Chapter 6

Neji and Mika

Part 1

"Are you nervous for your first day, love?"

"No," Neji answered picking up his backpack off the dining room table and swinging it over his shoulder. "Why would I be?"

"Because it's a new school, with new people and that's scary," Hiyeri smiled at her son reassuringly.

"You act like I'll be all by myself. I have classes with every one of my friends and Hinata's in my homeroom."

"Neji, I'm your mother, I'm supposed to worry about you. You're growing up so fast, it feels like just yesterday I was changing your diaper. You're even taller than me now!" Her voice cracked as the first tears began to fall.

"Mom, don't cry. It's not a big deal, it's just the first day of school."

"Your father would be so proud of you!" she sobbed.

Neji rolled his eyes, this happened on every first day he's ever had. His friends weren't even here yet to pick him up, and he was already feeling the embarrassment.

"Itachi's picking you up?" she asked while wiping her eyes of any tears.

Neji nodded.

"Oh God, he's a senior this year isn't he?"

"Yeah."

She started crying again, "why are you boys growing up so fast!? I remember when Itachi was pushing you and Sasuke off of the playground equipment and harassing you about girls."

"He still does that…not the playground thing, but the other thing."

She laughed through her tears. "That's what older brothers are supposed to do."

There was a car horn coming from outside. Neji looked to the living room and through the window he could see Itachi, Sasuke and Naruto in the car parked in his driveway. "I'm leaving."

Hiyeri enveloped Neji in a hug, and kissed his cheek, "I love you. Have a wonderful first day."

"Mom stop it," he complained all while pushing her off him.

"Okay, okay." Hiyeri followed Neji to the door, waved at Itachi and watched from the porch as they drove off.

"Did she cry again?" Sasuke asked, all while pushing Itachi's had away from the radio.

"Of course."

"My mom and dad both cried!" Naruto piped in. "It was so embarrassing! Jiraiya came over this morning too, to wish me luck—Sasuke what's taking so damn long with the music!?"

"Shut up, Naruto!" Sasuke shuffled through the pile of CDs in his lap to find the right one. As soon as he had found the one he was looking for, Itachi reached across the council and pushed the pile off Sasuke's lap and onto the floor. "Itachi, knock it off! You promised we could have the stereo this morning, stop being difficult!"

"Sorry Sasuke, maybe next time."

"Fuck off. We get stereo rights."

"Fine fine…none of that screamo crap though."

"Too bad, that's what we're playing." Sasuke opened the case of Pierce the Veil's Collide with the Sky and skipped right to "King for a Day."

The first half of their first day of freshman year was a breeze. They sat through all the presentations of the school rules like good kids, listened to every word the teachers had to tell them, then parted ways to find their first class after lunch.

Neji found his History class easily, it was in the same room and taught by the same teacher as his homeroom. For this hour he sat in the back, up against the wall, where his teacher couldn't see him if he decided that he'd had enough History for the day and wanted to draw in his sketch pad.

The bell rang for class to begin, and like every teacher was required to do on the first day, Kurenai Sensei introduced herself, wrote her name on the board and told the class a little about herself. There was a knock at the door that interrupted what Kurenai was saying. She opened the door and a girl ducked her way in. She bowed to the teacher and apologized for being so late.

"Mika, it's nice to have you again this year. Let's not get into a bad start already this year. You want to graduate, remember?"

"Yes, I'm so sorry Kurnai Sensei, it won't happen again."

Neji watched this girl gracefully walk down the aisle and find her seat to the right, diagonal from where he was sitting. She was the prettiest girl he'd ever seen. Her long, auburn hair was curled and cascading around her shoulders and down to her waist. She wore a white summer dress, with corked heeled sandals. His eyes traveled over her entire body. Her long, creamy legs were the perfect shape and fit her body perfectly. Her shoulders sloped slightly as she reached into her bag to pull out a pencil and the strap of her dress fell to reveal her lacy, pink bra strap. He gulped.

When she sat back up, their eyes met, and she noticed him staring at her. She smiled at him and whispered, "I'm Mika."

