when the idea hits, you roll with it. i love this family so much i could die. (i hope you guys enjoy!)
The first time Sarada finds a folded scrap of paper tied up with her lunch, she is amused - especially since the note consists of nothing but a cartoonish-looking smiley face. An absolutely dreadful cartoonish-looking smiley face that she loves on sight and laughs off as a joke of her mother's. She keeps the note in her pocket and doesn't mention it, and every now and then, she takes it out and giggles (quietly) because it never gets less dreadful.
And then she finds more notes.
More dreadful cartoonish-looking smiley faces - though they are all different from each other. Her favorite is the most horrifying of the lot, one that has a huge, toothy grin and two super deformed, disembodied hands giving the thumbs up sign. She only admires it when she is out of earshot of everybody, because her resulting giggle fits are the exact opposite of quiet.
By this point, though she's still highly amused, she's also suspicious and questioning whether her mother is the responsible party or not.
"Boruto," she says one day, after the sixth note appears. "You don't like to draw, do you?"
Boruto gives her an odd look. "No? I mean, I guess I doodle sometimes when I'm bored, but it's not a hobby." He peers at her intently, as if by doing so, he can pull her thoughts straight from her head. "Why aren't you asking Inojin or his dad? They're the artists."
She doesn't need an artist, though. The smiley faces were not drawn by someone with artistic ability as their forte. She presses on, determined to rule out Boruto as a potential note-giver.
"So you wouldn't sneak your doodles into somebody's lunch, is what you're saying."
"Uh - yeah, sure, except I didn't say that at all." He cocks his head to the side. "Are we talking general somebody, or the you kind of somebody?" His eyes take on a mischievous sort of gleam, and his grin follows suit. "You've gotta tell me now, Sarada, you flung the door wide open on this one."
She backpedals, thinks of an excuse on the fly. ("Of course I meant general somebody, don't let your imagination run away with you, Boruto!") She can't pin down the exact reason, but she wants to keep the notes to herself until she figures out who they're from - and even then, she doesn't think she'll share them with others. She knows they're terrible. She also knows she won't tolerate any criticism, justified or otherwise.
Still, she asks Mitsuki, too, in the same roundabout fashion, and scratches him off the list quicker than she did Boruto. She doesn't bother with Master Konohamaru - he isn't the type to play favorites and wouldn't have singled her out.
Which leaves two options, though she's partially convinced only one of them is viable.
She decides she'll start there. (Which is, maybe, where she should've started all along.)
"Mama," she says, casually, while they wash dishes after supper. "Have you been in a whimsical mood the past few weeks?"
Her mother, a soapy bowl in her hand, glances over at her. She is very visibly puzzled. "Huh? I don't - exactly know how to answer that, Sarada. I need a little more to work with, here." She plunges the bowl beneath the water in the sink.
Sarada finishes toweling off the plate in her hands, then grabs a cup from the drying rack. "Well, for example, when you made my lunches, were you inspired to hide notes for me, by any chance?"
"No," her mother says, drawing out the word. She follows up with a sly look in Sarada's direction. "But if this is your way of telling me you want notes from your mama, I'll write you one every day." She drops all pretense of subtlety, her excitement at the prospect almost palpable, and Sarada doesn't have the heart to contradict her. "I've got the perfect stationery, too!"
So. Her mother is not the culprit.
And that means -
That means, she needs to test her highly illogical theory.
When she's sure her parents are asleep, Sarada turns on her flashlight, grabs a piece of paper, and draws a far less dreadful cartoonish-looking smiley face with three question marks beside it. She folds the paper up, sneaks quietly into the kitchen, deposits the note in her father's favorite tea cup, and returns to bed.
The note is not there in the morning - she checks.
Her lunch brings with it the stationery her mother promised (Sarada adores it), as well as another smiley face. Except this one isn't smiling.
This one is sticking its tongue out at her.
"Papa, you're so lame," she whispers once she's finished giggling (discreetly, behind her hand).
She's never throwing any of them away, ever, and she's definitely not sharing them. These are hers alone.
That night at supper, she and her father give each other the side-eye, and though she tries to reign in her compulsion to laugh, tries very very hard, in fact, she barely manages to slap both hands over her mouth before her shoulders are quaking and ugh, now who's the lame one, really?
Her mother looks between the pair of them, mystified. "What on earth is so funny?" she asks her father. "Did I miss out on a joke or something?"
A tiny smirk playing at the corners of his lips, her father shrugs. "Who knows," he says.