He didn't read the names anymore. He had seen them, read them, recalled them, and revered them a thousand times… no matter how many times his eyes scoured the characters, the words had no meaning anymore.

As the worn morning light bathed the surface of the Konoha memorial stone in a dizzy ethereal haze, Kakashi merely stared beyond the words, beyond the surface simplicity of stones and literal meaning into the balmy darkness, and curled into it, like the foetus of an unborn child into the warmth of its mother's womb, feeding off an unknown lifeline, blissfully unaware that it would soon be ripped from its nursing vine to dry in the stark reality of the life outside.

Kakashi smiled to himself, and braced out a tentative, glove-clad palm to lay a row of fingers upon the marble. His fingertips slid from a distant coolness that felt so strangely welcoming that Kakashi had to consider deeply what it was that dragged him from this site each morning. With a final, brief glance, he about turned, a liberal hand finding the well-thumbed paperback in his satchel, and flipped it open, casually running a fingertip over the folded corner where he had last finished reading.

He had recently taken a fond liking to this particular book series; he had first discovered it behind a few biography booklets in an old stall where Obito used to pick up his beloved comic book series. He had turned a couple of pretentious memoirs about in his fingers, absently glancing for anything of remote, genuine interest, before his lone eye noted a distinct red warning label, coupled with a crude little illustration and a painfully clichéd, though oddly alluring title. Kakashi had felt himself tremble as he read the back of it, felt himself recover and take it confidently to the counter, where the purblind shop-keeper pursed wrinkled lips together in concentration as she vigilantly counted out the few copper remnants that her little money-box till housed.

The novel itself had proved a happy little purchase, despite the discomfiture of acquiring it from such a modest old lady. It explored his first budding fantasies that his early puberty had afforded him, and geared him up for greater, more creative passing reveries.

However – even at the most climatic scenes, Kakashi felt that there was something more to feel. He wondered if there was something that the author had missed, or had not addressed. He wondered if he was that different. Nevertheless, he had felt an exhilaration when he had paired himself with the superficial, breakable heroine of the 'Come Come' series, imagined his arms enveloping her, gliding his palms with fervent intent over the ample breasts which sent the novels protagonist into fits of unrequited arousal, his mind's eye painting a lucid image of the fictional beauty touching him in the places which had been pining for a fitful bout of attention from him for a while now.

However, a sense of… 'incompleteness' had resulted in his lack of interest in the heroine for some time, and Kakashi's attention had been honed in on the fleeting descriptions of the fewer male characters in the series – with their comparable nature, often unexplained desires to exert themselves upon the abundant female cast, and a base sense of instinctive sexual hunger. Kakashi had often wondered if the unassuming male protagonist was handsome, and if his close childhood friend had noticed that (when the heroine wasn't losing her scarlet lace panties, which, incidentally, suggested a moth in her fictional innocence… mm, even sexier).

Kakashi willed his mind onto the chapter at hand, eager to discover how his dream-blonde heroine would lose her clothing in this saga. Flipping a page as he walked, Kakashi noted a figure hurrying in his direction, and drawing his single eye from the well-thumbed novel clad in his left palm, he saw a young boy – raven black hair stirring as raw silk in the wind, pearl-black eyes, with their profuse eyelashes glittering with dogged focus.

The silver-haired jounin heaved a near-inaudible sigh as those lively dark eyes caught with his, and carefully planted his cloth-clad nose deeper into his soft erotica. This obvious tactic proved fruitless however, as Kakashi noted absently, when the hot-blooded youth braced his sandals into a skid, to root himself directly before him.

When Kakashi finally lowered the worldly novel from his line of vision, he faced a beaming chuunin, cheeks pink with the exertion of a morning's training, arms full of what seemed to be aged cream weights and several scrolls of varying colour and rank.

"Kakashi! I'm on my way back from a task Inuiei-sensei set for us!" Maito Gai exploded cheerfully, before his large dark eyes emerged from their elated slits to regard the unperturbed young jounin before him. In a moment, his eyes had dropped to the litter of training equipment in his arms, and Kakashi registered a short, shaky tremor of the hot-blooded youth's legs.

"I see… you finished before me, didn't you?" For a long moment, the silver-tressed jounin attempted to adjust to this swift gloom that had fallen over the other shinobi, before Gai deposited his load into his left arm, heartily extending his right into a 'thumbs-up', "Then I'll run 300 laps around the training grounds after I am dismissed!"

Seeing that his self-proclaimed rival had not answered outrightly, Gai added with an honest, gleaming smile, "It's a promise!"

"…Yo," Kakashi finally voiced, muffled beneath the cloth clad about his nose and mouth, "As much as I hate to disappoint you, Gai, I haven't been issued with any tasks or missions today."

Gai blinked once, somewhat perplexed as his lowered his arm, "Huh? …Hm…Yondaime-sensei is probably right. There aren't too many troubles outside Konoha at the moment…"

Kakashi shrugged inattentively, once again opening his paperback, "Mm? I haven't met with sensei yet… I guess I'm running a little late."

Eyes abruptly seeming to glaze over, the raven-haired youth gasped, his extravagant actions voicing his incredulity, "You haven't been to meet with Yondaime-sensei… you…you're… one hour, ten minutes and 40 seconds late!"

Kakashi nodded coolly, allowing the chuunin to finish his piece, as he flipped another page. Ooo, getting hotter…

His fist clenched, eyes saying more than his words, Maito Gai uttered softly, "Kakashi… That is disrespectful!"

"Mm," Konoha's copy-ninja agreed, eyes running from the crisp pages of smut to the concerned boy before him, and his unveiled eye seemed to smile, "I'll be even more late if I don't hurry… and then you'll partly be to blame."

