A/N: I've done minor edits on the previous chapters, nothing plot wise just word choice and paragraph structure.


The mornings have started to come with frost. White clouds of breath billow from her mouth with every exhale that looking like smoke trials, and the prickling of gooseflesh up her arms when she goes out in only her sleeveless tunic. It's after a week of compulsively rubbing her hands up and down her arms multiple times a day that Sakura gives in, and goes back to the shop where she bought her ninja gear. It's a simple matter to find long sleeved shirts with high collars and longer pants in black and dark green. She charms the shopkeeper again, and picks up a few sealing scrolls while she's at it. Her efforts in the garden are starting to sprout, she still has to buy vegetables from the market but it's starting to feel like her efforts are paying off. So she splurges a little on the scrolls, gets a food grade one, as well as one for weapons.

She's sees the jounin on occasion, senbon alway stuck between his teeth or flipping through his fingers. Sees him running on the rooftops, sprawled out on the log in the abandoned training ground, in the Hokage Tower the day her Academy class is taken on a tour. The first time she goes outside to start her morning training and finds him poking at the small cabbages starting to grow in one of the plots, she freezes. Then she throws a senbon at his head. He catches it without even looking up, and starts to flip it through his fingers.

"What are these?" He pokes at a baby cabbage again, with such a look of curiosity on his face.

"Cabbages." She answers dryly.

"Cabbages?" His eyebrows shoot up under his bandana and he pokes at it again.

"Yes, and if you could stop poking at it, I can pick it for lunch." It's one of the more mature of the lot, and Sakura thinks it's about time to test the first of her gardening efforts.

"Lunch?"

"Are you going to keep repeating everything I say?" It's her turn to raise an eyebrow, "Yes. Lunch, you know that thing you eat in the middle of the day, when your stomach starts to growl at you."

"I know what lunch is!" He's still poking at the cabbage.

Sakura sighs and moves forward, reaching around his curious fingers to cut the base of the cabbage near the earth, adding it to the small head of broccoli and a the bunch of spring onions in the shallow basket she'd set down on the wall of the plot. "Well, come on then." She says as she heads back towards the house. "And take you shoes off!" She's spent too many long evenings in the garden that have left her covered in mud from head to toe to tolerate anyone who thinks they can muddy her floors. 'It's far too much work to clean it up, when you can just leave your shoes and stuff outside.' By the mumblings she hears behind her, the jounin is following her orders, even if his feet make no sound on the floorboards she knows he's only a few paces behind her.

She sets the vegetables in the sink and runs the water while she puts the basket back in its place by the door. After rinsing them thoroughly, Sakura sets them on a large wooden board and pick out two a knives: one that's about the size of a kunai, the other more like a tanto but with a squared end instead of a point. With well practiced motions she separates the outer leaves of the cabbage and sets them aside; shreds the inner core and discards the woody stem; separates the broccoli down into florets and cuts the two inches of stem closest to the head into comparably sized pieces; the springs onions she cuts the root base off and slices on the diagonal. As each task is done, the prepared vegetables are tossed into small bowls that line the back of the bench. Painfully aware of the jounin standing somewhat stiffly against the wall, Sakura washes and dries the knives, setting them back into a rack. The board is wiped down with a damp cloth, and then she retrieves the things she needs for the next steps.

Ginger, ground pork, a small chilli, soy sauce and a small box of panko soon share bench space with a large bowl, a semi circular knife and a pot of water set over the heat. The ginger and chilli are swiftly chopped down so finely they're almost a paste, and join the pork and panko crumbs along with a generous slurp of soy in the bowl. With sure hands Sakura kneads the ingredients until they combine and smooth out. By now the water in pot is bubbling gently, and after rinsing the raw meat of her hands, Sakura quickly blanches the broccoli and cabbage, barely letting the latter touch the water before scooping it out. The broccoli she sets aside, but the cabbage leaves she lays out on the board and, while they are still hot and pliable, fills them with the meat and rolls them into little parcels.

Soon the board is filled with little, pale green, cylinders and Sakura is rinsing her hands again. The parcels are laid into a steam basket which is them placed atop the pot of boiling water. A glance at the clock confirms the time, and then she's putting the dishes in the sink and running it full of soap and hot water. It takes barely ten minutes to wash the board, knife and bowl, and she leaves them in the draining rack to dry off. Taking the lid off the steamer, she pokes the tip of senbon into one of the parcels and touches her finger to the tip. 'Burning hot, they should be cooked then.' The parcels are laid out on a plate, the cabbage is retrieved and drizzled with a sesame dressing she'd made earlier that week. Cooking complete, she turns to the jounin.

"Take those," she nods to the two bowls, and picks up the plate in one hand and two small plates and chopsticks with the other. "The table's through this way." She walks off again, relatively confident he'll follow her out of curiosity if nothing else.

That's how she ends up eating lunch with a jounin. A jounin who is failing to hide his utter ignorance of what food actually is and how to make it.


Genma didn't know this was a thing. Okay, he knew that food came from places, like plants and shit. 'But this is, this has to be some kind of clan secret jutsu.' He thinks as he stuffs his face with food the kid had made. "I didn't know food could taste like this." He muttered.

"What have you been eating?" There was mild alarm in the kid's voice.

"Um… Ration packs, mostly." Genma mumbled into his bowl, feeling strangely sheepish.

The silence was biting. "Ration packs. Mostly." There was so much skepticism loaded into that one word it was almost a tangible thing. "Never actual food? You are going to die an early and painful death, jounin-san."

"I haven't died yet." Genma grumbled, "And it's Genma, Shiranui Genma."

"Then, Shiranui-san, it's a wonder you haven't been hospitalised with malnutrition yet. Rat packs aren't meant to be your only source of food."

Genma cleared his throat, feeling sheepish again, and stuffed another mouthful of cabbage in as he avoided all eye contact with the maybe genin lecturing him about his eating habits of all things. 'Doesn't she know I'm a toku-jou, I could kill her with my little finger, blindfolded.' He whined in his head, 'Am I really that un-intimidating? Where did I go wrong?' He lamented, refilling his bowl for the third time.

The kid sighed, and refilled her plate before pushing the serving platters toward Genma. "Go on." She said, "And my name's Sakura. Haruno Sakura."

"Nice to meetcha, Haruno-chan."

"Don't-" Sakura chokes, "Don't call me 'Haruno'. Sakura is fine."

"Sakura-kun, then?" The jounin, Shiranui Genma, tilts his head at her, and there is a light of awareness in his eyes.

"That's fine." She mumbles. This house in unfamiliar enough that she can pretend, but every time the teachers at the Academy call out 'Haruno-kun?' or one of her classmates, the curl of ice in her stomach grows. Hearing that name, in this house, in the only place she has where she can leave those reminders behind, even if only a little? 'No.'