Hai, peoples. The beginning of my drabble collection.
And I know Shikamaru plays shougi, but correcting that would just ruin the theme, and so I made it chess. Think of it as an AU. :P
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It only takes a flick of her wrist to bring him to his knees.
Well, not just a flick of her wrist. More like an enrapturing glow in the pupil of her right eye, a twitch of her lip, and then a flick of her wrist. Her tiny, frail, delicate wrist. It was that moment, approximately three seconds ago, that he finally succumbed truly to the enigma named romance.
Oh, yes, he'd had his fill of women before; it was Ino for a little while first, even though they'd decided that really, really good friends was better for the team relationship. And then it was Temari, but that relationship was just a little too troublesome (and he wasn't the type to convey romantic feelings through a weekly letter—that would require the effort to find a flattering enough adjective to describe the shade of her hair; somehow, the simile 'like soft, sandy mud' didn't seem very complimentary). Then, there were a few medics at the hospital, and a civilian girl or two.
But now, no. this time was quite obviously different.
In reality, no girl had actually been bothered enough to accept his lazy chess challenge and seem truly interested in the game rather than flirting with him. There was one other girl who'd played it with him, and she was too occupied with looking up at him amorously from under her eyelashes to notice that he'd beat her within four moves. Kakashi had always had some lame excuse, and for every time he gave one, Shikamaru felt an inkling of what Team 7 must have felt every day. But no, she was actually, truly challenging him—a feat never seen before, except in his late sensei.
The invitation had just slipped out of his mouth before he could control it. 'Sit down, stay a while. Play a game or two.' He'd never expect that she'd actually accept. How was he supposed to know? Girls were always just so cryptic, indecipherable to most men in existence; why should she be any different?
No; a flick of her wrist, and the word 'checkmate'.
