Ryujou spun around to face the shinobi. Paling as he clenched the sack tighter with his right hand, he unconsciously began to slowly back up away from the gate and towards the forest. He knew that he couldn’t get away from whatever weirdo skeleton it was that came out of nowhere to ruin his quest to find honey. He just wanted to get away from the scary man and his big scary sword that both seemed to be getting bigger and bigger as they grew closer. Judging by the lack of reaction on the guards side, it seemed like zombie here was one of the higher ups. Catching himself walking backwards, he stopped and nervously stood there as he drew his bees back to him – it wouldn’t be good for any of them to get injured or to have the other side believe he was having any thoughts of escaping the situation.
Ryujou awkwardly stood there, glasses slipping further down his nose as swordie began speaking in his rather grating voice. He felt fairly wronged as the accusations flew at him but it wasn’t as though there was too much that he could do. Finally though, he saw the light upon being offered the chance to explain himself. It was all very simple and for the greatest of causes that he had to resort to what he had done. He felt that surely the other man would be understanding upon hearing of the reason for his supposed attack. Ryujou thought of how much time and honey he was wasting here and felt the weight of his very last jar of honey, diluted with water to get as much out of it as possible, weighing down the left pocket to his trench coat. He gathered his thoughts, and as he pushed his glasses back up, began to speak:
“Honey is the greatest of all condiments and additives. Soy sauce and tonkatsu sauce can’t hold a candle to the potential of honey. Preserves and stuff? Not a chance! Fruit juices and jams can’t even be considered in the same league as honey either. Its subtle sweetness and stickiness massively boosts taste and texture to anything that you might put a different condiment on too!
Adding honey to anything improves it. Meat is more tender if you stew it or cook it with honey. You can bathe with honey, you can wash with honey, you can slow your foes with honey, you can reward your friends with honey, you can clean your pores with honey and you can oil your doors with honey. Disregarding honey alone, having honey with anything else is a boon!
Not to mention the fact that honey is, as itself, a symbol! The symbol of true equality and unification! The unity of the bees in the sky with the flowers in the earth together creates honey with time! Enduring rain, storms and thunderbolts. Experiencing light mist and colorful rainbows. Like a lofty peak it waits, untouched by wordly affairs and unaffected by mortal matters, until it has reached its ideal form! Honey represents the model that everyone should strive to live like!
Furthermore, honey is a miracle of nature. It is equally liquid and solid! If you heat it ever so slightly then it becomes liquid and if you chill it ever so slightly then it becomes solid. It is like mercury, beloved by the heavens to experience both sides of everything; it truly shows how open minded we should be as a people! Without experiencing all that there is, how can we be content with what we have? Of course, mercury is something expensive, something that not everyone can get access to. Honey though, is different.
It equalizes the social classes! You will never need any sort of expensive sugar or syrup for energy or taste as long as you have honey. You can also use it to treat illnesses without costly medicine. No longer do poor people strive and work without being able to afford sugar. No longer do the hungry have to live their life without being able to preserve with salt. They can live like bees, who work all their life towards their goal and die satisfied.
Nowadays, without the presence of rampaging people, flowers bloom freely. Many praise these flowers, be it for the color or the synergy together, they all have something to say. However, after seeing hundreds and thousands of these flowers, one’s eyes become weary and tired. Oblivious to the beauty of the flowers, rather, they seem monotonous.
Now imagine at this time, you lift your eyes to see a string of yellow wisps, lively flying like children frolicking in the fields. When it comes to me, I cannot help but gasp in surprise! Even though these bees are common in the unchecked growth of our world, they are no ordinary sort of insect!
A honey bee lives for a mere nineteen weeks. They fly slower than we can run and millions of them will live and die without people like us ever noticing them. They flutter their wings furiously in order to reach a slight more pollen, get to a flower that lies barely out of their reach. They are covered with fur so that they can collect the pollen that the flower buds release. They are bespeckled with yellow upon the glossy canvas of black below. They fly unfazed and resolute through the haze and weather of the world. Though they are only as large as a person’s nail, they strive to support their queen until they number in the tens of thousands and can cover a field with their vast reach!
