Naruto and his friends were created by Kishimoto Masashi.

Author's Note: The format for this story will be a little different than my other stories. It's also my first attempt at making a pure romance. I think it will come out a little better than my other story that turned into a romance by accident (A Pleasant Sort of Hell). There won't be any citrus scenes. Enjoy.

"Old Man!" Uzumaki Naruto called as he came up to the Ramen Ichiraku Stand for a late lunch. "Give me a large miso and then another! I have a lot of bowls to make up for!"

Naruto had just returned from an almost three-year training trip with Jiraiya the Toad Sage. This was his second stop in the village. He would have made it his first, but he was afraid of the bodily harm that Tsunade would inflict upon him if he did not stop by the Hokage's Office first.

"Ayame-chan," Teuchi, the owner said, "our business is saved! Our favorite customer has returned!"

"Hallelujah!" Ayame said in return.

Both ramen cooks came out from behind the bar to great him. Both were wearing aprons. Teuchi was wearing a hat. Ayame had her brown hair in a kerchief and was holding her ladle.

"You came to see us first right, Naruto-kun?" Ayame asked.

Naruto hemmed a little bit. "I would have, Ayame-chan, but I had to report to Baachan first."

Ayame glared and arched an eyebrow.

Naruto sweated a little. "Ayame-chan, she's the Hokage and I'm one of her shinobi, just coming back from a long trip!"

"And how is that more important than the people that made sure you didn't starve before you could become old enough to be a shinobi?" Ayame demanded.

"Plus, Baachan hits harder than you do," Naruto muttered.

"Oh, really?" Ayame said sweetly.

Naruto moved to shield his head with his arms, but was too slow to avoid getting thwacked with the ladle. He looked up and saw Ayame idly twirling the ladle one handed through her fingers. He noted that she was not really paying attention to what she was doing and was doing a better job of it than he could. He also noted that she was in a loose combat stance.

The one thing that Jiraiya had really taught him was how to pay attention to things. Even before the training trip he had not been as oblivious as everyone had thought he was, but he would not have noticed. He was about to ask her about it, but then thought better of it. There were not many people about, but they were not exactly private here.

"It is good to see you again, Ayame-chan," he said.

"You too, Naruto-kun," she said. "You're looking good. You finally put on some height. I have to look up to you now!"

"Hey, I wasn't that short," he complained.

"Yes, you were!" Teuchi called from the back.

"Did Jiraiya-sama make you eat more than Ramen?" Ayame teased.

"Yes," Naruto said with a scowl.

"We really do appreciate your dedication to our art," said Ayame, "but you really should eat more than just ramen."

"Blasphemy!" Teuchi said with a grin as he brought out two bowls.

"Did Jiraiya-sama teach you some powerful techniques?" Ayame asked.

"Of course!" Naruto said with his biggest grin.

He thought he saw a bit of concern touch her eyes momentarily. Internally he grimaced. He had never been able to keep secrets from Ayame. He knew, however, that she would not call him on his lie—at least not in public.

Jiraiya had taught him a handful of things, but none of them were the big fancy techniques that Naruto craved. He had mainly focused on the basics: taijutsu, breaking out of genjutsu, throwing, and chakra control plus toad summoning and what he called "Hokage skills." The Hokage skills consisted of observation, negotiation, and calligraphy. The only flashy thing they had worked on was utilizing the Kyuubi no Youko's chakra. Jiraiya was a decent enough teacher—when he taught. However, he had spent way too much time doing his "research." Personally, Naruto was disappointed at having spent almost three years to get his taijutsu, kunai skills, and chakra control up to chuunin levels, being able to recognize and dispel B-rank genjutsu, and being able to control up to three tails of the Kyuubi safely.

He ate his ramen slowly—for him—as he brooded over the fact that all of his friends had been promoted. Neji was even a Jounin! He had had to spend time away from his friends and had not really learned anything he could not have learned here. It was true that he could not have practiced using the Kyuubi's chakra here, but they had stopped practicing that about two-thirds of the way through the trip.

He looked up and saw Ayame's concerned eyes looking at him. He smiled at her and picked up his eating to his normal ramen-devouring pace. He called for a third bowl and ate that quickly.

When he was finished, Ayame called out to her father, "Tousan, I'm going to show Naruto-kun what has changed around the village while he was gone, okay?"

"That's fine, Ayame-chan," he replied. "Just be back before the dinner rush!"

Ayame dragged him out of the door and dragged him through town. To be fair, she did point out some new shops and restaurants that had popped up since he had left, but he could tell she was using it as an excuse to corner him so she could interrogate him. Sure enough, after only half an hour they ended up in a deserted park.

