"D-don't forget to practice today's lessons!" Kurai's voice was heard down the crowded hallways as the children began piling over one another to go outside and play in the sunshine. Kurai was now a teacher at the local academy and he was having a tough start to it all. The children are wonderful, they really seemed to become affectionate towards Kurai, but he soon found out that with that affection comes his worry. What if these kids don't study and they fail his class?! There goes his reputation as an Uchiha.. AGAIN.

Kurai sighed audibly and began wiping down the chalkboard, his expression tired and worn out. "It's too hot to worry about this stuff.." He mumbled, then his eyes picked up to the window "...I wonder if there is a breeze yet?" He placed the eraser brush down and walked over to the window. The room was filled with warm orange rays of light, the wooden floor was glowing and the ambient noise from around the schoolyard forced a quick smile onto Kurai's face. Slowly, he cracked open the windows one by one until he felt that the room would cool off soon, but it seemed doubtful with the amount of sun it was getting. Quietly, while admiring the simple joy of being in the moment, Kurai moved back to his desk and began to shuffle papers, and clean up his work area.

After she saw that most of the children were outside, Hazuki went into the academy, holding a container full of bright red strawberries and a fan. She wore a simple white cotton dress and a hat to protect herself from the sun, but even so, it was still pretty hot. She turned to the classroom her friend recently started teaching in, then put the container on his desk. "Can you take a break?" Hazuki asked, fanning herself, "it's terribly hot inside, isn't it?" she sighed and then smiled as she fanned herself harder a few times.

"Is it hard, what you do?" she asked, looking down at the papers on his desk, "I don't remember if there was a teacher young as you when I went here. Can you handle them well?" Hazuki was a quiet student, but there were a few rambunctious kids in every class...

Kurai looked up with his eyes to see who it was who entered, but he could tell by her chakra anyways, but he smiled as he usually does when he first sees her. His dark eyes were hard to read and after he quickly scanned her once, he closed his eyes and let out a little laugh, "Hazuki, that isn't a shinobi outfit.." He sounded stern, but his laugh had revealed that he was just teasing her. Kurai stood up straight when he noticed the strawberries and his guard lowered considerably, his body language loosened up and he eyed the berries up. "Thank you for coming by, I was about to give in just now." Kurai reached towards a strawberry and picked the biggest one he could see.

His eyes glanced to the papers and he scanned the top sheet slowly, his attention really was on the strawberry he was fondling with his fingers. He didn't even have time to eat today since one kid got in a muffin punch fight, so he needed to feel every part of it and savour it before it's gone. Oh, he loves strawberries! "It's not hard at all, I mean.. I can make the class harder for them, but then they become harder for me to handle." Kurai took this moment to finally bite into the strawberry, an instant shiver went from head to toe. If Hazuki wasn't such a lady, he would have slammed his hand down on the desk and declare this was the best berry ever, but he knew that would probably frighten her.. "This is berry good." Kurai said with a mouthful of the strawberry and didn't even realise he had said "berry" good instead of "very" good.

She huffed jokingly. "I don't forget what I know just because I don't wear shinobi stuff," she answered, "and we still get hot! Aren't you boiling?" She already ate and she knew she couldn't have been working as hard as Kurai was, so she wasn't going to take anything. Something cold to drink would be better, anyway. Hazuki took off her hat and wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand.

It was funny how he didn't just eat the fruit immediately. "But they're first years, right? Can't be too hard..." the Konoha style was too soft in comparison to...everywhere else, probably. Kids could graduate after a year if they worked hard enough, but how often could that happen, given the style here? And she was just soft given the fact that her parents were usually out while her non-shinobi grandmother took care of her. It was both good and bad, but mostly bad, it seemed. She laughed at the pun, thinking it was intentional. "Yeah, berry. My uncle has a garden, so we picked these out today." Hazuki licked her drying lips.

"Are you going to go home soon? It's cooler outside, though..." She sighed, and her mouth felt dryer. What to do, what to do? "I'm thirsty, heh."

