Naruto's eyes widened when Hinata stepped into his sight.
Her hair was put up, one clip adoring the side like a colorful dot in the sea of her indigo hair. Her bangs were brushed to the sides a bit, exposing her forehead for once. It was a rare sight and he internalized as many details as he could.
She was wearing make up, that made her eyes bigger and her cheeks sweeter from redness. Even under the sparse light she sparkled but might be just his imagination.

The yukata she was wearing had the same lilac color of the flowers he had once seen on her windowsill and she was as lovely as those blossoms, which he could oddly remember very well.
So often had he heard people say how beautiful girls looked in traditional garments and this was the time he indeed started to believe it was true. She was returning his gaze shyly as he understood the matters of the world a little better and it made his head spin.

She was gorgeous but his body was malfunctioning to express it. So he just stood there, eyes large and face blushing while his friends watched them from afar.

It was hard for Hinata to maintain eye contact and she picked at the skin around her nails.
Behind him she could see Sakura and Ino throwing mischievous expressions at her direction as they each held a thumb up and it made her flush even more.

The girls had met to get ready for the summer festival today. Hinata had been excited not just because she had a boyfriend to go with this year but also because Sakura and Ino had suggested to dress up together.

She had never done that with anyone before, so she hadn't known how nice it felt to chat while looking for the right thing to wear or how the skin tickled when someone else did the make up for you.
They had talked much more about unnecessary things than actually getting ready but she remembered every little thing they said.

Their cheery and gleeful personalities reminded her a little of Naruto, just as the contentment of the atmosphere when they had sat in a circle and drank tee together.

Hinata was glad that she could share this kind of memories with them. Even when they had tugged at her bashful side when they promised to make her up so stunningly that Naruto wouldn't be able to say a word.
Since it seemed like their plan had worked, they grinned in success.

Hinata switched to eyeing the red gate they were standing under when Shikamaru came up from behind and interrupted the couple's staring. He said something that both didn't understand because their minds hadn't been in the here and now yet.

Luckily their inattention wasn't discovered as Naruto's friends joined them. With some of them Hinata was still unfamiliar with.
One friend introduced himself as Chouji, a boy with a bigger stature, who had arrived together with Shikamaru. Sasuke was already walking ahead when a dark haired boy named Sai casted Hinata a smile.

He stepped closer to her, saying that it was nice to finally meet her. Sai smiled softly but the longer she watched his face and the closer he got, the odder his facial expression became.

"Naruto told me a lot about you," he said, still smiling in his strangely awkward way and Hinata took little steps back.

"Dude, don't weird her out like that." Naruto had placed his hand on his friends face and pushed him further away, protectively getting closer to his girlfriend.

"I'm just being friendly." He stroked the place where Naruto had pushed him, looking at him in innocence and confusion.

"No, you're being a creep again."

The others already walked towards the venue when Naruto and his friend continued to discuss the proper ways of introducing themselves to people.
Hinata listened to their exchange for a while and started giggling. The thought of meeting Naruto's friends had made her nervous but she felt somewhat lighter now.

They joined the crowd of people walking down the street towards the venue of the festival, which glowed in the warm light of the lanterns even when they still had some distance to walk.
The noises got louder, the lights brighter and the air stickier the closer they got to the booths of the summer festival.

Naruto walked next to Hinata, occasionally chatting with his friends but not moving from her side. She didn't really talk to him but that was okay since she felt like being monitored by his friends whenever she even looked at him. She would barely be able to utter a sentence that way.

In front of her Sakura was talking with Sasuke while she overtook the part of talking and he of listening. Hinata couldn't hear a word she said but her pretty eyes reflected the lights of the lanterns as she looked up at the boy, who Hinata hadn't been able to say a word to as she felt intimidated just by his presence -even when Naruto had called him his best friend.

At one point in their walk Ino had approached Hinata, asking which food she wanted to eat followed by a heated discussion with Chouji about what was the best festival snack. It was fun listening to them and Hinata was relieved that Naruto had chosen friends that welcomed a stranger like her this brightly.

She smelled the different foods when passing the steams of deliciousness, contributing to the jolly ambient of gleaming lights and romping children holding up their masks.

