Sholpan had easily gone from the most miserable dog in Konoha, to the most content.
She'd spent the past few weeks being too bloated to eat or move, and yet had to pee all the time anyway.
Then she'd endured the most wretched cramping ever, with the result being a baby popping out of her lady parts every hour or so.
Who knew?
The bonus part was the placentas that soon followed. Those were freaking delicious. She didn't know she could make such tasty snacks, but doubted it would happen again any time soon.
Mari and Hana had been with her the entire time, massaging and encouraging her. She wanted to lick the puppies right away when they appeared, but her people had immediately jumped in to dry and fuss over them. Which was okay, because she still had those placental snacks.
In all, there were three babies. She just loved them so much. They needed to be kissed and cleaned constantly, so that's what she did. That, and she fed them. They ate a lot.
Except for the smallest one. He was so weak. Mari and Hana came and took that one away a lot. She worried about him, so she gave him lots of extra kisses whenever he was back.
Hopefully he would be okay.
One thing I didn't miss about puppies is how exhausting they were.
Especially ones that are struggling.
Sholpan had three beautiful little fuzzballs that looked vaguely like hamsters for the time being. One giant white beefcake who was almost 900 grams when he was born. The second a red fuzzball with white splotches, and the third a microscopic little grey mottled puppy.
Seriously, that little baby was scaring me to death. He was only about 80 grams when he was born. Hana and I had been taking shifts tube feeding him every two hours because he was too weak to nurse. Sholpan was allowed to have him long enough to help him go to the bathroom, but otherwise I had to keep him on me because she was so obsessive with her licking he wasn't able to get any rest.
Plus his siblings kept squishing him.
I frowned at him on the scale in Hana's clinic. He'd only gained 7 grams in two days. The little dude was seriously giving me flashbacks to Sholpan's troubling puppyhood.
There was a tiny vial of Hana's special formula warming for him. I stuffed him into my bra to keep him warm while I got the tube feeding equipment set up. If he got too chilled, he'd end up vomiting whatever he ate and probably aspirate and die.
"How is he doing?" Tsume walked in, her voice thick with uncharacteristic tenderness.
I shook my head. "He's not losing weight, but isn't gaining as much as he should. Still tired too."
She watched somberly as I drew 3 ccs of formula into a syringe and primed the thin rubber feeding tube. Her hand squeezed my shoulder reassuringly as I pulled him out of my shirt and carefully propped him into position.
Getting the tube down into his stomach and not a lung was one of the tricky parts. Once it was in place, I slowly filled his tiny stomach with the nutritious goo.
He fell asleep shortly after that, while I was cleaning up his little bottom. I nestled him back in my cleavage, pulling the neckline of my tank top up enough to keep him covered. It was extra important he stay warm with a full stomach.
Tsume watched all of this worriedly. "He is really small, isn't he?" Then she forced a grin. It came out more like a grimace. "He'll get through it though. He's an Inuzuka, and you're doing a great job looking after him."
"Thanks," I murmured, patting the little warm lump in my shirt. "He wouldn't have made it without Hana."
We shared a look. Hana was amazing. I wished I could learn that green glowy hand voodoo shit, but it was advanced way beyond anything I could comprehend at this point in time.
Tsume went to take care of other things. Since the puppies were born I'd been given some respite from the intense physical training. It was already starting to make a difference though. I went to my room and grabbed my shamisen, then headed out the door to my favorite tree for playing music.
It wasn't on the Inuzuka land, but close enough. Slinging the shamisen over my shoulder, I jumped and caught a low branch with one hand, then hoisted myself up. I plucked a green, oval shaped leaf off the tree before settling back against the trunk. Pressed it to my forehead with my thumb, and worked on pushing my meager chakra to spot it touched.
It was hard, because I didn't have much. Apparently a total civilian like me from another world had just enough chakra to keep from dying. If I used too much or too little, the leaf wouldn't stick.
After several minutes of varying the flow, it finally stayed. Carefully shifting my attention to the shamisen, I strummed a few experimental chords.
Papa always said music was good for puppies. Even when they couldn't hear, they could feel the vibrations in their bones if they were close enough.
This little guy was close enough.
I started out slow, to work the stiffness out of my scarred hand. First, the Ashokan Farewell. Then I fumbled my way through some other waltzes Papa used to like. Once my hand started to loosen up, I picked up the pace with Soldier's Joy.
That was an old favorite with my dad.
It was easier playing the songs now. I wanted to remember him, and they brought back good memories. From before he got really sick.
A familiar presence settled in the branches above. My mouth quirked up in a smile.
Kakashi's voice called down, "I like that one."
"Thanks." I sagged back against the tree. The leaf had fallen off my forehead at some point while I was playing.
My branch shivered a little under his weight as he suddenly appeared, crouching next to me. "How are the puppies?"
"Good, except the grey one is still struggling. He's not losing weight, but not gaining much either."
My friend's eyebrow furrowed in concern. Then shot up in surprise when I reached into the front of my shirt and pulled a puppy out.
"Oh, he is very small." He cupped his hands and I passed the tiny sleeping puppy to him. "Any idea why?"
