Disclaimer: Nope, don't own.
Ino has her first kiss when she is eight.
While all the other little girls are playing on the playground, Ino is inside, seated at her desk with an old book Iruka-sensi has lent her.
It smells funny and the pages are turning yellow but what catch her attention are the pictures. All the colourful pictures of girls and boys dancing together or of something called a knight on horseback or of princesses. Her favourite is the picture of the princess, asleep and under a deep spell lying still as a prince leans down to kiss her.
She spends her morning recesses for a week inside, reading the book while Iruka-sensei marks papers and at night he lets her take the book home where she reads it under the sheets long after her mother has told her to go to bed.
Ino daydreams in class about what it would be like to have her first kiss. She thinks it should be romantic and perfect and leave her with butterflies in her stomach for hours afterwards, just like in the stories.
This is how she comes to decide that she will have one; she will have her first kiss.
There are no evil witches around to put her under a spell until her true love comes and there are no knights or princes' either but that's okay. She can make do.
She thinks about asking Sasuke but she's too shy. Ino watches him from across the room and wonders how she would ask him. But every other girl in class is probably thinking the same thing.
Ino considers Kiba and Shino and that annoying boy in the back of the class with the blonde hair, but Kiba and the blonde boy are too loud and she can't even see Shino's lips. How is he supposed to kiss her?
As she leaves school for the day, book clutched tightly under her arm, it seems like all is lost. She'll just have to wait for her true love to find her.
Someone bumps into her and the book flies through the air, heading straight for a pile of mud. She watches with despair knowing how this is going to end, but the book never hits the ground.
"Sorry Ino." Shikamaru hands her the book, while staring off over her shoulder. "Didn't mean to bump into you."
Ino stares at him, eyes wide. Shikamaru has saved her book full of knights and princes' and did that make him a knight too?
"Thank you, Shika." She mumbles shyly and takes the book from him.
Before he can leave though she leans forwards and kisses him, square on the mouth, and maybe a little to the side, just like in the stories. She keeps her eyes squeezed shut and neither one of them move for what feels like forever.
Then Shikamaru stumbles backwards, staring at her like she's crazy before running off.
Ino grins and watches him go.
She's had her first kiss and she can't wait to tell all the other girls at school.
Years later she doesn't remember the exhilarating feeling of the kiss, or how for a moment she had felt just like the princesses in the stories. She remembers how Shika ran off right afterwards and refused to talk to her for the rest of the week, she remembers telling everyone in the class about it and claiming that Shika was her knight in shining armor.
It's okay that she doesn't remember her first kiss though, because she has Shika to remind her of it every day.