She stopped him in the middle of their afternoon walk with a hand on his chest and a grin on her face. "What is it?" Kabuto asked, puzzled, as she stepped towards a large oak off the forest path.
With a giggle, Kairi turned to him and gestured at the thick trunk. "How much do you wanna bet I can't climb it?" She looked not unlike an excited child with her blue eyes twinkling (even the clouded one) behind thick frames and her heart-shaped face, framed by gentle black curls, lit up like that.
He glanced down and pulled at his pockets, or lack thereof. "I seem to have left my ancestral fortune at home."
"I know what you can pay me back with," she quipped with a sly smile and a wink, banishing the illusion that he was dating a five-year-old.
Kabuto stepped forward, squinting a bit in the bright mid-afternoon sunlight that fell through the leaves. "Let's not gamble. I trust that you can climb a tree." He wasn't quite sure what the point of this was, really.
"Well, what if I just want to?" Kairi said, answering his unspoken question and, without further ado, taking a running start, jumping, and landing feet-first on the bark. It was exceedingly difficult for him to keep from smiling for no reason in particular as she gave a mirthful laugh, body parallel to the ground, focusing her chakra in the soles of her feet to walk up the straight vertical slope of the tree until she was at least twenty feet above her fellow medic. Once she'd found a suitable branch to use as a seat, she positioned herself comfortably and called down, "C'mon, Kabuto!"
"Come on what?" he replied, craning his neck and adjusting his glasses to look at her.
"Come on up, stupid!"
"Up there?" Kabuto raised his eyebrows. "What on earth for?"
"Why not?"
That was usually what he heard from Orochimaru before the Sannin attempted some kind of bizarre experiment that ended up in a catastrophic explosion. Kabuto sighed and decided to humor her, simply stepping up onto the trunk and walking up with no difficulty whatsoever. As he approached her branch, her giggles grew louder and louder.
Brow knitted, he asked as soon as he joined her, sitting down, "What's so funny?"
"I-I'm sorry..." She had a hand clamped over her mouth, but it did little to nothing to hide her grin or muffle the sound. "I-it just looks so silly when you do it! Especially with that serious expression on your face and your ponytail hanging down like that."
"Har-har," he said dryly, shifting. "You're the one who made me. And again, what for?"
"Aw, lighten up," she replied with a smile, giggles subsided, leaning on his shoulder and holding his arm. "And no reason, really. It's just kinda nice up here, y'know? Like a different world."
She had a point, which Kabuto realized as he sat in quiet with her for a few moments, looking around at the lush foliage inhabited by the odd chirping bird, the silence broken only by the wind rustling the leaves. Glancing to his left slightly, he saw that the wind had loosened some hair from behind her ear and brushed it back, if only for the excuse to admire the way dappled sunlight fell on her fair skin.
"Almost makes me wish I got out more," he said honestly, though like anything else he uttered it came out sounding sarcastic.
This earned him a giggle and a peck on the cheek that he pretended didn't make his heart skip a beat. "If that doesn't make me feel like a miracle-worker, I don't know what does," she said with a teasing air. "Alright, let's get you back indoors before you wither."
She started to get up, but he stopped her with a hand covering hers. "I'll live," Kabuto said with a faint smile, lips grazing her knuckles. She beamed and curled up to him, and they sat like that for a while. If nothing else, it made him feel at peace to know that she was pleased.