Another tiny update but hey at least it was a little quicker _ There should be a more comprehensive update soon...we'll be getting into somethiing vaguely resembling plot again :o
Shino has always found there to be something vaguely indecent and tantalising about bare necks... he supposes it is because growing up in the Aburame compound everyone wore high collars, necks and the lower halves of faces were private things rarely seen outside of the intimacy of marriage. He remembers the first time he emerged from the compound, to attend his first day of the academy, feeling scandalised by the amount of skin that women in particular seemed to show.
Eventually it had become dulled to him, another inexplicable difference between the Aburame clan and the outsider world but on occasion he finds himself still slightly startled by the sights...
Tenten always wears her hair up, the nape of her neck exposed above her pristine white collar in a way the seems to Shino positively designed to drive him to distraction. It is perhaps off-set by her tendency to cover every other part of her body in a rather modest fashion. He wonders why it is the bare mid-drift of Yamanaka Ino or the almost indecent shortness of Haruno Sakura's skirt and short's combination cannot even compare in his mind to the elegant bare curve of Tenten's neck.
He is observing her now, noting the simple elegance of the way she tilts her head towards her teammates, laughing warmly at some joke one of them has made...and he tries to calm the kikkai seething in his chest.
Jealousy is an ugly emotion, and one Shino is well aware he is predisposed to. As a child, perhaps he was too used to commanding the unwavering attention of his father who, as a single parent, had been rather closer to his son than tradition normally allowed. When he was often pushed aside by his teammates, he generally felt the emotion rise up in an attempt to choke him... it wasn't correct to feel that strongly about something so trivial and he could rarely vocalise exactly how he felt to them but he felt it nonetheless.
He knows that to indulge in this petty jealousy was wrong, especially in the circumstance he finds himself in now. It is counterproductive. It is above all ridiculous... that Tenten should wish to spend time with the teammates she had not seen for months was natural, understandable. That she should talk with other men was inevitable, to wish her not to would make him as bad as the ancient daimyo's who rumour has it had locked up their wives. But...
She hasn't sought him out.
Hasn't contacted him, hasn't come to the Aburame compound to enquire after him. In fact, a mere week after they exchanged breathless kisses, she seems to have forgotten him entirely.
It seems to him as if a sheet of clear glass has been dropped between them, separating him from her invisibly but inevitably. She has gone back to her world, her teammates and he is left to stand in the dark, to watch her from afar.
Alone.