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In A Life

12. Reading Material

:Hmmmmmm,: sighed Obito loudly, dramatically. Kakashi tried to ignore the ghost. He'd been sighing and generally being annoying for a while now; ignoring him was getting harder.

Kakashi wandered down the street, looking absently at the shops that lined it, not really seeing any of them. He had the day off, and he was finding it difficult to find anything to occupy himself. He couldn't train—he was still healing from his last mission, and his medic had told him in no uncertain terms that if he messed up all the hard work the mednin had done doing something foolish like training when he should be resting, Kakashi would find himself facing a very irate medic. And all ninja knew that irate medics could make very bad things happen to patients who annoyed them.

So Kakashi was without his usual escapes. What did people do if they weren't on missions or training?

:Hmmmmmm!: sighed Obito again. Kakashi caved, and flicked an irritated glance toward the transparent Uchiha. Obito looked back at him, innocently. :What?:

:If you're bored, why are you still hanging around here? You're a ghost, you can do whatever the hell you want!: Kakashi thought at his dead friend vehemently.

:Hate to break this to you, but being a ghost isn't real fascinating,: Obito returned. :There's nothing for me to do, unless someone dies and needs me to guide them. I just thought your life would be more interesting. You know, since you manage to get yourself into life-threatening situations at least once a week. Just my luck, this is your off-week.:

Haha. The boy was a riot. Sometimes Kakashi wondered just what he'd done in a previous life to deserve such treatment in this one. Haunted by a ghost who thought he was witty.

:It's not that I'm not witty,: Obito said, :it's just that you have no sense of humor.:

Yeah, whatever.

:You seriously have nothing better to do than to annoy me right now?: Kakashi asked. Obito floated through a fresh fruit stand, not upsetting a single melon. Strange, how he could sometimes choose to be completely insubstantial and sometimes choose to be able to touch and interact with things in the living world. Kakashi had been victim of a couple ghost pranks over the years he'd been haunted by Obito.

:Well…: Obito said. :To tell you the truth, there's some big stuff going to go down soon. I'm… sort of waiting for it.:

Well, that was vague.

:I'm not allowed to tell you,: Obito said, seriously. :It's not my place to interfere with things like that. I'm here to help you, not make you a god.:

Now it was Kakashi's turn to sigh. Sometimes he also wondered what exactly the reason was for his haunting. Obito had told him once that he'd come back as a ghost to help Kakashi 'with life.' It wasn't really an answer, but Kakashi hadn't really gotten a better one out of his late Teammate. From what he could gather, Obito was around to give him moral support, or something. There were a couple times when Obito would warn Kakashi of an enemy or a trap during missions, so maybe part of Obito's purpose was also to keep Kakashi alive, at least until it really was Kakashi's time to die.

Kakashi's musings were interrupted by the ghost's sudden exclamation-- :Here! Kakashi! Go in this shop.:

:A bookstore?: Kakashi asked. Obito circled around him dizzyingly.

:Yeah! You can buy a book for us! We can read it—I'll look over your shoulder,: Obito said.

:I guess…: Kakashi responded. He could do with a little more knowledge in edible wild plants. When they were out on missions and they—

:Ugh, no! Get something interesting,: Obito protested as they entered the store. He hurried over to a shelf. :Here! Look, these are science fiction… Oo! Zombies!:

Kakashi didn't much share his friend's enthusiasm. He looked longingly over at the informational section of the bookstore, where his How To books and nature guides waited.

:Hey! Look at this one, Kakashi! It was written by Jiraiya-sama. He was Minato-sensei's sensei!: Obito exclaimed, waving at Kakashi. The grey-hair shinobi ambled casually over to where the ghost was.

"The Legend of the Gutsy Ninja," Kakashi read the title. "Huh."

He paged it open and read a bit. It actually didn't sound too bad. Okay, he could do this.

:Get this one, too! It's also by Jiraiya-sama,: Obito said, choosing to be partially corporeal and pushing the small novel into Kakashi's hands. Kakashi looked quickly around to see if anyone would have seen what looked to be like a floating book hovering into his hands. :Relax, no one saw me.:

:We're in public! You should be more careful! The last thing I need is for more rumors about me getting around…: Kakashi grumbled. He stacked the two books in his hands neatly together and glared surreptitiously at Obito, who rolled his remaining eye.

:Yeah, yeah. C'mon, go buy those—I wanna read now!:

Kakashi's mouth twisted a little beneath his mask, quirking into a self-deprecating smirk. At the beck-and-call of a ghost…

He went to the front cashier and plopped the books down onto the counter. The man behind it glanced at the books, then took a closer look at the grey-haired shinobi.

"You're a shinobi, huh?" said the man, eyeing Kakashi's hitai-ate. Kakashi blinked at the non sequitur.

"That's right," he said slowly. The suspicion cleared slightly from the man's face as his gaze flicked down and took note of Kakashi's flak jacket.

"Alright. That's a thousand four hundred and fifty yen," he told Kakashi, who handed over the correct change.

:C'mon, Kakashi!: urged Obito. Kakashi wondered a moment why the Uchiha seemed so impatient as he gathered up his purchase.

The two—shinobi and ghost—made their way to a quiet area of the village; a little forested grotto that was too small to be used by ninja for training and too deep in one of the forested areas of Konoha for civilians to trek to. Kakashi settled down at the base of a tree and slid the books out of their bag. He set "The Legend of the Gutsy Ninja" aside for the moment and looked curiously at the other book Obito had pressed upon him.

"Icha Icha Paradise? What the hell is this, Obito?!"

:What? It's perfectly legitimate literature, Kakashi!:

"It's… it's porn!" Kakashi growled, paging through it briefly before shaking the book at Obito. Kakashi groaned. "This is why the guy asked me if I was a shinobi. He was making sure I was of-age!"

In a Hidden Village, the concept of being 'of-age' varied slightly from civilian villages. The thinking was, if you were old enough to die for your village, you could pretty much handle everything else—alcohol, cigarettes… porn. So, pretty much as soon as you had a hitai-ate you could buy those things. Of course, if you looked like a punk-ass little Genin trying to buy cigarettes or what-have-you, shopkeepers still retained the right to refuse you based on age. It helped if you also had a Chuunin vest.

:Look, we got a book for you and a book for me. Fair's fair, Kakashi!: Obito said, pouting. It didn't work quite as well as it had when he was eleven, mostly because Obito had aged his ghostly appearance to keep time with Kakashi's aging, and a childish pout didn't look as pitiable on a young adult as it did on a chubby-cheeked kid. :You don't even have to read it, you just need to hold the book open for me! I'll tell you when to turn the pages.:

"Is that supposed to make it better? You can make yourself corporeal; hold the book yourself!"

:That takes effort, Kakashi! And I can't be corporeal for long!:

Kakashi knew he would regret this, but… "Fine! Fine. I'll hold your stupid book for you. But I expect to be made a Buddha or a god or something when I die, for this," he grumbled reluctantly. "If people see me…"

:Think of it this way, people won't take you too seriously if they see you're reading porn. Then they'll underestimate you and it'll be easy to beat the crap out of them!: Obito offered, cheerful now that he'd won.

"A Hatake reading porn… The shame…" Kakashi mumbled indistinctly. He sighed in resignation, and flipped open the book, canting it to the side so Obito could read it more easily over his shoulder.

"Heh heh…"

:Kakashi? Are you reading my book again?:

"…no…"