"Hana-chan thinks his placenta wasn't attached well."
Kakashi held him up at eye level, carefully cupped in his warm hands, then offered him back to me. I took my puppy and slipped him back into the warm spot in my cleavage.
He stared for a moment, eyebrow raised. "Pakkun always says it's, that is, it's comfortable there." He coughed awkwardly and looked away. "For puppies I guess."
Smooth Kakashi. Nice save.
Resisting the urge to tease him, I changed the subject. "Hey, can you read to me some time? I'm terrible at it and miss stories." It was true. Not only could I not read well, but TV was no longer an option.
He opened his book, flipped through several pages, then held it out to me. "Try this page, it's pretty tame."
I took it and stared incomprehensibly at the characters dotting it. Okay, it's right to left not left to right, I told myself. You can do this.
He something blah blah something.
I squinted harder, as if that would miraculously improve my language skills.
He something her something.
That was an improvement. Maybe squinting was a solid strategy after all!
"What does aah-i-bu mean?"
He glanced over my shoulder. "Aibu? It's when uh," pink tinted his cheekbone visible just above his mask. "It's a way to touch someone. Softly, like this."
He reached out, fingertips caressing my forearm.
An electric shiver went through my skin at his touch. It was a little disappointing when he withdrew his hand.
"Is reading really that hard for you?" he asked in an unusually soft voice.
"Both of my native languages only have 26 characters, and both languages use the exact same characters. This is kind of hard for me."
"Mah, romaji?"
I nodded. It was weird that they had the Latin alphabet in this world. And that it was called "romaji", which was obviously derived from Roman.
Did that mean there were Romans at some point in the history of this world? I chewed my lip. "Where does romaji come from?"
"I don't know." He stared down at the book. "But someone should. Maybe the cryptanalysis team would know the history."
"In my world, it came from the Roman people. It's over 2,000 years old, and one of the languages I speak comes from their language.
He rubbed his chin, frowning at the paper. "Do you think there are people in this world somewhere who speak your language?"
"Maybe? Or something similar."
"What would you do if there was?"
I stilled and went silent. I hadn't really thought about that. Would I leave Konoha if there was some nation in the world where people spoke pseudo-French? Or even English?
Then again, just because a people spoke a similar language didn't mean their country would be any safer or nicer to live in. It could be like Nazi Germany for all I knew. My stomach twisted. There would definitely be no Inuzuka.
Or Kakashi.
"I wouldn't leave Konoha. My family is here. I guess, it's just lonely sometimes, being in a place where you can't talk to anyone in the language you were born speaking."
"Teach me."
Those simple words jolted me. Never in a million years did I ever expect him to want to learn.
"Which one?" I asked after recovering from my initial shock.
"The one you spoke most often."
"Do you have time? It's not an easy language, the grammar is nonsense."
"That's all right," he said, eye curving in a smile. "I'm a fast learner." His hand pushed the dark fabric of the forehead protector up off his scarred eyelid.
Which then opened.
The fuck happened to his eye? I screamed internally. Some of my shock must have shown on my face, because both his eyes widened, then he covered the offending one. "Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."
"It's okay," I croaked. "I just wasn't expecting that." Then after a moment of awkward silence, "were you born with it?"
He shook his head. "It was a gift from a friend."
"Obito?" I guessed, thinking back to how his hand would stray to that eye when he contemplated his fallen comrade.
He nodded. "This eye sees things in a way the other can't. If I watch you speaking your language with it, I should be able to learn it faster."
Oh. That was actually kind of cool. Though, I didn't quite understand what he meant by it being a present from Obito, or that it could see differently. Most people didn't keep spare eyeballs laying around.
Except Obito was dead. Which meant maybe he did have a spare after all. Okay, not going to think about that anymore because that was a little too weird.
"I'm ready to try again, if you still want to," I said.
"Right. Just face me when you talk and enunciate clearly. I'm going to say something in my language, then you say it in yours while I watch you speak."
He uncovered his eye again. After getting over the initial shock, he looked striking with one dark eye and the other crimson.
Konichiwa.
Hello.
Arigato gozaimasu.
Thank you.
Watashi wa Kakashi desu.
My name is Kakashi.
We went back and forth like that for a while, then swapped so that I'd say something in his language and he'd repeat it in English. I had to correct him a few times, but he wasn't kidding when he said he was a fast learner.
English sounded really, um, good coming from him. His tongue rolled the foreign sounds around in his mouth, tasting them, but not quite managing to reproduce them exactly as he heard. He gazed intensely at my face as I spoke, and I didn't look away.
I'd almost forgotten how hot guys with accents sounded.
Eventually he stretched and pulled the forehead protector back over his eye. "That's my limit for today. Please forgive my accent, it's going to take some practice to get rid of it."
"What? No way. It's-," I stopped myself before blurting out something mortifying. The fact that I didn't know how to say 'sexy' saved me from looking like an idiot. "I like your accent."
His eyebrow raised. "Oh?"
My face flushed with heat. I grasped for a word to describe it that wouldn't be too awkward. "It's charming."
His eye crinkled with a smile. "So is yours."