"There," Natsu said, adjusting the sash around my stomach. "Now look."

I opened my eyes, staring at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I couldn't help but make a face at the brown kimono that Natsu all but forced me to wear. I didn't see the intricately stenciled black flowers circling my elbows and my waist, or feel the expensive material it was made from. All I could think was: How am I supposed to spar in this?

Yesterday, Natsu decided that my usual dark tank top and shorts look wasn't good enough for the Academy, and took it upon herself to find something she thought was 'more appropriate' for me to wear. She wouldn't even let me see it until I closed my eyes and promised to hold any judgement until I saw how I looked in the mirror.

I avoided looking at Natsu's reflection above mine. Even without looking, I could tell that she was smiling, happy that she could do this with one of us. I knew that if she saw what I was thinking, she would be let down. I tried to reconsider the kimono, pulling experimentally at the baggy sleeves. I won't be able to move as fast as before, but I can hide a kunai in here-

"Not everything has to be about making you a better shinobi, Yasu," Natsu said teasingly, her voice just a little too light, masking the disappointment she felt. I jerked my eyes up guiltily and resisted the urge to grimace when I saw that her smile was gone.

I knew that, just like I knew that I should be grateful to Natsu, or rather, I should be honored to receive a gift like this to properly represent the clan's image at the Academy. I frowned slightly as I looked at myself again and all my sarcastic thoughts vanished. Practically, I couldn't see the kimono, as pretty as it was, staying this clean once we started the physical side of the Academy. Even less once my future class was split up into sparring partners. I could already imagine the patched holes and dirt stains that wouldn't wash out.

I lowered my eyes to the sink. "No," I quietly gave her my verdict, but I didn't wait for a response. I didn't want to see her expression. I jumped off the stool that Natsu had commandeered from the kitchen so I could fully see myself, and ran out of the room without another word.

I stopped in my room just long enough to quickly take off the kimono and lay it as neatly as I could manage on my bed. Then I darted out and into Neji's room. I may have let her down, but I knew Natsu would come looking for me, and my room would be the first place she checked. I already knew that nothing in my closet would be good enough for her, and I didn't want to disappoint her more than I already had.

Even though Neji kept his door cautiously half-open most of the time, it was the only room in the house that Natsu wouldn't dare go into. He paused in the middle of tying a bandage around his forehead. He glanced briefly at me, only to immediately turn to face the wall when realized that I was only wearing only underclothes. I raided his closet. He didn't question what I was doing or why I needed the protection of his room, but maybe he just didn't want to be involved.

He was already full dressed, wearing a mini-version of what he would wear when he was on Team Guy, minus the jacket. Looking through his stuff I quickly noticed that, unfortunately, the only difference between his closet and mine was that his was shades lighter.

I sighed loudly to let Neji know that I wasn't at all impressed by what I saw, but he ignored me. He was pretending to be adjusting the bandages, even though they were perfectly tied. I stared hard at his back for a few more seconds before I turned back to the closet and settled with a cream shirt and dark pants. After digging around a bit more, I even found a dark sleeveless jacket that, by the dust that came off when I shook it, I was sure he didn't know he had.

"Are you done?" He asked, sounding just mildly exasperated.

You're not fooling anybody, I thought, resisting the urge to snicker. "Yes, Neji," I said graciously. "You can turn around."

Neji shot me a look that said that I was more insane than he already thought I was if I thought that he had faced the wall for my benefit. I couldn't hold back a smile as he walked out of the room with his head held high.

He could pretend to be 'above it all' all he wanted, but the facts were that he not only never questioned why I was wearing his clothes, but he also left me unsupervised in his room. His actions said more than his words ever could.


Natsu insisted on not only walking us all the way to the Academy, but also on making small, boxed lunches for us to take with us, though when she tried to give Neji his, he'd merely looked at it, then her in disdain and walked away.

