An acquired taste

Benji spoke of his life family, how his father would usually be out on missions while his mom picked up the slack and cooked for the family, a master cook as he put it. Noboru could empathize with the young Konohanin, as he too had fond memories of his mom lovingly preparing meals for her child and husband. As few years he had of that, they were still a core part of himself, and in truth the way his parents raised him heavily influenced him. The way his father worked the field, he had taken into himself in the way he would choose his ingredients. His father taught him a lot about how to identify healthy vegetables, as well as how they could be prepared. His mother’s cooking style also was deeply ingrained in him; keep your knives sharp, and your cooking space clean. If you rush your cooking, you’ll end up with a tasteless dish. You have to prepare each ingredient carefully, so you get the most out of it. But that does not mean you get to slack off; work fast and efficiently, and you’ll be able to create flavourful dishes out of simple ingredients. That’s why knives need to stay sharp, and the space clean.

Young Benji was willing to learn nonetheless, and the two went into picking hemlock. He had his clones help him out, however, Kaito preferred to do it on his own without having his memories flooded later on with doing this three times. Picking done, with Benji picking a lot more than Kaito could’ve, they made their way back to the beach, where he said goodbye to his newfound friends, before his body began phasing away back home, the memory of the evening disappearing alongside it.