First Kiss

Summary: A story of one simple kiss that simply changed everything.

…FK…

A beautiful bright, sunny day came to greet the village of Konoha.

A gentle breeze blew waking up the citizens even more. Like always, calm and peaceful air surrounded the village that nothing could seem to disrupt it.

The people went on with their regular routine. Clerks rushed to open their stores for the day. Children chased each other, running along pavements into narrow hallways and back. Women flocked together, gossiping about recent hot topics. Most ninja warmed up for training to keep in shape as others skillfully jumped from roof to roof. Kiba using his 'new technique' where Akamaru pissed at his poor victims, Diabolic fan girls already chasing Sasuke around the whole village, Kakashi drooling over his new copy of his precious Icha Icha Paradise, and Gai and Lee hugging each other with a very peculiar sunset in the background, which was just plain weird and scary.

Yes, it was just like any other normal day that poor old Konoha had to deal with.

…FK…

A very pretty dark blue-haired woman walked to the destination where her boyfriend wanted to meet her, while curiously wondering why her boyfriend wanted to meet her at all.

Naruto always escorted Hinata every time and everywhere she goes. Of course, except when they were assigned to some individual missions, or when they were taking a bath, sleeping, training, etc., orwhen Neji decided to show his persona of being an over-protective cousin and therefore trying to kill Naruto for even touching his baby cousin.

It wasn't like she minded all of this, with Naruto always sticking by her side, cuddling her, saying sweet nothings to her which actually sounded rather sappy and even getting to the point where Naruto gets possessive every time a guy showed some interest to her. Actually, she rather liked it this way, it made her feel special, because in the past, she always felt that nobody even liked her. She considered herself as a dead weight to her teammates even though they always assured her that she's not.

Nevertheless, she knew the truth; she was weak physically and mentally. Heck, her little sister was even stronger than her when they were kids and that made her sister her father's favorite. It kind of hurts to know that she was not needed by anyone, even though her so called friends was always there for her, she couldn't get the feeling that she wanted to have, and that was to be acknowledge for her very own existence.

Hinata knew that her teammates and also the rest of the rookie 9 were sincere in being friends with her and at that time, she felt ashamed because she thought that she was not worthy enough for their friendship but chose instead to not say anything to what she was feeling by then.

Of course, one was bound to notice that one of their friends was acting quite differently and Hinata knew that all too well, that's why she kept up her mask as hard as she could. The last thing that she wanted was to burden her friends with her problems. However, even though she did all that she could to hide her depression, she was always been destined to fail, since one of her friends already saw through her mask.

Surprisingly, it was Naruto that was the first one to notice her strange behavior.

When Naruto confronted her, she was shocked beyond belief and vehemently tried to deny it but he didn't even budge once. After trying countless of times to dismiss the topic, she cracked. Hinata couldn't take the feeling anymore.

From all the negative emotions that she felt, all the painful situations in her life, and all the shame and regret that she had suppressed, everything went surging out like a dam. It had finally caught up and with nothing else to do or even the will to suppress it, she broke down.

She still clearly remembered that event when she was uncontrollably letting her emotions out; Naruto had stared at her in shock for a moment before getting over it and engulfing her into a hug. She still remembered the way she clung to him and, after a momentary pause, Naruto hugged back as fiercely in response, whispering soothing words to her and saying that everything was alright and that she had nothing to worry about.

She remembered calming down, leaning against Naruto as he told her some of the stories from his past, about how nobody liked him and that he was all alone. And she definitely still remembered the way they had drowned in each other's eyes before slowly and unconsciously moving their heads closer until they can feel the hot breath that the other emitted before brushing their lips together, pulling back for a bit and Naruto going back for more.

The kiss that they had shared back then had been so intense.

They let all their emotions of pain, sadness, anger, jealousy, and regret into that single kiss. After they kissed, there had been a short moment of uncomfortable and tense silence, they had no idea on where this was going to lead but they do know that they both felt something more in that particular kiss and none of them want to ever forget those feelings nor forget this particular moment.

She had felt insecure when the silence stretched on and she had felt ashamed for what she had done because she thought that Naruto regretted the kiss. After all this time, she still harbored strong feelings for the blonde boy but decided to keep it to herself because she didn't even know when this 'crush' will last but as time went by, her deep affection for him just strengthened even more and eventually turned into love.

Hinata quickly stood up as she couldn't stand the silence anymore and, therefore, without saying another word, she turned to leave the room. Naruto was surprised by her sudden actions but he caught up and snatched her hand and turned her around to face him, what he didn't expect was to see the tears that flowed out of Hinata's eyes.

