Ruminant

iii

3.

Suppressing the urge to yawn, Nara Shikaku, the current clan head of the Nara clan, tried to think of a better way to connect with the one-year-old child on his lap.

...It was awkward.

And kind of pathetic.

He was the Jounin Commander for Kami's sake. Feared for his prowess in strategic thinking and whatnot...but the unnerving silence was getting to him and the gaze - his daughter's gaze was downright disturbing in its coldness.

She seems oddly fascinated - or maybe disgusted is a more apt description - with his hair.

He wondered if he should cut it.

Shikaku knew he shouldn't have listened to Inoichi, that pansy. His daughter would grow attached to him eventually, his ass. He could count in his fingers the number of times they both spent with one another because he's busy with the war and somehow, with those few times, his daughter found him...wanting based on the frequency of her glares.

(He didn't forget the tearing stunt she pulled the other month too. Damn, his daughter's strong.)

(...Strangely, Shikaku still felt kind of proud even with the barely covered bald spot on his head he had to put up with from the ordeal.)

Meeting the babe's unusually sharp eyes, Shikaku studied his daughter like a particularly interesting specimen.

Are all children supposed to be like this or is Shikari just special?

"He'bivoe," His daughter suddenly squeaked out. Shikaku didn't even have the time to be surprised at the absurdity of Shikari's first words when the sentence that came after that registered his so-called prodigious mind. "I'll bi'e you to deat'."

Bite me to death? Maybe Shikaku heard that wrong.

"What?"

"Bi'e you to deat,'" Kami, his daughter said it like a promise.

"Why?" Shikaku asked curiously, pushing aside the comically foreboding feeling he got for future examination to contemplate a more pressing issue. Where did in Kami's name his daughter got these words from?

"Pwi- pwi-pple," Shikari started, obviously struggling.

"People?" He repeated bemusedly.

His daughter shook his head. "P'inppl'."

"Pimple?"

Shikari scowled adorably for a moment, splotches of red darkening her pale cheeks before she suddenly pointed to his hair.

"Oh."

"Pine'pple. Bi'e you to deat,'" His daughter's eyes glinted with an almost ferocious glint after declaring that statement.

...Troublesome.

-----

The next day Shikaku got his hair shaved immediately.

-----

"Why did you change your hairstyle, Shikaku?" Inoichi inquired while handing the other man the files from T&I. "I thought you said it was too 'troublesome' to cut."

Shikaku slumped before drawling out, "It's too long anyway. Besides-" He stopped, grimacing.

"What?" Inoichi prompted when Shikaku didn't reply immediately.

"My daughter didn't like it." Shikaku frowned. "She said her first sentence yesterday and she said it looked like pineapples."

Inoichi, the good friend that he is, promptly rolled on the floor and laughed his pansy ass off.