Chapter 14.

"What is he doing here?!" Naruto's outraged screams were not what Kakashi wanted to experience at the start of his day, but unfortunately it was exactly what he expected.

It was Saturday and so no school except for those who attended club activities or those on detention. Naruto, belonging to the latter group, didn't seem to expect anyone else apart from Sasuke and the art club members to be in Kakashi's classroom. And so, the blond senior was pointing an accusing finger at the other occupant of the room, who seemed to have an identical reaction to Naruto himself.

"I'm here for the club, unlike you, loser," Yahiko said, affronted.

"What did you say?"

Before it could escalate any further, Kakashi cleared his throat, getting both of the troublemakers' attention.

"Be quiet, you two," the art teacher ordered half-heartedly, wishing Hanabi and the others were there so that he could dump everything on the club's president and go get some sleep. Last night he barely had a wink of sleep. Just thinking about the yesterday's events brought a smile to his lips — it was all worth it. Even though he came back drenched and tired and his hand was hurting more than usual, Kakashi didn't regret any of it. He had a lot of fun hanging out with Hinata last night and it seemed that some of the good mood from yesterday still lingered, for he couldn't even bring himself to care much when Naruto and Yahiko almost started another fight in his classroom.

Just as he began contemplating letting Naruto and Sasuke go for today, the door to his workshop flung open, revealing Hanabi and Konan. Kakashi caught himself getting disappointed when he didn't see Hinata behind the students. Not knowing how to feel about that, the art teacher decided to take part in club's activities after all.

"Sorry we are late," Hanabi said by way of greeting, putting a tall stack of sheets on the nearest desk. "Had to print out these babies," she patted the heavy bundle almost lovingly.

"What are those?" Yahiko asked, leaning forward curiously. Naruto and Sasuke from the other side of the classroom looked like they too wanted to know.

"These are promotion flyers for our new competition!" Hanabi exclaimed and Konan nodded in restrained excitement. "We are going to hold a comic book competition. Anyone from Konoha can submit their idea for a one-shot, and the winner gets his comic drawn and published by the Art club!" the president explained, very much proud of her idea, if her expression was anything to go by.

"Really?" Naruto asked, looking at Kakashi, his disbelief evident. "I don't believe it."

"Believe it," the art teacher confirmed, making Sasuke smirk at the way the older man used his friend's own favorite quote. "The initiative has already been approved by Hiruzen, so if you lot are interested…" he trailed off, communicating the invitation.

The senior duo exchanged glances, clearly contemplating whether they should sign up or not. Just as they seemed to have come to a conclusion, Yahiko and Nagato beat them to it by voicing their interest as well.

"That actually sounds pretty cool," the ginger begrudgingly admitted, which got him a rare smirk from Nagato and a beaming smile from Konan. "Wait, can the members of the club participate too?"

"Of course," Kakashi nodded, "and you two are not even proper club members, so I don't see what you are worried about." Hanabi rolled her eyes at her teacher's insistence that Yahiko and Nagato not be considered members of the club despite the fact that anybody could join and leave as they pleased. The girl didn't say anything, though, as there was a more important matter to discuss.

"Now, how are we going to advertise our contest?" she asked no one in particular.

"How about you do your thing, and I will take care of promotion and all the other administrative stuff?" Kakashi suggested, feeling strangely generous. Everyone else seemed just as surprised by his initiative as he was himself. Usually he let Hanabi and club members handle everything and just supervised or smoothed things over with the school administration. Maybe Hinata was right about the art teacher actually enjoying their club's activities.

Having decided on that, the club went on about their usual business. Yahiko and Nagato didn't expect Kakashi to begin a lesson, and were even more surprised when he made them participate.

"Don't make me regret my decision to teach you lot instead of going for a nap," he had said as he gave them their assignment, relishing their groans of protest.

Meanwhile, miles away, on the top floor in one of the tallest buildings in the city, Hinata patiently awaited her audience with Itachi. She was pleasantly surprised that he had agreed to meet with her so easily. Perhaps what Kakashi told her was right after all, and the only thing she needed was to talk it out with her estranged friend. Her thoughts were interrupted when the door to the office opened, and out came Itachi himself.

"Hinata, please come on in."

Taking a deep breath for some reason, the Hyuga heiress stood up and went inside.

"Thanks for letting me in on such a short notice," she said, cursing inwardly. She had promised herself not to make it business-like, but couldn't help but fall into the comfort of courtesy. "I mean, you must be busy," she added in a somewhat warmer tone, trying to make the conversation more familiar.

