She nodded, Chiaki did that is, and listened. "Leaving traces of their travel. It's amazing that you can pick up on that. Most of my hunting has been through just sheer dumb luck. Or rather, sometimes it has come down to me stumbling in the woods and my quarry finding me. I hadn't realized that was how you tracked, or picked out spots like this one." She looked around and smiled, "It is a nice hidey hole, but I would hate to use it in the event of a war or something. It seems like it would... I dunno, trample on the sanctity of this place."

She waited for Akaneya to make the first move to the clearing, not wanting to disturb all that was going on there. Much as a person would wait to see how others would react in a nightclub on their first trip, Chiaki didn't understand the intricate movements of this place yet, and felt very much out of place. Strangely, though, she also felt very much at ease and at home. Chiaki nodded and looked around once more, "It more than makes up for my bumping into you in the dark, the cold, the almost losing my way. I feel like I can be at rest here, and the aesthetic certainly would lend itself to meditation, really, it is a magical place." She looked at her own hands and frowned a bit, feeling more out of place than usual, was she even alright to be here?

"You play your flute to calm down, right?" She asked, not taking her eyes off of her hands as they worked mechanically, either to alleviate the cold or because Chiaki was nervous and about to ask a silly question, "Could you... could you show me how you usually play?"

She blushed a bit, and lowered her lids, letting out a puff of air that held itself on the air in front of her for a time before disappating into the cold air, "I mean... I believe you said it when we were on mission together once, but I could just be thinking of something else. It's hard to tell what was said in the heat of things, you know, before the gorilla." She nodded, "And it seemed to calm the gorilla down for a very long time. Your music is... something that I envy very much."

WC: 6282

To play the flute? An odd request, perhaps, but was it truly so odd? Akaneya supposed that it did, on some level, make sense. If it was perhaps calming for her, it was an entirely understandable request. Certainly, she had intended to practice at some point today anyway - and to meditate even in the company of another would be quite an efficient use of time. To please the other by meditating even more so. It was lucky, then, that she never went anywhere without bringing that trusty silver stick she had carried through thick and thin over the years. Akaneya reached into her bag and slid it out, the mirror surface gleaming in the sunlight. She held it out to Chiaki to show, her gloves stopping the freezing metal from bothering her too much. She offered to the girl a bit of simple fingering, plugging the holes. The extra material of her gloves seemed to help this, sort of filling the holes like a proper plug instead of just placing fingers over and hoping they fit right. With each hole plugged, she explained the principle - "The more holes that I plug, the deeper the sound gets, because the air has to go further to get out."

She then proceeded to demonstrate that very effect. Simple scales, really. To her mouth, she blew into the metal pipe, and out came the notes with a simple rise and a simple fall. Taking it off her lips, she closed her eyes. The chirps of birds, the babbling of the pond, the slurping of the deer, it all came back to her clearer than it ever had been before. By turning off her sight, she turned on a new sight of another sort. Tracing where, precisely, she could get the best acoustics, she made her way there carefully, delicately, her footsteps near silent, until she reached the spot at last. At the point where all echoes meet, she raised the flute to her lips and began to play.

It was not a happy song. It never was. It wasn't necessarily sad, either. Rather, the mood it projected was something of contemplation. Some level of uncertainty, perhaps? At points, it might seem rather aggressive, but at other times it certainly had no issue pulling back, slowing down, floating a sort of vague melancholia. The melody flew through the air with the grace of a bird, the individual notes a flock of soft doves, but stood unshaken and firm like a mighty bear. The music was sad, and it was sweet, but woefully incomplete as it came to an unsatisfying close. One that, perhaps, seemed to linger on something, failing to move to a peaceful and restful ending. The songs always ended like that, not that Chiaki would know.

Chiaki watched as Akaneya produced the flute from a hidden place where she kept it and looked it over. The silver stick instrument was not foreign to her, but she hadn't played an instrument since she learned the recorder in the academy. There were those who were gifted with the touch of the muse, and there was Chiaki. She had played each note with precision, hitting it hard and fast as it came to the page and when she was done her teacher nodded and wrote down an 'adequate' on her paper for music class. It wasn't that Chiaki was particularly musically challenged, she just didn't get the 'essence' of music per se. The crescendos were too steep, the decrescendos crashed on impact with their register. Key changes didn't flow but rather rammed into each other and cursed at the other one while she played. She was a terrible flutist, or at least she believed she was.

