Even after finishing dinner at the dojo, Xie Wen still had not seen Zoro.
"That's strange. Usually, Zoro would have come back with the student sent to find him by now..." Koshiro scratched his head in confusion, muttering, "Did he get lost chasing a wild boar again?"
That word "again" said it all.
Although Koshiro was not worried about Zoro's safety, he still had guests waiting, so he called over the student usually responsible for bringing Zoro back and asked what had happened...
As it turned out, the matter had something to do with Xie Wen.
When Xie Wen had come seeking instruction earlier, a bunch of little radish heads had assumed he was there to challenge the dojo, and someone had actually run off and told Zoro exactly that.
The moment Zoro heard this, he sprang into action, running in the opposite direction from the dojo. He vanished in the blink of an eye, before the person who had come to notify him could even call him back.
Had Xie Wen not known that Zoro was a hopeless case with an absolutely abysmal sense of direction, that description alone would have made him think Zoro had been frightened into fleeing after hearing that an enemy had come to the dojo...
"Big Brother Xie Wen," Klee Meow tugged at his sleeve, "did we scare that person away, meow?"
(=ω=)
"That's not what happened! Senior Zoro just gets lost easily!"
Zoro was still highly respected in the dojo, and the student called over for questioning immediately protested indignantly.
Only after rebutting Klee Meow did he give a belated cry of surprise, in true pirate fashion: "The cat talked!!!"
After sending the student away, Koshiro said apologetically to Xie Wen, "I'm terribly sorry. We don't know where Zoro is right now, so