Title: Still I Rise -- #33: charmed
Characters/Pairings: Hinata, Jiraiya
Rating: K
Notes: A follow-up to the last bit in which Hinata wonders about getting published, and is henceforth the beginning of a short NaruHina arc in the most cliche way EVAR. (Don't kill me.) It's mostly written, ends in a fistfight, and will expand this universe to include Naruto (duh), Saskuke, Sai, Ino, and Sakura. It's set to be about 3-4 chapters, including this one. Also, wondering where the hell Shino, Kiba and Kurenai are? They'll show up eventually, I think.
"Well, Miss Hyuuga," says the absurdly large man seated behind the equally absurdly large mahogany desk, "your book has absolutely charmed me."
Hinata feels her cheeks go even warmer and hears the stutter in her voice before she can get the words out of her mouth. "I-I'm flattered, truly—"
Jiraiya waves her words away with a careless flourish of an enormous hand and a rogue grin. "You don't seem to get it, sweetheart. I see thousands of books come though this publishing house," he gesticulates widely, gesturing to the minimalist office that they're seated in. "I see crap and I see brilliance and I see everything in between. You, my dear, are brilliant, believe me. Very few authors get to sit where you're sitting, darling, very few are talented enough to be where you are." He winks at her, smiling a daring smile that makes her stomach dip a little even though the man is old enough to be her grandfather.
Hinata has never felt quite so small, but there is a strange sort of excitement burning in her chest. It had been four months of mailing her manuscript and waiting and tearing open rejection letter after rejection letter, until one crisp, blue morning—the sort of spring morning that had a promising sort of hint on the wind—when a letter had arrived, asking her to come into the Sannin Publishing House's Chicago office and meet with the chief editor—Jiraiya himself.
He looks even more wild and untamed in person and carries with him a sense of the exotic, a whiff of adventure, an air of the well-travelled that is at odds with his crisp suit and wire-rimmed glasses. She likes him despite herself.
"We want you," he says, "you and your book. I have a contract here"—Hinata's breath is lost somewhere in her lungs as he slides a slim black folder towards her—"for three books, and if they do well, we'll be looking to negotiate a deal for some more."
She reaches for it with trembling hands, and leafs through it and gracefully as she can. She's staring at the words, but for the first time in her life, they do not align themselves for her into neat sentences but dance along to strange patters.
"You'll want to think about it, of course," he says. "Have your agent look it over. You've got an agent, haven't you?"
My cousin, she thinks, remembering a late-night conversation when he had offered his services jokingly, saying in that half-sardonic, half-deadpan manner of his that she would need someone to stand up for her when the publishing company tried to steal the books from right underneath her nose. She would take him up on it, she decides. Or, at least, for now, she would pretend. "I—I do."
"Good. I'll get in touch with him—him?—him soon. Look over the contract, and we'll go over whatever changes you want to make together."
She stumbles out of the office a half-hour later, winded and exhilarated and more dumbfounded than she has ever been in her life. She walks blindly, turning the last hour's happenings over and over in her mind—her book! Published! In print! Just wait until she tells Neji, and he'd smile his small, true smile at her and raise his eyebrows and—when she dashes right into an orange and blond blur and finds herself on the floor.