Masashi Kishimoto™
New chapter!
2 (︶ U *)/
ii iii ii iii ii
Hinata jerked her feet out of the pooling water now spreading across the floor and grimaced. The newly overturned mop bucket, a victim of her terminal clumsiness, lay a few paces away, leaking half-hearted soap suds and grime which groped the flagstone in a large circle. It would all have to be redone.
So much for finishing chores early.
Hinata impatiently brushed some stray hairs out of her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater and tried to contain the damage. First things first... She leaned down to straighten the bucket. Okay, she felt a little better, now... Hinata expertly maneuvered her mop to contain the mess in as little area as possible.
Something always seemed to happen when things were going too well, like the universe was against her or something. For one thing, the fat orange cat that lived in the Creepy House a block away from St. Benedict's hadn't turned up to track its muddy paw prints all over what used to be her clean floors. Neither had the tap stuck and forced her to run all the way around to the other side of the school for water. Her assigned cleaning partner had even shown up for once to move a dust rag around before being called off for a club meeting.
Because checkers was just so important that Anne couldn't miss a single day of moving little black dots around a cardboard square in a shabby little clubroom that smelt of old sweat and dirty socks. Hinata could feel herself starting to grow angry but shook herself out of it before she deliberately kicked the bucket over in some poorly thought-out revenge.
A little lemon scented febreeze would take care of the worst of the odour easily enough, Hinata considered absently, back to mopping in small circles, though it would probably take a thorough cleansing to banish the ancient and all-pervasive lingering fish-smell that comes with having your club in a gutted, former boys' locker room. It's use as a changing room must have been accidental, Hinata nodded to herself, thinking of the high thin windows which lined the tops of some of the walls, painted shut after those kids threw some poor chump's gym bag down two stories onto the principal's car. No detergent to fix a broken windshield. But hadn't his air freshener survived the crash?
"Aiish." Hinata hit the mop against the floor tiles with a wet slap.
This is what happens when you spend so much of your time cleaning- it seeps into your subconscious and- and taints everything.
A short, sarcastic dialogue suddenly started playing itself in her head.
'Studying or cleaning- choose one girl, you can do the other when you finish.'
{reluctant}'I don't know.. how much time is left over for fun?'
{honestly curious}'F-uh-n? Is that some sort of detergent?'
Hah. Fun. Every day after classes Hinata could be found mopping, dusting, sweeping, organizing, tending the garden, or doing any number of other menial tasks at school. The only thing that regularly varied was which school she would be doing them at.
"Job or chores... At least Konoha pays me." Hinata muttered, not quite loud enough for the odd passing student to overhear. The other students had taken to letting her do all the work after Sakura had casually assured them that she wanted it this way. If I weren't so spineless, Hinata thought vehemently, I would confront her about it. At least Hanabi does most of the cooking, bless her heart.
Hey, long weekend! Hinata realized she had completely forgotten, having been too busy worrying-complaining. No school for three days!
"Konoha?" At least not those who weren't already in the room. "What, Konoha Secondary? Why would they be paying you?" A quizzical, vaguely sarcastic voice asked from where its owner was perched on a sink. Hinata whipped around, her growing smile stopped dead in its tracks. This earned a short amused giggle from the pink haired girl sitting behind her. "Jumpy much? I never met a rich girl who was so into cleaning. Isn't it so great that you get to do something you love?"
Patronizing witch...
Sakura hopped lightly onto the floor, careful to avoid the edge of the darkly cloudy puddle.
"Ah haha.. hah. I didn't hear you come in. What- what are you still doing at school?" Hinata asked, laughing back nervously. It really was strange insofar as Sakura and her posse usually being gone a microsecond after the last bell. Go on, shoo.
Sakura frowned. "You answer my question first. What were you saying about Konoha?"
"Huh?" Hinata stared at the other girl with wide and blank, then panicked eyes. "Oh, nothing, it's not important." Her straight dark braids swung wildly as she shook her lowered head, inwardly cursing both her shyness and her inability to think on her feet.
She had put a lot of effort into hiding the fact that she worked as a janitor, to the slightly paranoid extent of cross-dressing, and she wasn't about to have it leaked all over the school.
"Eh?" There goes the eyebrow, Hinata thought, peeking up through her bangs. The raised eyebrow that meant the issue would not be allowed to rest before she's raked it through and run it over twice. Stuck it under a microscope and subjected it to tortuous tests.
"Heh... Uh, c-could you maybe stand someplace else? I kind of have to finish this. Uh- not that I'm telling you to go away, j-just... You don't have to wait for me, you know, if, if you don't want to..." God I'm pathetic. Go home!
