Heh. Written for Valentine's Day. Ahh, it's been a while since I played around in Nejitenverse...on another note, I've just discovered that I've written about 6000 pages of RP logs with a friend. Mostly Hiashi-centric. No wonder, huh...


When it came to girlfriends, Neji considered himself the best-off shinobi in Konoha. Of course, he conceded that other males may feel this way - it was in the nature of boyfriends to be biased towards their significant others because of the reason-deadening presence of love. Girls seemed to be angry, in fact, when this was not the case. Even he himself was probably not completely objective towards Tenten...

Still, he was completely convinced that Tenten was the best girlfriend in the Village. He had even made a bullet-list of why it was so. (He'd been trying to construct an argument so as to convince the Hyuuga Council that dating Tenten was good. He ended up just scribbling her name over and over again. Luckily, it turned out that he didn't need to present a case to the Council - they were just happy he was capable of landing a girlfriend. Sometimes he thought he should have been more indignant about that.)

And one of the reasons she was so superior to every other kunoichi in Konoha was this: Tenten was refreshingly low-maintenance.

Neji couldn't help but use that exact term when he thought about it. With her, he didn't need to dress up; he didn't need to bring about half his monthly salary to take her out to dinner - half the time, they didn't even go out. He didn't need to spend time wracking his brain about activities for dates - mostly they trained, and then ate something, then he walked her home and kiss her on her doorstep - secure in the knowledge that they would do the same the next day. It was pretty convenient having a girlfriend whose favorite use of her time was the same as his: training. (Well, and kissing. But that sort of thing was best left to develop spontaneously...)

And he certainly never had to worry about presents. He got her nice practical weapons on her birthday, and got to enjoy watching her use them during practice and battle, and that was it. None of this 'three month anniversary' and 'first date anniversary' and 'third week since our first time shopping together' nonsense that he saw his cousin engaging in. Even Hinata had been seen to be accepting candies and flowers from her boyfriend, Inuzuka Kiba, on a trumped-up occasion - something called "Christmas", he believed, a foreign festival...he wouldn't know, he and Tenten had spent all the day at the training fields.

But then he'd overheard the other boys talking about their presents. Naruto and Kiba were competing over cutest plushie (Kiba's a puppy, Naruto's a fox). Shino was smugly regarding a flower bouquet from the Yamanakas, studded all over with real butterflies, and doing some sort of bugmind-jutsu as he shifted the placement of the brightly-colored insects. Even Shikamaru was whittling away at a deer-antler ornament of some sort.

And they spoke of the ecstatic way their girls received their presents, and Neji couldn't help imagining Tenten rushing into his arms, face alight with joy and grateful pleasure...

He decided that she was worth a little maintenance.


When Neji decided to do something, he went all out. A few well-placed words soon had the Hyuuga kitchens producing a gourmet picnic lunch - and a tray of well-made molded chocolates. (There was, understandably, a high demand for them around that time. Neji was hardly the first Hyuuga to want to impress a signifciant other.) He also had them pack the good crystal, and the good china, and a set of the fine silverware. Neji had inherited his mother's jewels, of course, and decided that giving a small dragon idol, carved out of deep green jade, was appropriate - he fully intended Tenten to one day be mistress of all his mother's jewels, after all. This was just an - advance.

Of course he made sure that there was a nice new set of kunai to go along with the present. Tenten had always liked weapons as presents - he wasn't about to stop the tradition now.

(He did not notice that his unprecedented actions had the whole compound whispering and buzzing. His cousins had taken to smiling gleefully at him, and even Hiashi was regarding him with a half-smirk. And the fact that he did not notice lent more fuel to the fire of gossip.)

The morning of the fourteenth dawned bright and clear, much to the relief of many people. Neji had risen BEFORE the sun, preparing the training field where he and Tenten met everyday. He labored in the pre-dawn darkness, spreading the blankets, placing certain scented candles at predetermined points so the air would be pleasantly scented but subtly so. A portable music player was hidden up the tree, with CDs of their favorite classical music ready to play later. He'd already warned Lee and Gai off - well, not so much warned as intimated that he'd be willing to spar seriously against Lee and participate in some predetermined competition against Naruto (who Gai had determined was Lee and Neji's eternal rivals in the way his sensei Kakashi was) if they just left him alone...

He was surprised to feel the warm, twisting nervousness in the pit of his belly. He wanted Tenten to like this. He wanted Tenten to be pleased...regardless of whether she flung herself in his arms and kissed him senseless, as Naruto and Shikamaru claimed their girlfriends did. He just wanted...

He just wanted her to smile.

When she arrived a few minutes later, she'd taken a good look around, then stared at him agape, eyes shocked. He'd tentatively smiled at her - a tiny quirk of the lips no one else would have called a smile, but she should know...

She attacked him.


"I'm sorry, Neji!" she apologized, for the fifth time, as she wrapped gauze around a gash on his forearm. The katana she'd used to deal the blow lay nearby - well, stood. It had been stabbed through the blanket he brought.

"It's just - I thought you were an enemy-nin."

Neji just grunted.

Tenten protested - having read that grunt for all its meaning, "Well, you have to admit it was suspicious! It was more like someone trying to impersonate you, reading all your surface details without knowing you. I mean - a romantic picnic? It's - it's not you. It's not US."

"..."

"I didn't even know you knew what today was!"