Dammit… they're all too revealing… Karin thought in irritation as she opened her locker and saw the assortment of swimsuits available for her. Initially, she was excited to finally take a hard-earned break from her mission at Shimeri Suna Estate and potentially go on a date with Suigetsu. But now, after seeing the swimsuits that were provided in the ladies' changing room, she wasn't so sure she would enjoy the party. She closed the locker door, sat down on the bench underneath, and sighed.
"Is anything wrong?" a sweet and soft voice asked from Karin's right.
"Who's asking?" Karin responded as she turned to meet the voice next to her, too disappointed to put up her usual abrasive attitude. Who she saw was a woman about Karin's own height, with long dark hair tied in a ponytail and wearing an orange one-piece swimsuit.
"I don't think we've introduced ourselves before. My name's Hinata Hyuga." she said. "What's yours?"
"Karin… Karin Uzumaki…"
"Uzumaki… Are you related to Naruto-kun?"
"We come from the same clan… But I've never even talked to him. So I wouldn't call each other 'family', if that's what you're asking…"
"Oh." Hinata shook her head and brushed off whatever she was thinking about. "You seem upset, Karin-san."
Karin hung her head. "It's the swimsuits. All of them are too revealing for me."
"There are one-piece swimsuits too… I picked it out since I don't like revealing much either…"
"You don't get it… Even your swimsuit shows off some cleavage and reveals your shoulders. Try looking through my clothes with those fancy eyes of yours. Maybe you'll have an idea then…"
At the suggestion, Hinata activated her Byakugan and noticed many bite marks all over Karin's arms and upper torso.
"I see…" Hinata turned her Byakugan off and looked away.
"So what do I do?" Karin asked.
"You don't need to change if you don't want to. Just go out like that."
"You know what…" Karin took off her thigh-high sandal-boots and then turned around and opened her locker door. "I don't need to get in one of those… but I can still enjoy the warm sand and cool water on my feet!"
Karin then put her sandal-boots in her locker and took the towel out, and subsequently closed and locked her locker. "Thanks Hinata!"
"You're welcome, Karin-san…" Hinata smiled as she waved across the changing room to Temari, Tenten, and Kurotsuchi. "We're ready to head out!"
"Don't be leaving without the star of this party!" Kurotsuchi protested. "I still need to pick my swimsuit! And as for those two…"
Kurotsuchi pointed to Tenten and Temari, who simultaneously pulled out the most revealing white bikini they could find from their lockers. Satisfied that they were identical, Temari and Tenten undressed, put the swimsuits on, and faced each other.
"Hey, Future Tsuchikage!" Temari called out to Kurotsuchi, who was behind Tenten from where she was standing. "Which of us is bigger?"
Kurotsuchi walked around to between the two of them and looked at Tenten and Temari's breasts very closely.
"Umm… they're pretty close, but I think Temari's are just a tiny bit bigger." Kurotsuchi declared.
"Huh." Temari smirked, her hands on her hips, "Seems like I win again."
"No fair!" Tenten objected. "You're two years older than me! When I hit twenty, you'll see…"
"Like that matters." Temari said while taking a towel out of her locker. "Just look at Hinata over there; she's the youngest one here and yet her boobs are easily the biggest of the bunch."
Hinata put her arms over her chest from across the room. "You're embarrassing me, Temari-san…"
Now that she mentions it… Karin thought, Hinata's got massive jugs… But on top of that, she has nice curves all over… and she's got a soft face… She's certainly pretty enough, and she seems very nice and patient enough to deal with anyone… "So, Hinata…" she said with a devilish grin.
"Yes, Karin-san?" Hinata asked with a slight shiver.
"Are you Sasuke's girlfriend?"
Karin's question shocked Hinata speechless for a few seconds.
"No way!" Hinata eventually screamed. "I don't even like Sasuke-kun!"
Karin was in complete disbelief. "How… How can that actually be true? I thought every girl in the world liked Sasuke without exception! Even the Mizukage displayed some fucking interest!"
