and grinned as she moved to help Silas when the containers of dumplings he got. "Yeah look what I found under my tomato bush," she said as she carried them to the counter.
Silas walked to his old friend and kissed her on the cheek. "Hello Kio," he said and smiled fondly. She was his oldest friend. The first friend he made when he came to The Sect of the Green Mountains and in fact, she joined the same day he did.
Kio gave her greeting which included a small hug and looked at all the containers of rice. "How did you know I was coming already?"
Silas looked at the ceiling "uh," he mumbled.
Hikari laughed and grabbed plates and chopsticks and put them in front of the three places on the table. "Silas is a big fan of the dumplings the old man sells. Whenever he sees him he gets them," she explained to their friend.
Kio laughed and poked Silas's gut playfully before he sat down. The gut was big, but it was rock hard like the rest of him.
"We can send you to the capital and have you join one of those sumo stables, or we could have if they got along with cultivators and that incident," Kio said and grabbed a few of the dumplings with the chopsticks and set them on her plate.
Hikari sat across from her and left Silas in the middle seat. "Incident?"
Silas watched Kio finish the bite of dumpling and she held back the groan of pleasure from the flavor of the pork.
"You got these from the Dumpling Man, didn't you?" Kio asked and pointed her chopsticks at Silas accusingly. "I know him, he comes up to the school sometimes. He's almost as good as the Chen's," he said before she finished the dumpling.
"What incident?" Silas asked. Living here, away from the school and since he turned his back to the entire world of cultivation he was out of the loop. For something to be called an incident by Kio, a teacher at the sect it must have really been something.
Kio grinned. "It's a cultivator thing, simple, humble like yourselves probably…."
"Tell us," they both groaned before Kio could get out the rest of her statement.
Kio laughed and put down her chopsticks. "Well, uh," she paused and looked for the words to explain. "Do either of you actually pay any attention to sumo?"
Hikari gave a shrug. "Sometimes they'll come here in between their tournaments and do some exhibition matches and hang out and such. We'll go watch if we don't have anything else planned. It's always good to show support to the mortals who are so devout to one of the Kami."
"Yeah," Kio grinned. "It turned out one of the Oyakatas or stablemasters or whatever they call them was in fact Kentaro himself," she explained and picked up another dumpling.
Silas and Hikari both just started at Kio.
"It was like their biggest tournament of the year, even the emperor was there. Kentaro revealed himself and then well…" Kio trailed off and shrugged.
Himari asked questions while Silas just sat there and thought. How did a kami pretend to be a sumo master? How did no one notice? Well, no, if it was Kentaro the kami could easily hide himself among mortals.
Kio waved off the questions from Hikari and shrugged once more. "I've told you all I know. I guess the Emperor sent his own people to look into it, but I haven't heard anything. All I know is there was a sumo head guy up there who showed signs of going a little crazy and then on the second or third day of their tournament Kentaro rushed the ring and all hell broke loose. His assistant was a cultivator and came in and fought with some homeless beggar that was also a cultivator?"
Kio's face screwed up at the end and she shook her head. "I don't know, apparently he saved some boy from getting trampled," she said finally and took another dumpling.
"So…" Silas finally spoke up, but he wasn't sure what to say. He just left the word hanging in the air.
Hikari stood and made her way back to the kitchen and grabbed some mugs and sake. "I think after that bombshell, we need a drink," she said as she returned and put the cups down with the opened bottle.
Silas nodded his head and poured each of them a glass. He drained his entire pour before he finally dove in on some dumplings. The three ate in relative silence and drank their sake as they thought over the news that Kio brought them. Silas restrained himself on the dumplings to make sure Kio got her fill as she was the guest and also because with the news, he wasn't as hungry as he had been.
In the end though, after a few drinks of the hard spiritual rice wine Silas figured the Heavens would do as they liked as they always had. The mortals would just be there to deal with the fallout. There wasn't really anything he could do. He looked over at Kio and grinned.
"What?" she asked and stared at him with her eyes glazed over.
Silas nodded his head maintaining the grin and Kio drew back. "Silas, no. I appreciate the off…."
Silas's eyes grew wide and Hikari started belly laughing. "No!" he stopped Kio from finishing her statement.
This made Kio laugh as well, and she put a palm up as Silas looked at both of the women with a frown as he blushed.
"What is it?" she finally asked after she laughed a little more.
"You're going to help me. You've already come to help train my apprentice in his martial ability. Now we're going to grow his core," Silas said and grew serious once more.
Kio looked at him and shrugged. "Sure, I don't see why not," she said simply before she took another sip of her wine.
"I'll arrange everything tomorrow and then at sunrise the next we'll do it," Silas decided with a nod. "He's grown all the channels he can, and he's been working hard."