When Hinata's eyes found a booth with a ring tossing game she gradually stopped walking.
From the time she had set foot on the busy street, there was an ominous sensation in her head and now she wasn't able to avoid it anymore as she could put her finger on why she had been feeling this way. Her chest tightened in the realization.

Years ago Jiraiya had stood in booth with the same game. He had given her the tag that day, from which she still wasn't sure if it actually gave her the power of turning time or not.

The white haired man snickered when she couldn't make her last toss.

"You made just one shot, I think that's only worth a consolation prize." Hinata frowned a brow at his expression as it seemed like he wasn't really sure what her failing at this game meant for him to do. Wasn't this his booth anyway?
She wasn't really disappointed at losing since she hadn't been that eager to win. She had played the game casually because it hadn't appeared that hard and she wanted to kill some time.

The man scanned his surroundings and scratched the back of his head, when he found a basket on the ground.

"Here, choose anything you want, kiddo." The plastic basket was filled with little colorful things that no one really needed. Animal figures, keychains and other knick-knacks that looked like they would break any moment she touched them.

Between these things Hinata saw a plastic flower tag. It was a sunflower, its discolored, yellow petals gave away that it wasn't new. But at least she could use it as a name tag for her bag, so it was lesser useless than the other things.
She reached for it and the man pulled away the basket. Puzzled he looked inside of it before he eyed her hand that held her claimed prize.

"It isn't just a name tag," he spoke in a voice that sounded even more rough than before.

"Huh?" Hinata timidly backed away when his gaze travelled up to her face.

"You could see it as… a lucky charm?" His bitter laugh and his unsurely stated words made it hard for her to believe him.

She wanted to turn around and leave but somehow it felt like the silence was prohibiting her from going. The man's eyes dwelled on her and it made her uncomfortable. Hinata took a few steps back.
He opened his mouth to say something but closed it right away, allowing her to disappear with the consolation prize in her hand.

"Hinata!" Naruto's calling threw her out of her memories. Her arms flinched and she gave Naruto a look that made it seem like she had forgotten where she was.
It was like her senses awakened again, the noises around her gained in volume and the smell of food in intensity.

"It's pretty crowded, don't leave without saying anything." He had closed in until just a few inches were between them, placing his hands on her shoulders and rose his voice against the uproar around them.

"I'm sorry. I spaced out a little." Hinata laughed shyly and unintentionally fumbled with the zipper of her handbag. One day he would probably ask her why she was constantly somewhere else with her mind.

"What were you staring at anyway?" Naruto shifted, his hands not moving away from her body, and peaked at the ring tossing game that was offered.
He grinned. "You wanna play?"

"Huh?" One part of her was relieved that he had labeled her absence behavior with a desire to play a booth game. She shook her head and stretched her lips into a smile. "Not really. Let's find the others again."

She escaped his grip and moved to search for the group of friends they had lost but due to her lack of height she wasn't able to look very far. How long had she been standing here that she couldn't see a single one of Naruto's friends?
Naruto's anew grasp around her wrist prevented her from expanding her search area.

"Let's just go around without them." The nervousness he hid behind his earnest expression silenced Hinata even until seconds after the last word had left his mouth. "Just the two of us." The darkening of his ears, which couldn't completely be covered by his strands, hinted at his embarrassment.

"I want to be alone with you," he added, surrounded by masses of people but Hinata understood what he meant and suddenly she felt exactly the same. There was a heat inside of her, stoked by his words and the humidity.

His eyes averted and the grip around her wrist became tighter.
"This looks fun. Let's play."

Hinata didn't worry much about the ring tossing game. She tried playing a little, guessing that she wasn't very good at it. She rather watched Naruto getting too serious between the many little children around him. He exclaimed loudly when his ring managed to slip onto one of the wooden poles and grunted when they didn't.
Sometimes she wondered where his source of energy was for him to display this sort of childish happiness, that made her forget her sorrows for a while.

They played other games as well and in their breaks they shared some food and watched whatever interesting thing they could find.

When the street got less busier because they arrived at a point, where few booths had been built halfway, Hinata seized her chance to stop walking for a while.

"One moment." A hold on Naruto's arm prevented him from walking further. She moved to the side of the road and bend down to reach her feet. Naruto followed her to the wooden gate in front of the unfinished booths.

"Do your feet hurt?" he asked, facing the top of her head.

