Her quiet, even voice stopped. There had been a tone of cold sincerity in it that Shino could not help but recognise. She meant everything that she said. She said no more than the truth. Her reputation for complete indifference to admiration and her unvarying attitude towards men were as well known as her bold courage and firm determination. With Sir Kiba Inuzuka she behaved like a younger brother, and as such entertained his friends. She was popular with everybody, even with the mothers of marriageable daughters, for, in spite of her wealth and beauty, her notorious characteristics made her insignificant as a rival to plainer and less well-dowered girls.
Shino sat in silence. It was hardly likely, he thought bitterly, that he should succeed where other and better men had failed. He had been a fool to succumb to the temptation that had been too hard for him to resist. He knew her well enough to know beforehand what her answer would be. The very real fear for her safety that the thought of the coming expedition gave him, her nearness in the deepening night, the cozy garden, the music... all this had combined to make him say those words that he, in a normal moment, would never dare say. He loved her, he would love her always, but he knew that his love was as hopeless as it was undying. But it was men who were men whom she wanted for her friends, so he must take his medicine like a man.
"May I still be the friend, Hana?" he said quietly.
She looked at him a moment, but in the dim light of the hanging lanterns his eyes were steady under hers, and she held out her hand frankly. "Gladly," she said straightaway. "I have numerous of acquaintances, but very few friends. We are always travelling, Kiba and I, and we never seem to have time to make friends. We rarely stay as long in one place as we have stayed in Iwagakure (Earth Country's capital). In Fire Country, they call us very bad neighbours, we are so seldom there. We generally go home for three months in the winter for the hunting, but the rest of the year we wander on the face of the globe."
He held her slender fingers gripped in his for a moment, suppressing an insane desire to press them to his lips, which he knew would be fatal to the newly reconciled friendship, and then let them go. Miss Inuzuka continued sitting quietly beside him. She was in no way disturbed by what had happened. She had taken him literally at his word, and was treating him as the friend he had asked to be. It did not occur to her that the man beside him is struggling to keep himself unfussed of the rejection he just had. She was totally unblushing and at ease. And as they sat silent, her thoughts far away in the desert, and suddenly a man's low voice rose in the stillness of the night, full of vain longings and regrets.
"Take the path of regret
Try to find where to place the blame
Trace back all that I've said
Where are you? I miss you..."
He sang in a passionate, vibrating baritone. He was singing in Konoha, and yet the almost indefinite slurring from note to note was strangely un-Konoha. Hana Inuzuka leaned forward, her head raised, listening intently, with shining eyes. The voice seemed to come from the dark shadows at the end of the garden, or it might have been further away out in the road beyond the cactus hedge. The singer sang slowly, his voice lingering gently on the words; the last verse dying away softly and clearly, gradually fading into silence.
For a moment there was utter stillness, then Hana lay back with a little sigh. "The Haku Song: Sadness and Sorrow. It makes me think of Water Country. I heard a man sing it in Yugakure (Water Country's capital) last year, but not like that. What a wonderful voice! I wonder who it is?"
Shino looked at her curiously, surprised at the sudden ring of interest in her tone, and the sudden animation of her face.
"You say you have no emotion in your nature, and yet that unknown man's singing has stirred you deeply. How do you reconcile the two?" he asked, almost angrily.
"Is an appreciation of the beautiful emotion?" she challenged, with uplifted eyes. "Surely not. Music, art, nature, everything beautiful appeals to me. But there is nothing emotional in that. It is only that I prefer beautiful things to ugly ones. For that reason even pretty clothes appeal to me," she added, laughing.
"You are the best-dressed woman in Earth Country," he agreed. "But is not that an admission to the womanly feelings that you despise?"
"Not at all. To take an interest in one's clothes is not an exclusively feminine vice. I like pretty dresses. I admit to spending some time in thinking of colour schemes to go with my horrible hair, but I assure you that my dressmaker has an easier life than Kiba's tailor."
She sat silent, hoping that the singer might not have gone, but there was no sound except a cicada chirping near her. She swung round in her chair, looking in the direction from which it came. "Listen to it," while listening intently with a genuine smile. "Jolly little beauties! They were the first things I listen for when I first came here. I say, without it, this is no West Continent."
"Maddening little beasts!" said Shino irritably.
"They are going to be very friendly little beasts to me during the next four weeks…. You don't know what this trip means to me. I like wild places. The happiest times of my life have been spent camping in Lightning Country and Water Country, and I have always wanted the desert more than either of them. It is going to be a month pure of joy. I am going to be enormously happy."
She stood up with a little laugh of intense pleasure, and half turned, waiting for Shino. He got up reluctantly and stood silent beside her for a few moments. "Hana, I wish you'd let me kiss you, just once," he broke out miserably.
She looked up swiftly with a glint of anger in her eyes, and shook her head. "No. That's not what we agreed about. I have never been kissed in my life. It is one of the things that I do not understand." Her voice was almost fierce.
She moved leisurely towards the inn, and he paced beside her wondering if he had forfeited her friendship by his outburst, but on the verandah she halted and spoke in the frank tone of camaraderie in which she had always addressed him. "Shall I see you in the morning?"
He understood. There was to be no more reference to what had passed between them. The offer of friendship held, but only on her own terms. He pulled himself together.
"Yes. We have arranged an escort of about a dozen of us to ride the first few miles with you, to give you a proper sendoff."
She made a laughing gesture of protest. "It will certainly need four weeks of solitude to counteract the animosity I stirred," she said lightly, as she passed into the ballroom.