Thank you, Strongwahine19 for your kind (and long) review. I read every last word of it with a smile on my face.
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Thank you Carbarrier and Stray Kids Fan for your reviews.
Welcome to chapter I. Let's see if your guesses are correct ;-)
"Neji!" Tenten clumsily pushed the buttons of her house lock pad and barged inside the place. Her eyes searched frantically for Neji and when she did not see him in the living room, she surmised that he was in her room or bathroom.
Tenten climbed the stairs taking three at a time to the top. She opened the door to her room and saw a horrible scene live out of a horror movie. Neji was sprawled out on the floor and there was blood!
"NEJI!"
Neji groaned at how loud Tenten was. He didn't think his larynx could handle the new volumes Tenten was taking his voice to. "Tenten I am not dead or dying, don't make me feel like the Rapture is here already."
Tenten released a sigh of relief. "You scared me!" She complained.
"My respect to women has taken on a whole new level. I am only happy that I was not stuck in a woman in labour." Neji groaned again when a wave of backache, headache and stomachache hit him.
"Dah..." Tenten was short of words for a while. "Have you used some ibuprofen?" She managed.
"It doesn't work!"
"Yeah...I know. I am sorry I didn't warn you about my menses but my menstrual period was held back for two months so I wasn't sure if it would come this month." Tenten admitted sheepishly. Her menstrual cramps were always on a whole different level, aching so much that pain killers didn't work.
"You eat too much sugar!" Neji complained/diagnosed. "That is why you have terrible cramps and an irregular cycles. Gah!" Neji groaned again as his stomach churned. "Where on earth are the tampons?!"
"Oh right!" Tenten ran to the bathroom for the tampons only to find out that she had none. "Wow, I was really happy that my period didn't come so I didn't stock up on tampons. I actually thought I hit menopause." Tenten mused to herself.
She had been strangely happy when her period didn't come for the first month because the pain that came with it was unbearable. Oh well. At least Neji's bearing the pain for her now. Ha! He was paying for his generational sins.
"Er...I don't have any tampons." Tenten poked her head inside the room to make her announcement. "So I am going to get some now. Try not to get more blood on the carpet and don't lie on your stomach or back or you'll regret it. I'll be back!"
Tenten vaguely wondered why she was given strange looks at the convenience store when she went to the sanitary pad aisle. Okay, she was a man now but who cared?! She was buying it for her...boyfriend? Girlfriend? What would she refer to Neji in her body as? Why was she even thinking thoughts like that?
Her disguise was on point too so nobody could recognize her as Neji. Why then were they looking at her as though she had blue skin?!
"Neji, I'm back." Tenten announced as she entered the room.
"Goodness gracious!" Neji jumped back with a start when he saw her 'disguise'. "Tenten seriously? What happened to facemasks?" He asked dryly, well as dryly as a man having menstrual cramps could speak.
Tenten literally wrapped a scarf around her face like the typical cartoon description of a ninja and wore shades over her eyes. She looked like a martian if they even existed. Picture the image.
The woman removed her disguise with a pout. "I was rushing okay? Come now, can you stand on your own?" Tenten asked.
"I'll try?" Neji grunted and tried to lift himself up. The journey to the bathroom was excruciating and blood dripped enough to leave a trail but they finally got there.
"Okay, wash the blood off and I'll – I'll s-set the tampon for y-you." A dust of pink trailed Tenten's cheek as she realized how intimate(ish) the situation they were in was like. She chose one of her granny panties dedicated to her menstrual period and set the tampon for Neji.
"Well this is awkward." Neji admitted as he collected the panties and Tenten could only flush red at how true the statement was. She briefed him about checking for stains, hygiene and how to change and dispose tampons and prepared some herbal tea for him.
Neji felt better after a few excruciating hours of terrible cramps and now he and Tenten were in the living room watching a TV drama after scrubbing the blood that stained the floor away. Both actors couldn't help but to point out the obvious inferiority in their acting skills which soon led to switching the device off. The fakeness was too much to handle.
"Oya oya, I didn't know that you cared about me this much to come in this ridiculous outfit." Neji mocked, gesturing to Tenten's clothing. She wore the pants inside out and messed up the buttons of her shirt, leaving a big gap of four buttons in the middle. In her panic, she had thrown on a foot of one of his dress shoes and a foot of one of his sneakers.
