. The jounin may have been one of those soft-willed, charitable types, who made themselves into doormats for those who were too feeble to help themselves. It wasn’t something he made a habit of doing himself, especially not while on duty. His time was precious because, unlike most others, his life was meaningful, and he didn’t like wasting it on hopeless causes.
He was still insatiably curious about the contents of that bonfire, though, so any excuse to get closer to it was good enough for him. He just hoped she didn’t take this as some sort of sign for some altruistic side to him that he didn’t actually have.
Shiu, unlike his instructor, did not let his hand fall from the hilt of his sword. He let it rest casually against it, because he did not care to appear non-threatening as she may have. As they descended the sloping landscape closer to the road, Shiu kept most of his focus on his feet, making sure his gait carried as much of an ethereal beauty to it as he possibly could while traveling downward at such an incline. When it leveled out, he looked back up to survey the group ahead of them, who had evidently taken notice.
With much of the mass of the sun’s body sunk below the horizon, it left glaring orange streaks blurring his vision, and he had to squint just to make out most of the details of the group’s demographics. It was an age range among the group that he found curious, and unexpected in as far as what he had pictured when he had believed them to be bandits. The teen boy, who seemed farther along in the stages of puberty than he was, in particular caught his attention. Shiu wondered, idly, how easy it would be to kill him if he tried. He imagined very easily. He was not a Kirigakure shinobi, after all.
Their defensive posturing came as a small surprise to Shiu, and he stopped when Sora halted in his periphery. Any lingering exasperation he may have felt towards the jounin-sensei was all but forgotten the moment one of the men decided to flap his mouth. Shiu’s brow lifted in amusement as they postured, trying to pose a danger that was nonextant to them by virtue of their civilian status, as far as the young genin was aware. It was enough to twist his lips into a small, wry smile, and something even more rare from him—he laughed.
It came out as a short, dry chuckle. When he finished, he asked the man, "Armed? With what? Kindling from that fire?”
Shiu did nothing to filter the mockery in his tone. Even if he ultimately got roped into performing some menial task to help out these hopeless characters, he was glad he went along with Sora’s conviction to approach these men. He had not expected the entertainment of commoners thinking they could do anything to make him feel unsafe.
As much as he may have enjoyed goading these men into saying more funny things, his obligations as a medical student meant there was a time-sensitive subject here for him to address. So Shiu nodded his head towards the bonfire, deciding to get right to the heart of it without delay. "Who are you burning?”