A/N: I'm am so very, very sorry for not updating. I was kind of even thinking of dropping it, but I reread it, and rethought my entire plot, so the story shall go on! Thanks for those who still want to read this!
Disclaimer: I still don't own Naruto!
Chapter 4: True Feelings
Miharu slammed the door of her home, tossing off her ninja sandals onto the floor.
"Pick those up!" Her brother, Tora snapped. "Mother will get angry."
Miharu glared at her brother and walked off into her room. She sat on her bed, and sighed.
She had tried to hide what had happened. She had it written in a book in her mind and locked it with a key.
But he easily saw through it and was flipping the pages of her mind.
Miharu fell back against the sheets of her bed. She rolled over and pressed her face into the nearest pillow.
He would find out her secret, and expose it to the world.
And she would be disowned, and left for nothing in the forest somewhere, where she would die.
"What do you mean, Neji?" Tenten questioned his odd statement.
"Nothing." He muttered. For now, it seemed best not to explain. It seemed wrong. "Forget I ever said it."
He began to walk into the thick of the forest, leaving his two teammates behind.
"Where are you going?" Tenten called, but Neji ignored her and continued out of their sight.
He walked until he was alone, far from any persons nearby.
Sighing, he leaned against a tree. "What is that girl hiding?"
He hated how interested he was. He hated how she intrigued him.
But he accepted it. He knew that there was some secret in her that was important, he just didn't know if it was good or bad.
Clearly, when she was asked of the incident, she was scared. She'd hoped no one would ask. And when killing her teammate was mentioned, she remained silent, but her eyes protested against that.
He could clearly see that there was no hint of violence in her eyes. They looked like Hinata's, but at the same time they looked completely different.
Miharu's eyes were innocent, like Hinata's, but strong and fierce. When she had snapped at him, she looked directly into his eyes, with a fiery passion. And, he noted, that she always looked people in the eyes when she spoke, unlike many.
Although looking straight at a person's eyes when speaking is a talent, it is also a flaw.
That is what led him to know, to see, to read her for what she truly is.
And at the moment, to him, she was a liar.
"Mi-chan." Miharu heard her brother's voice as he shook her awake. "Wake up, it's time for dinner."
She hadn't noticed that she'd fallen asleep. "Oh, really?" She muttered to her brother.
"Come on, Mother will get angry." Tora said once again before exiting the room.
Mother will get angry. Those words were the most common words she heard from her brother.
Ever since that incident…
No!Miharu shook her head. She mustn't think about that. She must forget it completely, she must rid it from her mind.
She sauntered out of her room to the dinner table, where her brother and mother sat looking expectantly at her.
"Hello, mother." Miharu said quietly, taking her seat in the wooden chair next to her brother.
"Miharu." Her mother nodded and then began to eat.
"How was your new team?" Tora asked her, to make the situation less awkward.
"It was alright. I was placed with Gai-sensei's team for the time being."
"Ah, Maito Gai?" Tora recalled. "Is that the team with the boy who can't use anything but taijutsu?"
Miharu nodded, picking at her food.
"The Hyuga boy is there too, is he not?"
Miharu froze for a second before nodding. Her brother noticed and switched the topic.
"Well, at least you have been put into a new team. That way, you can quickly become a great ninja like mother or father."
"Or you." Their mother, Kaede, added, obviously quite proud of her son. She looked upon her son, her golden eyes sparkling with admiration of him.
She glanced quickly at her daughter, and the twinkle was gone, and nothing was there in her eyes, as if she thought nothing of her daughter.
Miharu averted the gaze, she knew well enough that if she looked into her mother's eyes, she wouldn't find anything. Not even disappointment.
Instead, she looked to her brother, studying his face as he ate. He looked like her, she knew that, but he had a certain confidence to himself that made him look grand, like her mother.
Her brother was great. He was kind, happy, and a wonderful shinobi. Things that Miharu noted were exactly opposite herself.
She was the outlier. In a family of strong ninja, she brought them down. If she hadn't looked so much like her parents, she would have thought she was adopted.
She hated it.
She hated being a ninja. She hated being in a family of ninja. But, most of all, she hated ninjas.
Including herself.
"What are you staring at?" Miharu's mother questioned, noticing her daughter's spacey behavior.
"Nothing. I'm finished. I'll go…train." Miharu lied. She briskly grabbed her shoes and fled out the door.
She walked behind the house, on the outskirts of the village, and entered the small, unused shed of her family.
It was an old, rundown shed, but more than enough of a hideout from her family.
Who wanted to go inside an ugly little shed?
Miharu went over to the small desk she had placed inside and opened a drawer. Papers flew out of the overstuffed desk.
She found a blank piece of paper and took a box of colored pencils off of a shelf.
There she found solace in her secret love of art.
A/N: I liked how this chapter was going, and then my creativity died. Ha-ha. Anyways, I'll try to update more, for those of you who read this, but I make no promises. I will be posting a few new stories that I've written in my absence of website. xP