Yeeeah~ I haven't updated in a while, I know. I'd like to say I had the flu, but while I was sick for a bit, I'm not really sure that's what I had at all. Then I got stuck in a rut because I hadn't written for about a few weeks straight; long story short, after some zen meditation and checking myself on my procrastination habits and reading, I'm finally back with writing confidence much higher than before. But, enough about me and what I've been up to, enjoy the new chapter~!


Episode 7: Boys Love Games

Haku had arrived at Ami-chan's early in the morning at around quarter to nine; the downtown area around Otaku City had only just begun to fill up with people beginning their day, either heading to work or students heading to school, when he had opened up shop. It was close to noon now, and the black haired young man was dressed in his butler style uniform with his hair done in a long braid resting over his shoulder, rather than the usual ponytail; he was in the process of serving hot drinks and lunch to a couple of women at a middle table near the front counter.

They were regulars; the younger worked at a family run fabric store that Haku had visited a few times, and still had on her blue employee shirt with light brown pants. The other was an older woman, who owned the store. She was probably in her late fifties and was the younger girl's grandmother. The two came by a few times a weeks since the cafe first opened. That being the case, Haku knew from memory what the two would likely order without being told.

Of course, Haku couldn't read minds. He politely took their orders even if he could guess what they would go for.

"And here's your usual, one caramel cream latte and a raisin danish for you, and black berry bubble tea and strawberry mochi for you, ma'am," he placed each dish and drink in front of each of them, then took a step back, holding the serving tray against his body. "Will that be all for now, ladies?"

The older woman nodded. "Yes, thank you very much, young man."

"Your welcome, ma'am. If you need anything else, please let one of us know; now, if you'll excuse me." Haku gave a slight bow, smiling. Then he walked off towards the front counter. As he did, he could hear the comments directed at him as the two women talked.

"He seems like a nice young man, dear. Maybe you should ask him out on a date."

"What? No way, grandma. Besides, I'm still in high school."

"Exactly, there's no better time to put yourself out there and start looking. I know I did at your age."

Haku chuckled a bit and shook his head as he placed the tray on the serving rack to be reused. He was used to people commenting on him when his back was turned, some comments being more questionable than others. Not that he was complaining, if anything, he found it somewhat amusing.

"Someone's in a good mood today," his boss said. The woman was behind the cash register, having just gotten done taking an order. "Any particular reason why?"

"Hinata is at a meeting to discuss getting our novel animated. The thing I told you about the other day, remember," Haku said, leaning against the counter.

"Oh, that was today," Ami-san smiled at him. "Well, good for you two. I hope everything turns out fine."

"Me too. Everything still feels kinda surreal, even now its hard to believe something like this is really happening to us."

"You both put a lot of hard work and effort into your work," Ami-san said. "If you ask me, it was only a matter of time before someone took notice."

"Maybe somewhere further down the line," Haku said. "To be honest, I think me and Hina-chan just got lucky."

Ami gave him a look. "Come on, you know I don't believe in luck. Everything you do in life is because of calculation and circumstance; there a lot more evidence for that than there is about luck. But, that's just my thoughts on the matter." Just then another customer came up to the register; she took her attention off the feminine young man and smiled widely. "Welcome to Ami-chan's~ how may I help you today?"

"Can I get two slices of chocolate cheese cake, and one strawberry pie," the brown haired man said.

Ami nodded, tapping the order into the computer over the cash register. "Of course, is it to go or for here?"

"To go, please."

"Alright, just give us a few minutes."

As he leaned up and straightened the slight wrinkles out of his vet and tailcoat, Haku heard the usual sound of small bells jingling as the cafe door opened. He didn't think much of it until he heard a familiar young man's call out to him. "Hey, Haku," upon hearing his name, the light novel artist turned his head, a smile coming to his face as the young man made his way over to him with one hand in his black pants pocket, waving lazily with the other. "So it was you I saw through the window."

