Chapter 70
- If I win the second time, you'll let me touch you anytime, anywhere. - Kenshin said with a sly smile.
- WHAT?! Never! No, no, and no again! Do you realise what you're offering the daughter of the Nara clan?! It's not going to happen! - Kasumi flatly refused.
- All right, I'll up the ante. If you win, you can be free tomorrow morning. - Kenshin offered, spurring the young kunoichi's excitement.
Hearing about such a generous offer, Kasumi thought silently for a few seconds, then said: - No, it won't do. No one is to touch me 'out there'. Even if you offer to let me go right away, I won't agree to that. I just can't. - Kasumi sighed, and shook her head.
- Okay. (chuckles) I'll be able to touch you everywhere except your privates. Okay? - Kenshin said with a smile. He liked embarrassing the proud daughter of the Nara clan, and he was having a great time.
When Kasumi heard "intimate holes", she blushed and called Kenshin a "fool". Then she thought about it. She remembered the first game, and as she thought about it, she became more and more convinced that Kenshin was just lucky. Either that, or he had memorised every move from the start, and in five seconds had time to go through hundreds of combinations, and turn it all to his advantage. Even a great elder didn't have that kind of intelligence, so she decided that Kenshin was definitely lucky.
- Okay, but in addition to not being able to touch me "in there", you are forbidden to take off or get under my clothes in any way. If you break this rule, I will bite my tongue off and die immediately, understand?! - Kasumi said in a serious voice.
- Okay, okay, you don't have to do anything to yourself, honey. I don't want anything to happen to you more than anything else. - Kenshin said, and stroked the girl's arm.
Kasumi calmed down a little, and somehow, Kenshin's words made her feel so warm and soft that the prospect of letting him kiss and touch her body didn't seem so horrible, but it was far from pleasant.
The second game went pretty much the same way as the first. Except that Kenshin had to put in a little more effort and concentration. Kasumi was living up to her clan's prestige one hundred per cent.
This time Kenshin started overplaying Kasumi not at the end, but in the middle. Stumping her with each move. It wasn't easy for him to maintain x100 concentration to think about every next move, but in the end, he had to checkmate again, and Kasumi almost cried with resentment. She was a very self-loving girl, and she hated to lose, especially to such a cheeky scoundrel who was just waiting to pin her against the wall and grope her young body with impunity.
- How did you do that?! You couldn't get lucky a second time! - Kasumi blurted out.
- We all have our secrets. Let's just say that my mind is stronger than the Nara clan's. - Kenshin replied with a smile, planning to hurt her ego with another round.
- You rascal! If at least my Uncle Shikaku was here, you'd lose in twenty moves! - Kasumi exclaimed. Everything about the clan, especially the intelligence that everyone was so proud of, was an absolute taboo. Each clan was incredibly proud of their specialities, and didn't tolerate being ridiculed.
- Eh... If your Uncle Shikaku was here, it would be a sign of his great intelligence that if he lost to a "lowlife" like me, he would kill me with a single blow and no one would ever know he lost.
Kasumi had nothing to reply. She was no longer a young girl, and she was well aware of how everything related to achieving one's goals worked. She had been taught manipulation, cunning, and deceit in the clan, explaining that it was easier to kill an enemy with poison than to fight him head-on, or to take someone she cared about hostage. This was always and everywhere practised, and the noble righteous ended up in the gutter.
Shikaku had several times cited little Kasumi as an example of a great man, and an equally great shinobi, Minato Namikaze, who had been one of the decisive figures in ending the Third World Shinobi War, and he had also been a great benefactor to Konoha, saving it from the strongest biju, the nine-tailed fox demon.
However, at the very moment he was fending off the worst of the Nine-Tails' attack, Shimura Danzo, a Kage-level shinobi with plenty of aces up his sleeve, never made his move. And after Minato and his wife had fought off the Nine-Tails' attack with their lives, Konoha repaid their benefactor by having all of Minato's personal assets treated as Hokage assets and written off, while the hero's newborn son was orphaned in a cheap orphanage.
Shikaku didn't like this situation himself, but it was all out of his hands. He hadn't told his little niece many secret details, but after Naruto's birth, his father's teacher, the Great Toad Hermit Jiraiya, had nearly caused a bloodbath in Konoha, furious with Danzo and the High Council.
The heads of all the clans had arrived at the site of the possible battle, and all the council members who had the power of an Elite Jonin. Jiraiya didn't want to fight his comrades, many of whom he'd fought alongside in the two previous wars, so it was Hiruzen who made him promise to take care of the Fourth Hokage's young son to the best of his ability, and not to let him become a weapon or an experiment.
After this incident, Jiraiya was forced to leave Konoha almost permanently, spending years performing elaborate reconnaissance missions for the village, occasionally returning to check on little Naruto. He had clearly threatened Danzo that if he dared to involve the kid in his nefarious plans, he would lay down his life to stage a "second nine-tailed attack" on Konoha, and they would have to decide which Kage was willing to give his life to eliminate the threat.
Shikaku, like many of the other clan leaders, wasn't qualified to deal with such a level of issues. If all the clans had their horns in the air, they could overturn any decision the village council made, but most of the clans didn't care about the fate of some nine-tailed jinchuriki. They respected his father's exploits, and were not averse to raising him, but not if it meant fighting with Danzo and a good half of the village council.
For Kasumi, Minato's case was more than a clear example of the fact that one should only die for one's loved ones or clan, but not for an entire village. She could imagine the consequences of the death of "Great Grandfather" and the current head of the clan. After that, the Nara clan would be in a bad way, just as the Uchiha clan was in a bad way after it had not produced geniuses with the potential to become Kage for a long time.
She had no way of knowing that it was the systematic policy of first Senju Tobirama and then Shimura Danzo to nip the Uchiha clan's geniuses in the bud. In the end, the last head of the clan, Uchiha Fugaku, was barely considered an Elite Johnin, and was even weaker than Hatake Kakashi, after which their clan was "quite accidentally" completely destroyed.
Kasumi was certain of one thing, that nothing was more valuable than the needs of the clan, and if she had to give of herself for the clan to prosper, she would do so without delay. After meeting this mysterious fellow, that belief had begun to crack at the seams. Kenshin had told her something no one before him had dared to say. That she didn't have to live for the clan, that she could do whatever she wanted, that she could finally be that little girl who loved sweets and pretty clothes. But for now that thought was only in the corner of the young kunoichi's mind, and the principles embedded in her mind from childhood were still strong.