A/N: Yo! 'Sup! *does a Kakashi wave* Hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own naruto nor do I make any profit out of this fic.

CHAPTER 1

First day of classes in the first semester and the first thing he sees is a note on his hand: COMM ARTS 7 am JD BUILDING. He doesn't remember writing it down, but he was too sleepy last night he didn't really remember clearly what he was doing. In between his nagging mother who still doesn't want him to move out of the house—even after a year of doing so—and his father who just lounged in the couch while he single-handedly moved all his boxes, it left him drained. After that exhausting night, he just passed out on his bare bed. So maybe he did write it down and needed to go there later.

Reading the blurry digits on his alarm clock, he waited for his eyes to adjust. "6:45 am," he murmured. "Shoot!" he shot up from his bed—got a bit dizzy because of standing too fast— and prepared for the day in the fastest way he can.

He arrived 20 minutes late but luckily the professor still isn't inside. What could he have expected anyway? It was the first day, he remembered one of his professors mentioned, "If it's the first day of school, absence, late and almost everything is excused, but do that on the second day then consider yourself dropped."

'They really follow that first day policy huh, good thing.'

He was about to enter when he heard a familiar voice call out, "Shikamaru?" He turned to look at the owner of the voice and saw Choji. Funny, he doesn't really remember having another class with him.

"Why are you here?" Choji asked. Shikamaru raised a what-do-you-mean brow in return.

Choji, who understood what he meant sighed and explained, "It's too early for you to be here. In fact, you're not supposed to be here, at all."

"What do you mean?" Shikamaru was undoubtedly confused, if he even took the effort of writing his schedule for today on his palm, it meant that it should be something important since he knows he's not the type to just forget. Choji, seeing the look on his face, gave up and exhaled loudly, "Have you forgotten that your earliest subject is till 10 in the morning?"

"Yeah but I even scribbled the schedule on my palm, so I must have a class here."

Choji looked at Shikamaru's empty hand, devoid of anything but—well, the hand. Choji worried if Shikamaru had been getting enough sleep lately, it was very unlike him to forget his schedule and come to the campus earlier than the required time. "Are you...okay?" Choji looked really weirded out but Shikamaru just focused on the question first, "Yeah, I'm okay."

"If you say so."

"Ugh, why are you doubting me? You do see the note, right?"

"There's nothing on your hand."

"Huh?" Shikamaru is very confused. The note occupied his whole palm, in all capital letters. Why isn't Choji seeing it?

"There's nothing there, come on you need your sleep. Get out of here, find a nice place to rest," Choji placed both of his hands on each side of Shikamaru's shoulders and lead him outside, "You're losing yourself too early in the semester. We are all trying to keep our sanity intact a little longer. You do know that you went through all the trouble to get all of your classes to start at ten right? Since—I quote—'I don't want to go to school so early in the morning.'"

Shikamaru remembered everything he did just to push the schedule he wanted.

A flash of yellow and a faint smell of alcohol passed by quickly but he wasn't able to follow it as he was walking himself out of the building and when he looked at his palm again, the writings were getting blurry until they were gone. "What the—" then he decided, maybe Choji was right, he needed sleep.

He found a place to rest beneath the shade of a tree at the University Park. Only a few people were around either because it is too early or it's the first day and people want to exercise the first day rule.

He laid comfortably on the grassy floor, his bag was his pillow as he stared at the clouds passing by through the gaps in the foliage of the tree. 'Oh that looked like a chicken,' he thought. A few minutes passed and he finds himself slowly drifting to sleep. "Shikamaru?" a high pitched voice sucked the sleep out of his system. It can only belong to one person, Ino.

He heard footsteps growing louder as he opened one eye and sees Ino standing near him, books in hand. "It is you," Ino concluded, invading the space beside him and sat down, "What are you doing here so early?"

Shikamaru shrugged, not really wanting to tell the story again.

"You said that all your classes start at 10. You're not the type to even be bothered to go to school 15 minutes before time, yet you're here? On the first day of school?" Ino made it sound a lot more outrageous than he thought it was but then again, coming from a person who knew him all his life, it must be really out of character. She doesn't seem like she's going to let the topic die down any sooner too. She needs answers and Shikamaru didn't even want to try to convince her to drop it since it would be more dragging, so he told her.

