Chapter One: A Blue Day

The trouble began almost two days ago, on a beautiful late summer's day when the weather was balmy and the early evening sky above was cast in shades of the deepest blue.

Ironically, it also matched Ino's mood.

She was sitting on a stool behind the counter of her family's flower shop, looking pensively out the storefront windows at the people passing by on the street. The laughter of a girl caught her attention and she turned to watch, transfixed, at a happy-looking couple pausing to inspect the outdoor display of potted plants. After a few moments, the man leaned intimately towards his companion and whispered something that made her giggle again, and with a grin the two continued on their way.

Slumping over, Ino buried her face in her arms.

She knew this was not typical behavior for her. Ino had always been a positive person, if a bit temperamental (or "high spirited," as her mother delicately phrased it). She was not given to moping or fretting when something bothered her. Her coping mechanism was as practical as it was predictable: she got angry, she shouted, and then she moved on. But lately it seemed all she could do was sigh and stare off into space, and now even her parents were starting to worry. "Is everything okay, Ino?" they would sometimes ask her, and she would respond with a simple, "I'm fine." And really, she was fine… more or less. Besides, hers wasn't a problem they could fix.

And to think, once Ino had thought her parents were at the root of it. After all, they were the ones who had arbitrarily settled on fifteen being that magical threshold that marked the true start of their daughter's life – that day when at last she would be allowed to date and have a boyfriend. Ino had literally waited years just for it to come. And now it was only a few more days until her sixteenth birthday. Shouldn't she be more excited?

But that was the other part of the problem.

Ino was distracted from her melancholy thoughts by the sound of someone entering the shop. She looked up to see Sakura approaching the counter, a cheerful smile on her face.

"Hi, Ino!"

"Oh… hello, Sakura," replied Ino dully, placing her head back down on the counter.

Sakura lifted her brows in surprise, unused to such a spiritless greeting from her best friend and rival. Before she could ask anything, however, Ino's muffled voice was speaking again:

"Sakura… what's wrong with me?"

"What's wrong with you?" she repeated, stunned that such a sentiment could ever fall from Ino's mouth. "What in the world are you talking about?"

"Why don't boys like me?"

Sakura frowned. Was this all because of that idiot Sai? Well, Sakura had warned Ino right from the start about his being a complete social moron, but Ino hadn't listened. All it took was one silly compliment to turn Ino's head; she took every chance after that to flirt shamelessly with the boy. He in turn tolerated her with his unique brand of vaguely polite disinterest and had done nothing to either encourage or dissuade her. Combined with his occasional use of that ridiculous so-called nickname, it was no wonder that Ino acted as she did.

But even the most ardent admirer will eventually realize when they're getting nowhere, and it seemed that Ino had finally gotten the point. At the very least Sakura didn't see her best friend hanging around Team 7 quite as often; even clueless Naruto had remarked on it. From Sai, however, Sakura detected no concern or regret – the loss of Ino's attentions really made no difference to him. In truth, Sakura privately believed that Sai had always regarded it as some kind of misguided social experiment to learn from. For that alone she itched to smack him around. Now she definitely would, first excuse she got.

"You shouldn't base your feelings off of that fool Sai," Sakura said bracingly. "You ought to know by now that he's thicker than Master Guy's eyebrows when it comes to handling other people's feelings."

"This isn't about Sai," sighed Ino. "Well, maybe he was what started me thinking, but… this is about more than just him."

"So what's the real problem?"

Ino lifted her head again. Sakura was taken aback by the dejected expression in her eyes. Since when did a girl as confident and proud as Ino become so uncharacteristically doubtful?

"I just don't understand it! Haven't I tried to dress sexy? Don't I fix my hair and put on my makeup everyday? Aren't I always taken really good care of my figure?"

"Er… yeah," agreed Sakura. That was definitely one area Ino had always beaten her hands down in.

