Kakashi is cold towards me.

No, he doesn't ignore me outright, but his breezy tone of voice and the small, impersonal smiles that he gives me are even worse than that. I wish I could have stayed with Sakura instead.

His apartment is simple, but much nicer than I'd expected. Much nicer than any house I've ever lived in. But my potential happiness about seeing his apartment doesn't surface because of his quietness.

"You can sleep in the bedroom," he says, pointing to a half-closed door. I notice he hasn't taken his mask off yet. "The couch is where I usually sleep anyway."

"Oh, I couldn't do that," I say, even though my heart isn't into it. "This is your home. I'm just a …" I'm about to say guest, but that's not really what I am, is it?

He gives me another infuriatingly cold smile. "Don't worry about it."

And I let it go.

He orders for dinner to be delivered to the house while I shower. Because I have nothing but the clothes on my back, he somewhat grudgingly lends me a plain shirt and a pair of drawstring shorts that seem to be boxers. I blush at the latter article, but accept it thankfully.

It's odd to be dressed in his clothes and still see traces of his aversion towards me. The shirt and the shorts are big on me, and while that's all right for the shirt, I've pulled the shorts up quite a bit for the sake of my legs' comfort, but that means revealing much of my legs. I don't mind doing that, because if there's ever been anything I've been happy with physically, it's been my legs. I see Kakashi's visible eye widen slightly when I come out of the washroom, having finished washing my clothes and hanging them up in the bedroom, but it's an ephemeral and rare bit of emotion before he goes back to reading his book.

Dinner is eaten in silence, and I don't make the effort to talk to him. The thought of the vision, which I've forced out of my mind up until now, returns to me brandishing fearful possibilities. Is this my future? Is this what's going to happen to me? My mother had had dreams of having me before she became visibly pregnant – but that might be attributed to what Tsubasa has told me – which is why she had named me Mirai. Was this even a possibility?

It's not very late yet, but as soon as I finish dinner and wash the plates – taking his from the table before he gets back from answering a knock at the door – I bit him a polite goodnight and thank him for his hospitality. The tension is becoming increasingly uncomfortable, and I half-expect him to say something to me.

But of course, he doesn't. He smiles again, almost making anger bubble to my chest, and raises his hand in a wave as I close the door, probably a little harder than I should.

I'm frustrated. So frustrated with everything. Frustrated and betrayed and even mentally unstable. Everything, from the core of my foundations, has been shaken, including what I had thought to be my family – even the most beloved people in my life have turned out to be nothing like I expected, and nothing like what I thought I knew about them. And to top it off, the man I risked everything for, all the little pieces of the life I thought I knew, is inexplicably and suddenly so cold towards me. And I'm being forced to live with him.

There must be a sick, twisted almighty spirit up in the heavens, I think as I stare up at the ceiling. I bite my lip, forcing myself not to cry. I've cried too much already, and I've always done so. When I was maybe ten, and Tsubasa younger than me, our pet bird died. Both of us cried, but I cried for much longer than she did, even though she was much younger than me. I've never had a strong heart. I've never been able to keep myself from loving, and trusting, and look where it's gotten me now.

Against my wishes, a single tear leaks out from my eye. And I choke down the rest of my frustration and force myself to sleep.

::~::

The next day, I get up early at six in the morning. But by the looks of it as I come out of the room, Kakashi has not only already gotten up, but he's already fixed and eaten breakfast. There's a bowl with some congee and an assortment of spices and vegetables to put in it. The man himself is nowhere to be seen, to my slight and inexcusable dismay.

I eat breakfast slowly, not knowing what to do after. After washing my bowl and putting the other items into an empty-looking refrigerator, I notice a key on the table. I take it that it's meant for me, and I exit the apartment, locking the door behind me, half-expecting Kakashi to appear out of thin air and stop me.

But he doesn't.

I try to remember where I've walked in order to be able to get back to Kakashi's home, but I soon give up, hoping that there will be somebody kind enough to give me directions back home. I don't have any money with me, but it really doesn't matter. I'm content to walk through the village, just looking around. Now it is much quieter in the village than when I had arrived, giving it a peaceful, sleepy atmosphere.