"Neji," he whispered back. That was their first encounter.

As the days went on, he started seeing her in the halls with her friends. He found out that she was a senior and that she failed a few of her classes throughout her high school career and needed to retake them in order to graduate. That would explain why she was a senior in a freshman history class, Neji thought to himself.

To say he had a crush on this girl would have been an understatement. His friends noticed how he stared after her in the halls when she would walk by. "She's out of your league," Sasuke said.

"She's too old for you," Shikamaru would say.

"I think she's hot," always came from Naruto, which would earn him a glare from Neji and a sad look from Hinata.

Lee always encouraged, "I think you should go for it. Ask her out, the worst that she can say is no, and you never know, maybe she's in love with you too."

"I'm not in love with her."

"Then stop staring at her like a horn dog," Sakura rolled her eyes, "Its degrading."

"How is it degrading!?" Neji asked, slightly offended.

"It's not. Sakura just thinks she's a feminist," Sasuke answered.

"It's rude to stare after a girl while she walks away!"

Sasuke looked up from his phone to stare the pinkette down, "You're telling me that if I checked out your ass, you'd be mad!?"

Sakura's eyes widened. She stumbled over her words, pink tinting her cheeks, "N-no…I'm saying that if you don't have any intention to go after her, then it's rude to make her think that there's a chance just because you look her up and down."

Sasuke didn't say a word, he was too busy trying to hide the blush that crept up to his cheeks after basically admitting that he checks out Sakura.

"What makes you think Neji's not going to go after her?" Hinata asked, quietly.

"Because Neji's a prude," Naruto answered, "he doesn't do shit. He's gonna be a virgin forever."

"So are you, idiot," Sasuke insulted his best friend.

"Do you wanna go!?" Naruto jumped up and got in his face.

"Yeah, I do, right now!" Sasuke fired back.

"Okay, okay, that's enough," Sakura pulled both boys back by the collars of their shirts and ridiculed them both on why they shouldn't fight in the school hallways.

The first History project of the year, was a partner assignment. Kurenai Sensei assigned the partner at random by pulling names out of a hat. Luck must have been on his side, because the first two names pulled out were his own, and Mika's. She looked back at him and grinned. He had to fight with himself to keep his face from heating up.

"So Neji," Mika said after class was over, "When do you wanna work on our project? I'm free pretty much every day after school, and at lunch. Do you have a study hall? I could probably ditch a few classes to work with you, if you want."

Neji shrugged, "After school works."

"Perfect! You can just come home with me then." Before he could argue, she was already on her way out of the classroom to meet up with her friends. She said something to one of them and ran back in the room. "Wait for me by the west entrance after school, okay?"

Neji nodded and he was alone again.

When the final bell of the day rang, Neji found Mika waiting for him by the west entrance, just like where she said she'd be. When they arrived at her house, neither one of her parents were home, which made him a little uncomfortable considering he hardly knew this girl. She brought him up to her room and she shuffled through a stack of papers on her desk until she pulled out a notebook.

"Let's brainstorm," she said, "what can we do that'll work for this project. What are you good at?"

"I don't know," Neji shrugged, then took a seat on her bed where she gestured for him to sit.

"Well, aren't you like, really smart?" she asked. "My friends say they have classes with you, so you must be advanced."

"I guess."

"I always see you drawing in a sketchbook during class, so you must be good at that too, right?"

"I mostly paint," he answered.

"That's cool," she smiled, kicking off her heels. "I'm gonna change."

Neji got up to leave her room so she could do so, but before he could do that, she was already standing in her bra and underwear. Her jeans and t-shirt lying forgotten in the corner of her room. He looked away, embarrassed. The only girls he'd ever seen so undressed before was in pictures that Naruto had showed him, or at the pool during the summer.

He tried to look away, but he couldn't. She was just, so beautiful to him, and he didn't know when he'd get a chance like this again. She went on and on about what they could do for their project, while he watched the subtle movements of her body as she crossed her room repeatedly to find her comfy clothes. She found her leggings and bent over to pick them up off the floor. Neji's head almost exploded. Her lacy undergarments accentuated her body perfectly…he needed to draw this.