"Okay, Naruto-kun," she said. "What gives? I've never seen you eat ramen that slowly."

He sighed and sat down on the grass. "Just feeling a little discouraged. I've heard that all my peers have been promoted. The guy I beat in the Chuunin Exams is even a jounin now. It makes me wonder if I would be a chuunin too, if I had stayed."

"Well, at least Jiraiya-sama taught you awesome techniques as a compensation, right?" she said.

Naruto snorted. "If only. Ero-sennin taught me more than Kakashi-sensei, but that wasn't hard. The only cool techniques that Ero-sennin has taught me, he did before the training trip."

"Ero-sennin?" Ayame questioned with a giggle. "I have to admit that suits him according to his reputation."

Naruto laughed. "I know, right?" He sighed. "I shouldn't be bitter. Ero-sennin has taught me a lot, but most of it was catching up to stuff that I should have learned before the trip."

"Like what?" she asked.

"You'll appreciate this," Naruto said as he pulled out a small notebook, a brush, and a small bottle of ink. He wrote "Ramen Ichiraku is the food of the gods" on the page.

"Wow!" she said. "That is an improvement!"

"Ero-sennin says that I'm almost up to his standards. He says that after a little more improvement he'll teach me something cool."

Ayame had a thoughtful gleam in her eye. Then suddenly she smacked him in the shoulder.

"Hey!" he exclaimed. "What was that for?"

"How come you never put that much effort into writing while I was teaching you?"

He rubbed the back of his neck and chuckled nervously. "You never offered a cool technique?"

Ayame rolled her eyes. "Idiot."

"Hey!" Naruto said. "I am really grateful you taught me how to read and write."

She stood up. "I should get back so that Tousan doesn't get swamped."

She gave him a hug.

"Thanks for talking to me, Neechan," he said.

"No problem, Naru-chan," she said.

He frowned at her. "I'm too old for you to be calling me 'chan.'"

"You're also too old to be calling me 'Neechan,'" she retorted.

"You don't want me to call you sister?" he asked, startled.

"I'm your friend, Naruto-kun," she said. "I won't be offended if you call me 'Neechan,' but I will call you 'Naru-chan,' if you call me that."

She gave him a saucy wink and left with a little extra sway to her walk.

"Huh," Naruto said. "I'll never understand girls." He had no idea if she was just teasing him or if she was actually trying to flirt.

"Old Man," Naruto called as he entered Ramen Ichiraku the next day, "get me a couple of large pork ramens!"

The ramen stand was empty again. He almost always came in the off hours so as to not cost them too much business.

"Of course!" Teuchi returned. "Welcome back, Naruto-kun."

"Hi, Naruto-kun," Ayame said.

"Hiya, Ayame-chan," Naruto said. He decided to ignore whatever had happened to end their walk the day before other than resolving not to call her "Neechan" anymore.

When he was working on his third bowl, Ayame sat down next to him. "How has your return to Konoha been?" she asked.

"It's been great!" he said animatedly. "Baachan put me on a team with Kakashi-sensei and Sakura-chan. Kakashi-sensei gave us the Bell Test again."

He pushed back from the bar, having finished his third large bowl.

"Come and tell me about it," Ayame said, grabbing him by the arm.

"I'll be back in a bit, Tousan," she called to her father.

They ended up at the park again. Ayame sat down facing him.

"The Bell Test is an awful test," she said. "I don't care that it has an honored history."

"It does?" he said.

"Sure," she answered. "The Nidaime Hokage gave it first to his students, Sandaime-sama and Hokage-sama's councilors. The Sandaime Hokage gave it to his students, the Densetsu no Sannin. Jiraiya-sama gave it to Yondaime-sama. The Yondaime Hokage gave it to Kakashi-san and his teammates. Kakashi-san gave it to you and your teammates."

"Wow," Naruto said. "I didn't know that! How do you know that?"

She rolled her eyes. "People talk while they're eating. Actually, the test itself isn't that bad—if Kakashi-san isn't giving it. According to what I've heard, he's particularly mean about it. For five years he was given the best teams out of the Academy and he failed them all by subjecting them to ruthless mind games. Yours is the first team he passed."

Naruto scratched the back of his neck. "I don't know why he passed us, to be honest. The way we 'showed teamwork' was pretty weak. Emo-chan shared food with me and Sakura-chan followed his lead."

Ayame giggled. "Your nickname for the 'Last Uchiha' still cracks me up."

Naruto flashed her a huge grin. "It is pretty great, isn't it?

"Anyway," he continued. "The Bell Test wasn't that bad this time since most of the psychological torture was moot."

"Did you get the bells?" Ayame asked curiously.