Gai blinked slowly, his honest face forming an acute blankness, before he narrowed his eyes and wagged a finger reprimanding, "A real ninja admits when he is at fault!"

Kakashi resisted the urge to roll his uncovered eye, and resigned to hold the gaze. There he goes… spouting off those moral recitations from the 'Nice-Guy Ninja Handbook'…

The hot-blooded youth held the teacher-like stare for a moment longer before his lips broke into a warm smile, grasping the weights and scrolls in two lightly tanned arms, "Ne, Kakashi, sensei entered me into the chuunin trail for tomorrow… I was wondering if you had decided to enter?"

The silver-haired jounin groaned inwardly. Ever since he had become a jounin, Gai had been challenging him more frequently, with more tiresome methods, and with greater stakes at hand. Kakashi reasoned that this was due to a feeling of inferiority and a lingering sense to seek status fulfilment, which was characteristic of any shinobi who chose to compete with one another in hopes of surpassing a terrible 'adequacy'. Still, deep down, Kakashi wondered if these superficialities had a sincere root. A lotus could not bloom without a seed, just as a dream could not develop without first experiencing want. Something had planted a seed of purpose within Gai, and the need to fulfil that want was its nourishment.

He had often seen Gai's hands, their knuckles shredded, fingers coveted in blood, trembling with exertion as the hot-blooded dropout slammed them against stone regardless, without a beat of passing. He had seen the darkness beneath sleep-deprived eyes, so swollen that Kakashi would not have been surprised if closing them had felt like several razors embedding themselves into the abused flesh, yet still had seen a smile amidst it. The silver-haired jounin had witnessed Gai shed tears of joy at the most trivial of achievements, and the thought of such earnest clarity unsettled Kakashi deeply.

The Konoha copy-genius had often kept his own achievements to himself, after believing that uttering them would drive Gai into a spiral of self-reprisal. However, once Gai discovered said triumphs, his eyes would glisten fondly, unashamedly in admiration… it was a confused sentiment which echoed quiet deference, but… something more. It was that warm look of contentment that Kakashi could rarely disregard, even as his fingers skirted over the 'Come Come' series, or when he lay in his modest apartment drifting on the verge of sleep and waking.

Gai unsettled Kakashi more than any shinobi he had ever met. Possibly even more so than those who sought to kill him. Perhaps that was why he often avoided the tremendously emotional chuunin. Kakashi flipped another page, and blinked. Actually, it was more likely that Gai just was too annoying for him to bear. He disliked morning people; and Gai was a morning-noon-night kind of guy.

"I don't think so," Kakashi mumbled finally, snapping from his momentary reflection, fingers placing against his temples, "I've got a headache."

The gaze of disappointment was as plain as if the word had been tattooed upon the chuunin's crimson forehead protector, and he sighed, "Are you sure, rival Kakashi? I doubt that there will be any shinobi who are at my level… if you entered, and Inuiei-sensei knew about it, he might finally consider me as one step closer to becoming a jounin…"

Everyone knew that Gai's teacher, Inuiei-sensei, traditional jounin of landed ability, had been keeping him back largely due to a grave dislike of the boy's pleasant, often childish nature, and, Kakashi reasoned, an inherent arrogance that some special bloodline ninjas were wont to express. Hell, even Kakashi himself had often asserted so about himself, but really, what point was being modest when you were this good?
Despite this, what was concerning, no, interesting was that he had heard an ugly rumour that Inuiei had often berated Gai for his lacking interest in ninjutsu and genjutsu and had refused for some months to even teach the hard working youth. It was Inuiei who had branded Gai with the nickname, 'hot-blooded dropout', renowned in Konoha to those who hadn't hearts to discern fun from outright cruelty.

It was times like this when Sharingan-Kakashi thanked his lucky stars that he had been taken under Yondaime's wing.

Before the young jounin had time to answer, a soft clearing of a throat resounded from his left, and Gai jumped, "Inuiei-sensei!"

In all his glory. A reputable figure of a man, with his elegant limbs, soft-lifted blond tresses, and striking sapphire eyes paced leisurely towards the two youths, before ceasing into a stand, his eyes beckoning the raven-haired chuunin to him, as though he were a lion demonstrating his unconditional authority over a lowly female.

"Gai, are you going to stand around all day like an idler, or do some work?" The champagne-haired jounin teacher demanded softly, yet the underlying disdain was acidic, "Perhaps that's too difficult for you?"

Giving a fleeting glance to Kakashi, Gai jogged obediently to the severe blond, "No, Inuiei-sensei, I—"

Snatching the scrolls from the chuunin, Inuiei surveyed them for an instant, contemptuously, before striking his cold blue eyes to the weights in his student's arms, "You're adding your dense rules to the task I set? What have I told you?"

Yondaime's student saw Gai glance down, seeming to take intense interest in his sensei's sandal-clad feet, "Haha, Inuiei-sensei, I thought it would be good practice…"

"You'd do well to take mind of what I teach you," Inuiei retorted, "You'll never get better on your own."

Kakashi felt an overwhelming urge to throw something very hard, and very sharp in a certain direction in that moment, and stepped forward, causing the authoritarian blond to cast his eyes in his line of vision.

Dropping the open book to his hip, Kakashi turned up his lone eye, and stared unfeelingly into the bitter blue iris' of the jounin teacher. Inuiei held the gaze, but his pupils appeared to waver as that unreadable black eye smouldered into them, seeming to sever the retina, with its pliable nerves, submerging into the blood laced with landed-family chakra, into his very soul.

Kakashi disliked people like Inuiei a thousand times more than morning people.

The silver-haired youth registered the hot blush of shock under the other boy's eyes, (who had fallen uncharacteristically silent), and decided to walk, stating casually, a lazy hand raised,

"See you at the trail tomorrow, Gai."