At that very moment, Hinata had confessed to him that she had loved him for a long time now, even back when they were still in the Academy, and that she did not expect him to love her in return. But before she could say anything else, he lifted her head to meet his tender eyes and told her that he had been suppressing his feelings for a long time too. He just didn't like the idea of endangering his loved ones. Everybody knew now that he was the vessel of the Kyuubi and it was no secret that many people were out to get him.

And after that night, they became lovers.

True, they were shy and careful of their actions to the other at first but as time went by, they became more comfortable around each other. When their friends got the news, they didn't even have the audacity to look surprised by the revelations. Actually, they were already expecting this to happen for a very long time now. They were actually more surprised that it had take this long before they finally got the guts to confess to each other.

Overall, the rest of the Rookie 9 deemed it as good news, and even celebrated in a quiet affair, as promised by Ino. However, the words quiet and Rookie 9 did not exactly fit the bill. Thus, the party somehow led, in one way or another, to everyone in the village knowing of the true nature of their relationship. It was probably caused by a bottle of sake and a very drunk Lee.

Due to this, Hinata became more confident and almost no longer stuttered. She even trained hard to gain her father's acknowledgment again and this time around she was not going to do it alone since Naruto had been always there by her side. She worked hard and eventually became a great medic-nin, only a little bit less in the level of Sakura, where she was not only got acknowledged by her father but by everyone else around her. And she thanked Naruto for always staying by her side because without him, she may have never had the chance to get out of her lonely life.

Two years had passed by now and they were still going strong, and she will not have it any other way.

Coming back from her thoughts, she noticed that it was almost sundown and that she was already near the bridge where Naruto had asked her to meet him.

While walking towards their meeting place, Hinata noticed the falling cherry blossom petals that had danced around her as a gentle breeze brushed past. Stopping for a moment to look at the spectacular sight before her, the falling petals had reflected the light of the setting sun and it glowed quite uniquely.

Hinata just stood there for a moment and continued to watch it. A flash of gold diverted her attention; she noticed that someone was watching her as well. What she saw a handsome blonde man with eyes unlike the sky itself, staring at her.

Naruto slowly walked towards her as she stood transfixed at the gentle face of her boyfriend.

"Hina-chan." greeted Naruto, a smile spreading across his face.

"Naruto-kun." replied Hinata, blushing.

"E-err… yeah!" stuttered Naruto, laughing nervously as he shyly scratched the back of his head. "U-umm, I just want to, u-uh, a-ask you something!"

"Y-yes." Asked Hinata, blushing profusely.

"I-I wa-, no, I m-mean!" said Naruto, stumbling to his words. He heaved up a sigh and finally said in one breath. "wilyumryme!"

"Huh?" asked Hinata, a sweatdrop forming on her head.

"U-umm, what I mean is," Naruto gathered up all his courage, pulled something out of his pocket and opened it revealing a stunning diamond ring and bravely said or rather squeaked. "Will you marry me?!"

Hinata gasped as he said those words that she had waited for a long time now and felt as tears had threatened to fall.

"O-of course, I'm not forcing you or anything" Naruto said sadly, as he thought that Hinata was going to reject me due to her silence. "I just want to say that my love for you will never change and that I will always be there for you and I understa-"

He was cut off as Hinata suddenly tackled him.

"Yes!" answered Hinata, tears now freely flowing on her face. "yes! yes! yes! yes!"

Naruto stayed shocked for a moment before slowly letting a big smile form on his face. He stood up rather quickly with Hinata still in his arms.

"YES! SHE SAID YES!" Naruto whooped, while turning with Hinata still in his arms. "I LOVE YOU!"

After a moment of laughing to express their overflowing happiness, they stopped and kissed deeply before parting reluctantly for air.

"I love you." whispered Naruto, hugging Hinata while touching her forehead with his and staring lovingly in her eyes.

"I love you too." Hinata whispered back, meeting Naruto's gaze with her own.

..

They kissed again and this time, they put all the emotions that they were feeling at the moment like joy, bliss, and happiness, just like their first kiss.

..

A/N: Cliché, I know. Anyway, I just edited this story because there were too many grammatical errors. I wrote this fic way back in high school, one of the reasons why it was crappy. However, I noticed that some fellow fanfictioners wanted me to continue this fic.

So…

To continue or not to continue?

~ Gasanechi