Upon closer inspection, Neji saw that she had somehow managed to pick the right foot for both shoes. She tied up his hair in stupid pigtails too. Neji could not begin to imagine the horror the media would put him through if the paparazzi saw Tenten looking like this but Neji could somehow not bring himself to care.
The fact that she worried enough about him to run over in a space of ten minutes just because he called to ask for tampons and had groaned loudly once or twice, made Neji's heart warm up with several emotions.
Tenten pouted, pink dusting her cheeks, and removed the shoes which she forgot to remove in her panicked frenzy. "Of course I care about you." Tenten's voice was so small that it almost did not reach Neji's ears.
Though Tenten said nothing further, the small smile that she tried and failed to hide spoke many words for her and Neji understood them all. The man allowed a smile of his own to play upon his lips as he boldly placed his head on Tenten's lap.
He was surprisingly (in the good way) not met with any restraint, Tenten stroked his hair in fact. It was rather weird for the both of them because they were basically staring into their own faces as though they were looking at mirrors but there was something in the atmosphere that made it different.
It was as if they had not switched bodies. Tenten and Neji liked it and did not move from their position on the sofa for a very long time.
Xxx I am you?! xxX
Neji woke up to the ear grating sound of the doorbell to Tenten's house ringing incessantly throughout the place. They did not have any filming to do until it was night time today so it could not be Anko or Shikamaru at the door. Could it be Lee? No. Neji shook the thought off. The green man would have spammed his phone with phonecalls if it were Lee.
Neji walked down the stairs and checked clicked the intercom button. "Who is it?" He asked with mild irritation. Tenten would barge into her own house so it could not be Tenten at the door.
"Your father."
Neji frowned at that. He checked the man's image through the surveillance camera and was met with a Tenten in a man's form. Although older, the man had Tenten's eyes and her face. The only difference between the two of them was their hair. While Tenten's was a rich cinnamon brown, this man's hair was dark and murky.
The main reason why Neji did not allow the man in, aside from the fact that he did not know how Tenten related with her father, was the red flags waving in his face about the man.
Thick dark circles accentuated his eyelids and they were not because of the lack of sleep but of alcoholism and drug use. The man had not shaved in what seemed like weeks or months even and his clothes were ragged. The man's eyes were red and sunken and the way he introduced himself was off. Even as he stood, the man kept looking around him anxiously as if he was being followed.
Red flags.
"Uh...hold on a minute...sir." Neji added the 'sir' as an afterthought. Neji went upstairs to Tenten's room and picked up her phone to dial his number.
"Zênmé liao?" Tenten, for some reason, always answered his calls in Chinese but he supposed it was what made her unique.
"Tenten, your father is at my doorstep." Neji refused to beat around the bush about this. "He looks like a carbon copy of you and like he has not showered in months." Tenten released strings of colourful Chinese words from the other hand.
"Yes, unfortunately, that is my father. Neji, do not open the gate for him or listen to him. In fact send him away because I do not treat him with respect. Kick that piece of shit out. Neji, if you give him audience I would kill you even if it is literally killing myself. I would kill you! Neji..."
Neji scowled upon realizing that Tenten was having a panic attack. "Tenten, calm down okay? Calm down." Neji did not realize that he was pacing until he stubbed his toe against a stray coffee table. The pain did not register though because he was more worried about Tenten than anything.
"Tenten, breathe in." Neji instructed. When he heard her taking a sharp breath in, he muttered some soothing words and instructed her to exhale. The process continued until Tenten was finally calm.
"Sorry." Tenten whispered dejectedly.
"Hey, we can talk about this later okay? I won't let him in or near me or listen to him okay?" Neji promised.
"I don't want him to hurt you." Tenten muttered into the phone and Neji could not deny himself of the fluttering his hear felt at her next words.
"I care about you too."
And finally, the slow burn (ish) begins with a touch of drama on the side. So Tenten's father huh? What do you think about him? Why do you think he is at Tenten's gate and why do you think Tenten's afraid of him enough to develop a panic attack?
Who can guess?
Zênméli a ö? - what is the matter?