"I'm home, Mom," called Sasuke, kicking his shoes off at the door and walking to the kitchen, where he dropped his bag unceremoniously by the table. He slumped down into a chair, when he noticed his mother cutting up some fruit. "Is that for me, or is someone coming over?"

"Ah, you're very observant," Mrs. Uchiha noted. "Actually, yes, someone is coming over. Your father and I have hired a Japanese tutor--"

"A WHAT?!!"

Mrs. Uchiha turned around to face her son. "A Japanese tutor. So you can learn Japanese."

"Hn," went Sasuke, crossing his arms.

His mother mimicked his action. "Sasuke, you are Japanese, you should know how to speak and read in Japanese! Don't you think it's a little shameful that you don't know how?"

"No," Sasuke said simply and stubbornly.

"Well, too bad," Mrs. Uchiha stated equally as stubborn. "We've hired a Japanese tutor and he's coming over in fifteen minutes so you'd better do whatever to get ready for him. Tidy up the kitchen table, take that bookbag to your room, and maybe take a shower or something..." his mother instructed, and then turned back around to the cutting board.

Sasuke grumbled and cursed under his breath ("Sasuke! I won't tolerate that-" "Yeah, yeah...") and rearranged some of the objects on the kitchen table. Then he hoisted his bag over his shoulder again and walked down the hall to his room where he let it fall to the floor again. He approached his dresser and pulled out one of the drawers to dig out a clean shirt, pants, and underwear and walked out of his bedroom across the hall to the bathroom, where he got ready for a shower. Five minutes later, he turned off the water and toweled himself dry. Putting his clothes on, he exited the bathroom and headed for the kitchen again.

"Sasuke, your hair's still dripping wet!" she exclaimed.

"So?"

"At least dry it some more!"

Sasuke sighed in exasperation and went back to the bathroom and dried his hair with a towel, and made sure it at least wasn't dripping before returning to the kitchen again. He found that this time his mother wasn't the only person in the room.

"Ah, Sasuke. Your tutor's here," she said, smiling brightly.

The tutor had his back to Sasuke, eating the fruit Mrs. Uchiha had set out for him, but Sasuke saw he was a blond with messy spikes of hair.

"He's my tutor?" Sasuke asked dully.

The tutor coughed and turned around. He had a round and tanned boyish face, bright blue eyes and six strange, thin lines on his cheeks, three on each, that looked like whiskers.

"He doesn't look Japanese," Sasuke remarked. But he does look dumber...

"Oi, that's no way to talk to your teacher!" the blond said in English.

At least he doesn't talk with some weird Japanese accent, Sasuke thought. "How old are you anyway?" he demanded to know.

"I'm gonna be 14 this October," the blond replied.

"You're older than me?!" Sasuke exclaimed in disbelief. The kid was pretty much a runt in Sasuke's eyes, although in reality he was but an inch or so shorter.

"Yes, well," his mother interrupted, "we thought you'd learn better with someone around your age."

"BULL--!"

"Sasuke!"

"Yeah, well, since my student is here now," the blond said smugly, "I'll go over my ways of teaching. But first..." The blond stood up from his chair and bowed to Sasuke. "That's an important Japanese custom when meeting someone new. I'm Uzumaki Naruto. We say our last names first."

"..."

"Uh, you're supposed to bow to me now," Naruto suggested.

Sasuke made no intentions to.

"Hey...I don't have all afternoon."

"Sasuke, do it please," his mother said.

The reluctant boy rolled his eyes and bent forward a little. "Sa--Uchiha...Sasuke..." he growled.

"Good," Naruto said pleasantly.

"Ah, lovely," Mrs. Uchiha said. "Well, then, I'll just leave you two to study and all. I'll be in my room, Sasuke, if any problems or uncertainties occur..."

"Okay, Mom..."

"Mm, good peaches," the blond-Naruto- mumbled. "Where should the plate go?" he asked, holding it up.

"Put it in the sink," Sasuke replied, sitting down to a chair across from his tutor.

Naruto's eyebrow twitched and he got up from his place to put the plate in the sink himself. "Y'know, you're pretty rude. First of all, I demand respect, as I am your teacher."

The host only snorted in reply, not meeting Naruto's gaze but obviously glaring.

Naruto ground his teeth, trying to hold back a comment. "We will be learning how to read and write, and speak Japanese. I've taught other people for about a year, so you aren't my first student. The way I like to teach is by having you write in Japanese, and presenting various forms of Japanese media to you. Newspapers, books, comics, TV shows, music, and video games. I do let you work from a text book thing sometimes, but personally, I don't like them. Any questions? No? Okay. First we'll start with the basics.

"Konnichiwa, I'm sure you probably know, means Hello, or Good Afternoon. Repeat after me; Kon-ni-chi-wa."