"Shikamaru, hey," Haku said, somewhat surprised. "I thought you were still in Tokyo studying."

"Nah, I'm finally getting a break from all that stuff for the next few weeks, so I decided to come back home and relax for a bit instead of putting up with my roommates. Besides, the Will of Fire festival is coming up soon, I'd hate to miss it," Shikamaru said. The guy hadn't changed one bit in Haku's eyes, at least not appearance wise. He still had the same spiky ponytail and tastes in clothing; asides from being a few inches taller and the small chin stubble, nothing was different. "But, man, its been a while, huh?"

"About a little over a year, yeah," Haku agreed. The bell on the front counter rang, letting Haku know that another order needed to be taken out to another table. The feminine young man glanced over as Ami-san put the tray of food on the counter top, then he turned back to Shikamaru. "Sorry, I can't really talk right now, duty calls."

Shikamaru waved it off, smiling. "No problem, can't exactly have you losing your job on my account. If you've got work to do, we'll just catch up some other time," the lazy genius said. He turned around and headed for the cafe entrance. "I'll be seeing you around, Haku."

Haku gave a nod. "Yeah, see you."

Then he was out the front door, disappearing into the crowded city streets. Haku went over and picked up the serving tray. As he turned to take the order to the table, Ami-san reached over and tapped him softly on the shoulder, causing him to stop mid-stride, glancing over his shoulder. "You know, if you want to catch up with your friend, you could always take your lunch break after your done serving table three."

"Is that really alright," Haku asked. He wasn't scheduled to go on lunch for another hour. "I mean, I can wait."

Giving a shrug, his boss answered. "Its fine, I mean, we're having a slow day anyway and things probably won't pick up until school lets out. Just be back in forty-five minutes, okay."

"Sure, thanks, Ami-san." The feminine young man gave the woman a smile and headed for the table he was supposed to serve. Once the food was given out, and checking to see if anything else was needed from from the costumers, Haku returned the serving tray and headed through the door leading to the employee area; he clocked out for his lunch break, not bothering to change out of his butler uniform, grabbed his cellphone and lift the cafe to find Shikamaru.

~(2)~

As he made his way through the crowded streets of the Otaku City area, Haku took a moment to set a timer on his phone to go off five minutes before his lunch break was over. His mother always told him more than once, "its better to be a few minutes earlier, than to be a few minutes late." Among other thing; each piece of advice his mother told him, Haku took to heart and tried to apply it to his life as best he could.

And mother's words haven't failed me, yet. He thought. Plus, if me and Shika-kun really get talking, the last thing I want to do is lose track of time. The crowd of people he walked with stopped at the red light at the next street corner. "If I was Shikamaru, were would I head to first," Haku muttered to himself. After taking some time to think and try to remember all of his lazy friend's favorite spots in the area, only one place came to mind aside from the Hidden Blade Arcade and the book store, and that was the Games Room below the Sun Seed Garden.

The Sun Seed Garden was a rooftop insect enclosure run by the Aburame family, one of the smaller and rarely mentioned families that had been around since Konoha was a hidden village. One of Haku's oldest friends, a quiet boy named Shino from his elementary school, was apart of the Aburame. They grew all kinds of flowers and other plant life, all the while letting the different bugs of the enclosure roam free, while the beautiful but poison ones were kept in cages; some of the insects were ones that could only be found the forests surrounding Konoha or in the Forest of Death, like the poisonous shadow beetle.

Back in the era of the hidden villages, the poison from such bugs were used by the Aburame to slowly and quietly assassinate lords and government figures.

There were only a few rules when visiting the garden, such as there was no smoking allowed and no one was suppose to pick the flowers, but the rule that came before those two had to be followed strictly: no one was allowed to kill the insects within the enclosure, not even spiders.

Regardless of this rule, however, many people still visited the garden. Though, more than a few visitors got kicked out for not following the rules.

