Yichen cared so much about Dango not entirely because Dango was the ninja beast of his teammate Shironeko.
More importantly, although Yichen had lived within the range of the Sealing Jutsu for some time,
his talent for senjutsu training was ultimately lacking, and his affinity with Natural Energy was rather low. He wanted to observe how other people or animals perceived it.
But ninja placed great importance on their own intelligence. Carelessly observing others would make them unhappy. Even within the same village, such probing was quite taboo.
There was no such issue with observing Dango.
Yichen had also always harbored a suspicion: perhaps human hearts were too complicated, making it difficult for people to draw close to nature.
Animals, on the other hand, had simple minds and were much closer to nature than humans. Perhaps they were better suited to absorbing Natural Energy.
So Yichen greatly looked forward to Dango bringing him a surprise.
Unfortunately, time was too short. Anbu missions were too frequent, and Yichen spent far less time in the village than he did away on missions.
Counting from when he had joined the Anbu, the time Yichen had spent within the Sealing Jutsu had not even reached half the time he had spent there as a guinea pig before.
That very night, Shironeko eagerly delivered Dango into Yichen's hands.
Dango's intelligence was no lower than that of an ordinary person. Shironeko had already explained the benefits of Natural Energy to her, so Dango did not resist the matter. On the contrary, she was rather excited.
Thus, on Dango's first night in Yichen's home, neither man nor cat slept well.
Dango paced back and forth through Yichen's little house, sniffing here and looking there from time to time, wanting to see what differed inside the Sealing Jutsu