When Winter Arrives

When the season turned wintry, Hinata couldn't help but stare outside her window in awe. Snowflakes seemed to be drifting everywhere, falling from the sky, as hundreds of them landed everywhere, touching cars, the ground which was now covered in metres of snow and steadily building, and the tops of trees, making them seem as if they had white tendrils, frozen in Winter's wrath. She breathed against the glass, her breath fogging it up, as she gave a shiver; though she was perfectly warm herself. She couldn't help but long to be out there in the snow, building a snowman, or even making snow angels in the white clumps everywhere, but she stepped backwards and sighed softly, shaking her head.

There was no point in going outside if you couldn't enjoy it like the rest of the kids could.

It just wasn't as fun.

She stared down at her leg in a cast and sat on her bed, tentatively tracing the cast's rough surface with her fingers, as she wriggled her toes a little. Fresh flowers sat in a vase full of clean water on her bedside table, and cards from her friends were open – but there was one special card that she had taken off her table to read over, and over. It was from Naruto, her long-time crush and friend. Hinata felt a blush slowly make its way across her cheeks as they grew hot at the thought of him caring about her enough to write out the get-well card. A few weeks ago, Hinata had been involved in an accident. She had been training in the training grounds as a genin, practising her taijutsu, when all of a sudden she felt dizzy and fell over – effectively spraining her arm in the process. It hurt so much that she had been crying, and her cousin Neji and father Hiashi had gotten her immediately to Konoha Hospital to be treated by the medical-nin there. When Hinata was told that she had to have her arm in a plaster cast and a sling for two weeks, her heart fell.

But the nice cards and words from all her friends made her feel so much better.

However, who she really wanted to see, was none other than Naruto himself, but she just couldn't bring herself to contact him! She was sure that he wouldn't want to be around someone in a sling, thinking that he'd consider her to be boring, and the thought put her off.

After a few days of thinking, endlessly staring and taking in his words in his card made her change her mind, and she had gathered the courage up to talk to him at last.

She turned her head when she heard the doorbell rang, and she out her room, and down the hallway over to it, just as a Branch member tried to answer it. As she saw Hinata look at the door, she politely bowed and left the heiress to open it, not wanting to intrude, giving her a smile. Hinata, a bit too small to see who was at the door, opened it with cold fingers, gasping in shock as she saw who was at the door.

A blond, spiky-haired boy stared back at her with his common foxy-grin, snowflakes nestling their way into the blond tendrils of his hair. "Hey, Hinata! Want to go out in the snow with me?" Naruto looked at her injured arm and then added hastily, "Uh...oh...I don't want to push you, if you can't-"

"I-I'll be right there, Naruto-kun!" Hinata blushed and turned around, quickly running into her room to get some warmer clothes on, her face beaming, as Naruto simply stared at her in disbelief, before his face split into a wide grin. Nothing could stop Hinata from coming out in the snow, it seemed, not even an injured arm.

As she hunted around for a warm, woolly jacket and uggboots, she felt a lot happier that Naruto showed up, soon forgetting about her plaster-cast and injured arm.