She was explained the principle, and rather than saying that she knew about the premise of the music and ruining the moment, she nodded along, wondering why Akaneya was so... so... She gripped for the word and it slipped through her fingers. It was hard to pin Akaneya down in a word. She was ephemeral but she also was grounded. At the same time as she was analytical she was also cautious, timid, and green in all aspects emotional. Chiaki found a seed tucked inside of Akaneya's personality and she wanted, desperately to see it bloom. Too much sunlight, too much water, too much care would kill the seedling though, leaving only a hard husk behind, little difference from a pebble. So for now Chiaki nodded along and said, "So it'll be harder for you to play the deeper notes then." Another nod and she dipped her head, lifting her eyes expectantly with a little secret smile, meant only for Akaneya.

Chiaki watched as Akaneya closed her eyes and wove her way around the clearing, listening to something. Chiaki herself stepped over rocks, made sure to not disturb the growth here and there, new growth was a lighter color than old plants, and Chiaki made sure to step on the more mature of the plants to ensure that they would be there for their next visit. Sneaking around Akaneya, she stood in front of her partner, only about an arms length away and as Akaneya touched the flute to her lips, Chiaki's eyelids touched each other in a kiss that closed the outside world off, cloistering her in an intimate area with Akaneya.

The lilting of the song broke into an aggressive run, but fell back on its heels, almost catching its breath in a melancholic sort of pacing. She listened as she was lifted to the upper branches of the canopy, sitting among the birds and chirping happily away with them, then was taken to cuddle with a bevy of doves. She shimmied down the tree to be held tight by the melody, strong as a bear. The notes seemed to be coming to a crescendo, both in tune and in tempo and then it split off, jolting Chiaki awake from her half-slumber meditative state. Akaneya was there, and so was Chiaki.

Chiaki walked slowly, deliberately towards Akaneya, much as the water in the pool moved in an inexorable fluidity. Her hand came up in the ripples of her movement, her eyes drooped to a half-lidded state and she didn't say what she thought of it. Instead her hand rested tenderly on Akaneya's cheek, her fingers were bird's legs, anchoring her there as her face drew closer, fast enough to catch an unawares person off guard, slow enough to be sensual. Her lips parted slightly and then Chiaki did something that she didn't think about. Her world was all touch, all sound, all taste as she pressed her lips gently against Akaneya's own, her other hand coming to rest on Akaneya's waist gently. Chiaki's eyes closed and she transmitted all she felt into the kiss. A sense of longing, a sense of belonging, a sense of confusion, a sense of comfort, a sense of closure, and a sense of peace.

She tried to show Akaneya the end of the song in a kiss.


WC: 7009

As soon as the song had ended, Akaneya lowered the flute, put it away, and opened her eyes. Chiaki stood an arm's length away, though she knew that already. The disturbances in the sound waves made it trivial to find something so close and the size of a person. That was the idea, after all, the entire reason for the technique's existence, for the years of training she'd endured to hone this skill, to see with sound and not even need her eyes. In a flash of a movement, but a motion so fluid that she could not discern the exact point at which she moved from one place to another, their lips met, and Akaneya was unsure of what to do.

She froze up, tense, and as Chiaki placed her hand on her waist it felt as if she had been thrown by an ape into her grasp. She presented some initial protest, a little "MmmMm" into the kiss, but as it dragged on she felt herself go limp, one hand of hers trying to mimic what Chiaki had done with a weak, uncertain grip. With this, she fell into the kiss, feeling herself lighter, floating, more delicate than she'd ever felt in her entire life. An intense experience, to be certain.

All this in a matter of seconds. A thousand thoughts floated in her mind, questioning every circumstance. Had she been too friendly? Not friendly enough? Did this mean that her quest to attain a good relationship with Chiaki had been a success? Had these feelings always been latent and waiting to pounce, or had it been the result of her own actions? Was this why Chiaki had invited her to lunch? Had the privacy of the forest done it, perhaps? So many unanswered questions passed by and yet she couldn't even ask them! Would she want to ask them? The situation before her was so totally alien that it seemed as if ripped from another world entirely.