"It's nothing." Itachi offered her a seat and took his own, hands resting on the large glass-covered desk made of several types of exotic wood. From his intent look she understood that the Uchiha expected her to start. The whole air felt like she was supposed to come with something serious, and Hinata felt like an idiot for taking his time for a simple catch-up chat.

"Sorry for barging in like this…" she trailed off, more and more unsure of her idea as time went by. Just as she was about to abandon everything, make an excuse and leave as quickly as possible, her phone rang with a message. With yet another embarrassed apology, she pulled the phone out and saw a single message from Kakashi.

"Don't chicken out."

Smiling to herself, Hinata put the phone away and with new courage, spoke again.

"I just wanted to ask how have you been. You know, to catch up. It's been a long time since we had a casual chat."

She waited for Itachi's response, willing herself to look him in the eye and not at her own twiddling hands. To her surprise, the man smiled. It was barely perceptible, but Hinata saw it often enough when they were kids to know that it was there.

"I must confess, I too wanted to talk to you," he admitted, his whole expression getting more relaxed, as if Hinata's words were some kind of a signal for him.

"You are as mannerly as always," Hinata smiled, relaxing herself.

"Oh, I'm afraid I am no longer the person you used to know," he replied, his tone grave. After a second of heavy silence, he smirked again. "I drink coffee know."

Hinata felt the tension dissipate from within her as she let out an exaggerated sigh of relief.

"You are a big boy now," she joked, making both of them chuckle.

Still smiling, Itachi reached for the communication device and with a press of a button told the secretary that he won't be available for the remainder of the day.

"Now we can really catch up," he said, clearly pleased with himself. Hinata happily nodded, standing up to get a good look around her friend's office. There were mostly things you'd find in a typical boss's office, like lots of books, paintings and other expensive trinkets. But there also were quite a few things personal to Itachi himself, and one of them was a picture of his family. She stopped to get a better look at the framed photograph, not realizing that her friend had also stood to come up beside her.

"I thought that they'd like to see what I've come to…" he said, but Hinata didn't catch pride nor joy in his voice. She watched him intensely look at the picture and waited for him to say more, but he didn't seem to want to continue that train of thought. Instead, he turned to her with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes and spoke. "Anyway, would you like some tea? Or have you too started taking a liking to coffee?"

Taking his joke as a cue, Hinata decided to play along. "No, I'm still tea for the win."

"Excellent."

They've spent this way much of the rest of the day, immersed in seamless banter and childhood nostalgia. Their rekindling of their friendship was so strange in its simplicity, in fact, that by the end of the meeting Hinata couldn't help but re-evaluate the way she operated. Perhaps, much like with Itachi, she tended to overthink things and adopt a too careful approach, when she should've been acting more. With those thoughts in mind, she felt more prepared to enter a new day.

When Hanabi promised Kakashi that people will be interested in their contest, she never imagined that the extent of their interest would reach such a level. People were literally busting into their workshop to submit their idea or inquire about the contest, even when it was well past the school hours. Even Kakashi got tired of reprimanding them at some point and simply left everything to the Art club. Hanabi thought that secretly he enjoyed all the attention, but the thought would never leave the boundaries of the club's private conversations.

Contrary to Hanabi, who only told her hypotheses to her friends, Hinata had no problem saying her observations to the man himself.

"Why are you so afraid to be happy?" she asked him when they both escaped the suddenly very popular art classroom. The way he increased his pace without ever replying to her question told Hinata more than his actual answer would have. "I still haven't thanked you, you know? For your help with Itachi," she said instead.

"No need," he grumbled. "There wasn't much of a problem there anyway."

"Maybe not for you, but I really needed the push you gave me," Hinata argued, a soft smile playing on her lips. When Kakashi finally stopped at the door of Kurenai's office, Hinata could finally make him look at her. "I guess what I'm getting at is that while you think that you didn't do much, other people might not see it that way. It's the same thing with your club. You may not think that you contributed much, but without you there would be no Art club in this school."

Kakashi seemed to think for a moment, before nodding slightly. "Maybe you are right…" was all he said as he entered the accountant's office. Hinata decided to wait for him outside, and sure enough, he came out five minutes later, looking somewhat pensive.

"Is everything okay?" she asked, thinking to herself that she was probably worrying too much and overthinking as always.

"It's nothing," he replied, making Hinata worry even more. Why would he answer her question with a phrase like that? Her worries had to wait, however, as he turned to her, "Do you know the Bright Dawn academy?"

