"Dai-chan! Dai-chan! Listen to this!"
Daidoji rolled her eyes, briefly looking up from her graphic novel to acknowledge Rin's entrance before returning them to the pages she had open. Rin dropped down next to her, panting heavily with silky threads of brilliantly violet hair dipping over her youthful face. Daidoji screwed her eyes shut tight. It was hard enough listening to her pant like that, so breathlessly.
"Listen to what just happened!" Rin exclaimed. She was obviously excited.
"What is it?" Daidoji had been friends with this girl for a long time. They were both exceptionally talented ninja in the Hanzo Academy. She respected her friend for her talents, but she thought she could due with being a little less cloud-minded and stop fawning over her cartoonishly-oversimplified dream of ahiceving 'world peace'. Daidoji had always stuck by Rin despite this, even when she found it annoying. She did not take her ninja duties as seriously; she considered it the way of life she was meant to lead because it was the tradition of her family, so she had to accept being a ninja for what it was. The fact she proved to be so good at one was simply a lucky coincidence for her.
"I got to talk to Kiriya-sensei today!" Rin squealed.
Daidoji rolled her eyes again. If she wasn't talking about ninja duties or training, Rin was probably talking about how cool and handsome Kiriya-sensei was. He was a pretty popular teacher at the academy, one of the best, and he trained both Rin and Daidoji multiple times. Daidoji thought he was a man worth the respect and prestige, but she didn't share the same feelings that Rin had for him. Rin didn't just admire their teacher, she clearly had the hots for him too. Daidoji...couldn't say that she appreciated it very much. That was why she didn't like giving Kiriya-sensei any consideration outside of his role as a teacher.
"You got to talk to him, huh?" Daidoji figured it was only right she helped keep the conversation going, even if she dreaded to hear what Rin had to say.
"Yes, and he said that he'd be happy to train me privately some time! I've always wanted the chance for some one-on-one, you know how much I've talked about it! Isn't this great?" Rin was positively beaming. She was overjoyed at the fact of getting to spend time, alone, with this older gentleman she had been pining for since the day they'd met.
Daidoji nodded, but she kept her eyes trained solely on the single panel at the top of the page, depicting a man being punched in the stomach. She could definitely say, without a doubt, that she could feel, on an emotional level, what this drawing of a man would probably be suffering at that very moment in real life.
"That's really great." Daidoji tried to play it off by acting aloof and uncaring as always, which seemed to be convincing enough for Rin, who had always been a bit easy-going for a ninja, hence her ditzy personality. She wasn't very good at picking up on peoples' cues, the little hints on where their true thoughts and feelings lied.
On the inside, however, Daidoji could already feel the deep, dark cracks starting to surface over her heart.
She and Rin were good friends. As far as she knew, they would always be good friends. Sometimes, though, she wished that Rin would look at her and talk to her the same way she always talked about Kiriya-sensei. Just a little bit would be nice.