Suddenly I catch a scent I hadn't imagined would be in such a large village, and I follow it eagerly, half-expecting a beautiful meadow to be at the end of my journey.

But I'm disappointed when all I find is a flower shop. Though, as I look more closely, the flowers are exceptionally well-kept.

"A bit early in the day to be looking for flowers on a date, isn't it?" comes a voice, and I look up to see a middle-aged woman with light brown hair.

I flush. "Oh no," I say, "I just followed the scent of your artimisia absinthium here. I was really surprised when I caught a whiff of it."

The woman's brow furrows a little, but she seems to be amused. "We normally just call it wormwood, so I'm surprised you know the proper name for it. And I'm very surprised you could detect it and follow its scent here!" She laughs.

I smile, a little bit self-consciously. "I'm new in Konoha, actually," I confess, "and I noticed a bit of something I have at home. I was really excited and I thought there might be a meadow or something around here."

The woman laughs again, and there's a sudden shout.

"Mom, have you seen my hairbrush? You know, the pink one that I always –"

The owner of the voice appears at the top of a staircase at the back of the shop that seems to lead up to a residence. She's a bit younger than me, and has long blonde hair that hangs down to her waist, even longer than mine. It's evidently uncombed, and her bright blue eyes are a bit surprised at the sight of me.

"Oops, sorry," she says, a little flippantly, "I didn't think there'd be any customers at this time of day."

"This is my daughter Ino," the woman says, seeming to be a little bit annoyed by her daughter's sudden intrusion. "Ino … well, actually, I don't really know your name, dear."

"I'm Mirai," I say quickly, not sure if I should shake her hand.

"I'm Kaori," she says with a warm smile. I guess handshakes aren't the norm around here. "Ino, Mirai isn't from around here. Why don't you show her around the shop for a little while? I should go wake your dad up. He has a meeting with Ibiki today," she says, seeming as if she's talking to herself. "Well, it was nice meeting you, Mirai."

The girl Ino looks a little bit disgruntled, but as she comes up to me, a sudden light of interest comes to her eyes.

"Your name is Mirai? Are you from the Sky country?"

Stunned at her sudden question, I blink wordlessly. "Um … yes, I am. H-How did you know?" I ask, feeling a bit unnerved. Is it the clothes I wear? But no, my clothes are completely normal. Quite plain and nondescript actually, especially next to this girl's bright purple ninja garb.

"Oh, don't worry," she says with a laugh, taking in my shocked expression. "I heard it from Sakura. We're … friends."

"Oh," I nod in understanding. "What a coincident," I say with a bit of a shaky laugh. "Sakura is an amazingly kind person."

"Yes, yes, of course," the girl says rather dismissively. Does she not like Sakura? But they must be friends for her to know of my existence so quickly. "Let me show you around the shop."

The daffodils, tulips, and wildflower arrangements out front are colourful and mainly to catch passers-by attention. Inside the shop are some of the most delightful flowers I've ever seen. There are beautiful bouquets of roses and flowering chrysanthemum bushes. But my favourites are the pots of blush-pink camellias.

"These camellias are just exquisite!" I exclaim.

"Yes, well, they are a lot of work to maintain," Ino says waspishly. "They're the only plants around here we have to water twice every single day."

"And what are these?" I ask, spotting plants with white petals but a bright purple center.

Ino looks a bit surprised. "You know all these other flowers but not these? These are orchids, and they're really popular."

I shake my head. "I've never seen them before."

At this point, Kaori comes back down the staircase with a blond-haired man who bears a striking resemblance to his daughter. He gives me a polite nod as he sees me.

"Bye honey," he says, kissing his wife's temple as he pulls her in for a one-armed hug. I do my best not to stare, but it's such a casual yet tender little action that draws me in. He hugs his daughter too, and leaves.

For some twisted reason, my mind decides to conjure up an image of Kakashi.

I bite my tongue, horrified.

"…but she didn't recognize the orchid!" Ino is saying to her mother. Her mother laughs, giving a little shrug.