"Yeah, I used to study there. Hanabi too," Hinata immediately replied. "What about it?"

"They are Konoha's rivals, I'm sure you know about it since you studied there. And somehow they have learned about our little contest. Now they propose to make it an inter-school contest, where the winner is determined from both school's participants."

"Isn't it great?" Hinata was confused, why did he look so troubled?

"Yeah," the art teacher agreed unconvincingly, "just great."

Hinata rolled her eyes at the man's thick sarcasm. "Come on, are you afraid of losing?" she teased, but her expression soon morphed into one of surprise as she saw that he was being serious. "My God, you are afraid that we'll lose!"

"I just know those bastards at Dawn, okay! Since me and Obito were students we have always had a rivalry with those snobs. And they always act all superior and never let you live it down if you happen to be worse than them at something! You should know it since you studied there," he once again reminded her.

By Hinata's unamused expression, Kakashi could at least gather that there was a disagreement between them.

"So what if they act like that? The whole point of this contest is not to win but to have fun!"

"That's just what a loser would say," Kakashi muttered under his nose.

"Excuse me?!"

"I'm just saying it's a matter of pride," the art teacher replied, somewhat irate. "Anyway, we are not going to lose, so it doesn't matter." With those words he stormed off, mumbling something about talking things over with the principal and vice-principal.

As much as she thought she knew Kakashi, his words today shed some new light on his personality. When before she thought that he didn't give a damn about anything, it was becoming increasingly clear to her that he tended to care a little too much about certain things. Like his own pride for example. He didn't strike her as someone who valued others' opinions that much. So why was he so hung up on winning this contest was a mystery to her. In her ponderings, she didn't notice approaching Kurenai. Their resident accountant too had seemed to be occupied with thoughts of her own, as it so happened that they bumped into each other, scattering the documents the older woman was carrying all over the corridor.

"Oh, sorry," Hinata apologized, immediately moving to pick the papers from the floor.

There was one piece of paper that caught her attention among all the other routine documents and reports. There was Kakashi's name on it and she naturally got worried. A financial paper with the art teacher's name on it was bound to spell trouble, she feared. Picking it up, she noticed the change in Kurenai's expression too, which only confirmed her worries. Upon closer inspection, she found that it was merely a classroom inventory report written by Kakashi.

Hinata's relief was short-lived, however, as she still couldn't place Kurenai's too guilty expression to her seemingly insignificant discovery. So, she took another, more thorough look at the document. The first thing she noticed upon re-inspecting the report was that the items listed in it were nowhere near the real level of quantity. Also, Hinata may not be an artist, but she was pretty sure there were much more different pieces of equipment in Kakashi's workshop than what was reported.

"There is something more to it, isn't there?" she said, crossing her arms while still holding the sheet.

Kurenai beside her looked unreasonably nervous. "What do you mean?" she said, trying to snatch the paper away, suddenly in a hurry to leave.

Hinata just pressed on, not letting the woman escape, and it wasn't long before the older accountant finally cracked. Yet another advantage of doing things Kakashi's way.

"You've seen Hatake's classroom, right?" she said meaningfully. "There is no way all the stuff students have access to is listed on this report."

Connecting two and two together, Hinata's eyes widened with realization. Kakashi was buying all that expensive equipment with his own money! There was no other explanation. Looking at Kurenai, she saw her nod in affirmative. It was all coming together; the way Kakashi was very careful with his money despite it being common knowledge that teachers at KL earned quite a bit, the way he was always furious when somebody messed up equipment in his class, the way he always complained about kids wasting paint on multiple occasions when Hinata helped him out after classes. Heck, he even lived in school for Pete's sake!

With this newfound realization, Hinata went about her day, wondering just how much she still didn't know about the mysterious art teacher. It took so much of her concentration, in fact, that the first thing she said when she met him was, "Is it true?".

"Is what true?" he raised a brow, the sandwich he was about to eat stopping inches away from his open mouth. Everyone else in the cafeteria looked quizzically at her, and Hinata felt her cheeks heat up with embarrassment.

"Ehh… that you… talked with Itachi before I visited him in his office?" she covered up. She already knew the answer to that. Itachi himself confessed that Kakashi prepped him on it before she visited, although how did the art teacher manage to get the busy Uchiha's attention she didn't quite know. Everyone else returned to their normal activities after determining that there was nothing interesting going on, and Hinata could sigh with relief. The last thing she needed was to give them wrong impressions, not to mention letting Kakashi's secret known.

