If you thought the romance between Hyuuga Neji and Tenten was all butterflies and rainbows, you'd be wrong.
Hyuuga Neji was the most stoic boy at the academy.
Every girl swooned ever him, more interested in becoming Mrs. Hyuuga than a kunoichi.
Well… every girl except one.
There was one girl who thought him strong and was very nice to him. She was more interested in becoming a kunoichi than his girlfriend.
And that's exactly why Neji fell in love with her.
Another fangirl threw herself at me. I brushed her off, and continued to focus my aim on the target.
Next to me, a girl thrust kunai after kunai at the target, the kunai hitting the bullseye every single time.
She was incredibly beautiful, but not in the delicate way in which my cousin Hinata-sama is. She was strong and durable. I threw the kunai at the target, the kunai landing in the ring just outside the center.
I sighed. At least I had the Byakugan.
I took one more look at the girl. Her accuracy was… impressive. The center of the target was filled with kunai, so not even a piece of the red color was showing.
She whirled a kunai around her finger. I looked from her target to my target. No one had EVER beaten me at ANYTHING in ninja acedemy before!
I looked around. Girls had left their targets, not even a single kunai in them, to flock towards me. Every girl in the class had surrounded me.
Except her.
I marveled at how she wasn't focused on what I was doing, but rather, on what she was doing. She was the only girl I knew who had done so. I stole one more glance at the girl. She didn't look back at me, but rather focused on the target.
Hmm… interesting.
Oh, what was her name again?
There was no other way to look at it.
Fate had placed her in that class with me.
Fate placed all these annoying fangirls here to enhance how appealing she was. She wasn't caught up in me or what I was doing. She had her own agenda.
And not too long afterwards, fate placed her on my team. Fate also placed those IDIOTS, Gai-sensei and Lee on our team, but I suppose that was also to enhance her appeal. Fate made us training partners, and fate made us friends.
When I became a Jounin, she took me out to dinner. She let her hair out of the buns it was always coiled in and slipped into a pretty dress.
She was beautiful, but I much preferred her in her element, in her pants and t-shirt combo with her hair wound into buns. She seemed uncomfortable in the dress. I think it was the first time she'd ever worn one. And she did it for me.
I was sixteen and I blamed my hormones for the way I felt towards her, my most beloved teammate.
After the celebration dinner I walked her back to her apartment. When we finally arrived, she leaned up and placed both hands on my shoulders.
"Neji, I'm so proud of you," she said.
And I proceeded to cover her lips with mine with what started as a soft, innocent kiss but grew into something more powerful.
My heart pounded in my chest as she unattached our lips and mumbled something about it being late, her cheeks red.
Oh, Kami-sama. My hormones sure weren't to blame.
The weeks following, it was awkward. It was hard to pretend we didn't have feelings for each other.
So we stopped talking, just training. One day, I was sent on what was supposed to be a weeklong mission. I came back a month after I was supposed to, bloody and battered, but alive. She visited me in the hospital, as soon as she heard. She placed a kiss upon my lips as soon as she walked into the door.
"Neji, please don't die. I love you," she whispered.
I wasn't dead, but I looked like I was about to kick the bucket.
"Tenten, I love you too," I said, my hand taking hers.
After that, we started a relationship. The awkward silences subsided. Nothing was really… different.
Before this, we were already inseperable. No one thought anything different about us until…
We were training one day, a few months later. I used Kaiten and hit her with one of her projectiles.
The kunai was embedded in her leg. She didn't cry out in pain, like other girls might have.
Instead, she sat down on a treestump and took the kunai out of her leg.
Blood seeped everywhere and she seethed, her teeth grinding together.
I took a seat on an adjacent tree stump and placed a kiss on the bloody spot.
"Tenten, I'm sorry," I said, "Are you all right?"
"It's fine, Neji. I should have kept my defenses more alert," she said.
"I should have warned you I increased Kaiten's speed," I said.
Then, I proceeded to place a kiss upon her lips.
Usually we were good about not doing this during training.
We were so very good about not making physical contact.
Because… if anyone saw
"NEJI! TENTEN! What are you youthful teammates doing?!"