"She is from quite far away. But your knowledge about flowers is exceptional," she says to me.

I feel my cheeks grow a little bit warm. "Thank you, but I have never seen such a beautiful flower shop before." Not even my mother's garden, from which I learned most of this knowledge, could compare.

"We try our best," she says.

"I actually work more with herbs than decorative flowers," I say. "Where I came from, I was the one who made most of the salves and such in my village."

Kaori looks very intrigued. "We have a section for herbs out in the back garden. Would you like to come take a look?"

"Oh … I'd love to, really, but I shouldn't intrude so much on your time. I don't even have any money with me, so I couldn't even buy anything."

She waves a dismissive hand in the same air as her daughter. "Nobody comes into the shop so early in the morning, and it's always wonderful to see someone as young as you have an interest in botany. My daughter," she says, frowning a little, "takes after her father and would rather go out to train than help me out a little here."

I stifle a bit of a smile as Ino huffs. "Well, thank you very much," I say quite sincerely and I follow Kaori to the back garden.

There is a large section devoted to roses, a beautiful enclosed area with all the colours of roses one could name. The scent is wonderful, and the sheer number of roses makes the usually-faint scent of roses permeate throughout the entire garden. But to the side, a much less eye-catching garden captures my attention instead.

"Oh!" I exclaim. "There's everything I used to grow here! And my favourite – that's where the scent of artimisia came from! And lovage – that's one of the ones I always have a big supply of… Majoram too! You wouldn't believe how badly headaches run in our family …"

Our family. I stop my gushing for a moment. Was it really right to call them my family anymore?

"And winter savory," Kaori says, seeming to not notice my pause. She picks a small sprig and inhales the scent deeply.

"Oh," I say, distracted by yet another one of my favourite plants – though I wasn't able to find seeds for it for my garden. Winter savory? What an odd nickname. To me, it's the satureia hortensis. Mother used to put this in almost every one of her medicines to mask bitterness or strange tastes of other herbs. Kaori hands me the sprig and I inhale deeply too.

"Would it be possible for me to help you out here?" I ask shyly. "I mean, I don't need pay – there's someone taking care of me – but it would just make me so happy to be amongst nature again, at least somewhat."

Kaori looks a little surprised. "Oh dear, I would absolutely love the company. Ino is usually off with her teammates training, and I'm here for most of the day … I can't let you just work here with no pay though. We'll work out something reasonable, and you can come in whenever you're not busy."

A wave of happiness comes over me – something I haven't felt for a while – and I hug the older woman suddenly, who is a bit surprised at first, but pats my shoulder a little eventually.

"I know how you must be feeling," she says wisely. "Our Fourth Hokage's wife also came from another village, and I witnessed them falling in love. Even though he meant so much to her, it was hard for her to get used to Konoha sometimes."

And so she offers me a ridiculously high salary – ridiculous only by my standards, she tells me – that I manage to bring down just a little bit before she shakes her head and says it's final. Well, at least I won't have to depend on Kakashi so much. Maybe eventually I could even move out, if everything was quiet for some time. Kaori insists on giving me a week's worth of pay when I accidentally let it slip that I came here with nothing but the clothes on my back, and I can't do anything to refuse the older woman.

"But who on earth are you staying with?"

"Oh, Hatake Kakashi."

She nearly drops the flowerpot she's holding and gapes at me. "Kakashi-san?" And when I nod, confusion written plain on my face, she says in a quiet sort of voice, "He's not really the social sort of man. He had a bit of a difficult childhood." But she stops, a little bit suddenly. "That's not to say that he's not a great man. All the shinobi in Konoha consider him with great respect. He's one of the finest shinobi you'll meet." She sounds a little proud, and I don't ask what she meant by his difficult childhood. If I'm to know, it should come from him.

I thank the woman profusely, feeling rather guilty walking away with a week's pay and only having done a few hours of work late that evening. And she had given me lunch, too. She gives me directions back to Kakashi's home – directions that I'm not at all sure I can remember – and eventually I manage to find my way back, though I do happen to arouse a strong headache.

