“A good book deserves to be savored” Kakashi stated haughtily as he slowed his tree hopping down to a genin equivalent speed. “And I did hear about the movie, rumor has it they are trying to get Yukie Fujikaze to play the female lead” he said with enthusiasm at the prospect of them getting such a famous actress to be a part of the series, seemingly oblivious to Airi’s internal debates.

The truth was a different matter however, as given their close proximity it was rather difficult for Kakashi to not notice his friends behavior. He could feel the extra heat that radiated from her face when she buried in to his neck. He could easily tell that what she had asked him wasn’t what she had originally wanted to from the tonal shift as she asked. There were a hundred other subtle clues that Kakashi could pick up on that told him she was nervous about the topic she nearly brought up.

 If it had been anyone else Kakashi would have simple ignored their behavior, or directly called them out on it, but Airi was one of the very few people he could call a friend. Because of that he would let her bring it up when she was comfortable. That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try and find out anyway, perish the thought. He was one of the most skilled ninja in the village, being noisy came with the territory. Airi being his friend just meant he wasn’t going to drill her for information, wouldn’t stop him from taking a third or fourth look over all of her actions to try and piece it together from those however.

“As for training…” Kakashi started before he realized a flaw in his original training plan. He was used to training other Anbu, or helping out newly minted Jonin, not Genin. He didn’t voice said realization however “I’m going to start working on group cohesion for the first half and cool down with personal training. Not going to worry about any particular structured plan at the moment.” As he explained his very impromptu training plan, he was working on breaking down his normal training regime for lower ranked ninja. He would worry about tailoring it to each of his students when he had a better idea about where they needed work; after all it’s not something he could learn when he was playing around with them during the Bell test.

[i]‘You have started to get soft Inu’[/i] He thought harshly, it was twice today that he had slipped up. Once with his daily schedule and just now with not realizing that he wasn’t treating his mission of training his team with the focus it deserved.  

“What about you?” Kakashi asked dragging himself out of his self-depreciative thoughts, he would have time for those later “Have you ever thought of picking training back up?” he wondered casually. He knew that after she got out of the hospital her drive to be a kunoichi had crumbled, but that was years ago. Granted they tended to avoid the topic, but he was curious and it could be what she was nervous about.