It was because of a simple note on his hand, that even if it was troublesome he went to school early. He went to school early. He decided that those two words don't really fit in a sentence.

All of a sudden there was this spark in her eyes—more like an explosion of several revelations—that Shikamaru didn't want to understand. He doesn't even understand her way of thinking and he knows fully well that if he asks, she isn't going to stop anytime soon and he needed his sleep. Following that thought he closed his eyes and shrugged her off but no... Ino just had to go on with it.

"You do realize that's the legend of the school, right?" she chirped, the enthusiasm oozing out of her like a suffocating aura that he can feel even with his eyes closed.

'Oh god no,' Shikamaru thought. He has heard of it, quite a few thousand times already. The legend of finding your 'soulmate'. It was said that if you write stuff on your skin, it will be mirrored on your soulmate's. Their parents whom have studied here before affirmed that legend but Shikamaru still doesn't believe it. Their parents like to pull their legs. If he did have a soulmate he would've seen markings on his skin before. He was already on his second year in this university and still no signs of that person. If that's true, if he really did have a 'soulmate' then, why now? Why so late?

Ino scolded him for being unromantic, "Come on! Don't you think it's fun?"

"Not really"

"I came to this school because of the legend! Everybody wants to see theirs, and you have a chance right in front of you! Aren't you the least bit interested?"

"Not really, I mean can you even see the meaning of 'soul mate' in the dictionary? Is it even a real word?" Shikamaru rolled his eyes. This legend could possibly be made by people who wanted to romanticize some random stuff that happened years ago.

"It is a word!" Ino argued strongly while immediately fishing for her phone in her bag.

Shikamaru just shrugged as his friend tapped furiously on her phone.

"A close friend who completely understands you, a person who is perfectly suited to another in temperament." Ino read straight out of the dictionary app on her phone, after doing so she brought the phone close to Shikamaru's face to prove her friend wrong. "It is a word and a soul mate is real!" Ino insisted.

"Uhuh." was Shikamaru's non-committal reply. If his tone was not sending Ino the signal that he really doesn't want to talk about it, he hoped the expression on his face is a dead giveaway.

'Looks like it wasn't effective'

"Just this one time! Please just write something down and try just this once and if it fails I won't ever talk about it! I'll give up! I'll drop it."

If there's one thing that Shikamaru knows about Ino it's that there's no way she's ever going to drop a subject that she was curious about but if it would make her shut up, even for a minute, he'll do it and be done with it.

"Fine," he said exasperatedly. "This will fail and this will be the last time I'll ever hear of this, okay?" 5 minutes in the conversation and he was already tired.

"What do I write?" he asked, pen in hand, "My name?"

"Your name? Hell no! We just wanna see her! Not freak her out! We should just do what she did to you this morning. We'll write down a name of the building—a meeting place, and we'll wait for her! Courting her would have to come after we know who she is so we could work things out on how we could win her over." Ino babbled. She is so motivated when it comes to these things.

"Don't you have classes?" Shikamaru asked not liking where things were going. "It's the first day, nobody would care if I'm there or not." She smiled and he gave up on the possibility of getting out of this mess. He had time to spare anyway, better to finish this now before Ino could take over his relationship. She used we and she doesn't look like she's going to back down anytime soon.

Shikamaru wrote the time and place down on his hand and Ino blabbered on about how romantic this is and so on which he tuned out as he closed his eyes to wait before he knew it he nodded off.

"Shikamaru wake up! It's almost time for you to meet her!" Ino shook him awake.

"Yeah," Shikamaru mumbled.

He and Ino stood up and went on their way to meet his 'soulmate'. He decided to keep the quotation marks on since he still doesn't believe in all of this.

"Hey, kid you're on my class, right? Can you collect the handouts I gave earlier. There were some mistakes on it and here are the correct version." A professor they passed by said towards who he thinks is a first year, judging by the naive aura that she's giving out even from afar. She looked troubled and was discreetly glancing at her watch but like all other freshmen, complied.

Shikamaru slightly hoped that Ino was the one cornered by that professor so he could get out of this but, nope, fate just had to be cruel to him today, of all times.

