My latest obsession has been SasuHina and I've enjoyed so many of the stories I've read. Sasuke and Hinata really have such potential! I'm writing this story as practice because I haven't been writing for quite a while. I'd appreciate any constructive criticism.

The (beautiful) photo credit goes to Elcii, and you can find her on DeviantArt. ^^

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, because if I did, Sasuke and Hinata would actually interact.

Clockwork Summer

She holds an hourglass in her hand with a blank expression.

Watching the grains of sands slowly dispense from the curved top glass, she absentmindedly flips it over as if she had a sixth sense for detecting when the hourglass had to be flipped over.

The room contains a cluster of antique clocks, which seemed to be haphazardly arranged, as if someone had randomly shoved and placed the objects into the room with the desire to finish as soon as possible. However, she could understand, seeing that there were simply too many clocks to arrange in a meticulous manner.

Hinata Hyuuga sits in the back of the room with a clear view of the faraway window, staring at the clear blue skies and the nearby beach with a distant gaze. She sits in front of the closed backroom, waiting for potential customers to trickle into her uncle's clock shop. However, seeing as the beach is just an extremely short distance away, she knows that notion would be quite unlikely, and so she places the hourglass down and looks through her bag to find a novel to pass the time with.

Her uncle, Hizashi Hyuuga, had politely asked Hinata to be his assistant for the summer, seeing as his son, Neji, would be away for his first year of university. Hinata hadn't dared to say anything to her uncle at the time, but Neji had never helped out with the shop. Whenever her cousin had stopped by the shop, he would stand around to say something to his father before leaving. Those occurrences would last approximately five seconds. She had wondered why her uncle would request for her help on the way home when her father announced that he would be taking Hanabi, her little sister, to a training camp for the summer.

Even so, Hinata had been planning to stay at home without her immediate family. She would be okay. After all, she is already seventeen years old, and she would be an adult soon. She had always been taking care of herself, and her father would still be financially supporting her.

Then she had seen the eyes of her uncle when she had visited the shop to deliver the news. Although he had a friendly smile on his face, his eyes told her that he was lonely without Neji, his only son.

So she had nodded with a small smile, thanking him for allowing her to assist him with his work.

However, she is aware of the fact that the store rarely had visitors. Antique clocks have lost their value to almost all except for collectors, who travel from far away to purchase an item to add to their collection. Hourglasses have been replaced with timers, because other than fascinated children who flip the device over and over again, no one had any interest in them. For that reason, her uncle only had a small collection of hourglasses, but they were all unique and beautiful, and truly one of a kind. Otherwise, the customers usually consist of people wishing to fix their broken watches or clocks.

Before walking to the store in the morning, Hinata had stopped by the library to fill her large tote bag with books, knowing that she would need to do something to occupy herself. Her uncle spends the time in the shop in the backroom fixing or polishing clocks, where there was air conditioning.

With a tired sigh, Hinata reaches her hand into her bag again to look for her paper white fan that she had painted delicate little cherry blossom petals onto. Her job may have been to keep an eye on the store and to greet potential customers (or more likely, a person looking for a clean restroom) but she could rely on the creaky door adorned with small bells to warn her of a person's appearance.

Perhaps she should have borrowed a book about the mechanics of a clock, because she wouldn't want to be completely useless to her uncle. While she is debating whether or not to learn about clocks, her ears hear the gentle chime of the bells.

She pauses for a few seconds in anticipation, feeling too shy to lift her eyes up. She had felt terribly rude for not greeting the customer immediately, but she had to work up the courage to even look up at the person.

Maybe she should have taken a class to teach her to combat shyness. It would have been the sensible choice.

A small antique clock is placed on the table. With a quick glance, Hinata could tell that it had been dropped. There are minor scratches on the cherry wood and it would take another layer of lacquer to fully coat the exterior. Upon closer examination through the glass, she is relieved to see that the interior clock had been spared. There is a picture of a faded, worn map beyond the roman numerals.

"Some idiot needs his clock to be repaired," she hears a male voice say in a bored drawl.

She finally looks up and prevents herself from flinching. She hadn't expected Sasuke Uchiha to walk in. Actually, she hadn't expected to see him until school started because they sometimes had the same class. More accurately, they had shared the same classroom together in their third year of primary school, third year of middle school, and second year of high school.