I glanced down thoughtfully at my own lunchbox, and the white bow carefully tied around it, making it easier to carry. At the same time, I tried hard to ignore the nervousness I felt growing with each step away from the compound. Other than for Father's funeral, I had never gone outside of the compound, and even then, I was surrounded by members of the clan and hadn't paid any attention to my surroundings. Dark hair and white eyes were all I knew. It was familiar. It was safe. Despite knowing that the Hyuga were as much a part of the village as every other clan, I couldn't help but feel like a tourist visiting a foreign land for the first time. Everything was so unfamiliar and different from everything I knew that I couldn't help but feel intimidated, and even a little scared.

I could only look up again when I started to hear the low buzz of conversation, and realized that we were finally away from the outskirts of the village, where the compound was, along with a few of the other big clans. Though I couldn't see any other clan past the dense ring of trees separating us from everyone else.

Identical looking rundown apartment buildings surrounded us. My eyes were drawn to copper curls of a woman leaving an apartment building to our left, but I quickly averted my gaze. I felt more uneasy than before. I knew that hair like that was common and even considered normal, but I still couldn't shake the feeling. I glanced to my right when I heard laughter, and saw a boy a few years older than me walking with a girl. He gestured wildly with his arms, and she laughed again. His eyes were bright green. Dislike clung to my lungs like thick, black tar, making it hard for me to breathe properly. I focused on my feet and refused to look up again as the sounds became louder.

I felt like I had been thrown in the deep end of a pool without a life jacket. I was overwhelmed. The eyes were too colorful; the hair was off. All the buildings looked haphazardly placed when compared to the orderliness of the clan houses. It was all so unorganized and I was drowning in all the noise and-

My head jerked up when I felt a hand on my shoulder, and stared up at Natsu with wide, surprised eyes. I realized I had stopped walking when I looked past her and saw Neji several feet away. Even though he stopped, he kept his back to us. Natsu's smile was knowing, and her eyes reassuring. 'It's okay' she mouthed, making sure that we wouldn't be overheard by anyone around us.

Natsu squeezed my shoulder as the panicky feeling in my chest started to fade, and I eventually managed to breathe out slowly, calming down. I still felt nervous, but being reminded that I wasn't as alone as I felt smothered the worst of it.

Once she saw that I was okay, Natsu's hand slid away and she looked past me. I followed her gaze to Neji. For a second I thought that everything wasn't getting to him like it had gotten to me—until I saw how deeply his hands were jammed into his pockets and how unnaturally straight his back was, like his shoulders were a shield between him and the rest of the world. He was affected by it by it as much as I was, he was just better at hiding it.

She sighed. I froze as Natsu started towards him. She stopped directly behind him, and I knew what she was going to do. I didn't know what I should do. I wanted it to work. I wanted Natsu to comfort him like she comforted me. And while I didn't expect Neji to turn around and dramatically throw himself into her arms, instantly repairing their relationship, I wanted him to just let her. At the same time, I knew Neji, and I wanted to warn Natsu against trying to touch him because I didn't want her to be hurt by whatever he did or said.

Natsu stretched her hand out but stopped with her fingers hovering over his shoulder. Then the choice was taken out of both of our hands, because Neji noticed her right before she could touch him. He spun, quickly backing away from her hand. "Don't touch me!" His voice was cold and angry, his eyes narrowed into slits. Natsu flinched, jerking her hand back like he'd burned her.

A few heads turned our way, attracted by the scene we were making, but they looked away just as quickly, deliberately staring away from us as if they would somehow be punished for discovering that the Hyuga could show emotions. Any other time I might have found the way an older man to my right faced the wall funny. He studiously inspected the paint as if it might peel off and fly away any second, but instead I could only manage a grimace. Everything outside of the three of us might as well not have existed.

This isn't what I wanted. I took a small step forward, but there was nothing I could do to fix this. Neji had made the way he felt about her perfectly clear, and no amount of apologizing for him could change that. He hammered the final nail in the coffin of their relationship, and then set it on fire.