Kurai finished munching on the berry and licked the red juice from his lip, "I'm just teasing," He smiled briefly. He pulled at the neck of his shirt and fanned it for awhile, then said "It's absolutely scorching out, I don't know how the kids have energy. I'm not even old and they still run circles around me." Kurai picked up the container the strawberries were in. "First years, right now they are just doing a test on rules and regulations of being a shinobi." Pretty standard test for Kurai, his class needed to be able to recite the shinobi handbook!

He ate another strawberry and spoke out of one half of his mouth, but covered it with his free hand while he talked, "Let me close my room up and we can go get some iced tea," He sounded more pleasant now than he ever has in his life. "Which uncle? How come I never heard of this until now?" Kurai tucked in a few chairs and then walked to the classroom door and waited for Hazuki, "You're holding out on me," He held the container closer to him, defensively.

"This life wears you down, doesn't it? So it's good to have so much energy now..." Young, bright-eyed to-be shinobi. They didn't know how it was truly like. Too young, anyway. "Not many people really follow that book in the end, do they?" She laughed a few times quietly. Not that she ever had many opportunities to break the rules at all.

He sounded different than before, maybe less stressed...or maybe it was just a different kind of stress. She didn't want to ask, but she wondered what his parents thought. "Okay," Hazuki answered, moving back towards the exit slowly. She put her hat back on after rubbing her forehead again. "Um, Shouji-ojisama? You don't know him..." nor did he know a lot of people she lived around, really. She stepped outside the room and started walking down the hall to go outside. "But you don't have a change of...not-school clothes? You're going to pass out if you're outside too long." A joke, but it felt abnormally hot today.

Kurai closed the door behind Hazuki and made sure it was secure before he began to walk with her, "There are a lot of goofs in my class." Kurai sounded a bit irritated, but then he sighed and a tiny smile spread over his lips, "But you know, it's nice to see." He had been trained on keeping his emotions in check, a stone-cold shinobi, but to see kids without a care in the world really made him feel lighter. He wished he had a younger sibling now. "Hey, I still follow the book.. in some instances.." He mumbled the last half of the sentence and took a bite out of another strawberry. "And.. I made most of the kids cry on their first day, so they definitely failed that test. No crying allowed.." Maybe he was being a little too tough for kids.

The academy was stuffy and warm, but nothing compared to outside. It was like stepping foot in an oven at full heat. Even the birds were sounding drained in their songs, but the nostalgic sound of the cicadas made it tolerable for Kurai. He loved that sound. "I'll be fine," he sounded like he regretted saying it though. He had no place in the village to play the tough guy now that he was a teacher, he might as well drop the act and stop suffering so much, especially in this heat. "I don't have very many clothes anyways, I won't pass out.." Kurai bit into another strawberry, "I have strawberries to keep me sane in this heat." That is if the heat didn't completely fry the berries before it was too late. "What brings you to the academy anyways? Just bringing me strawberries?" Kurai seemed curious, but his eyes were glassed over and hard to read.

"That's good." She wanted to laugh because it just sounded like he was still trying to be cool by saying how tough he was being on the kids. Was making children cry cool, anyway? "If they don't cry, they won't fail the test? So then maybe you shouldn't make them cry? Who taught you how to teach?" She was asking more questions than normal, but mostly it was just teasing. Still, she wanted to know how it was like to teach at the academy, even though she'd never teach a normal class. Maybe calligraphy for the girls' class once in a while, but that's it. That was the only class where softness would be okay, but even then it couldn't be all the time.

Hazuki started fanning herself harder. "I want to stay inside a refrigerator for a while," she told him, adjusting the brim of her hat. Maybe there was some better place to go that wasn't sweltering hot. "Well, my cousin goes here now and he forgot his lunch, and then I remembered you were here and that you liked strawberries, so I went back and got some for you. And it's hot in my house too." Nothing much, really. Just something to do. "I hope it's colder inside the tea house."

