"Hrmm..." Natsumi glared at the food laid out before her, her tongue pursed between her lips as a pair of chopsticks shook in her fingers. Using the delicate eating utensils was proving to be more difficult with her hand still injured. After failing to pick up a piece of beef several times, she finally got fed up and stabbed it, then bringing it to her mouth and chewing on it with extreme prejudice. As she continued to eat in an awkward fashion, she listened to Kaede and Ryozan. Ryozan hesitated in answering Kaede's question, and seemed to avoid making it very clear just why he choose not to fight. She decided not to pry into it, she herself was not entirely fond of fighting. The sounds of people dying, the act of taking another life, it wasn't something she wanted to grow accustomed to. 

Ryozan asked her about her mother's cooking, she looked down at the food before her. Sure, her mother was capable of cooking good food, but she was far too adventurous in the culinary arts. Often, she would cook up some frankenstien concoction and have her taste it, proclaiming it to be the next big thing. It was never the next big thing, it was always a disaster. "Well, honestly..." Natsumi started, but the sound of knives scraping together stopped her words in their tracks. Chizuma was standing right behind her, a devilish grin on her face that was daring her to speak out of turn about her cooking. 

"My cooking is always perfect, isn't it dear?" She said in a honeysuckle voice. She leaned forward to cut up a steak on Natsumi's plate, a gracious action that seemed more like a threat to her. A bead of sweat ran down Natsumi's face, and she swallowed a lump in her throat.

"Y-yeah, my mother's cooking is always perfect. Every. Time. I've never gotten sick for an entire week or anything like that at all!" Natsumi said with a nervous chuckle. Chizuma patted her daughter's head and walked back into the kitchen. "A-anyway, we've got a lot of work ahead of us, huh? Helping the other villages fight the empire isn't going to be as easy as this. We caught them off guard, after all."