Kasumi always rose with the sun, Ryu noted with surprise after several days. She did not make it obvious—she remained still and quiet in her bedroll for quite some time after dawn most days—but Ryu was nothing if not observant. As the predawn light crept across the sky every morning-no matter how soundly she slept, no matter how deeply she dreamed—in the moment before the sun crested the horizon, she was instantly and fully awake. This, apparently, was a lifelong habit; when he asked her about it, she flushed, clearly dismayed that he had noticed, and murmured something about her mother telling her tales of rising early herself just to see her young daughter awaken, smiling and quietly cooing, as if, as her mother put it, "bidding the sun itself good morning." He had chuckled then at the image of an infant Kasumi wide-awake at the crack of dawn and her bemused mother, pondering the strangeness of it all. Kasumi had smiled tentatively at him, her embarrassment and relief apparent in her expression. He understood; shinobi lived and died with the shadow of night, it shrouded their art and their deeds; it gave them protection and power. The sun and its light, the superstitious among them might say, represented the antithesis of all that they were. So to be a shinobi who embraced the dawn, was to be at least an oddity and at most a threat. How appropriate, he thought, for this particular shinobi to be the embodiment of this contradiction. Here she was: born to lead, now an outcast; an assassin, trained to kill dispassionately and as needed, but who had only killed once—for vengeance and to put an end to an evil man's evil deeds; a hunter who was now hunted but refused to be prey; beautiful like a mountain lily: soft, delicate and breathtaking; strong, tenacious and determined; steeped in blood yet still an innocent; a child of twilight who wakes with the dawn.
He poked the embers of the fire with a fallen branch and shook his head at his own musings. Since when did he indulge in philosophic rambling? It was late, he was tired, and it seemed he had no control over his own thoughts. It mattered little what she was born to be or how many she had killed; all that mattered was what she was now and that she could do what was necessary. And she could do what was necessary; she proved that when she killed Raidou. But what she considered necessary as a nukenin differed greatly from what others in the same situation had deemed necessary. Other runaway shinobi had attempted to kill all those sent to find them. The deaths of the ones they had managed to kill had served as both a warning to all who followed and had eliminated a threat to the target. The more skill the shinobi possessed, the higher the casualties.
Kasumi was very skilled.
That she had evaded death at the hands of her brother's assassins for this long was a testament to her ability. That she had done so without killing anyone was almost beyond belief. She fought as hard to spare their lives as she fought to preserve her own life. He knew of no other shinobi who would have chosen that path.
But she was unlike any other shinobi he had ever known.
Her strength of character humbled him. The opposing elements of her spirit intrigued him. Her graceful beauty and gentle nature distracted and captivated him, like a soft breeze that coaxed the cherry petals to leave their blossoms and dance in its embrace. She, without any intention of doing so, was creating a resonance within him that he was finding more and more difficult to ignore.
So don't… The thought brushed against his mind like a moth's wings.
He threw the stick on the embers as if tossing away his errant thoughts. "Enough! This is foolish," he muttered harshly to himself. He had no desire to let his mind wander any further down this fruitless path.
Sighing, he stood up, glancing towards the eastern sky. The darkness was slowly giving way to the indigo of pre-dawn. Kasumi would awaken soon and when she did his mind needed to be clear and his thoughts focused. He had promised Hayate that he would protect her and so he would. And if his heart tried to whisper that he would have done so without the promise, his mind chose to ignore it as he channeled all of his wayward thoughts into the execution of his daily katas.