Kurai let out a long, drawn out annoyed noise, the heat taking a toll on him in his dark clothes, not to mention his thick black hair. "This heat is going to make me cry," His voice was still annoyed, although there was a playful hint to it and so he wasn't being entirely serious about it. Psh, Kurai never cries. His eyes snapped back to Hazuki when she questioned his teaching skills. Yeah, now that he reflects back on his days as a teacher.. he would be the first to admit that he should have been the last candidate in Konoha to be teaching the youth of their village. Kurai basically would tie them up and tape their mouths so he could drink tea quietly. Maybe that's why they all cried. "Ah.. maybe I shouldn't be so aggressive. Doesn't help that by their age I was already a prodigy." Kurai let out a little laugh before he bit into another strawberry.

He pushed open the gate leading out of the academy grounds and held it open for Hazuki, his body turned in the direction of the market where the tea house was. The streets were filled with people, most of them watering down outside to avoid the heat. Many more sat in shady spots and had ice cream to keep them cool. "I'm sure it will be cooler inside, they have ice after all right?" He spoke with a slight waver. What if it was so hot all the ice in the ice tea cafe melt and all they have are luke warm drinks? The strawberries were getting hot too..

"I'm sure you know that experiences vary." One teaching method wouldn't be good for all students, but that was usually all they had to work with.

She walked past him and the gate and walked towards the market place. The air felt sticky with humidity and sweat, worsened due to the presence of more people than usual. "Well, they do have iced tea, right? Actually, I like milk tea better." She wove through the crowded marketplace and found the entrance to the teahouse. The lights were off inside, using the sun to light up the building naturally and to presumably try to keep it cooler.

And it was. Not by any large amount -- otherwise there would be much more people inside -- but it wasn't as bad. Hazuki took off her hat and tucked her fan in her belt before she walked up to the counter. "Hello. Black milk tea and ice cream mochi, please?" She pulled out a wallet resembling a cookie and paid for her snack before climbing up one of the chairs around the high bar-like eating tables.

"Not too bad, right?" she asked, putting her hat down on the tabletop and wiping her forehead yet again.

Kurai was finished the strawberries by the time they got to the tea house, and he was just finished licking clean his fingers when he went to the counter to order his drink. "Ice tea and mochi," Kurai handed over some loose change he had in his pocket and then turned towards Hazuki as he wiped off his forehead with his forearm. "I wonder if some of them have grown out of their training diapers." Kurai sighed and sat across from Hazuki, then placed the empty container off to the side on the table.

When the drinks and snacks came Kurai was quick to pick up his iced tea and take a good, long swig. Before the waiter could even leave, he was ordering another iced tea. Pronto! "I didn't realise how thirsty I really was until now," He was a bit embarrassed now, so he picked at the mochi to stop himself from ordering a whole line up of beverages. "You should come in to the academy for a lesson!" Kurai blurted out and stared at Hazuki intensely.

She laughed awkwardly; there wasn't much funny about the upcoming reality of children in the academy. "My cousin said that there's a four-year-old in his class. He's only six..." Some say the sooner the better, and maybe it was true, but the children were so, so young. Parents must have forgotten just how young their children were and the children must have been too excited to resist. Or maybe Hazuki's thinking was just structured different than those raised predominantly by current or former shinobi.

Hazuki took a small sip from her tea and looked up to see Kurai gulping down his drink. "Ah. Maybe you should bring water to class in case you might sweat yourself out," she suggested before drinking more. Hazuki put her cup down and looked his way, though never right in his eyes. "Okay, but what would I do if I was there?" She could only think about observing...but that's all. Hazuki poked at her mochi and bit into it as she awaited his answer.

"After being conditioned to be the perfect warrior, I still kind of prefer the civilian life." That would be the only time he would say such a thing. It must be the heat getting to him! "I'm starting to appreciate life a bit more at this slower pace." Now if there was a fish pond nearby or a lush meadow, he wouldn't mind spending time doing nothing there.

Kurai finally took a bite of his mochi and chewed it while he thought out his answer to her question. "Teach them manners," He sat up straight and took his new ice tea from the waiter. "Or something. Be the one they run to when I make them cry." Kurai let out a short, excited chuckle before he took a sip of his iced tea.