He was taken out of his fantasies when she said, "Sorry about that, we can get back to all seriousness now."

"O-okay," he forced out.

About half way through the start of their project, Neji finally got his mind un-fogged from images of the hot senior girl in front of him in her underwear. He was sketching out an outline of a possible visual aid they could use when she asked, "So how long have you and Hinata been dating?"

"What?" he asked startled, "Hinata's my cousin."

She laughed, "Oh. Now I'm embarrassed. I figured that since you and Hinata were together you wouldn't mind if I walked around in my underwear…I figured that it wasn't anything you haven't seen before, but you're related so…"

"Don't be embarrassed," he tried to reason, "its fine."

"Good." She went back to researching. "You're used to it though, right?"

Neji was confused by her words, "What do you mean?"

"You've had a girlfriend before right?"

"In middle school, that doesn't count though."

"Sure it does…depending on how far you go, it counts."

Neji didn't answer her. He liked Mika, but it didn't change the fact that he didn't know her, and he didn't want to sound like a loser in front of the hot senior he fancied by admitting that he was still a virgin.

"So?" she questioned, "how far did you go with your middle school girlfriends?"

Neji debated with himself if he should lie to seem cooler, or just tell the truth. He settled on the truth. "Just kissing mostly."

"So you're still a-"

"Yeah."

"That's surprising to me. You're a pretty attractive guy, and you don't seem to be unconfident at all. Why the wait?"

"They weren't anybody I wanted to do it with."

"That makes sense," she smiled up at him, "it's better to do it with someone you love, anyways."

They finished their project, and when they presented it to their class, Kurenai Sensei told them that it was the best she'd ever seen in all her years of teaching. Mika was ecstatic because it made her realize that she could pass this class. It was nothing new for Neji, he was used to being the best.

A few weeks past, and in that time, Neji and Mika had been talking a lot. They texted each other every night until one of them fell asleep. Neji couldn't stop thinking about her. His friends began to get annoyed with his constant interactions with her, because she was literally all he talked about. Anything they said he would have some stupid story about how it pertained to Mika. Sasuke and Naruto almost beat him. Lee thought it was adorable. Shikamaru didn't care.

Neji spent every history class period sketching the beautiful girl that sat diagonally from him. Each page was filled with something different; her profile, the back of her head, her legs…he memorized every detail about her, and could sketch her entire body just from memory, including the time he saw her in just her underwear.

During a test at the end of the month, Neji stuck his sketchbook under his desk and forgot about it. He ended up leaving it behind. Mika had been struggling with a lot of the test questions and stayed behind after the bell to finish. After handing in her test, she noticed the yellow booklet sitting under Neji's desk and immediately recognized it. She removed it from the book holder under the desk and went to find him. She wandered the halls while she tried to remember exactly what class he had after history, and even after texting him with no reply, she decided on just waiting until after the bell to return it to him.

She took a seat in her economy class, and put the sketchbook off to the side. About ten minutes into class, her brain couldn't take any more talk of numbers. She needed something else to do. She pulled Neji's sketchbook out of her book bag and began to page through it. Her eyes widened at the first sketch she flipped through. She had no idea Neji was so talented, everything on the page was meticulous. The detail in the hand she was looking at inspired her, just as the leg did on the next page, and the eyes one the page after that. As she made her way deeper into the book, she began to realize its familiarity. These pictures were all of her.

Flipping back to the pages she had skipped over in the beginning, she gasped to herself. It was a perfect drawing of her backside in nothing but her bra and underwear. Anybody else would think that finding an entire sketchbook dedicated to them by someone who was basically a stranger would have been creepy, but Mika thought it to be flattering. She loved how he captured her form, and how exact each drawing was to the real thing. She turned to the last sketch in the pad and smiled at the drawing of her profile. Her heart raced, and in the moment she realized that she maybe in love with the young freshman.

The final bell rang and Mika found Neji at his locker, gathering his backpack. She noticed his friends approaching him, and raced to get there first. "Hey," she smiled at him.

