Too Much
'Well,' Neji thought as he stared at the mirror, 'it could be worse.'
It had all started with a team meeting (everything always does, doesn't it?). Gai had called them together to train, something they would have all been doing anyway so Neji saw it as a little more than pointless. Lee had voiced his disagreements quite loudly.
"Of course it's different than training alone, Neji! Support from peers makes any training that much more effective!"
Neji didn't quite agree, but he relented none the less. In the years he'd been with his team, he had discovered that the phrase "choose your battles" was one to head when Lee was involved.
"There is more, young ones!" Gai had, well, the only word for it was declared as they all scattered to their normal sections of the training grounds. A groan was stifled in Neji's throat before it could escape. "Today we train together on equal terms. That means no weapon summoning, no Byakugan, and no opening any gates."
As always with Team Gai, the reaction was slightly more than immediate. Lee shown (no, really, he literally lit up) at the suggestion. Tenten just sort of quirked an eyebrow as if she wasn't sure where this was going (after all, Gai hadn't said no weapons period). Neji, of course, stared at Gai blankly, well, more blankly than usual. He was, after all, the one that was really getting screwed in this arrangement – he just didn't realize that yet.
Twenty minutes later, Neji figured it out.
"Dammit!" he cursed for what felt like the hundredth time.
Like the hundred times before that, Lee and Tenten paused and let their teammate viciously swipe at his hair.
In all the years before, Neji had never realized how much his hair got in his face. The knowledge was there of course, he wasn't a genius for nothing, he had just never really noticed it because it had never bothered him. With the sudden discovery that he had apparently too much hair, he was forced to realize something else. It had never bothered him before cause he had never seen his hair before; he had always looked through it with his Byakugan before. Too bad in his time as a chuunin he had for some reason stopped wearing his hair-tie.
It appeared Tenten could read his mind. That or his angry swipes.
"Neji, do you want to just borrow a ponytail holder?"
An annoyed glare was her only response.
"Just come over here, okay?"
And he did.
The rest of the training session was fairly uneventful in comparison to that first twenty minutes. In fact, Neji couldn't even remember them now, but that was in light of a much bigger problem.
He couldn't get the stupid hair-tie out of his hair.
In retrospect, he supposed it was his own fault. He couldn't trust Tenten with helping him bake, why could he trust her with his hair?
He sighed as he gave his hair one more sorrowful look. This would be just another thing he would have to ask Hinata to help him fix.