He nodded. "It was pretty tough, but we got them. Sakura-chan is tons better now that she's been trained by Baachan and I'm not Konoha's most unpredictable shinobi for nothing."

"How'd you do it?" she asked.

"We targeted his biggest weakness," Naruto said with a smirk.

"What? Those disgusting orange books of his?" she said.

Grinning even wider he nodded.

"You didn't!" Ayame said. She burst out into genuine laughter. Ayame was a very controlled person. On the surface, she smiled and giggled a lot, but Naruto knew it was a mask—much like his own boisterous mask. His mask hid his loneliness, but he had never figured out what hers hid. He decided that he would get her to discard it around him—not because he wanted to invade her privacy, but because he wanted to hear her laugh again.

"Yeah, even two-on-one, Kakashi-sensei is pretty tough," he said.

"How are you getting along with Sakura-san?" Ayame asked.

He thought about it for a moment. Maybe if he opened up a little, she would too. "Pretty well, actually," he said. "She's been friendly to me most of the time, unlike when we were first assigned to Team Seven." He rubbed the top of his head. "She still has a hair-trigger temper though."

Ayame scowled at the gesture. "I don't see what you like about her."

Naruto gave her a faint smile. "Did you know she was the first person my age to be nice to me?"

"What!? Really?"

"Yeah. Some girls were picking on her because of her forehead and I told them off. We played together for a couple of days at the park before she stopped showing up." His smile faded. "Her parents must have warned her off. A few weeks after that I only ever saw her with Ino-chan until the Academy."

"And you kept after her because of that?" Ayame asked.

"At first," he admitted, "but even I'm not that persistent. Really, I kept asking her out because she was a safe and easy way to get attention."

"Safe!?" Ayame exclaimed. "She continually hit you on the head!"

"Ah," Naruto said, "Sakura-chan didn't hit that hard until she studied under Baachan."

Ayame folded her arms and huffed. "Well, I don't like her. Shallow fangirls like her give kunoichi a bad name."

Naruto arched an eyebrow. "And your invested in the reputation of kunoichi, why?"

She rolled her eyes. "Kunoichi are the public face of women in the village, silly. The rest of us are respected in proportion to how kunoichi are respected."

Naruto had a suspicion that Ayame had attended the Academy, at the very least. Sometimes he got the feeling there was more to it than that.

"If you wanted a girl's attention, there was less painful choice," Ayame said.

"Who, you?" he teased.

She rolled her eyes. "Please. Until you came back from your training trip, you were much too young for me."

"And now?" He grinned at her.

She grinned back at him. "Now it would just be momentarily scandalous." She swatted his knee. "No, silly, I was talking about someone else."

"I assume you mean Hinata-chan?" he asked.

She nodded. He could see a small gleam of satisfaction in her eyes. She knew him better than anyone and was aware that he was not as clueless as he made out to be.

He leaned back and looked up at the sky. "I've been tempted more than once. She's a nice girl, even if she is horrendously handicapped by her self-esteem issues. It was an immense pleasure to take her idiot cousin down a few pegs on her behalf at the Chuunin Exams."

"But. . ." Ayame prompted.

He snorted. "The village pariah and the unwanted princess of the Hyuuga clan? They would slap a Caged Bird Seal on her faster than we could blink." He sat back up again and looked Ayame in the eyes. "I could never live with myself if they did that to her because of me."

"There are ways around that. . ." Ayame said.

"Sure," Naruto waved an arm. "She becomes a legitimate clan heir or leader by overcoming her confidence issues and I become Hokage."

She arched an eyebrow. "Aren't you going to become Hokage?"

"Well, yeah," he said with a grin, "but that will take a few years. Until then, Hinata-chan is better off if I act clueless."

This time he swatted her knee. "What's with grilling me about my love life?" He grinned at her. "Checking to see if you have any competition or are you being my Neechan?"

He got another genuine laugh out of her. "Wouldn't you like to know?" she said coyly.

Then she leaned over and ruffled his hair fondly, like she would when he was little, as she got up.

"I'll see you later, Naru-chan."

There was a definite sway to her hips as she walked away.

Naruto collapsed onto his back and placed his hands behind his head as he stared at the sky and groaned. This new way she was teasing him was confusing. Then he smiled. It might be fun though.

Author's Note: Most things that happen off screen are only trivially different than canon.

Chan vs. kun: Chan is used for kids and teen girls or by little kids. Naruto using it for anyone else is disrespectful. Ayame is a marginal case since she's 20. Using it for Sasuke is deliberately insulting. Using it for Tsunade is also an insult, but in that case it's a fond one.

Yes, I'm reusing my favorite nickname for Sasuke. I like it better than the standard fanon "teme" which is actually a rude way of saying "you" in Japanese.