Profuse apologies for the time it took to get this update out. You go to Japan for a week, and you come back and find out that your cat knocked your laptop over and that it has to be sent in for repair, and then you go to look for your hard-copes only to find that they've gone completely missing so you can't even sit and type it back out on a different machine. And yes, if you're wondering, Japan was awesome. Definitely somewhere I could live.

At any rate, I don't own Naruto in any way, shape, form, or fashion. I DO own any original characters, as well as this story.

Any similarity to real-life events or situations is strictly coincidental. Either way, I do hope you enjoy it.


She ran away. Before she had a chance to let herself think about it, she had started to run, and she couldn't stop herself now that she had started…so she ran. She wasn't running away from him...more like away from him. Indeed, she had spent a great deal of time watching him from afar, smiling whenever he laughed, crying whenever he cried, always wanting to get close the distance, but she was never able to gather enough willpower to make her presence known. Before she knew it, she was closing the door to her dorm. She stared out into space for a few moments as she caught her breath, before leaning on the door and sliding down. As she sat on the floor, she brought her knees up to her chest, put her head down, and sat there, breaking the silence of the room with a single word.

"….coward."

∞ 曲 ∞

Naruto packed up his violin and bow rosin.

"Man…I know I'm pretty different-looking, but I thought my scaring-everybody-off phase was over," Naruto said to himself as he pondered the meaning behind the girl twice running away from him before he could finish a sentence.

'And,' he thought, 'We're in the same year of school…why am I only noticing her now?'

Instead of thinking too hard about it, he decided to take a nap under the trees. He set his violin aside, flopped down on his back onto the grass and let out a heavy sigh, both because he was comfortable on the grass and because he was worried that he had started to scare people again. While he was lying down, he began to fidget with the ID booklet she had dropped.

"…Hyuuga…Hinata…" he said to himself, thinking about it for a bit, and then laughing to himself.

"And I always thought I was the only one with a punny name."

He stretched out and relaxed, putting the ID booklet back into his pocket. He could have started to actually doze off, but after a few seconds he heard footsteps approaching. As they stopped next to him, he opened his eyes and saw a very stern-looking black-haired boy looking down at him.

"…I can't see the trees through your head, Teme. Also, I can see up your nose."

A moment passed, and the boy responded.

"What are you, five? Baka. Now get up. We have work to do, and you know you have to 'maintain academic excellence.'"

"Yeah, yeah…" Naruto said grudgingly as he slowly stood and gathered his things.

"Alright. Let's head home."

∞ 曲 ∞

When looking at the Hakkoukan campus, the academic institution itself takes up a relatively small area. The real reason that the campus is so vast is because of the surrounding town. The Hakkoukan campus is a lot like a college town (the school itself being academically superior to some universities), and one can find everything in the area around Hakkoukan that one would find in a regular town. Everything was managed by adults but run and maintained by students working to help fund their Hakkoukan education, which in turn helped Hakkoukan fund itself. While most students did indeed work for their education, the exceptionally wealthy (or the exceptionally lucky) did not.

Uchiha Sasuke was the former.

The Uchiha family business started one summer in the 1800s with a small house with a few people in it who made hand fans with interesting art on them. 200 years later, the Uchiha family controlled one of the largest business conglomerates in the world, and Uchiha Sasuke was the sole heir to the family trade….and the family fortune. He was smart, athletic, handsome, mysterious, and to top it all off, he was a cellist. And the ladies absolutely loved him for it.

…Sasuke on the other hand just though that all the fan-girls were irritating, and wished that they would shut up and go away.

The two walked toward the front gate of the school, where Sasuke's car was parked.

"Aww, you came to pick me up? How sweet." Naruto said in a sarcastically sweet voice.

"Shut it, Baka. I left my notes in Mitarashi-sensei's class and I came to pick them up. I was going to leave, but I saw a girl running for her life out of the trees, and I went to see what happened." Sasuke explained dismissively.

"Going to find out what made a poor girl cry? Sasuke, I had no idea you were such a gentleman." Naruto responded immediately, in the kind of voice a fan-girl would have when talking about their object of obsession.

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Baka."

"Teme."

After a minute or so of walking, Sasuke broke the silence. "….So?"

"Huh?"

"The girl," Sasuke continued. "Who was she?"

"OH!" Naruto said loudly, re-railing his train of thought. "That was….uhh….Hyuuga-san! Hyuuga Hinata!"

"….And you know this….how, exactly?" Sasuke asked, clearly suspicious.

"Well, she dropped this." Naruto said as he went through his pockets and eventually pulled out the ID Booklet. "I was going to give it to her after my nap."

"…And did you think I was going to give you a ride all the way to the girls' dorm houses or something?" Sasuke asked as they both approached Sasuke's very shiny, very black, and very expensive-looking car.

"Aww, does that mean you won't!" Naruto asked loudly and with a lot of disappointment.

Sasuke didn't bother answering. He just opened the car doors and got in, and Naruto followed him, muttering under his breath as he did so. The car started, and the two drove off.

After another minute or so of silence, Naruto took his turn to strike up a conversation. "…Do you know anything about that girl?"

"About Hyuuga-san?" Sasuke started, taking a moment to think. "Hmmm….Well, the Hyuuga family is one of the biggest outside contributors to the Hakkoukan Fine Arts Department since the school was founded. The family itself has roots that go so far back that the entire lineage might as well be a national monument."

"Whoooaaaa, that's pretty extreme." Naruto said, fascinated.

"Yeah, they're…..traditional. Traditional and conservative. Very conservative." Sasuke said, emphatically pointing out the last part.

"Probably why she freaks every time we're in the same room…" Naruto said, mostly to himself, but definitely loud enough for Sasuke to hear from the other side of the car.

"Yeah, you are pretty different." Sasuke said in agreement, which affected a loud "HEY!" from Naruto, to which Sasuke simply chuckled.

Naruto moved things right along. "How do you know all this stuff anyway?"

"The Uchiha and Hyuuga families have both been around for a long time, so it's natural that we have some connections" Sasuke explained. "The Hyuuga family gets a lot of invites to things like arts shows that Uchiha sponsors. I've seen Hinata-san at a few of them, actually. We've never really talked too much though, she's definitely a wallflower."

"….You know, rich and important people confuse the hell out of me." Naruto said after taking a few seconds to let it all sink in.

Sasuke raised his eyebrows ever so slightly. "Really?"

"Believe it." Naruto responded, crossing his arms. "I could never be a stuck-up filthy-rich person who goes to parties and acts all polite. There too much…." He trailed off, but uncrossed his arms and started gesturing with his hands as if he were summoning the words from his mind.

"….Too much to think about?" Sasuke asked.

"Yeah." Naruto said as he flopped his hands down onto his lap.

"I can see why that would be hard for you." Sasuke said as he pulled into the driveway of the two-car garage of their particular dorm-house.

"HEY!"