And somehow, she had always sat behind the handsome young man. Over the years, she had grown accustomed to his familiar back and the curve of his neck. She could tell that he hadn't been to the beach at all, because his skin retained the same milky white complexion that females are always slathering skincare products on their faces to achieve. His black hair looks as if he recently had a trim, but his locks stubbornly remained in their tousled bed hair state.

Hinata promptly stands up and stutters, "W—welcome! Please wait a moment; I'll tell the owner about this."

She involuntarily flinches at her incompetence. It is only her first day of volunteering, and she couldn't even properly greet the customer.

The first customer of the first day.

Sasuke tilts his head as he stared down at the petite girl, and she couldn't help but fidgeting under his scrutinizing gaze. She wishes she could make the blush on her cheeks disappear.

"…You look familiar."

With a jolt, she looks back up at him before her eyes dart back down to the ground. To an innocent bystander, Hinata would appear as if she was very interested in her sandals, but she was simply mustering up the courage to reply.

"My name is—is Hinata Hyuuga. I sat behind you la—last year in class."

And we attended the same primary school. And middle school. Also, we had classes together in those schools.

"…Oh," Sasuke replies blankly.

She laughs nervously and stares intently into the clock, wondering if she should retreat into the backroom and notify her uncle about it.

"I'm Uchiha Sasuke," he introduces himself for some reason, as if she did not know who he was.

Most of the female population in their town (not to mention school) would literally throw themselves at him because of his good looks. He had sharp, deep onyx eyes that compelled people to compose poetry. At the top of the class and the holder of the school sport records, girls are always proclaiming their love for him.

It baffles Hinata when she sees the girls declaring their love for him when it seemed to her that they only liked him for his appearance without knowing anything about him.

Without thinking, she blurts out, "I—I know."

She is almost embarrassed for a split second before realizing that of course he would know that she knew his name. After all, she had sat behind him in class!

Inwardly, she groans. For all she knew, he could be thinking about how she was another fan.

Gesturing to the backdoor, she tells him, "I'll be back."

She stoops down and struggles to pick up the clock before Sasuke sighs and effortlessly lifts it up with a raised eyebrow at the blushing girl. With a small glance at the neglected novel, she frantically shakes her head and lowers her arms to wrap around the clock (in a hopefully protective and gentle manner, despite how much her arms were shaking) before finding herself faced with a closed door.

"…Oops," she mutters under her breath as she stands there, staring at the door as if willing it to magically open.

"You could try open sesame."

She blinks and looks up at the boy, wondering if she had imagined him saying that.

"Try it." With a small grin, he shrugs his shoulders and tilts his head towards the direction of the door.

Feeling silly, she follows his advice by whispering the two words and concentrating on the door. She tries to ignore her trembling arms. She feels even sillier for insisting on carrying the clock when it obviously took her a strenuous amount of effort to keep it from crashing into the ground. On the other hand, Sasuke could carry it with one arm without any effort.

Magically, the door opens and her uncle's face appears with a smile. "Hinata-chan! You didn't tell me that we had a customer. Welcome, Uchiha-san. I take it that you need your clock repaired—"

Before her uncle could finish his sentence, Sasuke had silently transferred the clock from Hinata's grasp into her uncle's arms.

Her uncle had only shown the slightest of surprise before nodding in understanding as he appraised the object. "I'll contact you when I'm done."

Sasuke nods in response as Hinata's uncle quietly closes the door, disappearing from sight.

The entire exchange had occurred in less than thirty seconds. Hinata had been listening to the tick tocks of the closest clock, and she shyly looked up at Sasuke in wonder.

"I can't do magic, if that's what you're thinking."

Did you just read my mind?

"I didn't read your mind," he replies with an amused tone.

It takes Hinata approximately three seconds for her to realize that she had spoken out loud, and the boy in front of her could indeed not read minds. "Then how did you kn—know that he was going to open the—the door…?"

The look on his face suggests that she was a source of amusement to him, and she didn't like the feeling. "I heard his footsteps, and I needed a method to distract you." She hadn't even had the chance to ask him another question before he answered in advance. "From dropping the clock."

"O—oh. Then t—thank you," she hastily bows in gratitude.

Sasuke had started to walk away towards the direction of the door, but he slightly lifts up his arm as a lazy way of saying bye. "It wasn't for you. It was for the owner of the clock."

Hinata turns over the hourglass in her hands with a distracted gaze at the door thinking that Sasuke Uchiha may not be able to perform magic, but somehow she had a feeling that she was going to have a magical summer.