"No, the straps of my sandals slipped." But even with holding onto the railing, reaching her heels wasn't that easy in the yukata, that stretched around her body, preventing her from moving as freely as she wanted to.

"Let me." Naruto's blond hair entered her vision as he knelt down to her feet. She shot up and gave her best to prevent her toes from curling under his fingers. Her body seemed to memorize every touch he made adjusting her strap.
Maybe the situation messed up her sense of time but his work on her shoes took longer that this task normally would.

His fingers seemingly lingered in every movement and while she asked herself when he would raise his head and face her again, his voice, subdued from the surrounding noises, got through her ears.
"You look pretty today."

He had already taken his hands off of her but refused to stand up, as Hinata eyed his wild, blond hair. When his eyes moved upwards to peek at her reaction and saw her baffled expression he jumped up.

"Don't get me wrong. You're always pretty but today it's like… a special kind of pretty?" His mouth was so busy with explaining his intentions that he nearly bit his tongue. But the features on Hinata's surprised face didn't waver.

She was usually the one who got flustered and red when talking. She had noticed him getting bashful at some occasions but never to an extent that it could be compared to her constant embarrassed state. The comments he made to make her blush fell so easily from his lips. The way he touched her like it was the most natural thing in the world had made her imagine that it wasn't that big of a deal for him as it was for her.

"I mean. Every day is special but eh… today it's es-especially special." He grimaced when he heard the strangeness of his own words. "Okay, this sounds weird. I'm really bad at this." His voice indicated that he gave up on explaining any further and probably worsening the situation. Hinata broke into a smile when she saw that he moved his bottom lip forward and bloated his nostrils.

Right now he was getting flustered over something he had once said to her while grinning from one ear to the other. Yet he was stammering this time and Hinata started smiling when she understood why.
He wasn't saying it to make her bashful this time or to be playful because it was so easy to play jokes on her but because he genuinely wanted to compliment her. His words were completely serious this time and those kind of words were much harder to utter.

"You aren't that bad," she said and finally awakened from her rigidity, taking few steps forward to overcome the left distance that parted them.

"Really?" He wasn't really convinced but when he saw the smile on her, the corners of his mouth lifted.

For a moment they just looked at each other and it seemed like the noises around them started to blend out bit by bit. Hinata's eyes slowly shut as she closed in and Naruto moved to cup her face.

The girl didn't notice the loud clatter behind her that lessened in proximity and caught Naruto's alertness. While she waited for his lips to touch hers she was instead pushed to the ground by him.
The palm of her hand scraped up on the asphalt but the pain was secondary when a scooter passed her and crashed into Naruto right where she had stood not even a second ago. The vehicle bounced off the wooden railing and its driver fell to the ground along with his wheeler.

Naruto was thrown over the fence and crashed into the brokenly, left booth. Hinata was still paralyzed on the ground when the weak pillars fell and the wooden beams of the roof fell right on Naruto, burying him under their hardness.
There was shouting and screaming. Passerby had already stopped walking, open mouths covered by their hands and shocked eyes fixating the building that had completely broken down.

The wheels of the roller kept spinning when the driver pulled out his legs from under it, his face distorted in horror.
Despite the many present it was dead silent for a moment before several people rushed to the stack of woods to look for the buried boy.
One person called an ambulance but Hinata knew that it was too late for that measures not because she had a grave medical knowledge but because it had always been too late.

Someone tried to help her stand up but her knees were weak and she couldn't stand for long. Her eyes stared at the spot where Naruto was lying even though her view was blocked.

She had seen him dying so many times, too many times. Someone might have guessed that the shock would lessen but it didn't, in fact this time it felt worse than all the others before.
It was because she had hoped, after all this weeks of nothing happening, she wouldn't have to experience this anymore, also because he had pushed her out of the way so she didn't get hurt and because he wasn't just her classmate anymore.

Hinata clenched her fists, her knuckles turning white and her nails imprinting into her skin but the pain in her limps wasn't grand enough to overshadow the one in her chest. Her body trembled in emotions, her throat feeling sore all of sudden. Yet rather than sadness her stomach seethed in anger. She was so enraged at whatever made this happen over and over again that the flame of madden displaced her sorrow.

Her eyes still fixating the point in the distance, she pushed away the person who had tried to help her up. Instead she rose on her feet herself. It was hard at first, as her legs felt like jello but her fury energized her and she grunted.