He walked in a slow pace and saw the freshman trip from a non existent rock. Sure enough the handouts that she was holding came flying.

Shikamaru is not a heartless person so he knelt and helped the girl pick up the scattered papers all the while getting a few closer glimpses. He took his time picking things up and even let Ino walk ahead of him. "Thanks," the girl said while moving from paper to paper.

He noticed she had blonde hair tied in a messy bun. He mumbled a "No prob," as he handed the girl what he collected getting a quick view of her shirt that had a well known band's logo on it paired with paint-splattered jeans and combat boots. "Be careful next time," he bid as Ino yelled for him to get his ass moving. He lazily waved a hand as he stood up and walked away missing the chance to get a full view of the girl's face. Not that it mattered, he was just a little interested anyway.

The place he specified on his hand where they would meet is near one of the buildings for his next class. It was not exactly secluded but it's quiet enough to suit his needs. It was a bench shaded by a huge tree behind it. He remembered sleeping there several times.

He and Ino waited for someone to come and sit there and after 10 minutes someone did. Ino squealed into his ear in a higher pitched voice than her usual while tugging him excitedly.

He halted Ino's insistent tugging and looked at her meaningfully, Ino got the message and stayed far enough to be discreet but near enough to hear the conversation.

Shikamaru started approaching the girl and took a seat beside her. He doesn't know how to do this. Why does he even have to? Ino's here, watching, judging him, that's the reason. He can even feel her stare boring holes on his back but he knew that the least he could do is make things less awkward for him and the girl. If Ino was right this would not have to end on this first meeting. And how do you ask a stranger to see their hand without sounding like a lunatic?

'Hi, I'm Shikamaru and there's a possibility that you're my soulmate. Can you please confirm it by showing me your hand?' If he tried saying it like that, she'd definitely think he's a lunatic. Why did he even agree to do this?

Apparently he doesn't need to be the one to initiate the conversation because after a few seconds of inconspicuous sidelong glances the girl smiled flirtily and introduced herself.

"Hello," she said and raised her right hand for him to shake. He was happy to get this over with, so he looked at her offered hand and shook it. No writing, he was about to excuse himself when he realized that he wrote on his left hand. Ugh, this is a drag.

He held the girl's hand for a while longer, as he stared into her eyes. The woman felt a bit conscious and fidgeted as Shikamaru continued staring, thinking of what he should do to get this over with.

He put his other hand in his pocket, feeling his pen and also an idea emerging.

He let go of the girl's hand looking as if he's embarrassed. He turned to her completely and reached out for the girl's left hand hesitantly. He wrote a random combination of numbers on her hand and nodded slightly. He told her that he needed to go to class already -an excuse the girl probably took as his effort to hide his embarrassment. He offered her a shy smile and scratched his cheek for good measure before walking away completely.

Ino was frozen by the time Shikamaru came back. "What just happened? Didn't I tell you not to freak her out?" Ino panicked. Shikamaru sighed, "It doesn't really matter. She doesn't have any writings on her hand and none appeared on mine." And for the nth time today she was surprised but somehow relieved. She knows Shikamaru's soulmate is out there and the "hunt" is exciting since the first sign showed after a year of waiting but deep down she thought that the girl they saw there was a bit too ordinary to be in her friend's league.

She knew Shikamaru. If it isn't interesting enough, if it isn't going to keep him entertained it won't occupy him for so long. The girl was normal, short brown hair, small cute face wearing a floral dress but she lacked what Ino called the 'flair' that her friend needed in his life and she really wants to see Shikamaru totally floored and awed by someone who's just existing. "Now that would be a view, hah!" Ino thought aloud and Shikamaru just looked at her with a what-the-hell expression which Ino replied to with an innocent smile.

Shikamaru stared at his empty palm and closed it with a feeling he couldn't really describe. It felt somewhere in the middle of confusion, relief, disappointment and ...thrill, like playing board games with an opponent he couldn't see through and he just can't seem to calm down.

He smirked at this sudden mystery appearing before him. What's more fun than putting together puzzle pieces to finally see the bigger picture? Maybe he wasn't able to find her yet, but by the gods, he swears he will. He needed this game of hide and seek and he trusts the woman on the other end to not make it easy.