A/N: Hello awesome possums! I finally got around to publishing Chapter 1! Some parts of this story have been sitting on my computer for a long time. This is dedicated to everyone who reviewed my other Shino/Ino fic and said they wished there had been a happier ending, as well as anyone who read it. This is for you~. I've been wanting to do a light and fluffy story featuring these two, so here it finally is. It's not going to be a long chapter story. Each chapter will be more like short snippets that steadily show the progression of the Shino/Ino relationship. I like to think of it as we're a bug flying in and out of their lives, seeing a romance grow. :) Hope you like it. Please read and review! It truly makes my day hearing from people, even just a quick note, or for constructive criticism.

Fumei mushi = Unknown insect

Ino

He had been in her shop for too long already. It really was quite unnerving. The way he silently skulked around in the same corner like that. The way he'd pick up a flower and smell it and examine it for ten minutes, and then put it back. The way he seemed like he wasn't leaving anytime soon. He was scaring all the customers away. Hell, she was pretty creeped out herself. Worst of all, he was ruining all the bouquet arrangements and not buying anything.

Seriously, who did he think he was, messing up all the careful arrangements she had taken hours to painstakingly and quite lovingly make anyway? It was her craft. Suddenly Aburame Shino felt the urge to become a damn flower connoisseur for a day and rearrange all the bouquets, the arrogant slimeball. She might've been able to turn a blind eye to his presence if he was willing to fork over some cash, but there he remained, seemingly money-less, wandering around and around—and around—like he had nothing better to do but be a pain in someone's ass for three hours.

Clearly, as if this statement of the obvious needed to be stated, his presence there wasn't good for business. Already the number of customers that had arrived earlier had thinned significantly as word spread around town about him being there, and the ones who decided to come anyhow stayed clear across on the other side of the store. Ino hadn't realized just how notorious the Aburames were to the townspeople before, but this was certainly evidence enough. It was a bit excessive, Ino thought, considering this was a town filled with plenty of shinobi with freaky abilities. This sort of room-clearing ability of his may have been ideal for battle, but her hypocritical nature now cursed the unintended Aburame jutsu for working so damn well.

One old woman who was in desperate need of a mirror judging by the way her hideous scarlet lipstick smudged off her wrinkly lips (Ino had hardly been able to look away from that spot) had even gone so far as to come up to her a half hour earlier and "whisper" (half of Konoha could've heard her) how the man in the corner partially in the shadows in the hood and sunglasses seemed mightily suspicious and gave her "a real case of the heebie-jeebies."

Ino took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the cashier counter. This was enough. She had to do something. This was more than an old woman's heebie-jeebies; this was business. What if Shino stayed until closing? Her father would get angry at the lack of sales for the day and blame it on her being lazy, Nara-style. He would have none of her explanations or excuses. Every visitor is a customer, he would say, in that vexingly prudent tone of his when he knew he was right. And he would be right. It was the number one rule in business: you never denied someone from being a customer no matter what, lest you felt comfortable freely giving away money to your competitor face to face.

She sighed. Shino was a customer. Maybe she should cut him some slack. Sure, he was more silent and serious than a rock. Sure, he kept his face and eyes covered at all times and had a tendency to creep around wherever there was a dark corner available. But what really was so scary about him? What did she care that there were hundreds and hundreds of bugs crawling around inside of him in a frenzy with their millions of tiny, furry legs, eternally replicating, with ever-ready fangs covered in goo and saliva, desperately waiting to sink them into their next victim? She didn't care!

So long as she kept enough distance in between them.

"Buy one bouquet, get the second one half off!" What was supposed to be a pleasant chirp of a greeting came out as a sort of disturbing squeal.

He looked up but did not reply as she cleared her throat in embarrassment and tried again. "And, believe it or not, today is your lucky day because you can design your very own bouquet, with up to four different kinds of flowers and purchase it with the special discount of thirty percent off!" She smiled wide.

He nodded in curt understanding and then turned away.

"It really is a good deal, really…" she said awkwardly to his back. She watched him continue to browse around in silence, tapping her foot all the while. Her initial apprehension to his appearance had waned and been replaced with impatience. His reputation was certainly not overrated. She had never met someone so damn quiet. So secretive. So abnormally unresponsive to her presence. She could've stripped naked right then and there and she'd bet her life savings he would not have noticed. It was actually quite infuriating.

"Do you need help?" she asked tartly, her pleasant front now completely dissipated. "Because that's what I'm here for, you know—"

"Do you do this to all your customers?" he asked finally, his quiet, deep voice etched with a tone of annoyance that rivaled hers.

"No, but I think someone who has spent nearly three hours looking around in the same part of the store and still hasn't bought anything seems suspiciously like he needs some help."

"Hn," he replied. "I do not think you would be capable of helping me with this."

Ino was more than a little offended. "You don't think I'm capable? That's rich. Who are you getting flowers for? Your mother?"

Suddenly she stopped and her eyes widened. "No!" she gasped. "It's for a girl you like, isn't it? It's me. That's why you don't want me to help, you're getting flowers for me. Aburame, I honestly never knew—"

"I need them for some beetles."

Predictably, her scheme to make him talk worked wonders, but Ino could barely relish in her victory as her face contorted into a grimace of disgust. "Your bugs?" she began, scandalized. "All this time you were picking out flowers for your bugs?"

A pause. "That is correct."

She snickered. "What, are you asking them on a date or something?"

"No."

She waited for elaboration, and when it didn't come, "Then what are you going to do with them?"

The black lenses met her eyes, and though she could not see his, she could sense the aggravation in them. "I am going to feed the flowers to them."

"What?" she wailed. "You can't do that!"

"I can."

Ino pursed her lips in disapproval, shaking her head as she continued her lecture. "I can't believe you can look at flowers—at my flowers, nonetheless—and see how colorful and beautiful they are, and only imagine them mercilessly eaten to the core by your ravenous filthy bugs. And without a second thought. Without regret!"

Shino furrowed his brow in thought before he carefully spoke. "I suppose that is true. If you choose to look at it that way."

"Well I do," she huffed, her arms crossed as she watched him continue to look in—once again—silence.

At last he picked up a lone flower from a bouquet, held it up and declared, "I'd like this one."

Ino widened her eyes. "Not the hydrangea," she pouted.

"You would not approve of any flower I choose. Does that mean you are not going to let me buy it? Shall I take my business elsewhere?"

She mumbled something that he couldn't quite understand, but he was positive it was safe to assume swearing was involved. "You shouldn't mumble obscenities to your customers. It is poor business etiquette."

"And what are you, the business etiquette police? You seem intent today on assuming jobs you're not qualified for," she snapped back, and her meaning went well over his head. "Come on, the cash register's right over there. You know, you're really not supposed to pick flowers out of the arrangements. Single flowers are sold separately. Get that? Single flowers sold separately. Next time I won't be so forgiving."

She rang up the flower and told him the price. It must have been one-millionth the profit she could have made that day had he not come. She shook her head as he obliviously handed her the money.

"Taking three hours to not even buy a bouquet," she said, sighing, as she took the money. "You're a lot more annoying than I ever imagined. It's quite surprising, actually."

He looked back at her as he took the flower. "Good day, Yamanaka Ino," he said simply, and walked out without another word.