Sakura took a slow step forward instead. "Why are you being so secretive? Aren't we friends?"
No.
Another step, too close. "Hinata-chan," she smiled. "Tell me," 'My, what sharp teeth you have..' "You have a 'boyfriend' there, don't you?"
...?
"No? Hmm. You said he was paying you," Sakura made a comically shocked expression and clapped a delicate hand to her mouth. "It couldn't be-" The hand was removed and she leaned in to whisper the rest. "Something like 'escort', could it?"
...Did she?
Sakura giggled, already gleefully skipping out the door where girlish footsteps could be heard coming down the hall.
Did she just call me a prostitute?
"Ohmigod, don't worry! Your secret's perfectly safe with me-" The hushed greetings and unintelligible, but unmistakable sound of gossip that followed until they rounded the corner made Hinata think otherwise.
I hate my life.
ii
"Hey! Gaara, wait up for a sec!" Kankuro called, jogging as best he could with a bag full of heavy textbooks. "Te-ma-ri," The brown-haired boy began, lengthening each syllable of their sister's name until he'd finished rummaging around inside of it. Gaara counted 20 seconds before the end of the 'ri'. "- wanted me to give this to you." Kankuro proudly held out a leatherbound copy of an old medical trial and Gaara took it without enthusiasm.
"Thank you, looks fascinating."
"Haha- don't look at me, she's the one who wants you to be a doctor." Kankuro adjusted the strap straining his shoulder with a grunt. "And you should pick up some broccoli and chickpeas on your way home from school, she said she's cooking tonight. Some sort of soup." He shrugged and Gaara nodded, dubiously glancing through the hand-scrawled notes in his hand.
"Just how old is this thing?"
"I think Temari got it from her Bio prof, the one she's assistant to as she's so fond of telling us. Early 1920's?" Kankuro answered, frowning at his watch. "'Kay, I've got a lab I can't be late for so I'll see you at home." 91 years? Gaara examined the book's yellowed cover more closely. Will the pages disintegrate if I try and read it?
Kankuro clapped his brother on the shoulder and took off down a side path. Before making it all the way around the bend he skidded to a halt to call back, "Wait, forget what I said, she wants red kidney beans and carrots! Carrots!", then almost tripped on his own shoelaces when he turned back, causing him not to see the long protruding branch that whipped him across the forehead.
Muffled slightly by the distance, "I'm o-kay!"
Gaara slipped Optical Nerve Reattachment in Amphibians into his bag and continued along the sidewalk, wondering if they were really related.
ii
"Do-don't think.. think... haah" Naruto panted, his running already slowing with exhaustion. Damnit! If only he hadn't run 20 laps around the track after school! It probably hadn't been such an awesome idea to do all those sit-ups either, even if there had been girls watching.
"Haah.. Haah!" He could hear Jiraiya panting laughter from a few paces ahead. Damn Ero-nin, the rent was almost due!
"Don't think you'll get away from me that easily!" Naruto felt a sudden burst of strength just as he could feel his legs about to give way. One leap and he had grabbed hold of his guardian's flapping vinyl coat and they were both rolling on the ground. Over the sidewalk and down the grassy hill, picking up speed as they went.
'Oof!' 'Agh!' 'Watch it kid, that's my arm!' 'Then keep to your own side old man!'
After much sputtering and indignation they reached the bottom. Jiraiya sat up to shake some of the grass out of his excessively long hair while Naruto leaped up, full of energy.
"Hah! You're not Ero-nin anymore, you're Ero.. Ero-slow!"
"Your nicknames are terrible. Puh! You couldn't have just held my arm or something? Pfft!" Jiraiya spit out more grass.
"Now-" Naruto took a moment to catch his breath, "Now, go talk to the landlord! Oba-chan's serious this time, she'll kick us out!"
"Ha ha ha," Jiraiya chuckled heartily, "Tsunade's an old friend, don't you worry your pretty little head about it." He stood and brushed his clothes off once more. "Tut- look what you've done to my coat, it's practically green now."
Naruto folded his arms but his face was grinning. "C'mon, it's already 7 but you can still catch most of your show."
Jiraiya often left for a days at a time 'for work', jokingly quoting that the only thing he missed was Hot in Cleveland (Naruto was sure he was joking, Jiraiya definitely missed him too. What Naruto didn't understand was where Jiraiya could be going that he didn't have access to basic cable.). The sitcom was the older man's latest obsession, just behind his erotic novels and creeping every attractive woman that walked by.
