A/N: Was planning to only have this fic as a one-shot, but I saw something on tumblr which I immediately associated with this story.

maplesugar85. tumblr . com . post/105571829427/its-hard-to-eat-ramen-when-you-have-such-long (remove spaces on the first few characters)

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Masashi Kishimoto does.

Remembering Nii-san

by ChoppingBoard

Chapter 2 - Herring Soba

Hinata was late for dinner. Team 8's training was supposed to last until 5:00pm but Kurenai asked them if they can drop by and have some tea. She hurriedly entered her room and quickly glanced up the wall clock: 8:00pm. She sighed. She knew Neji would be back today from his mission and he shared a few stories over dinner when Hinata asked. She appreciated that they were now on good terms. Regrettably, she missed this dinner so she would have to catch him in the morning.

She carefully set her soiled weapons aside and slowly made her way to the bathroom.

–-

Hinata headed to the kitchen after her much needed bath. She hoped there might be food left so she wouldn't need to prepare anything. What greeted her were three bowls set aside on the table. She silently mused if there were 2 other people who missed dinner. It was customary for the cooks to leave a few bowls in the table, in case someone comes home much later.

As she opened the bowl, she smiled, the dinner for that night was Herring Soba. Neji's favorite food.

Hinata lazily pulled one stool and used her right hand to drag one bowl towards her. The bowl emitted a nice aroma as she lifted the plate covering it.

She frowned as she noticed several strands of her hair found their way to her soup as she ate. Normally, she would have her hair tie on her left wrist, but she forgot about it this time. She tried to lift the bowl again to her lips but several hairs still dipped on the soup. Sighing, she wondered if someone would berate her if she used chopsticks on her hair. It was the kitchen after all, there won't be any shortage of it.

She grabbed a new pair of chopsticks and slowly formed her hair to a messy bun. Hinata tried to remember Ino's voice as she taught her how to do it with the eating utensil. Now if she could just keep her left hand on her purple locks and grab a chopstick with her right.

"Hinata-sama?"

Hinata instantly dropped the lone chopstick and her left hand slowly retreated to her side. She let her shoulders shrug and turned around to come to face 'the intruder'. So much for stealth and utensil hygiene.

"Neji-niisan." the way she spoke gave away the disappointment she felt. Now what do I do? She was glad that she can probably have a chat with him now. She sadly looked at her bowl of Soba Herring.

The brown-haired Hyuuga went closer and picked up the dropped chopstick. "You look... sad. Is there something wrong?"

Nothing's wrong. I just can't eat my noodles without a hair tie. Her eyebrows met as she appeared to be in deep thought. She didn't know how to lie to Neji Hyuuga. She suddenly sat straight and remembered her manners. "Have you had dinner already?"

Neji carefully eyed her and responded "Yes. I just dropped by to get some water. Are you sure you're okay?" He smoothed out her hair as her excuse of a messy bun caused several hairs to go astray. He then noticed that the shorter ends were damp and somewhat sticky.

"U...Uh... I f-forgot my hair tie! Some got soaked on the soup." She finally let out what was bothering her. "I wanted to use that chopstick to set my bun." She frowned as she looked at him.

His expression softened as he understood the situation. He took two steps to get behind her and slowly grabbed her hair to form a ponytail. He then removed his own hair tie to fix it into place. "There. You can eat properly now." He smiled as he took the seat in front of her.

The blue-haired Hyuuga had a tinge of pink on her cheeks and couldn't help but touch her ponytail to make sure it's secured. "Thank you nii-san!" She slowly noticed that several strands of his hair were slowly making its way to his face. She clutched the hair tie on her at the sudden realization. "You removed yours! Nii-san..." she directed her frown to him for the second time.

"As I said, I already had dinner. Getting my hair into water won't be too bad." He slowly filled a glass with water and he did it very nicely that none of his hair touched the water. He even tucked several strands under his left ear.

Knowing that Hinata couldn't protest further. She grabbed her chopsticks again and drank some soup out of the bowl. She also grabbed some noodles and took a bite of the herring. "Are you sure you're okay just watching me eat? This is your favorite after all."

He chuckled. "Well, I already ate. I just need to make sure your hair strands aren't hungry for soba."

Hinata smiled in response. "How was your mission?"

"The usual. Lee couldn't contain his excitement and almost lost his belongings. Tenten complained a lot and Gai-sensei initially freaked out several civilians."

She tried not to laugh too much but it was a funny picture. She knew Neji would always have to get them in line if his teammates were slowly veering away from the mission at hand.

–-

Timeline: Somewhere around Chapter 700

Hinata, Himawari, and Bolt sat on the dining table and were silently eating ramen for dinner. Naruto was currently away on a diplomacy mission and the kids asked if they can have his favorite food for dinner because they missed him. Hinata obliged and was delighted when she saw the excited expressions on her kids' faces when she put several bowls of Ichiraku Ramen on their table.

Himawari was able to grab a few toppings and was now having difficulty grabbing the noodles. Hinata noticed the difficulty she was having and without saying a word, she pulled new pairs of chopsticks and grabbed several strands of noodles to her daughter's mouth.

"Mom! Your hair's on the soup!" Bolt exclaimed and now stood on his chair to grab her hair out of the soup.

Hinata slowly set the chopsticks down and fastened her makeshift ponytail with a hairtie on her left hand. She smiled at her son and tapped on his seat to make him sit down again. She also brushed a thumb on his right cheek to remove a stray spring onion. "Thank you Bolt."

Her son flushed slightly with the gesture and Hinata responded with a smile.