Then came the end of the kiss, and the two pulled their heads apart. Akaneya was stunned, confused, her face lit as red as her hair, and despite her silence and shock there was a burning flame of life in her eyes never before seen. A moist cloud left her mouth in a wordless sigh as she stared into Chiaki's eyes, and perhaps beyond them as well.

Chiaki parted from the kiss, her eyes opening slowly, still holding onto the unfinished notes of Akaneya's song in her head, the trill of the highs, the thrum of the lows. Her eyes locked onto Akaneya's and her mouth remained open, a sigh of her own copied Akaneya's but it was one of deep contentment, of belonging. Her head was usually filled with a thousand naggings: that she wasn't dressed right, that she needed to work out this bit of her body, that she needed to eat more to get bigger. . . endowments, that she wasn't the right partner in a dance at a club, that her house was untidy, that she had an itch and couldn't scratch it.

It all faded into that kiss, into the song that Akaneya had played and for a tremulous moment it lingered, before Chiaki closed her mouth and her eyes opened slowly a bit too wide. What had she done!? Had she shattered what little trust she had gained with Akaneya? Akaneya had kissed back, albeit shakily. Did that mean that she was also feeling the same? Did she cross a line? Was there a line to cross? There certainly was with Chiaki, was it the same with Akaneya. She stood there, dumb from the kiss, a blush making its way into her face, the clothing seemed hot, too hot for her now. She was too close, MOVE! Move by all the gods MOVE!

She was numb, had she ruined what little trust Aka had put into her? Her eyes were a turbulent storm, on the one hand there was a begging for one more kiss, and on the other there was sheer panic and a backpedaling. She dared not say anything for a good hot moment before stepping back and placing a couple of fingers to her lips. She didn't regret it at all. If this is where it ended, it was pure, it was warm, it was real. It was all that Chiaki could have hoped for in that moment, and yet did she overstep herself?

"I ah... thank you." She said, her eyes tracing the outside of Akaneya, trailing all the way to the ground, her fingers stayed in their position on her lips, her arms hugged her coat closer to her, letting out a cloud of steam. She was, after all, warmer now that all of that happened. She didn't know what else to say, but braced herself, tensing slightly, for a tirade, a slap, an abandonment, perhaps. She didn't know what came next, but she had just invaded Akaneya's space and she didn't know how she would respond. Devil's in the wait, her mother always said, better to be slapped than to be told you will be slapped.

WC: 7480

Thank you. Thank you? Really? Was that what she had to say? Was that kiss a thank you, or was it a thank you for allowing the kiss? Akaneya still couldn't quite process what had just happened, nor the reasoning or motivations, and most certainly she was confused now as to the status of their relationship. Were they friends now? Is that how it worked? It was clearly good at the very least, that much was certain, and for how certain it was it meant that Akaneya had most certainly accomplished the mission she set out to do. A success. That's good.

As the life drained from her eyes and the red flushed out from her cheeks, turning her back to what she had been only a few moments prior, Akaneya collected her breath. At an analytical look, Chiaki almost seemed as startled as she had been, and also didn't quite understand how to proceed from here. Could anyone know? It was a sudden, unexpected thing, full of vagary and vagueness. Fixing her posture so she stood upright once more, she crossed her hands behind her back, holding them together, and coughed a little.

"That was...unexpected. I am rarely caught off-guard, but you managed to do so. I congratulate you on this, and I think it is good that we have managed to establish positive relations. You are an effective kunochi, and our skills are quite complementary. If we are to work together again, and spend more time among one another, this being something I anticipate, then having such positivity between us can only be of benefit. Though I do not understand you...I hope to see you again, Guanyin Chiaki." She bowed, and that was that.

Exit.

Stats:

Chiaki blushed and couldn't really form sentences, had she really done what she thought she did? apparently so, as Akaneya was as taken aback as she was.

She bowed in return and said, "I hope to see you very soon." A small smile branched out over her lips like summer's break, "I will call you if I have a mission or perhaps, if we should want to get together for another er..." She didn't want to label today, let it stay sacred, "session, later."

WC: 7567

Exit

Using 4500 to train these jutsu: Four pillar bind, electromagnetic murder, and lightning release, false darkness.

7500 - 4500 is 3000 to play with

Using 1000 to get perception to C-3

3000-1000 is 2000 to play with

2000 going towards training senjutsu up to D rank.