Natsu turned away without a word, busying herself with smoothing down the nonexistent wrinkles on her kimono. She didn't look at anything for a few long seconds, and then when she did finally look up, her expression was schooled into impassiveness. She moved past Neji without looking at him, but she also didn't look back me.

Neji crossed his arms, his head turned away from her. I frowned deeply at her back. I walked forward to stand next to Neji and was about to write on his shoulder and tell him that he should've given her a chance, but it was too late for that. I dropped my hand. He glanced at me, but I refused to meet his gaze and only jogged to catch up with Natsu.

After that, I did my best to ignore Neji.


Natsu stayed at the Academy only long enough for the entrance ceremony to start and then she quietly excused herself. I lost sight of her as the Hokage started to speak. He was standing at the very front of the crowd of this year's students with a half-circle of teachers standing behind him. Neji paid little attention to the Hokage. Instead, he looked around for any other notable clan kids worth his attention, or not-so-discreetly snuck glances at me. I kept my eyes on the Hokage as he spoke about the Will of Fire and our duty to the village, all the while refusing to so much as look in Neji's direction. I had never deliberately ignored him like this before and he clearly didn't like it.

Ignoring him turned out to have multiple purposes. Not only did it get under his skin, but it also stopped me from thinking too much about all the different hair and eye colors around me.

Once the Hokage finished his speech and the applause died down, the line of teachers behind him stepped forward. Each teacher called up a group of kids, and once they were all gathered in front of him or her, they were led inside the building. We were paired with the second to last teacher, who immediately told us to call her Rui-sensei.

"Alright everyone!" Rui-sensei clapped to get everyone's attention as the last kid joined our group, a boy with brown hair who did a dramatic double take at me and Neji. I pretended not to notice as Neji leveled him with the iciest of stares until he looked away uncomfortably.

"Follow me!"


This is a waste of time.

It was only minutes into our first class and Neji was already done with the Academy. I fought off a traitorous smile and carefully moved my arm as far away from him as I could, keeping my expression neutral. Rui-sensei was in the middle of writing out the classroom rules on the chalkboard, and I listened to her explain them in detail as if he wasn't sitting right next to me.

Neji huffed and sat back in his chair, crossing his arms. I managed to diligently listen for another thirty seconds as she told us the appropriate time to ask to go to the bathroom before I couldn't do it anymore. Even though I didn't completely agree with Neji's statement, I could admit that I was already bored. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, resisting the sudden, strong urge to look longingly out the nearest window.

The way Rui-sensei spoke to us didn't help to make me anymore interested either. She talked down to us, and I couldn't help but dislike her for it. Some part of me knew that she was treating us exactly as we were. To her, we were little kids, barley even shinobi-in-training, but after spending my whole life in a clan that had never made me feel like I was six as much as I did now, it was just condescending. Looking around at all the other kids hanging onto Rui-sensei's every word made me sink down in my chair a little. I felt like even more of an outsider.

I snuck a quick glance at Neji, only to blink when I saw that he was leaning forward, staring intensely down at something below us. I tried not to look like I was doing it on purpose as I followed his gaze down to the white and red fan three rows down. An Uchiha. Her back was as straight as a Hyūga's—and made me extremely aware of my own poor posture—and she was wearing their trademark dark, high-collared shirt. I studied her curiously for a few more seconds, but there wasn't much to see from the back. I looked back at Neji and saw that he was still staring. I was about to tease him for looking at her for so long when I abruptly remembered that I was ignoring him. I swallowed the words and quickly looked away, pretending to suddenly find an interest in the lunchboxes stacked neatly on the floor next to my foot when he glanced at me.

By lunch, Neji was in a bad mood. He sullenly followed me outside, and anyone who came within feet of him received a swift glare that sent them in the opposite direction. I still didn't look at him as I sat down underneath the shade of the building in a relatively empty corner of the playground. There were a few groups of older kids scattered all around, but most were as far away from the chaos in the middle as they could get. Three or four kids our age were trying to climb to the top of a big tree in the center, while others were playing games with cardboard shuriken and kunai.

