Souji was smiling again--if not, perhaps, quite at full strength--and that was enough to allay the worst of Hijikata's guilt, at least for the time being.

"I do not." He took on exactly as much as he could handle, as far as he was concerned. And it wasn't as if he'd planned on being assaulted by an over-grown flower last night. It simply had not been one of those things he could have logically anticipated.

Now, of course, he'd be expecting attacks from every shady bit of shrubbery he came across.

And then Souji was back to playing with his breakfast. This was becoming something of a routine with them. An utterly ridiculous one, at that. He scoffed, both at Souji's actions and at that question. "I don't need someone else to look at bruises," he countered, sounding vaguely offended. After all, he hadn't wandered all over in his younger days, selling his family's medicine without learning a thing or two. He didn't need someone working for kidnappers to patch him up.

He reached out to pluck the fork from Souji's hand. He was not going to let himself be fed, again. "That's your fault for playing with food instead of eating it." Never mind that he'd been the one to knock it out of Souji's hand in the first place.