"There's only one man I have feelings for, Karin-san." Hinata's tone became serious and sharp, unlike her previous softness, surprising Karin. "And that person is…"
[X-X-X]
Meanwhile, in the men's' changing room…
"Hinata's in love with me?! Like that?!" Naruto exclaimed in total shock.
"Only an idiot like you would miss it…" Sasuke said, sitting beside him, his locker and Naruto's being next to each other.
"But… when? When did this happen?"
"When? She's been in love with you from the very beginning, you idiot. Ever since you met in the academy!"
"How did you… figure that out? I don't remember you two ever talking to each other, even back then…"
"It was very easy to spot from my point of view regardless. You remember how all the girls in our class were attracted to me, right?"
"Yeah… It was one of the things that kept me from being your friend… Not only were you at the top of our class, you also got everyone's attention without even trying. I was so jealous of you…"
"Well… there was one exception." Sasuke revealed, Naruto's eyes widening in comprehension. "Hinata. She was the one girl in our class that never paid any attention to me. She never even looked at me… because she was busy watching you."
Naruto started to cry. "So for all those years in the academy… Before Iruka-Sensei acknowledged me… when I thought I was completely alone in the world… I wasn't? Hinata was watching over me and believing in me the whole time?"
"That's right. While most of the village hated you for what the Nine-Tails did, and while I was too obsessed with getting revenge on Itachi to care about you either way, Hinata wanted to be by your side, supporting you and believing in you and protecting you all at once. While the world's come to acknowledge you for who you've become, Hinata's been acknowledging you for who you always were. She was just too quiet to make her voice heard at the time… To be honest, I thought you already figured it out."
"Why is that?" Naruto wondered, still teary-eyed.
"When Sakura told me about how you held hands with Hinata during the war, she told me that when you did it, you told Hinata, 'thank you for being by my side this whole time'. I thought that maybe you learned just how long she's wanted to be at your side, and that was your way of letting her know how much you appreciated it. Seems like I was wrong…"
"That was right after Neji died… I wasn't really thinking straight. Hinata helped me restore my resolve and I said and did the first things that came to mind to show my gratitude…"
Suddenly, Sasuke started giggling faintly.
"What's so funny about that, huh?!" Naruto asked in irritation.
"It's just… I know just why you did it! My god, you're even dumber than I thought!"
"And what's that supposed to mean, bast-"
Naruto's curse was cut off by Sasuke pressing his index and middle fingers on Naruto's forehead:
"It means you love her back, you idiot. You're so stupid that you don't even know your own feelings!"
"I'm in love with Hinata? What about Sakura-chan?"
"What about Sakura?"
"I'm not following…"
"Why did you start liking Sakura in the first place?"
"Well…" Naruto contemplated for a few seconds. "I didn't know myself for a while, but I got my answer when I transformed into you and Sakura-chan almost kissed me. She confessed to me that she was desperate for your acknowledgement… and that was something we had in common: being desperate for your acknowledgement."
"And what did you and Sakura talk about the most while I wasn't around?"
"That would be… you. I promised Sakura-chan that I'd save you, and when I failed she promised me that we'd save you together… When Sai first joined our team Sakura-chan and I compared him to you believing he'd never fill the hole you left behind… When I first learned Rasen Shuriken and Sakura-chan was treating me in the hospital, we talked about how I might have been strong enough to finally take you back… Even when Sakura-chan made her confession to me, it was ultimately about her giving up on you more than being in love with me, and me believing she'd never give up on you completely, and me calling her out on her lie… Looking back, every single important conversation that we ever had was related to you in some way, Sasuke…"
"Now that that's clear…" Sasuke took a deep breath. "Let me ask you one final question."
"Alright, shoot."
"Tell me, Naruto… If you remove your shared desire for my acknowledgement and wanting to save me… What's left of your bond?"
Sasuke's question made Naruto freeze, unable to provide an answer.
"I don't know…" Naruto eventually admitted.