"Hi Mika," he smiled back.

She looked up to see that his friends had noticed them talking and they stopped their approach to give them some privacy. She glanced down at the book that was in her hands and back up to Neji. "You left this in history." She held the book out in front of her for him to take, but he didn't move. He stared at her, fear evident in his eyes. "I looked through it…I probably should have asked first, but I did it. Sorry."

"You looked at all of it?"

She nodded, and he finally took it from her.

"Neji, do you like me?" she asked.

"I…um…" his grip on the sketchbook tightened as he fought with himself on how he should answer her. "Yeah, I do," he mumbled, obviously embarrassed.

She smiled shyly. "You're really talented. I liked you're drawings a lot."

He relaxed a little when he realized that she wasn't upset with him for drawing her so much. "Thanks."

"Looking at how you draw me, it made me realize something."

Neji waited for her to continue.

"It made me realize that I like you too." She met his gaze, with a blush dusting her cheeks.

He stared at her, waiting for her to tell him that she was kidding. There's no way a senior, this hot and this amazing liked him, an emo fifteen year old that did nothing but paint and draw, back.

"Do you want to be my boyfriend, Neji?"

He did. He really, really did. But he kept his mouth shut, still waiting for her to tell him that she was creeped out by his infatuation with her. Those words never came.

"Do you Neji?" she asked again.

He nodded slowly, "yeah."

She smiled, big and bright. Excitement obvious in her gaze. Before anything else could happen, Mika got up on her toes, wrapped her arms around Neji's neck and kissed him gently. He kissed her back, and wrapped his arms around her dainty waist. When she pulled away, he went in to kiss her again, and she graciously accepted his lips on hers. This was the best first kiss Mika had ever had, and she's had a lot.

When they were finally able to pull themselves away from each other, she told him that they would be hanging out this weekend and going on a real date. They walked out of the building with their fingers laced together for all to see, but she needed to pull away so that Neji could get in Itachi's car with Sasuke and Naruto. She kissed him again, quickly, and said that she'd see him tomorrow.

Neji turned around to see his friends staring at him, all with stupid grins plastered across their face.

"Ooooh!" Naruto teased.

"Took you long enough…" Shikamaru sighed.

Hinata and Sakura both smiled sweetly at him, but didn't say anything.

Sasuke raised his eyebrow and said, "I can't fucking wait to tell everyone about this."

"S-shut up, it's no big deal."

"Neji, you just got kissed! This is a big deal!" Lee shouted.

"It's not like I've never kissed anyone before," Neji shrugged.

"But this is a senior!" Naruto exclaimed. "Freshman boys don't get senior girls, especially one's like us, this is a miracle!"

In the car on the way to Neji's house, Itachi finally won the argument about who gets to pick what music plays over the stereo, when Sasuke announced, "Neji's got a girlfriend." To which Itachi immediately shut off the mainstream pop music that blared throughout the car.

"What!?" Itachi asked excitedly, "Who?"

"A senior," Naruto teased.

"Really?" Itachi asked, concern obvious in eyes.

"Yup," Sasuke answered for his friend, "she's hot too."

"Who is it? Maybe I know them."

"Mika Toya."

Itachi's concern immediately turned to relief at the mention of her name. "Mika's cool. I didn't know you knew each other."

"Oh they know each other," Naruto teased again, "you should have seen the way he was kissing her!"

Neji ignored his friends comment and replied to Sasuke's older brother, "We have history together. That's how we met."

"Is that one of the classes she failed?"

Neji nodded, "yeah."

"I bet you're pretty damn ecstatic that she failed that class and had to retake it," said Sasuke. "Or else you wouldn't be making out with her in the parking lot."

"We weren't making out."

Itachi grinned and added, "You will be soon."

A/N: Let me know what you think of Mika so far! I think the background chapters about Mika and Neji's relationship will be three parts long, and then I'll get back to the real story. I think I'll also have a few background chapters about Tenten and her ex (who currently doesn't have a name) as well. Don't forget to review! Check out my other fics as well!