Gyūtan

It's been two weeks since Su-Jin first stepped through the gates of Sunagakure. It's been a week and a half since she stepped through the doors of what was once a home. Then, it was in disarray, abandoned in a hurry and then picked clean of anything of value. It's a house like any other in Sunagakure, gently rounded, as though built by nature someday long ago. Sunagakure's surviving buildings seem like they have stood a very long time. The people suffer and die and choke, but the stone endures... well, except for when it doesn't. The middle of town attests to that. She has to wonder if Iwagakure's architecture tells a similar story.

It's clean now, though still an empty and sad place. At her client's request, Su-Jin has set herself up in a single room. She's claimed the kitchen, of course. She's had two other missing-nin lodging in the same house and working for the same client. So far they've been pleasant enough roommates. Quiet, and not often noticed, besides the lingering metallic stink that follows the one braving the Bloodworks. Neither's heard any word of Su-Jin's mother. Su-Jin herself has continued with the odd jobs, sniffing around for any information with little success.

It's late evening, a windy night's chill settling deep into the village's bones. As always, when far from home in a dangerous place, Su-Jin does what comforts her. She cooks.

Su-Jin's portable charcoal grill sits on the kitchen's sandstone counter, not yet lit. In the meantime, she gradually trims and skins a cut of beef tongue, humming a slow melody from a Lightning Country play to herself. Is theater still popular there, she wonders? She'd been so young the last time she'd been in Lightning. Idly, she imagines Atsunaka, Chihu on his lap, listening to the shamisens.

She sets the trimmed fat and gristle aside and sets to slicing.

[315]

A deep chill set in with the setting of the desert sun, encompassing the desert as a whole with bitter winds. Boiling hot during the day, frigid at night- it was an interesting environment, but one that could be fatal to the unwary. She was currently holed up in her apartment, laying spread eagle on a carpeted floor with a detached expression. The girl was tired, but... She couldn't find it in herself to close her eyes long enough to fall into a slumber. After a few moments, she pushed herself up, palms stinging slightly as they supported her body weight. She took in a heavy breath before pausing for a few seconds, and let it out through her nose. She supposed there was no use in sulking. Her thoughts traveled back to a few days ago, where she had met a curious stranger at an attempted rebuilding project.

Interesting enough, she had told Amaterasu where she lived.

That level of trust was unusual, but... It might be fun to visit. It wasn't like she had anything better or more productive to do at the present moment. A pair of mismatched eyes trailed over to a bedside table, which was covered in assorted scrolls and tomes borrowed from the local library. Well, probably stolen, but it was largely still unmanned and thus there wasn't really anyone to stop her or any of the other missingnin from going in and taking what they wanted. She stretched hugely, pulling on a small black jacket before heading out the door, not really bothering to lock it behind her. After all, most people who knew she lived there gave her a wide berth- and if they knew what was good for them it would remain that way. The brown haired girl walked quickly, the cold biting at her skin, before arriving at the designated address not ten minutes later. The door appeared to be locked, but...

She walked along to the side, progressing towards a large window. Inside appeared to be a kitchen- with a familiar figure inside. After a moment or two of contemplation she knocked on it, expecting to be let in.

Hey, she did technically have an invitation after all.

[WC: 369]
[Total WC: 369]

Su-Jin slices the tongue into half-inch portions as Amaterasu hesitates. Though Su-Jin is working facing the window, she gives little indication that she's noticed the girl, waiting patiently for her visitor to announce her presence. The woman is dressed similarly to the first time Amaterasu had seen her, though she has her hair down now, shaggy locks falling just behind her shoulders.

Amaterasu knocks, and Su-Jin replies with a small smile of greeting. Su-Jin looks a little surprised to see her. She sets down her knife and walks towards the window. It'd taken her ages to figure out how to unlatch them when she first got here, but she'd made sure to master it before she'd fallen asleep the first night. With a click, she swings the window open.

"Evening," she says, warm but a little distant - like she'd been interrupted while deep in thought. She steps aside to make room for Amaterasu to pass. The girl looks exhausted. Not cold, though, strangely. "Get in here, it's freezin' out."

[169]

After a moment's consideration, she slid through the window on the tips of her toes into the much warmer interior. She eyes the strange meat on the counter- beef, judging by the smell, although not quite a cut she recognized. Where she grew up, beef was a rare commodity, and she had only really been travelling for a few months. Her culinary experience left much to be desired. She blinked at the older woman before turning her head back to the meal she was preparing, wordlessly wondering about it before she asked the question on her mind. "What's that?" her voice rang with a childlike curiosity that she often lacked when more fully awake. She stretched hugely before taking a deep sniff of the air around her.

