Sasuke's Pov.

I noticed that Shizuka had entered the training room, but continued undeterred with the boy's training.

Akito continued to work on his chakra control, which Shizuka had taught him during the last training session.

From the corner of my eye I saw how the black-haired female let herself slide down the wall on the floor and paused there to watch the training.

I wondered what she wanted to discuss with me, but knew that she would not tolerate interrupting Akito's training for a conversation.

My attention turned back to the child climbing the walls of the room. He was really a quick learner, but a little clumsy from time to time, like at this moment. He was hanging upside down from the ceiling and looked at me with a confident grin when he lost his focus and his feet came off the ceiling.

The next moment I perceived movement from my peripheral vision. Shisui's sister jumped up as if she had expected something like this. She sprinted up the wall at a mad pace and got to the boy before he really fell.

»Pride comes before the fall,« she said warningly and gave him a serious look.

The boy dangled upside down in Shizuka's grip and looked back at her in surprise. She let herself fall, took the Kurama in her arms and landed like a cat in front of me.

»Baka,you will do that again now,« she said to him when she had let him down.

A little intimidated by her harsh tone, the boy just nodded and went straight back to work.

I looked at Shizuka's side profile. Her black hair, which now reached to the small of her back, was tiedto a high braid ponytail. This probably had to do with the examination of Orochimaru and Kabuto. I also noticed earlier that she had apparently bought new clothes on her last mission.

Instead of the tight cycling shorts, she wore dark blue three-quarter-length pants that were pretty tight around the hips and widened around the legs before they snuggled back to the skin on her calves. She had replaced the close-fitting, long-sleeved shirt with a black, sleeveless, cropped top with a turtleneck. Over it she wore a gray vest on which she had sewn the Uchiha crest. Her arms were covered by black gauntlets up to half of her upper arms.

»Is the conversation you want to have with me important?« I asked and looked at Akito, who was running up the wall again.

»A matter of interpretation,« she replied and copied me.

»If you find it important to have a conversation about our current emotional position and the question of how this should go on with us, then yes,« she continued and answered my unspoken question.

I was a little puzzled that she wanted to talk about her feelings. Instead of answering, I looked at the ceiling, where the Kurama boy was now hanging upside down again.

»How long do I have to hang around here now?« he questioned the Uchiha.

»Thirty minutes, then it goes on with the Genjutsu training,« she answered and looked up at him too.

Akito looked like everything would fall out of his face at any moment.

She turned to me. »We have half an hour. Do you want to talk about it now or later?«

»You don't want me to dangle from the ceiling alone for half an hour,« Akito grumbled.

The black-haired woman smiled.

»If you complain about it, it'll be an hour,« she replied, turning back to me.

»Later,« I replied with a smile, too, and saw the Kurama exhale with relief.

After half an hour, Shizuka released the sweating Akito, who had to exert hard for the last five minutes to keep himself at the ceiling.

She continued the training I had started and only finished it late in the evening. Akito was so exhausted that he almost fell asleep during dinner.

I did the tidying up and washing up while the ravennette put the black-haired boy to bed, who could barely stand on his feet.

Less than 15 minutes later she was back in the room and looked at me. In contrast to the last two times we were alone, she didn't seem a bit unsafe.

»Go ahead,« I asked.

»You know that I'm not that great emotional person and that I also can't always express them in the way other people might do,« she began.

That's what I liked about her so much. She would never stick to my arm in public, or necessarily want to hold hands.

»I like you more than I planned, and that seems to be less easy to suppress than I hoped it would be. We are in a situation where a relationship between us could become a problem. Should Orochimaru, who is unfortunately not as stupid as he looks, find out that we have feelings for each other, he could use that against us,« she continued, without asking whether I had the same feelings for her.

Shizuka seemed to have given it a lot of thought.

»That's pretty much all I have to say about it,« she finished, now looking at me expectantly.

»Then you've already mentioned everything,« I replied.

She seemed a little surprised and asked: »That's all you have to say about that?«

»I see it like you do, so we can agree,« I shrugged back.

»I'm telling you that I like you, ignore what you are feeling and talk in the ›we‹ form and you just nod it off?«

»Just like you, I find the public display of emotions annoying, so that's fine. I probably like you as much as you like me, and Orochimaru will certainly not notice if we don't let it show,« I summarized.

»So we both agree that we are essentially renouncing everything normal couples do,« she noted.

»Which means that ... ?« I questioned.

»No public display of feelings, which includes holding hands, kissing, cuddling and all this. We also leave out things like dates and all that romantic crap. I'm neither keen on it, nor see any point in it,« she explained.

»I think there are some people who would find it romantic to train under the full moon and then smooch afterwards,« I grinned.

»Sure, people like to beat each other up first and then pounce on each other completely breathless and sweaty,« she replied sarcastically.

I took a few steps closer to her, took her face in my hands and smothered her next words in a kiss.