I was in the middle of silently eating a rice ball—Neji had begrudgingly taken his lunch box and settled with glaring me into submission—when I heard a sharp cry. My first thought was that someone had fallen out of the tree. It was bound to happen sooner or later, but instead I saw a boy with red triangle markings on his cheeks fall dramatically to his knees, holding a cardboard kunai against his stomach. He gave one last dramatic death cry to his murderer standing above him before he tipped over and went still. His killer roared in victory and yanked the kunai out of his body before running back into the furious battle.

I watched as another boy went down under a barrage of kunai and shuriken, howling and shuddering as he slowly died. It looked both confusing—I wasn't sure how they knew who was bad and who was good as they ran around—but also really fun. My half-eaten rice ball was practically forgotten as one of the boys held up a kunai and proclaimed victory once half of them were 'dead'. Everyone else still standing cheered loudly enough to receive dirty looks and glares from those around them.

As the dead started to get up again, I had two options. I could do what I imagined Neji was doing in his head and mentally scoff at the obvious waste of everyone's time and energy. Then I could pretentiously eat the rest of my rice ball and pretend not to be secretly watching them. Or, I could ignore the fact that I was a Hyūga for a few minutes and just try to tap into my inner kid and play with them.

Decision made, I put my lunchbox down and stood up. I managed to take a single determined step forward before fear strangled the little courage I had. The bottom of my shoes was glued to the dirt. Staring at them as they separated into sides, I saw everything I spent the morning trying not to think about. I didn't know how I possibly thought that I could join that chaos. They were pushing and shoving violently at each other, shouting and stabbing wildly with their weapons. How could anyone fight like that? There was a bigger chance they would hit themselves or their allies than an enemy. What made me think that they would even let me join them?

I frowned. I resisted the urge to look around. It suddenly felt like everyone was staring at me, watching me, judging me for my emotions, for not being a proper Hyuga. I hunched my shoulders and turned away from the battle, walking quickly back inside, away from all the imaginary eyes. I stopped in the hallway once the door closed behind me. There was only a single teacher around, but she turned down another hallway and disappeared out of sight. The lack of people made it easier to think clearly. I felt both frustrated and strangely disappointed. Way to not be a Hyūga.

I slid down against the wall and pulled my knees up to my chest. I was so sure about my decision to go play with them. How could I let my stupid fear get to me again? I leaned forward until my forehead touched my knees and squeezed my legs. I don't know what I would have done next if Neji didn't sit down next to me. I didn't even hear him come inside. He didn't speak and I didn't move my eyes away from the floor. I ignored the sound of him shifting next to me, only to feel something tapping against my knee seconds later. I would've ignored it too, but the tap only came again and again until his stubbornness won out over mine.

I lifted my head and was about to rival his worst glare with one of my own when I saw that he was holding my half-eaten rice ball with the tips of his fingers. I faltered, staring at it in shock. I moved my stare up to him, but he wasn't looking at me. In fact, he seemed to be doing everything possible not to meet my gaze. I looked back at the rice ball and slowly took it from him. Neji dropped his hand as if it he'd just let go of an explosive tag. He still wouldn't look at me. Even so, I smiled as I ate the rest of it.

Natsu was waiting for us at the end of the school day.

Neji spotted her first. We still weren't exactly on speaking terms, but our silence was companionable instead of frigid. He shoved his hands in his pockets and glared at the ground like it attacked him. "I apologize," he said stiffly once we were close enough to be heard. I whipped my head around to stare at him in shock, but his eyes were dark and unreadable. "For my behavior earlier," he forced the words out through his teeth.

Natsu only blinked down at him, her eyes wide. Neji turned away without waiting for a response, frowning at me. "Happy?"

I looked up at Natsu, and saw that even through her surprise she was looking at him with a new warmth in her eyes. "Yes," I grinned at him. "Yes I am."