"That's what I've been driving at from the start." Sasuke concluded. "Your feelings for Sakura were never real. They were nothing more than an illusion you created. You made yourself believe you were in love with Sakura because her love for me reminded you of yourlove for me.You projected the desire you had to get close to me onto her. That's all it was."
"Why are you… so sure? It's as if you're speaking from experience…"
"I am. What you did with Sakura is exactly the same thing I did with Taka."
"Taka?"
"The team I formed after I left. You've met all of them by now. Jugo, Karin, and Suigetsu… Jugo was the one who fought with us against Obito, and Karin and Suigetsu are the couple that held hands in front of Kurotsuchi. I wasn't sure until recently, but I formed the team and grew to 'care' about them because they reminded me of Team Seven on the surface. Jugo, like Kakashi, is a very nice guy at first glance but is deadly if you piss him off. Suigetsu, like you, is an overconfident idiot getting in way over his head with a big dream; he wants to collect all Seven Swords of the Mist and you want to become Hokage. And Karin, like Sakura, used to put all her focus on me to the exclusion of all else… Of course, that's where the similarities end, but I didn't know or care about that until I started going on this journey. The point is, no matter how much I wanted to deny it, there was a part of me that wanted to go back home and restore my bonds with Team Seven. I think creating Taka… was a way for me to appease that part of me while trying to reject it."
"And you're saying that my crush on Sakura-chan was my way of… appeasing the part of me that wanted to become your friend and your brother, instead of your rival? So I was getting close to Sakura-chan so I could avoid getting close to you? But I accepted that part of myself during our first fight at the Valley of the End!"
Sasuke stood up and turned around, opening his locker for his towel. "And that's why Sakura returning your crush no longer mattered after that, didn't it?"
"Now that you mention it… You're right! After fighting with you four years ago, I stopped caring whether Sakura-chan noticed me or not. All that mattered was that you were back and that she was happy. Rather than pursue romance from Sakura-chan… I was pursuing friendship from you!"
"And now you can stop pretending with Sakura and pursue romance for real."
"Hold on… you said something strange. You said I was an overconfident idiot getting in way over my head… but that was also an illusion."
"It was?" Sasuke raised an eyebrow.
Naruto nodded. "Yeah. I only boasted as a way to hide my insecurities. I didn't have any real confidence in myself until… I made this very confession to Hinata four years ago before my fight with Neji in the Chunin Exam finals, and Hinata helped me realize how awesome I really was…"
"I think that was the moment then… The moment you fell in love with Hinata."
"That… makes a lot of sense! It was the first time I ever let my guard down for anyone… That I even did that must have meant I already trusted her more than I did anyone else. And after she saved me, I told Hinata that I was wrong about my first impression of her and that I actually really liked her… It's just that I didn't realize in what way I liked her until now."
"So I bet you can imagine how Hinata must be feeling after you held her hand in front of the whole alliance… and never followed up on it." Sasuke remarked.
Naruto remained silent in thought for a few seconds, but he suddenly screamed:
"Oh my god! Hinata… she must be devastated! I practically tell the whole world 'this is my woman!' and then I don't do anything else with her for over two months! We went to Neji's funeral together, and Hinata saw me in the hospital a couple times, and there was our mission just now… but other than that we never saw each other! I didn't even give her a birthday present, since I had no idea what she'd like… Hinata must think I want nothing more to do with her! What do I do, Sasuke?!"
"Someone once told me that men are supposed to make women happy. So cheer her up. Hinata's here with you and this is a party, after all. Beyond that… just be yourself; Hinata isn't interested in anyone else." Sasuke finished by closing up his locker and walking to the exit door. "But hurry up, will you? We're late enough as it is. Such tardiness is one thing we don't want to emulate from Kakashi…"
Naruto looked around to find that Lee, Suigetsu, and Kankuro were already gone.
"Holy shit you're right!" Naruto shouted as he jumped up from the bench, then turned around, got a towel out of his locker, subsequently closed it, and swiftly followed Sasuke out the door.
The Shimeri Suna Estate party was about to begin.