The scent of pickled chilis hit her nostrils, and she found herself wrinkling her nose slightly at the strong smell. She didn't dislike the food, per se- she just didn't like pungent odors. A pair of mismatched eyes traveled across the kitchen, eyeing the various appliances and cabinets. Soy sauce. Salt and pepper. Sesame oil. In truth, Amaterasu had no idea what the older woman was doing, but she was tired enough not to cause any trouble. For now, she was content to sit and watch.

[WC: 213]
[Total WC: 582]

Su-Jin closes and latches the window as soon as Amaterasu is inside, shivering at the chill that follows the girl in.

"Beef tongue," she replies, returning to her station as Amaterasu looks around. "Offal's cheap, far as beef goes, so I pick it up whenever I have the chance! Used t'serve it at the restaurant back home, whenever we could get ingredients in from Lightning." Su-Jin speaks freely, quickly perking up from her distant attitude. She's curious as to what brings Amaterasu, but she can keep her questions to herself. The life of a missing-nin is good at teaching you to mind your own business.

The smell of pickled chilis comes from a small bowl of a greenish, chunky paste. The soy sauce and sesame oil sit in small bottles, off to the side by the round portable grill. A beaten-up box of instant rice sits by them, as well as a roll of tin foil. Her knives are sharp and well-maintained. She turns to wash her hands in a set-aside basin.

The kitchen is what you'd expect from Sunagakure in its current state, and it doesn't look like Su-Jin's brought a lot with her. One cabinet is missing its door, and there's nothing inside. There's a faint mark on the ground where perhaps an oven used to be, but it's long gone - and judging by Su-Jin using a basin to wash her hands, the sink isn't working right either. What remains is what was carved from the stone itself, only as movable as the house around it. The lightbulb in the ceiling is shining nice and bright, at least, so the home hasn't been stripped for cables.

[278]

"Beef tongue?" she let herself question openly. "You can eat that? It isn't poisonous?" Amaterasu isn't quite sure where poisonous came from, but neither was she sure where the beef tongue came from, either. "Do people in Lightning Country eat weird stuff like this all the time?" she found herself wondering aloud. "Cow tongue..." she muttered to herself. Why couldn't they just eat octopus and squid like a normal person? The girl wanders to the bowl of... sauce, maybe? It seems to be where the pickled chili smell is coming from, at least. Her eyes trail about the ragged kitchen. Due to Amaterasu's early arrival in Sunagakure, the kitchen in her apartment was relatively well kept... Maybe when Su-jin was gone, she could break in to her house and leave some of the appliances there. It's not like she knew what half of them did, anyways.

She walked around a bit, letting Su-jin do her thing before turning back. A question burned in the back of her mind before she ended up speaking up. "Have you tried any of Suna's native cuisine?" she didn't know what she had expected from the desert village, but what she had learned was rather interesting. The staple carb seemed to be overwhelmingly cous cous, with vegetables and fruits being grown in river bed gardens. Most of the meats served were camel, mutton, goat, and chicken- a few eggs here and there as well. Pressure cookers seemed to be very popular as well, but since the original takeover, most seemed to have been looted or otherwise moved. She let out a simple hum. "You should try it," Amaterasu spoke after a moment of silence. "I think you'd like it."

[WC: 284]
[Total WC: 866]

Su-Jin can't help but laugh. "No, it's not poisonous," she says, not unkindly. She considers Amaterasu's question. The way she was raised, she isn't prone to thinking of dishes as 'weird'. At least, not in the pejorative sense, really. What other people find strange and gross, an Akimichi finds exciting and fresh! "There are a few interesting raw beef dishes y'can find in Lightning. You gotta be real careful about where the meat is coming from, though. Freshness an' all," she hums, walking towards her little charcoal grill and fiddling with a long lighter. She lifts off the grill and holds the lighter just above the charcoal, trying to convince it to give her a decent flame as she talks. Click. Click. Click.

"I haven't had as much as I'd like. I bet I would," she says thoughtfully in response to the girl's comments. Su-Jin hasn't wanted to impose. In most places she stays for a while, she makes friends and trades recipes, but here... it doesn't feel quite right. Though she had nothing to do with the destruction here, a bit of guilt gnaws at her all the same. "I might head south before I leave Wind, I really wanna have fish couscous again." Click. Click. "Huh, being difficult today, are we?" she says, squinting at her seemingly-dead lighter.