The light changed to green and Haku crossed the street, then took a right in the direction of the garden, while taking in the sites. None of the scenery was new to him in the slightest, he simply enjoyed seeing how many new people he could spot among the locals in the crowd. For the most part, Haku had no trouble figuring out who were foreigners; most spoke little to no Japanese, and even if their Japanese was good, their appearance gave them away.

The one thing he found that gave foreigners away most of all, even if they were Japanese from another part of the country, was that spark of wonder and excitement that only people visiting from other countries and provinces seemed to have.

That being the case, Haku could see quite a number of foreigners were in the Otaku City area, and it came as no surprise to him when he was approached by two of them, something that happened from time to time. They're probably lost. Haku thought. The man had on denim shorts and a red, button-up shirt with short, spiky orange hair and brown eyes and the woman with long blue hair and gray eyes, who was holding the hand of a little boy with red hair.

"Um, excuse me," the man began in somewhat alright Japanese. "Do you speak English?"

Haku looked at the three of them, then gave a nod, replying in accented English. While he had never been very good at writing in English, speaking the language he could do well enough, though Hinata was better at it because of her family background. "Yes, I do."

"Oh, good," the man said in English. "My Japanese isn't that good yet, so I'd rather speak in English for now."

Haku smiled. "I understand that."

"Yahiko, can we go to the Hokage Tower next?" The little boy asked.

The orange haired man looked over at the boy. "In a little bit, Nagato," the man said, before turning back to Haku. "Anyway, I was wondering if you knew where we could find the Shinobi Grave Stone, I think we're kinda lost."

"We are lost," the slim woman at his side said. "My boyfriend here is pretty bad with directions; he's been dragging us all over the city for the past hour and refuses to admit he actually has no idea where he's going."

"There's no need to be upset, Konan."

"I have plenty of reason to be upset when you waste our time, plus Nagato hasn't eaten lunch yet."

Haku chuckled at the expression on the man's face. "Well, the Shinobi Grave Stone is close by," the young man turned and pointed down the block. "If you go three blocks down and take a right, then get on the bus going towards city hall and get off near the Hokage Tower. The Shinobi Grave Stone is in the large park across the street from there," he looked back at the family of three. "If you get lost again, or can't find your way, the best thing I can tell you is to get a map or look for a tour guide to show you around; I recommend doing both just in case."

The man smiled, giving a nod. "Thanks a lot, man. And sorry if we held you up."

"No need to apologize," Haku said. "If there's nothing else, I must be on my way; enjoy the rest of your day."

"You, too, and thanks again for the help."

He gave the three one last smile and started walking towards his destination at a slightly faster pace. The eastern part of Otaku City had three tall buildings that were much taller than the ones surrounding them; the wider building was the convention center were a number of concerts and events were held, the building across the street from that one was a popular hotel with an online gaming cafe, and the last building a few floors higher than the previous one with a large green beetle sign over the front entrance was the Aburame owned Green~Beetle hotel, with the Sun Seed Garden somewhat visible on the top floor from just across the street.

Haku made his way through the automatic sliding doors into the building lobby. An older man in a black security uniform sat behind the front desk, reading a newspaper called the Konoha Chronicle, while sipping his coffee in one hand.

"Excuse me, sir," Haku said, as he approached the security guard. The older man lowered his newspaper. "Did you see a guy come in here, five, maybe ten minutes ago; brown shirt, black pants, spiky ponytail?"

"Brown shirt and black pants?" The guard stroked his mustache with a thoughtful expression, then his face lit up a moment later. "Oh, you mean pineapple hair guy, right?"

Pineapple ...guy? Now that Haku thought about it, his lazy friend's ponytail did look really similar to a pineapple, and he somehow never took notice of this. He chuckled, and gave a nod. "Yeah, that's the one."

"Well, if you're looking for him, he took the elevator up to the eighth floor. He's probably went to the Games Room," the man answered. Haku thanked him and headed for the elevator. He pressed the up button for the lift and waited as the digital numbers above the elevator door counted down from the floor it had been on.