These are bees! Though you may call them unattractive because they can neither sing like a cricket, nor do they gracefully hop like a grasshopper. Nevertheless, they are strong and solid, fierce and protective, rugged and brave, but still minimalistic yet cute. They are beauties among insects! When you slowly make your way through a forest or a field in an attempt to make a living and see a colony of bees earnestly trying to bring food back to its hive, how can you see them as nothing more than mere insects? How can you be blind to the fact that, with all of their minimalism, curiosity and tenacity, they are represent our hardworking ninja? How can you fail to see link them with our hardworking farmers and outer village inhabitants who make sure that ninja like us can continue protecting our village?
How could you miss that these bees who forge onwards through unknown lands to bring food back to their companions are resplendent with the very spirit and soul of the our fellow nin who, as they paint the lands with their noble sacrifices, are writing a new history for our Hidden Leaf Village with their own blood? Each year a single hive of bees will only make a few dozen jars worth of honey but such hives will live in peace and harmony for generation upon generation.
These bees are the most glorious of insects. However, they are often ignored just as much as the hard working craftsmen and farmers who support the village. However, like all the citizens of the Leaf, they are bursting with patriotism and are able to survive despite any outside hardship! I honor these bees because they support the idealism of our village and in particular, the spirit of companionship and exploration, along with the will to do what they can for the village and to represent the village.
It is in pursuit of this unyielding spirit and mindset that I leave the gates here today; though the honey never spoils, it does one well to open their minds and see all that this world has to offer! The honey itself is just an added benefit too; the distraction of having a bee fly a bit too close is a worthy sacrifice for there to be more honey that people can enjoy! It’s not as if I had any real intent of attacking, endangering or causing more than a momentary diversion from their job of looking at a forest. It can’t just be framed as though I sit here with nothing more to do than have my precious bees sacrifice their lives to disrupt others. I’m not that big of a sicko, y’know.
A few bees should be just a trifling matter to those guards who defend this spirit anyways. If they can’t handle a simple distraction, then how can they even compare to such noble bees!? In any instance, simply sending a few bees around the guards to distract them can’t and shouldn’t be considered an attack on them in the slightest! If that actually hurts them then who knows what those Frost guys would be able to do!” Ryujou lowered his voice for this part, looking around, “I hear they jumped the ANBU sennin in the woods and beat him up. I say if the leader of those sneaky people can get jumped, our guards can’t be off their guard at all! Rather, I’m worried about truly causing an issue! What if when I’m bothering them with letting me through the gate, a bunch of Frost guys run at the gate and blow it up? Then it would be all my fault that they manage to get in.”
“Between two situations with potentially getting blamed for an attack, I’d rather be in the one where I have more time to get honey.” He grumbled to himself under his breath. Though empowered by his loud praise for bees and honey, Ryujou did feel that it was getting rather dry underneath the hot sun outside the gate. He hadn’t had a drink for a while and his speech hadn’t helped too much either. He picked his nose a bit before his mind suddenly remembered that he still had his last bit of honey on him. He realized that he had completely forgotten to discuss the virtues of honey water!
How it helped digestion if you were feeling a bit queasy or how it helped soothe sore thoughts and suppress colds when seasonal ailments surfaced, the possibilities were endless! Besides, a subtle tint of honey in water gave it that little bit extra to really make you enjoy drinking the water. No more would you have bland water, with honey water it was actually fun to drink along with all of the added benefits! If you were completely quenched too, you could just leave it out and other bugs and birds would be able to enjoy the taste of honey water too. It was a win win situation for everyone involved.
Ryujou pulled out the quaint little jar from his pocket. It was a pretty little piece, with decorative glass tinted blue along the rim of the glass and a brass top with a little bee stamped in. He had spent a good amount of his allowance on the glass a few years back and he had always kept it until now. The vender of the time had even admonished him, saying that good things like this weren’t meant to be hidden away and were meant to see the light of day so that others could enjoy the aesthetics too. This train of thought led to the matter of manners, a subject that he had to so infuriatingly study and he hesitated before offering the glass out first to the person that was still there infront of him.
“Want some honey?”