"Kon-ni-chi-wa," Sasuke followed. Then he watched Naruto bend over to the side to take out a notebook and pen from an orange backpack.

"Japanese is traditionally written up and down and right to left, but it's also sometimes read left to right horizontally, like in TV show captions or video game captions," Naruto explained.

"I know," Sasuke said. He'd seen some Japanese newspapers and magazines that his mom and dad had.

"Well, that's great for you. I'm gonna just teach you how to write it left to right, since that's how we read here, and it'll be really easy to just write up and down later on." Naruto paused to flip open the notebook and started scribbling something down.

"...that's how you write 'konnichiwa'?"

"No, that's all the Hirigana characters. There's forty-six of them, and they're used to write original Japanese words. Theyr'e kind of like an alphabet. I wrote what sounds they represent, so you look at them and try to figure out how to write 'konnichiwa'." He passed the notebook to Sasuke.

Sasuke scanned them over for a while, still a little puzzled, but soon he tried his best to copy the strange scribbles and slid the notebook back to Naruto.

"Eh, you're pretty good," the blond remarked. "So I'll teach you katakana now then. It's the other alphabet and they usually use it for words that aren't originally from Japan. Like, um..." He tapped the pen against his cheek as he thought. "Uh...'chocolate'. We say 'cho-ko-re-to' which sounds pretty close to 'chocolate', right?"

"It sounds weird."

Naruto rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I know, but I didn't invent Japanese, so whatever." He wrote down the katakana characters and had Sasuke try to spell out "chocolate" or, well, "cho-ko-re-to". "They say this one's easier and probably best for people who know English to learn first. It's pretty true..." he said, when the notebook was returned to him soon after. He then instructed Sasuke to continue practicing writing the characters.

"Hn.." Sasuke said unenthusiasticly.

"...Sasuke Uchiha," Naruto suddenly said moments after.

Sasuke looked up. "Yeah?"

"You go to the public middle school, right? Aren't you on that straight A list thing?"

"Yeah..." Sasuke said hesitantly. What's he getting at?

Naruto grinned widely. "Heh, well, will ya look at this. Me, Naruto Uzumaki, tutoring a straight A kid? HA!"

Sasuke scowled. "And I'm guessing you're a dead last, aren't you?"

Naruto stopped laughing and glared. "What did you just call me?"

"Dead last," Sasuke smirked, realizing he'd gotten on the blond's nerves.

"I'm your teacher here and now, and you don't call your teacher a dead last!"

"Whatever...dead last." He resumed writing.

Naruto's eyebrow twitched, and he mumbled quietly, "Teme..."

"Yeah, whatever that means."

"I'll let you know I have a B+ in science and english!"

Naruto sighed and picked up his backpack and set it on his lap. He pulled out a big softcover book around an inch thick and put it on the table. "This is the workbook thing that I don't like, but you should probably look through whenever you've got time and stuff. Y'know, since you're probably on that straight A list with no effort and hardly any studying, read and write in it in your spare time."
Sasuke stared at the book with little interest.

"Tomorrow afternoon I wanna see a page full of katakana, front and back, and some work in that book, understand?" he said the last part in Japanese, before adding in English what it meant.

"Yeah, sure..." Sasuke replied, putting the pen down to lean back in his chair.

"Wakata," said Naruto. "That's what you'd say back to me." He slung his book bag over his shoulder and smirked. "Well, maybe I might even see ya at school tomorrow, eh?"

Sasuke froze. "Oi, don't tell anyone you're tutoring me! I don't care if it's just Japanese."

"Tch, I dunno...My friends like to hear about all my students..." Naruto said with a wicked grin.

"Naruto, you'd better not--"

The blond turned towards the direction of the front door, but turned back around to say, "Thanks for the fruit, Mrs. Uchiha!"

Sasuke's mother entered the kitchen and smiled. "No problem. We'll see you tomorrow afternoon."

"Mn!" Naruto said, nodding. He looked at Sasuke. "See you at school, Sasuke," he said sweetly.

"..."

After he left, Mrs. Uchiha turned to her son. "Well, did you enjoy yourself? He seems like a nice boy."

Sasuke, who was picking up the stuff on the table, fumed.


11/15/07: revised a little bit. well, okay a lot. Made them around my age so it's easier. (not in high school yet so dunno what it's like, lol)

Wheee!! A new story!! Hee hee. I thought I should be uploading SOMETHING anyway... it's been a while, i think. sort of. I haven't really gotten very good ideas for my other two stories that haven't ended yet, but I thought of this idea (while putting dishes away again) and it seemed really good. :D

My dad's always yellin' at me about how I should be talking in Chinese cuz I am Chinese (well..chinese born american) and blah blah blah... I mean, hey, look, I read a book in Chinese yesterday! Yeah! ...it was a picture book by Leo Lionni... The pictures were pretty!