~(2)~

With a ding, the elevator door slid open and Haku stepped out into the wide corridor of the eighth floor. Just in front of him was a golden bronze colored sign on the dark blue hallway wall; the sign had a double sided arrow pointing off to the right and to the left. Underneath the left side of the arrow was the word: 'Restroom', printed in bold black letters, and printed under the right side was: 'Food Lounge/Games Room' to the right.

Having been here plenty of times before, though not too often as he would've liked since graduating high school, Haku headed right and walked until he got to the T-shaped corner at the end of the corridor, then he made another right without bothering to read the next direction sign. At the end of the hallway, Haku came to a set of heavy, brown wood double doors.

He turned one of the nobs, gently pushed the door open and walked in. The first thing to greet him was the strong smell of food and sweets, as well as the all too familiar sound of people talking and laughing. The Games Room wasn't like an arcade in any way; where the arcade was filled with loud noises, from both the numerous electronics and people, the Games Room was meant to be a somewhat quiet and reserved place for those who played card games and board games; in other words, games that required a lot of strategy, thought and contemplation. Even when completely packed with people, which it wasn't at the moment because it was the weekday, loud noises and talking were always kept to a minimum.

"I reverse your nin-card with my trap-summon! That means all ten of your high level shinobi can't move for three turns! Suck it!"

"What ...goddammit, again!"

At least, most of the time.

Walking around the gaming area, he looked for his (as the guard put it) pineapple haired friend among the tables of other gamers. Knowing what he knew about Shikamaru, Haku made his way towards the part of the room known for having laid back but competitive chess and shogi matches; the Games Room was about as big as a large library room, minus the book shelves, with many different sized tables spread across the brown wood floor to a row of large windows that gave a nice view of the city spread out in the distance, leading all the way to the surrounding forests; to his right was where the smell of food and baked goods rose from the food lounge area for those who didn't feel like leaving to get a bite to eat.

The young artist walked, searching around the room, until he stopped near to the a crowd of younger kids playing Monopoly, having caught sight of Shikamaru's spiky ponytail and the back of his jacket to his left not far from the windows. He made his way over to him, hand raised to announce himself, when another familiar young man around his age with bushy eyebrows and bowl-cut hair sitting across the table from Shikamaru looked up and spotted him with a wide, white teethed smile.

"Ah~ Haku-kun! I didn't expect to see you here!"

"Hey, Lee," Haku greeted, returning the smile. While he hadn't seen the athletic, green dressed youth in quite some time asides from resent television, he hadn't seen Shikamaru for much longer. Rock Lee, or to most of his close friends and family, Lee, had been a close friend of Haku and Hinata's since their junior year of high school.

Back then, Lee was a grade over the two and spent most of his time at his uncle's gym or around Hinata's cousin. Lee and Neji weren't did exactly have what most would call a normal friendship; at most, Neji simply tolerated the highly energized workout fanatic. But, simply because he tolerated him, in no way meant that the calm and collected Hyuga didn't consider Lee a good friend. Rather, it was because Lee was a dear friend of his that Neji even tolerated him to begin with.

They were also, in Lee's words, "hot blooded rivals!" Haku knew for a fact that Neji could honestly care less about some rivalry with a workout nut like Lee. He challenged the older Hyuuga every chance he got, even to this day; who ate the most, who could swim the fastest, who could lift the most weight, and the list of outrageous challenges went on and on.

Lee was a bit calmer than he was back then, however that in no way meant he was any less likely to challenge Hinata's cousin, he simply widened the range of those he issued challenges to; Haku had been called out for races and sparring with Lee on more than a few occasions.

"I thought you were working." Shikamaru said, turning halfway around in his chair.

"I was, but we have these things called lunch breaks," Haku said. He gestured towards one of the empty seats at their table. "Mind if I join you?"