"Hey!" she shouted at nothing and no one in particular but everyone turned to look at her. "Is this a joke?!"

It felt like she had opened a tap of hot water that couldn't be closed anymore. "Why are you doing this?! What did I do to deserve this?!"

She looked up at the sky as if the answer to her questions would be up there somewhere. It was obvious that there was none but the fact that there was no reply in the dark, nothingness above her fueled her anger even more.
People inspected her as if she was going crazy.

"What do you even want me to do?!" This was the first time Hinata had ever screamed at anything but she rose her voice in vain. She wouldn't get anything in return. No answers, nothing that showed her the way she had to go from now on and no reason why she was the chosen one to witness this. Just a blanket of cold nothingness.

Hot tears prickled at the corners of her eyes and her vision started to get blurry in time with her slacking knees.

Hazy faces approached her to calm her down but she pushed them away, her legs were powerless but somehow she managed to take a few steps towards Naruto.

"Just tell me what to do." Her voice cracked, the sadness within finally overtaking her anger. Shoulders trembling, she couldn't push away the people trying to support her anymore and her voice died in her airway.
Her throat, her hands, her chest, everything hurt, acquiring all the energy she had left. "Please."

She shut her eyes and after barely feeling the hotness of them under her lids, the buzzing noises of her surroundings disappeared.

When Hinata opened them again, Naruto's blond shock of hair was in her vision. He had kneeled down, fumbling with the straps of her shoes.

"You look pretty today."

It might be his words that had kept her from going back further in time. Selfishly she wanted to hear them again but couldn't prevent the lump in her throat from forming and her bottom lip from trembling.
Even though she had heard those words in the same tone and manner just a few minutes ago, they sounded completely different in her ears now.

She couldn't manage to say anything in response, as she was occupied enough to not start crying right at the spot. And when Naruto looked up at her, his anxious blue eyes gathering the courage they needed to face her, she couldn't react the way she wanted to.
His words, voice, and gaze still flattered her but not as overwhelmingly as before.

He jumped up when realizing the sad mood in her glimpse.

"Did I say something wrong?" he asked in panic, lifting his hands, apologizing for whatever had made her like this.
Hinata shook her head and sniffled before grabbing his arms with both her hands.

Naruto appeared lost and confused when she guided him away from where they were standing. He called her name several times but there was no reply on her part so he started to get anxious. He rewinded his words and actions as if there had been something he had missed and he had to be sorry for but he couldn't find anything.

She didn't face him, not even when they stopped after walking a good distance.
There were masses of people around them, chatting and laughing loudly. Music played somewhere from afar. Nevertheless the silence between them was vast as if there was actually nothing and no one around them.

Hinata finally looked at him but he couldn't really read what her gaze meant and the feelings behind them. Somehow her eyes seemed dull. He didn't say anything because it felt like it was her turn to do so.

Naruto heard a motor behind him and a loud thud not long after. Something scratched the surface of the asphalt and made a group of people around resound. He was about to turn and check what was happening when he felt Hinata's arms embracing him. She held him tightly, pulling him towards her like it was her duty to prevent him from giving his attention to anything else but her.

She buried her face in his chest and embraced him so firmly and with such strength that he wouldn't be able to untangle her arms around him. The hair of her bun tickled his chin.

"Hinata?" He wanted to push her away a little so that he could see her face but she shook her head, still dug in his shirt, and squeezed him even more.

"Let's just stay like this for a while," she said after several moments of stillness and he obeyed her words. Somehow it felt like the right thing to do at this moment even when passerby started to stare at their public display of affection and whisper in each others ears. But Naruto was much more worried about the reason that had made Hinata like this, even when he was silently pleased about her closeness.

From the side he saw a scooter passing them, the loud motor disturbing the content peace. Naruto sensed Hinata's fingers clenching his clothes in her fists as he looked down at the crown of her head. She felt much more tense now that he had his arms around her too. Was she quivering under his hug?

Hinata rose her head from his chest and locked her eyes with his. It felt like eternity since he had seen this fair orbs the last time. The girl gulped visibly, looking at him with the most severe expression he had ever seen on her face.
Yet her eyes glistered in grief.

"There is something I want to tell you."