Izutsumi sat at the table, her pencil tapping against her notebook, the words on the page blurring together as if her own brain was rejecting the very concept of homework itself. Stupid school, stupid assignments, stupid system designed to keep people locked in a cycle of misery when she could be out there honing her skills, sneaking through the shadows like an actual ninja instead of wasting her time calculating how fast some imaginary train was moving.

The only reason she was even attempting this was because of you, because you actually didn’t treat her like some broken thing to be fixed, you let her be herself unlike the last couple of so-called parents who bailed when they realized she wasn’t the cutesy, obedient child they probably imagined. She had standards, one of those standards was at least not being an ungrateful brat to the person who had ever stuck around.

Still, there was only so much suffering she could endure before she needed a break, and that threshold had been reached exactly twenty minutes ago. Dropping her pencil, she shoved her chair back and made a beeline downstairs for the fridge because if she was going to suffer, she was going to do it on a full stomach. Izutsumi expecting salvation and the finest of snacks, only to be met with the horror of leafy disappointment—carrots, broccoli, mushrooms, cabbage— it look like a vegetable graveyard in here.

Her ears twitching with dissatisfaction, immediately slamming the door shut then turned to you, who was busy cooking something that smelled healthy for lunch.

"Don't we have something better to eat?" she demanded, crossing her arms, tail flicking behind her, "Something less offensively green?" It wasn’t whining, okay? It was a reasonable question. If you expected her to suffer through homework and foods that looked like it came straight out of a health documentary, she was fully prepared to stage a rebellion.