[220]

"Isn't raw meat bad for you, though?" she asked. "'Cause it has germs and stuff." a pause as Su-jin continued talking. "I have some couscous at my house. I don't think I have any fish, though." Fish was a rare commodity in the desert environment for obvious reasons- even moreso because of the recent takeovers. No merchants in their right mind would have Sunagakure no Sato as the first place in mind to peddle their goods and wares. She leaned over the grill, glancing back at the lighter. "Do you need help lighting that?" she wondered aloud. Of course, the thirteen year old wouldn't really bother to listen for a response. She'd simply reach through and stuff her left, scarred hand between the charcoal and allowed her chakra through. At first, her veins began to slowly take on a blue glow, reaching higher and higher levels of brightness as the temperature increased. She was simply using an incomplete Burn Up- and because she had no intention of burning the house down, she was trying to keep the temperature as low as possible. After a couple seconds, smoke began to rise as the heat increased exponentially. At around the ten second mark it burst into flames, and she withdrew her blue flame covered fist. It extinguished pretty quickly once she stopped feeding chakra to fuel it. Though still scarred and smoking slightly, the hand itself was largely unharmed by the high temperatures. As well it should be... A stinging sensation emanated from her palm, but that was more from the way the jutsu worked than anything else. She had, after all, literally lit herself on fire to light the charcoal grill...

[WC: 280]
[Total WC: 1,146]

"That's why you need to get it real fresh, and from a trusted butcher," Su-Jin says. "Gives bacteria less time to settle in and make themselves at home." Click. Click.

She smiles to the girl at the offer. "If you don't mind. I think this one's finally kicked the bucket," she hums, setting the lighter down, and watching to see what Amaterasu can do. What she expects is... your average simple fire release technique, really, the same kind Su-Jin would eventually use if Amaterasu weren't so kindly offering. She's made a strong habit over the years of using tools over jutsu, even when it's less convenient. Attracts less attention. Sometimes you don't really have a choice, though.

Her eyebrows raise at the creep of blue up Amaterasu's arm. Her first thought is that it's untyped chakra - and then the heat washes over her face. "I-" she starts, and then cuts herself off when Amaterasu withdraws her blue-wreathed hand from the charcoals - the flame dying in moments as it starves of chakra. "Thanks," she says graciously, after simply staring at the girl's hand for a moment. What a showoff. It worked, though, Su-Jin is suitably impressed. "You know you're gonna have to try it, now! Can't go throwing jutsu around like that on an empty stomach," she says with a broad grin.

She sets the metal grate back into place, and sets up a plate by the grill, orange light now suffusing the pale charcoal. Just the very faintest hint of smoke rises from it. With a soft hum, she tears out a generous section of tinfoil, carefully folding it into a pouch. Then she dumps in a healthy portion of rice, some pre-prepared seasonings next to her salt and pepper, a bit of butter, and some water from the bottle. She seals the pouch and gives it all a good shake before setting it on the side of her grill to cook. While that's getting going, she sprinkles healthy amounts of salt on to a few of the slices of beef tongue, while some of the others get a nice brushing of soy sauce.

"The rice cooks far slower than the beef, so we'll give it a bit of a head start," she says.

[374]

"You're... going to give me some?" She looked at the rice in the tin foil, attempting to sniff subtly what it would smell like. The spices and grill smoke were the main thing she picked up- which was fair, she figured. Uncooked rice didn't have too much of a smell anyway, did it? Amaterasu looked down pointedly at the beef tongue. "How come only some slices get soy sauce?... And why does it cook faster?" she was genuinely interested in an answer, which was something that surprised her. Had she potentially found a new hobby, despite her... well, everything? A sense of curiosity enveloped her. Su-jin brought this out in her- on her own, she likely never would have cared. This needed further... investigation. Well, that was what she told herself. Maybe she was just having fun. A little. Not that she'd admit it, of course.

She watched intently as the rice began to steam and puff up slightly, standing on the tips of her toes to see the grill better- due to her diminutive stature, of course. Eventually, her mind starts to wander. Su-jin wasn't like Kenshin- warm where he was cold, soft where his edges were jagged and sharp. She didn't quite know what to think of the woman who so openly offered her open hand to someone who she likely knew would kill her the instant she became a liability? She was either very brave, or...

What did she see in the thirteen year old, she wondered? Was it something that she herself didn't notice? She blinked to herself and looked up at the face of the older woman, feeling an odd sensation building up in her gut. Who was she to make her feel this way?

[WC: 290]
[Total WC: 1,436]