Akari Uchiha

Ch. 49 An Amazing Rinne Festival

"...How long are you planning to ignore your sensei?"

Akari shrugged. "I'm not ignoring you."

"You are avoiding looking at me," Kakashi drawled.

He heard her grit her teeth as she continued washing the dishes in the sink with her back facing to him.

"What happened to... being more honest about emotions or whatever that was?" he prodded.

"What happened to not going Mean Scarecrow on me?" she answered back, placing another washed plate on the slab to dry.

Kakashi sighed, grabbing a towel and drying the plate beside her. "I am still allowed to give you punishments for whenever you do something stupid."

"I can tell the difference between that and Mean Scarecrow, sensei," she dead-panned.

Kakashi sweat-dropped. "Is that what we are going to keep referring to it as?"

He sighed again when he got no reply. "Taking part in a dangerous Samurai tournament was stupid," he reasoned.

"It just happened," she mumbled. "Plus I won the first round."

"...You did?" Kakashi blinked in surprise. "So you encountered Sasuke in the second round?"

"You would know that if you had bothered to listen to me before going Mean Scarecrow," she mumbled, standing on her tip-toes on the stool she was standing on to reach the sink, to get an empty casserole.

Kakashi opened his mouth to protest, before she interrupted. "And before you even ask, I know it was you being Mean Scarecrow because I mentioned two Uchihas in the conversation and you revealed your actual emotions when you were drunk."

Kakashi groaned. "Ignore whatever I said while I was drunk."

"So you don't care about me?" Akari turned to look at him. Kakashi blinked at the blunt question.

"Uh... no that's not what I said-"

"So you do care?"

".... I can tolerate you, yeah," he grumbled, annoyed because he knew she was doing this on purpose.

"So your drunken-blabbering weren't all lies," she nodded to herself.

"Fine," he groaned. "I'm sorry if hearing you faced two rogue and murderous Uchihas on one C-Rank mission and put your life in potential danger because of your stupidity concerned me a little bit."

Akari blinked before glancing down. "Is that why you were getting drunk?"

Kakashi raised an eyebrow at the random question before shrugging.

"It was the Rinne festival. Everyone was getting drunk," he reasoned.

"You were trying to pass out at the bar," his apprentice dead-panned. "I had to drag you to your house and you are heavy."

"...Ouch. Insulting my well built body like that-"

"You scared me."

Kakashi stopped short hearing the quiet voice and glanced at Akari again. His tiny apprentice looked up at him with a wobbling lip bitten between her teen and already glistening eyes. Kakashi mentally prepared himself for an hour of cuddling and convincing.

"I had never seen you so... different, you know?" she sniffled. "And you never told me you had PTSD!"

".... well most ANBUS-"

"I don't care about most ANBUs!"

"...."

Kakashi stared at her. He had rarely heard Akari raise her voice at him first.