Greatly relieved when I find his room number, I use the key, but find that the door is already unlocked. As I enter, I see his now-familiar form on the couch, sitting with a particularly bad posture. He seems to be asleep.

"How was your day?"

All right, apparently not asleep. Maybe my entering woke him up.

"Fine," I say politely, cringing at the vagueness of my answer as he gets up from the couch. Wasn't I the one who hated his impersonal attitude? I amend, "I found some work at the flower shop."

"Good for you." I don't know what I had expected him to say, but his lack of response irritates me. I dig out the little bag of coins from my pocket.

"I should pay you for rent and all."

"That's not necessary."

"I'm obviously intruding on –"

"It's not necessary," he says, and I look up at him across from me. The tone of his voice suddenly changed into one of firm finality. Commanding. My head gives another throb.

I'm not an assertive person, and I can't seem to come up with anything to say to this, except to say it in a meek tone. "I'd just like to thank you for all you've done."

His mask is on, I realize, and I don't have the nerve to ask him to take it off. But he smiles that enigmatic little smile, and for some reason, it's not as cold as before. "You saved my life," he said simply.

Did I really save his life? It's a question I've been pondering for a while now. I wonder what would have happened if I hadn't spotted his body in the woods. He probably would have gotten up in a few days and been on his merry way. He just seems so resilient it's impossible for him to just die like that.

And coldness comes over me again. Who am I to say I know anything about this man? I still don't know the reason for his being in that forest that day. How he managed to change my life. And by change my life, I mean turn it upside-down and mash it up into little unfathomable, confusing, and most of all, frustrating pieces.

I look away from him. I don't want to think anymore, and especially not with this headache that's only getting worse by the second.

"Hey," he says suddenly, and I freeze when I feel his fingers on my chin, making me turn to face him again. "Is there something wrong?"

Yes. You're acting cold and distance, and quite frankly, it's scaring me. I need comfort, and I need to be able to talk with you about my fears, my worries, and about the future, in general. How it's going to be. Am I going to be staying here forever under your surveillance? Can't your Hokage tell that I'm powerless and there's nothing that can possibly make me turn against you? I saved you on an impulse, yes, but you should be able to tell by the way I've acted up to now that I trust you all, even your Hokage. I would do anything to help you. But the way you're acting is making me feel scared. Alone. Please, talk to me.

"No," I say instead, because I sound like a whiny little child, and because explaining all of that would take too long, and take up too much energy. My headache is simply unbearable now. And then for the first time in my life, I fake a smile, one that actually looks genuine despite all the pain, both physical and emotional. "Of course nothing is wrong."

And suddenly my self-control shatters, and a look of alarm crosses his face before everything in the room disappears into a swirl of black, black, and more black.

::~::

"Your father didn't intend to tell you about your powers."

It's the same voice as before, but this time there's something else. Smell. I can smell a musky, acidic scent in the blackness of the void. I don't try to move.

"He didn't want to let you know. Let go of him. Come with me, and we will rule the world together."

I can feel fear, like a trembling moth in the air.

"Yes … master."

It's the woman's voice again, and she says it in a barely-audible whisper. There's a laugh, a cold, emotionless laugh.

"Good … you don't even expect to be an equal to me. Good …" There's a little intake of breath. "We'll kill her, and we'll have nothing standing between us and glory."

There's undisguised greed in that voice.

And suddenly that trembling fear erupts into a desperate desire to escape, like a struggling moth doused in water.

"No … not again, please! PLEASE!"

::~::

Hello, wonderful readers! Say hello to chapter 11 and all the frustrations that come with it.

Oh god, this is terrible. I didn't mean to make Kakashi like this. It's the fanfic I'm reading that's making his character like this. Ugh! I knew I shouldn't have started reading it. T-T I'm so sorry, but I love you (Big Bang ftw). Maybe you'll forgive me because this chapter is pretty long. And that "sick, twisted almighty spirit" is me, in case you didn't catch my drift in the beginning of the chapter.

All this tension … it's leading up to something big. And that's all I'm going to say! :)

As per usual, please review, follow, and favourite! :)

-Jennifer *haggles*