Naruto could already see his words having an effect as Jiraiya hmm'ed and hawed about still not having completed his 'research'. As far as the blond boy could tell, all his guardian's 'research' entailed was frequenting spas and women's lingerie stores, but Jiraiya continued to insist that it was necessary for him to write.
"I hear its a one-hour special."
It worked. "Hot-damn, what are you waiting for? Go wave us down a taxi!"
Naruto nodded, happy to oblige, and the two of them spent 30 minutes trying to remember the number for one after realizing taxis usually didn't ride through the rural outskirts of town looking for business.
"Wow, we ran far, eh?"
"Just keep walking."
"Real far. . ." Naruto reached up to cradle the back of his head in his arms, still grinning.
ii
"Pass the gravy, would you dear?" Hinata's maternal grandmother's kind, elderly voice sounded completely at odds with the cold, clipped business-like tones preferred by the rest of the family. At the moment they were adressing their favourite topic for dinner conversation: Hyuuga co.'s current performance in the stock market.
Hinata nodded, smiling with real affection. "Of course Grandma, here. Careful, it's hot."
"Neji, take the saucière so she doesn't drop it." Hiashi harrumphed in a clichéd, 'rich-old-man', manner that might have been funny had it not been so insulting. I'm not an invalid, Hinata thought mutinously. Still can't get over your disappointment that he's not your biological child instead of me? There's no reason you can't have a male heir to the company, there's one sitting right in front of you.
The boy complied, gently prying the boat form his cousin's hands with a murmured 'Yes Uncle' and quick smirk of superiority flashed at Hinata. Petty bastard. Thank god these things are so infrequent. She could honestly say that her grandma was the only person she missed from home.
"The stock fell slightly on Monday, but by lunchtime Tuesday it was back up higher than it was before!" One of her uncles said it as if he were making some incredibly clever joke and some of the other men nodded in approval.
Madness.. Madness everywhere! Hinata wished she could throw her head back at how ridiculous these people were. Maybe I was switched at birth.
She had never seriously considered this, though it used to play a part in her boring-lesson daydreams. The resemblance between them all was too strong- everyone meeting them for the first time had to remark at the freakishly pale eyes that ran in their family.
They didn't phrase it like that, but that was what they meant.
Dinner passed at such an agonizingly slow pace that by the end of it Hinata was wondering if time really didn't have a way of slowing down for the Hyuugas. That Hiashi's annoying assistant wasn't just being annoying when he said that.
Now the uncles were being handed their hats and the aunts the furs they wore even though it was summer as Jeeves the butler (not his real name) ushered them politely out the door. Neji followed a moment later, taking his time to bid the others farewell, even though he knew his cousins had to wait for him. Every two months on the pretense of a friendly visit, Neji would inspect the two bedroom apartment the two Hyuuga girls shared for cleanliness and order. The next evening he would make a report to Hiashi. If they failed they were deemed incapable of living on their own and would be ordered to return to the manor. This was part of the real, legal contract Hanabi and Hinata had been made to sign in exchange for their freedom. The other two parts, which for some reason only applied to Hinata as she was the eldest and because Hiashi was a jerk, was that she maintain perfect grades and a part time job.
So far they had passed all 10 inspections: an achievement they were quite proud of given the thoroughness with which each was conducted and, Hinata suspected, a source of great jealousy and therefore ire for Neji. They had been enemies since he'd discretely pulled their hair as children to make them cry, and then be lectured about Hyuugas not crying. Neji was probably biding his time, waiting patiently as only someone distantly related to snakes could, for them to fail.
Well we won't. We'll finish school like this and then move far away for university. The same university. And we'll stay up late watching chick flicks and laugh at you for being such a-!
Hinata still couldn't think of a word dispicable enough to describe her cousin without swearing ('damn' didn't count) and so just let the sentence hang like she always did.
"Shall we go." Neji stated in a tone that suggested he would rather not and Hanabi nudged her sister, wondering how she could be smiling like that after the evening they'd both just been through.
ii
"Damnit Kankuro, I said chickpeas and broccoli! How the hell do you expect me to make a chickpea-broccoli rigatoni with kidney beans and carrots?" An angry female voice scolded from the kitchen, having just glanced through the grocery bag Gaara had deposited there after getting in.
"Hey hey, calm down. They're vegetables too ya' know, not like I told him to get chicken or something." Kankuro called back, eyes focused on the tv screen where he was currently in the lead in some sort of racing game.
