8:15…He should be here any minute now! Look busy!

Shiho picked up her Sports Illustrated magazineand flipped to a random page while keeping her eyes peeled. She looked around the cafe to make sure he had not come in without her seeing. Nope, not yet. After five minutes or so of not concentrating on the article the possibility of Golden State Warriors making a comeback, she gave up and pulled out her King of Dreams book, the eleventh installment of the Wheel of Time series. She could not fathom how anyone can be more interested in sports than in the Wheel of Time. Sure, sports can be fun—and she's had her share of fun watching a game of cricket—but the Wheel of Time was epic! She sighed. She did not remember when she lost her sense, but worrying about what some stranger thought of her was very unlike her. She could not even point out exactly what it was about him that made her lose her common sense. He was moderately handsome, but she had seen better-looking men before. He wasn't even the type of guy she would normally befriend. He was clearly an athlete, despite his thin frame. Perhaps it was that devil may care attitude, devoid of arrogance…and passion. Or maybe it was his taste in books. She had never met a jock who liked Isaac Asimov and Michael Crichton. Then again, she hadn't met that many jocks. Since the first time she saw him about a month ago, she started to look forward to studying at Starbucks where she can gaze at him. Her study sessions there had gotten less productive, but life's not perfect.

She heard the door open and jerked a little. And there he was, walking right past her. She caught a whiff of him, and he smelled like soap—Lever 2000 to be exact. She couldn't quite hear his order, but she could hear that his voice was a warm baritone. Wow, he even sounds bored. As he got his drink (it was his usual White Mocca, she noted) and took a seat, she tried to watch him through her peripheral vision and inadvertently smiled. Gosh, I wish I just knew his name! She had been tempted to look him up before, but she felt that in the unlikely event that they became friends, she would feel creepy for stalking him.

She heard a soft ring coming from his direction, and he picked up his phone.

"Hey, Ino…"

A girl? A girlfriend? She noticed that he smiled once or twice during the conversation. He even laughed! And she had never seen him laugh! He looked even more radiant to her. Talk about being out of my league.

That night, her resolve melted. She turned on her computer and went on Google. She remembered the shorts he wore one time. It said Konoha Soccer. She typed Konoha Soccer in the search bar, and she found thousands of results. To narrow it down, she typed in the area as well. Toward the bottom of the new results page, she saw that his team was the Konoha Foxes. This time she googled "Konoha Foxes Soccer." The first item on the page this time was a website with the soccer team's home page. She clicked on it, and was delighted to see that the website provided a roster. I am so good! Now all she needs to do is look at the players one by one to see which one he was. After approximately two minutes, she found him. #32 Shikamaru Nara. 5"7 / 117 lbs. Excellent, now on to Facebook. Miraculously enough, she found his Facebook page and it just so happened to be public. Huzzah! Shiho wins again! He didn't have much on his page. Only his birth date, his high school, and his interests. She could not tell if he was single or in a relationship. When she clicked on his pictures, she saw that most of them were taken with a plump-looking boy and a pretty blonde girl. One picture that made her more than a little envious, though, was one with the blonde girl standing behind the sitting Shikamaru with her arms around him. She noticed a faint smile on his face, one she had only seen today. Then she noticed the tagged name. Ino Yamanaka. The girl on the phone earlier. Hmmm, this sounds highly suspicious. She returned to his profile page and looked at some of his wall posts. Most of the posts came from the same people. Chouji Akimichi, Naruto Uzumaki, Kiba Inuzuka. But the most frequent poster was this Ino Yamanaka girl. She was the first to wish him a happy birthday this year on Facebook.

Ino Yamanaka hey hun! happy bday again, sry i woke you up. ill take you out for sushi later today k? xoxo

September 22 at 12:05 am.

Jeez, if he's into girls that look like her, then I have a snowball's chance in hell! That night Shiho went to sleep a little disappointed but satisfied that she knew so much more about her mysterious crush. Hmph, I may never get anywhere with him, but I still know a lot more about him than he does about me, and that sure counts for something…right?

When she went to Starbucks the next day, she didn't even bother to pull out her Sports Illustrated. What was she thinking? It wasn't as though he would suddenly be interested in her because he erroneously assumed she liked sports. From what she could tell from his page, he wasn't just some meathead. It seemed like he enjoyed chess—he had the application on Facebook and was on the leaderboard. Oh yeah, and she had no chance. No matter what she did, the likelihood of striking up a conversation was close to nil, she reminded herself. How depressing. She wasn't one to fall head over heels for any pretty boy, but this time her behavior was becoming ridiculous. She rarely even used social networking sites. And now she was using them to stalk strangers? She shook her head. Maybe a little RPG would make this situation less gloomy. She pulled out her laptop and opened her Final Fantasy 7 program. She was close to finishing a perfect game this time. All she needed now was to beat Emerald Weapon before moving to the Northern Crater. Afterwards, Sephiroth will get the most brutal beat down of his life. Perhaps she can save some of the last blows for the revived Aeris. Yes, sir, revenge was going to be sweet.

"How did you bring Aeris back?"

She froze upon hearing the rolling baritone, which sounded a little less bored than yesterday. She slowly turned her head to see THE Shikamaru Nara staring at HER laptop screen. She did not even notice that Emerald had wiped out her entire party.

"Oh! Um well, it's actually possible with a Gameshark—see the Gameshark is this cheat cartridge that's available for a lot of gaming platforms—and after that I burned a copy and made it compatible for PCs—it sounds kind of complicated but it's not so bad, I can do it for you if you'd like!"

"Uhh, sure. What's your name?"

"My name is Shiho. What's your name, Shikamaru?"

A/N: I hope my version of Shiho wasn't too OOC. She was in so few chapters that it seems like there's a lot of room for speculation when it comes down to her character. Thanks for reading!