"Ah. It broke."
There was a soft sound of strained laughter from behind him, mixed with the distant sound of the emergency alarm. "I'm pretty sure we both figured that, Kururu-dono. We can do little of anything else but wait. The alarm is loud enough for half the street to hear, I'm sure we'll get pulled out in no time."
The idea didn't sit too well with the technician and he gave one of his typical, annoyed 'tsks' as a comment to the situation. It didn't go unnoticed by the ninja.
"It is no use to get sour over it, Kururu-dono. Just relax and it'll be alright."
Kururu was a moment away from telling Dororo not to test his pathetic Zen attitudes on him but he figured the last thing he wanted was a crying, wailing, triggered Dororo in the corner of a broken-down elevator. Not that he cared much about it. He simply hated the sound of bawling.
Giving up on checking the half-crushed panel, Kururu sat in the corner and immediately regretted this decision, seeing how Dororo placed himself in the opposite one, his eyes closed and looking as if in middle of a meditative state despite everything that just took place. Watching him like that gave him a strong urge to simply turn around and stare at the wall but he didn't find the energy to do it. So, he simply slumped back in his corner, with nothing but the meditating ninja for entertainment. An entirely unwelcome entertainment, if he were to be honest.
When the two first found themselves in the same elevator that lead to and from Kururu's underground base, Kururu didn't think much of anything about it. Dororo came in, there was a polite greeting, to which he mumbled one back, and the two headed up to Hinata's residence.
Precious silence reigned, when something shook and the elevator stopped. Before any of them could do anything, it started crashing down dangerously fast. Kururu recalled little of it because he at some point started flying through the air and his head got hit. He was pretty sure that, for a few moments, he was out, or at least in daze because when he came to, much to his horror, the elevator was still and he felt Dororo holding him much firmer than Kururu would have ever liked to be held.
"What are you-?" Kururu began through his teeth, only to then realize as his eyes began to get used to his surroundings that the elevator's ceiling was crashed enough to block the only other potential exit out, the walls of it dented and folding in on themselves and Dororo was not holding him per se as much as he was pushing him harshly down into the floor, covering him with one arm while trying to make sure the ceiling wouldn't crush them with the other.
It took the technician a little longer than it usually took him to understand things to realize Dororo had been trying to protect him.
He said nothing about it, and neither did Dororo.
Which annoyed the technician to no end, because the ninja had been limping.
Oh, how he hated it.
If that idiot had not done anything, surely, he thought, they would both come out just fine. They went through much, much worse things, Kururu figured. Sure, there might have been a chance that they could have gotten seriously hurt but the possibility had to be miniscule, anatomically small, practically goddamn invisible-
"Kururu-dono, are you alright?"
"Huh?" Kururu snapped out of his musings and realized Dororo was no more meditating. Instead, he had been watching him quite attentively.
"You look incredibly upset."
Not thinking he looked anymore annoyed that usual, Kururu scoffed. "What's it to you?" he offered, not phased in the least. Or at least that's how it was until Dororo spoke again.
"Why, I care because we're friends, Kururu-dono."
It would have been so easy.
We're not friends.
I don't know you exist half the time.
You're nothing but an expandable that's butting into my work space.
Just as Kururu prepared to completely destroy whatever there was left of Dororo's positive attitude with his heartless reply, another, more curious question popped into his head; what was it that made Dororo think they're friends? Yes, the ninja was all about the peace and love on Pekopon but surely, surely, he wasn't that stupid. He must've noticed how utterly dismissive he'd been to everyone, aside from when he was trying to annoy the Hell out of Giroro.
Curiosity won over.
"Why?"
"Sorry?"
"Why are we friends?" Kururu asked, giving Dororo a chance to figure it out for himself, to drown in his own realization of just how meaningless the two were to each other.
Dororo was quiet for a moment.
"Kururu-dono, you wouldn't agree with me on that?"
"... Hardly." Kururu offered, though he really wanted to say 'of course not'. "Aside from working together, the two of us rarely shared a moment that could be considered…," he paused, "...warm."
When Dororo laughed at those words, Kururu had to admit he was mildly surprised.
"What's so funny?"
"For the smartest and most intelligent of our platoon – of our entire military force, more likely – you can be a bit on a dense side sometimes, Kururu-dono."
His brain being just about the only thing he could truly take pride in, Kururu found himself uncharacteristically hurt by such a word as dense. Perhaps it was because it came from the last person he expected to say something like that to him.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you."
The apology only upset him further.
"It's fine." Kururu spat out, just hoping that the whole conversation would end right then and there.
"Do you want the answer, anyway?"
Kururu gritted his teeth. "It's not like I care."
"Well, you did ask."
"Tsk." For a moment more he was quiet. "Sure, answer away."
"It's your face."
For once in his life, Kururu was confused.
"We are friend because… of my face?"
"That does make it sound silly!" Dororo apologetically smiled. "What I mean is, it's your face that tells me we're friends."
Aside from his brain, Kururu remembered, he was absolutely proud of successfully masking whatever feelings he wanted masked. That being said, with Dororo managing to expose both of these things in less than a minute, the technician received these news as painfully as he would a punch straight to his face.
"Wh-what are you talking about?"
"Your face is not exactly an empty slate, Kuru-"
"My face is exactly that." Kururu insisted, his voice sounding both desperate and concerned. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to admit nobody has ever seen him as upset as he was in that moment. "My face… is exactly that." He repeated, as if trying to convince himself at this point. Dororo watched him carefully.
"Kururu-dono… do you think that… we see ourselves in the mirror differently that others do in real life?"
Kururu didn't reply.
"I'm not asking you a trick question, Kururu-dono. You may relax."
"I am relaxed." The technician lied, and the ninja was kind enough not to call him out for it. Dororo continued.
"I've met and seen many creatures on this planet that have faces… so much more colorful and expressive than our own race. And in studying their faces and emotions, I came to realize that all of us, no matter the planet nor the galaxy, share that one thing in common. The little things, that give us away. The twitches, the frowns, the smiles. The reactions. The emotions in them."
Kururu listened to this, dread filling him up from the realization of what he was hearing, and his heart nearly burst out of his chest when Dororo, again smiling his stupid smile and again being more perceptive than anyone he's ever met, said:
"And that's why, Kururu-dono, I think we're friends."
The broken down elevator felt cold and hard in comparison to what Kururu had felt and had been trying to hide so desperately all this time.