"It was one little thing to remember and you screwed it up!" The sound of metal pots and pans rattling past each other. "Honestly, would it kill you to just get what I asked for once in a while?" Temari huffed and Gaara reflected that she must sound awfully harsh to the old lady who lived in the apartment next door, what passed for walls between them being unnervingly thin. They could usually hear her playing old records and talking to her cats or the other old ladies who came to visit every week almost as if she were in the room. Though to be fair, the woman was nearly deaf and had to speak and be spoken to at volumes that could have made it through even the thickest walls.
But old Mrs. Thompson wasn't getting the full story unless she knew about Kankuro purposely 'forgetting' which ingredients Temari wanted every other day, and how could she? Temari practically dropped to a whisper when seriously discussing anything personal. She only ever shouted about mundane things like groceries.
Kankuro played it like a game. If she said 'soy milk', he wrote 'coconut milk' on Gaara's grocery list when it was the youngest brother's turn to do the shopping. If she wrote 'spinach' on Gaara's grocery list, he crossed it out and wrote 'romaine lettuce'. The only time she could be sure of getting what she wanted was on the days she did the shopping herself, which usually wasn't more often than twice a week with her part time job and university.
Their father had arranged for his secretary to send them an allowance each week before leaving on his two-year, overseas business trip, but it wasn't quite enough to cover all expenses. He believed in young people fending for themselves financially. 'You think my father gave me an allowance? Laziness! Wouldn't have dreamt of asking him!' He only agreed to supporting them when they offered to move out with Gaara before he was 18.
"Still vegan." Kankuro's retort turned into a cheer as he made a narrow win against a hedgehog-like creature and celebratory music starting playing from the tv.
Temari gave one more half-hearted huff and then was largely silent while she worked out what sauce would go best with carrots. To be entirely truthful, she almost enjoyed Kankuro's little game. She liked being surprised at whatever he or Gaara brought her and using all of her cooking skills to come up with a last-minute meal plan almost as much as not having to cook at all. Vocally she opposed eating out because of the excessive cost (they were on a budget after all) but privately, would miss their routine more than anything.
"Attention diners: your food is on the slab." In 30 minutes the three of them were settling down to the large, thin cement slab lain across two thicker slabs which served as a low-lying table. Kankuro had found them at the junkyard he used to work at in the early days when they first moved into their apartment. He'd been enthralled and though the three of them sometimes talked about buying a proper table, one that was not literally made of trash, nobody really wanted to. It had character with its jutting edges worn smooth by the sun and the rain. Plus, its granite-esque façade made it a pretty convincing stand-in.
"Mmmh- see, who needs chickpeas?" Kankuro smacked his lips appreciatively after tasting some steaming pasta, nodding to Temari.
She smiled back at him, twirling spaghetti around her fork. "You just prepare yourself- on thursday I'm going to stuff an entire package of hummus down your throat."
"Haha." Kankuro rolled his eyes but Temari didn't answer. "... Not really, right? Hummus is gr-oss."
"Gaara have you started reading that study I got for you from Professor Brown?" Temari turned to ask, pretending she couldn't hear Kankuro pretending to gag from across the slab. "He said it would be of great interest to any future doct- Gaara your face!"
Gaara jumped, startled at Temari's sudden change of tone. Delinquents hurling insults and trying to beat him up never scared him, but for some reason his sister did.
"Whah, whah's wrong wi' 'is fashe?" Kankuro asked concernedly, still slurping up a string of noodles.
Fuck. I could've sworn those guys never landed a hit. Maybe being around Sasuke so much, his best and only friend apart from two blood relatives, was making him cocky.
"Is that a bruise? It is!" Temari exclaimed while Gaara tried to pull away. "You've been fighting again, haven't you? Oh, Gaara, what am I going to do with you!"
"Temari, sheesh, it's just marinara." Kankuro jabbed with his fork toward the spot on Gaara's chin Temari had been examining.
"What are you talking about? It's obviously- oh." She frowned and wiped it off. "Well."
"Haha!" Kankuro laughed, raising his glass to his lips, and Gaara felt a wave of relief sweep over him. Temari hated violence with a passion more violent than any fight Gaara had ever been in and her brutally long lectures on peace, Ghandi and the Hippocratic oath were apt to be given out anywhere, anytime. But though Gaara did his best not to make the school call his house for fighting, the police call his house for assault, or expose any bruises in her presence, he could never seem to convince himself to actually stop fighting.
"Well." Temari continued to frown but said no more on the subject.
ii iii ii iii ii
I wonder if I'll get any more reviews? ~(ಥ A ಥ)~
Regardless, I hope all who read this enjoy!
Also, it's funny, but I find I don't really care about the Naruto series anymore. Is it cheating to keep writing a fanfiction for something you don't even read anymore?