"Then why is it guys don't seem to pay any attention to me? What am I doing wrong? Whenever I meet a cute boy I like, I tease him, I flirt with him, and I make it plainly obvious that I'm interested in him… but no guy ever does anything more with me beyond that. And now I'm almost sixteen – and I've never even been kissed!"

"Oh, for Heaven's sake, Ino!" laughed Sakura lightly. "If that's what has you worked up, you should cheer up. I'm already sixteen, and you know that I haven't been kissed either!"

"I seem to recall that you came pretty close, though."

Sakura winced. Well, it had been a near miss, and with Sasuke, too. As if she was going to pass up the opportunity to brag about that!

Noting her friend's face turning faintly pink, Ino's eyes grew duller. "And you've gone out on a date, too."

"Yeah, well, that was just with Naruto," mussed Sakura, thinking back to that odd outing. There had been extenuating circumstances behind it, too… although come to think of it, she didn't necessarily need to call it a 'date' just to get Naruto alone. "And in any case it didn't really go so great…" she added hastily.

"I've never been on a date. No one's ever asked."

Sakura began to shift uncomfortably. Ino sighed and continued to speak.

"You've had boys like you – two rather strongly, in fact. Both Naruto and Lee…"

"Naruto's like an over-eager puppy!" declared Sakura, feeling at last she had the means to undermine Ino's assertions. "And you know that I don't like Lee that way! I mean, I never did anything to encourage his interest; that was all his doing… er…"

Grimacing, Sakura quickly shut her mouth – but it was too late. Ino's voice grew very soft.

"And from all of the girls who ever chased after him, Sasuke never paid attention to a single one… except for you. You got closer to him than anyone else."

Now Sakura knew something definitely was wrong; her eternal 'rival in love' would never have admitted that.

"…Sasuke was my teammate," murmured Sakura after a moment. She wondered why she was downplaying it; her old self would have gloated and rubbed it in Ino's face. "That was the only reason why."

"But you can't deny that he did care for you, at least a little – even if only as a teammate."

Sakura said nothing, feeling a dull ache stir inside. No matter how much things had changed between then and now, and the vast gulf that still existed between them, at least she'd always had that much to comfort her.

Watching her friend's face, Ino smiled wistfully. "I couldn't even say the same thing about my teammates."

Sakura was taken aback by this assertion. "But surely Choji and Shikamaru care the same way about you!" she insisted. "I mean, what about those earrings you guys all wear?"

Ino tugged absently at her earlobe where a simple stud twinkled. "These earrings originally represented our fathers: the Ino-Shika-Cho thing, you know. We first got them just before we took the chuunin exams for the first time." Ino suddenly gave a derisive snort. "Personally, I sometimes think they let me bully them into it. I wasn't about to get a tattoo…"

"I don't blame you," muttered Sakura.

"But that's just it," said Ino softly. "It's not as if… it really means anything. When it comes down to it, they never come looking for me; I'm the one always having to hunt them down." She stopped playing with the earring and let her hand fall back to the counter. "You'd think even if only as a teammate -"

There was an unexpected interruption as the door to the shop swung open and Naruto bounded inside.

"Oh, there you are, Sakura!" he said cheerfully, walking over to his startled teammate. "I was looking all over the place for you, wondering where you'd gone…" Smiling, he turned to the other girl. "Hey Ino! Stuck alone in the shop again?"

Sakura sent an alarmed glance over at Ino and her heart sank. Her eyes were suspiciously bright and she had on a painfully forced smile.

"I won't keep you, Sakura. I think I'll just slip into the back for a while… help Mom with the inventory, you know…"

Without waiting for a reply, Ino hopped off her stool and quickly vanished into a side room. As soon as she was gone, Sakura wheeled around and bonked the foolishly grinning boy on the head.

"What was that for?" asked Naruto, rubbing his head in bewilderment.

"For your brilliant timing as usual, Naruto," snapped Sakura.