"Of course not, take a seat," Lee said, smiling. Haku gave a nod and sat down. "Looks like the dynamic trio is back together again. Its been a long time since we last came here."

"Yep, and Haku's just as snarky as ever," Shikamaru added. He picked up his rook on the chess board and moved it close to Lee's king. Haku could see their game was over before he even sat down. "Checkmate."

Lee was about to retort, until he realized he was completely boxed in on all sides. "Oh, wow, that is checkmate."

The lazy genius wiped the pieces off the board, then looked at Haku. "You wanna play? I could use the challenge."

Haku smiled. "I'd rather not. I have to get back to work soon and playing chess will probably make me late," Shikamaru simply shrugged, and the butler dressed waiter continued. "So, what been going on with you two?"

Lee was the first to answer. "Same thing as always, training and working and more training," the athletic young man said with high energy. "Since I only came in third in the Ninja Warrior finals, I'll have to train even harder to reach the top next time~!"

"Hina-chan and I watched it live, you did great," Haku said.

"It may have been great to some, but I don't feel it was my best," Lee said. "I could've done much better if I'd just trained harder, and that's what I intend to do for next year, starting tomorrow with my new training plan with the help of Gai-sensei. If you have time, you should come by to workout with us sometime~."

"Um ...no thanks. But, good luck with the training," Haku said, a somewhat nervous smile on his face. No way I'm taking one of those hellish classes again. Lee's uncle, Might Gai, ran a gym not far from Konoha High School called: The Mighty Man Gym. Haku had gone to the gym to train twice in the past year before he decided it was best to just do his own thing. He like the gym, but the training classes were brutal, near super human. Haku's arms and legs ached from almost a week straight after just going to one class. He honestly had no idea how Lee survived such training when he was younger.

"Lee, your uncles training would kill someone," Shikamaru said. "Even Neji would quit halfway through and he's been doing martial arts since he was in diapers."

"Really," Lee raised an eyebrow. "Our training isn't that bad, is it?"

"It is that bad," Shikamaru and Haku said at the same time.

The energetic young man put on a thoughtful expression, crossing his arms. "That would explain why hardly anyone takes the advance classes," Lee muttered. "Maybe Hinata-chan was right about Gai-sensei having to go easier on the beginners."

"You think," Shikamaru said, making a face at the workout fanatic, before he turned to Haku. "Speaking of Hinata, how is she doing? Last I heard that book series you two made got some pretty good reviews."

"I'll have to take your word on it about the reviews, me and Hinata tend not to read those; the sells have been better than good, though," Haku said, before chuckling. "Toad Animations actually wants to turn our book into an animated series, believe it or not; Hinata's in the meeting as we speak. To be honest, I kinda nervous."

Lee smiled widely and patted the feminine waiter on the back. "Nervous for what, this is great news~! Congratulations on your success!"

"Thanks," Haku said. He took his cellphone out of his vest pocket and glanced down at the time. "I've still got some time left for lunch, how about we get something to eat from the ramen stand near the arcade? I heard they brought some new items to the menu not too long ago." He tucked the cellphone away. "Besides, you still need to tell me about college life, Shika-kun."

"You really want to hear about that train wreak?"

Lee laughed. "Come on, college can't be that bad."

"Yeah, I'd think the work would be easy for you," Haku added.

Shikamaru let out a sigh. "The assignments aren't the problem, its the people," the lazy genius slid back his seat and stood. "Lets get something to eat first, then I'll tell you both all about it." With a nod, the three headed towards the double doors lending out of the Games Room while still making small talk. Though, Haku still found himself wondering how Hinata's meeting was going. Sarutobi-san is there with her, so I'm pretty confident things will be alright. Still, I wish I was there to hear what was going on. He thought.


And there you have it! The next chapter should be up on Sunday(Monday at the latest) since I started working on it while editing this. Remember to review and let me know of any spelling or grammar errors you spot.

Until next time,

Peace~!