The moment they got out of the Hokage's office, Tezuka somehow managed to spirit Itachi away from his mother on the grounds of an apology meal. Since it was proper manners, his mother could not refuse unless she wished to give insult, which she would not stoop at for a thirteen year old.
"What do you like to eat, Itachi-kun? Please don't say meat," she grinned. "I'm paying."
Itachi refrained from pointing out that negotiating the terms of their meal defeated the purpose of the apology. He had the feeling it would lead to something unpleasant for him.
"…cabbage," he replied, not mentioning he had already eaten.
Tezuka scoffed, cementing his opinion that she was just being contrary for the sake of it, not because he did not know the social cues for people aged less than thirty. The street they were on had mostly noodle shops.
"Nee-chan, is the grub ready? I could eat a summon!" She yelled at the back of a dango shop. The noren cloth hanging from the front had enough stains on its lower parts to testify for its good taste and happy clientele.
A woman of twenty years old, her working yukata's sleeves tied up with white string and her hair covered in a light blue kerchief, went out. "You better help with the shop, missy, before I give you a wallop! Where's yer manners?" She shouted in a surprisingly deep voice.
"Anego!" Tezuka yelped.
"Don't you "anego" me!" The woman threatened, then saw Itachi and stopped. "Who's the cute bean sprout?"
"My ex," Tezuka replied absently.
"Your what?!" Her sister asked, outraged. "Wait for a couple years at least," she hissed. Itachi blinked up innocently, proud that he managed not to blush. He saw Tezuka's grin of approval with the corner of his eye and smiled inwardly.
He bowed precisely. "Uchiha Itachi, your younger sister ex." He said solemnly. "Teammate," he added.
Tezuka swung a hand over his shoulders as anego looked at them with a raised eyebrow. "The hellspawn you swore you'd ditch at the earliest opportunity?" She said sardonically while Tezuka winced. "Come in."
A crate of tottering summer apples came in just as they were settling down at a small table, "Taro-nii!" The crate shouted. It thunked down and a four year old boy with black hair came out from behind it to join them.
"Suga," Anego said, "bring more sugar from the warehouse. Tezuka, go and help."
"But I'm hungry!" She whined as she got up nonetheless.
"You worked nothing until now, missy, so you better get up sharpish and do it if you want to eat," Anego threatened. She turned to the door as it opened. "Anata," she said happily.
Itachi turned and looked. A man in his forties came inside, followed by a boy of eighteen with the same jet black hair. The young man was dressed like a samurai, a family crest on his shoulders. His hair was in the usual topknot of an adult warrior, so he was definitely at least sixteen.
"Otoo-sama, Ani-ue," Tarō-kun greeted politely as he got up.
Anego's sharp gaze turned to her younger sister. Tezuka waved. "'Hullo, Kuro-jijii." Her voice sharpened. "Good day to you, Tettchan."
The boy's eyes narrowed as his left hand clenched on the handle of his sword.
"I apologise for intruding, Ikeda-san," he replied coolly. "I did not think I would find you so lively after failing your first test so spectacularly."
Tezuka blushed in fury. Tarō also went red from embarrassment.
The young man's eyes flickered to Itachi then he bowed and sat with his father at the same table.
"The shipment has arrived," the head of the Kuroda family told his wife, then he turned to Itachi. "I take it you are their new teammate?" He bowed. "I leave my useless child and sister-in-law in your care."
Itachi bowed deeper. "Ah, no, I was just replaced by a more adequate member of my clan," he said. He could help Tezuka and Tarō save face and get a dig at them in the same sentence.
The boy snorted. "You have been lucky. The banshee screeched in your ears enough to.."
"Ichirō," his father warned.
Itachi watched it all, as the atmosphere lightened up after the warning, committing all to memory. He had a report to give to Shisui after all.
Itachi put his new team out of commission from the first day.
"I tried to assert myself," he argued to Tezuka as he ate his favourite dango. He definitely did not huff. The girl blinked then started laughing like a dying hyena.
"You know what you lack?" a red faced Tezuka asked him after a worryingly long time of flexing her abdominal muscles to their limits without taking a breath.
"Hatred?" Itachi asked, shrugging.
"What?"
"Ah, it's an Uchiha saying," he replied, somehow disappointed she didn't get it. He had even tried cracking a joke.
Tezuka snorted. "Telling me Uchiha jokes now? We're becoming chummy, eh," she smirked as she elbowed him. "Have some dango then."
"Thank you humbly for this delicious food," Itachi replied sincerely, making her laugh.
"You lack experience, runt." She said affectionately. "You may have great analysis and so on, but you also need experience. I just know, she said ironically, what you think.
Itachi swallowed the dango. "What do I think?"
"You are probably thinking about something of little consequence, maybe a poem or a code, or just the dango, but your true thoughts are that you were right, that you made the right decisions you self righteous little brat," she grinned. "At the same time, you are disappointed nobody is at your level of intellectual knowledge, and nothing proved to be a challenge. And you found yourself marginalised once more, and you cannot find the fault in yourself, and wish to be so generous as to not hold it against them either. Half of that feeling is fabricated to keep yourself from growing prideful, and half of it is probably genuine. What I can comment, is that your social skills suck ass much as Taro-kun's cipher solving skills."
Itachi glared back unimpressed. "That is basic reading," he said through a mouthful of chewy dango. If Tezuka insisted his social skills were deplorable, he might as well prove her right.
"It's experience, brat," Tezuka grinned. "Which will be more apparent when we do real missions."
Itachi's skeptical interjection was drowned out by anego's voice.
"And you no doubt think you are too good to stir the dango sauce?" They heard her from the doorway. Tezuka gulped. "Anego.."
"You cut a cat's whiskers?" She asked, horrified. "You know it's like blinding them, right? You maimed a cat. You maimed an innocent being for a mission."
"It was for making medicine," Itachi corrected, a bit more subdued than his earlier exuberance when he first told Tezuka about it.
"So making someone else suffer is alright if it helps those you know?" Tezuka asked. "I'm not saying the medicine should not be made," she said when she saw Itachi's shoulders tense. "But you should take responsibility."
"Take responsibility for the sauce, you rapscallion!" Anego shouted. "Stop dawdling! And you, Kurogoma-kun, skewer the dango and dip them in sauce."
"But I have to…" Itachi started but Anego's "hurry up, both of you before I come and get you by yer ears, you dollops," quickly made him reassess his priorities.
Notes: Anego= older sister, humble language
The cloth hanging in front of the shop, showing that they are open for business for the day, really was used as wiping cloth by the customers during Edo period. Thus, the dirtier the noren, the better the food.
Ichiro is a name given to firstborn, this is why the father reprimands the boy like that. People had multiple names, Tetsu being his name taken in adulthood, Ichiro is the childhood name.
Saving face, losing face are self explanatory I think.
Kurogoma is black sesame. Anego's nickname for Itachi because he's a smol bean.