Anyways, after the mostly uneventful lunch, during which Gai had kept his challenges to a minimum, Hinata and Kakashi finally managed to talk in private.

"So what did you want to talk to me about?" the masked man asked her after they stepped foot into the nurse's office. Thankfully, Tsunade was somewhere else doing her own business, and they could talk openly about whatever Hinata wanted to ask him. Frankly, she didn't know what exactly was she going to accomplish by confirming that Kakashi paid for his students' equipment. It wasn't that unusual for an enthusiastic teacher to spend out of their pocket for their students. That image, however, didn't quite match the man that was standing before her. "Listen, if it's about Itachi then I didn't do anything, I swear. I was going to rough him up a little bit, but turns out he is a decent guy."

"Nevermind that," Hinata told him at first, but then his words registered in her mind and she couldn't help but ask for an explanation, "Wait, what did you say?"

Kakashi, in turn, had finally seemed to get that talking about Itachi was not her intention, as he averted his eyes. "Nothing."

"Kakashi."

"You heard it," he muttered, crossing his arms defensively, "I was going to talk to him about you, since you so badly wanted to patch things up with him. But turns out he never even thought about it like that. It seems he got caught up in whatever happened to him that he lost touch with reality or some shit. Anyway, you yourself said that it doesn't matter."

She didn't say that, but at the moment Hinata didn't know how to react to it, so she decided to finally switch back to the initial topic of conversation. She'll talk with Itachi himself later, when there is a bit less distance between them.

"Alright, but what I really wanted to talk to you about is something that I found out just today," she said, and from the way Kakashi's eyes moved back to her she could tell that he was curious. "When I was helping out Kurenai earlier," she started, feeling less confident with each word, "I found your inventory report…"

That seemed to be enough for Kakashi to understand where she was going with her question. And thankfully, he didn't mind answering her honestly.

"That woman can't keep her mouth shut about anything…" he grumbled, likely already thinking about how he should get back at Kurenai, but nonetheless confirmed Hinata's suspicions. "Yeah, most of the stuff we use in this classroom I buy myself. It's honestly nothing."

Hinata pretty much already knew it, but hearing it from Kakashi himself had weirdly made everything even more impressive.

"Kakashi, that's very nice of you," she said the first thing that came to her mind. To her shock, he didn't react to it as he usually would to praise, with a grumble and an absent 'whatever'. Instead, he seemed to get embarrassed for some reason.

"I didn't do it for them, you know," he said, once again averting his eyes. That was bullshit, and they both knew it. Hinata just smiled knowingly, choosing to play along. To what lengths would Hatake go just not to admit that he actually cared about this school and its students. Just when she thought there was nothing else to talk about, Kakashi proved her wrong by inadvertently spilling another secret. "I'm perfectly able to pay for everything myself, including the upcoming competition," he said, moving to sit at the patient's chair across her desk, "so there is no need to worry."

"Huh? What about the competition?" she asked, and Kakashi stopped in his tracks.

"Don't tell me you didn't know? Really?!" he slapped his forehead, refusing to believe in his own blunder.

Just as Hinata was about to tell him that she had no idea what he was talking about, Tsunade chose this moment to barge in, startling both of them.

"Hey, you two, if you were having ideas I would suggest you to at least make sure the room is locked," she joked, laughing at the way both of their faces flushed red in embarrassment. "Relax, I'm just kidding. I know that Hinata is too proper to do anything like that," the nurse reassured, plopping into her swivel chair and rotating one whole circle in it. "But I heard that last part about the competition, and I've got to say, it's very unusual for you Kakashi." She stopped her chair and leaned forward on her desk, eyes locked on the art teacher. "To willingly not only organize, but also fund such a big event… I wonder just who were you going to impress with it?" With those words, the blonde woman's eyes flickered towards Hinata, and she chuckled once again at their childish reactions.

She was joking of course. Knowing Kakashi, that idiot probably didn't even realize himself that what he was doing the past few months since Hinata came to school was exactly what he should've been doing all this time. Maybe becoming a teacher wasn't what he wanted, but it was clear as day that it was exactly what he needed at this point in his life to move on. Who knows, she decided in the end, perhaps the stubborn idiot would finally open his eyes and grab the happiness that he kept so vehemently refusing all these years?

Meanwhile, it looked like Kakashi was trying to get out of telling something to Hinata that she didn't know. Tsunade, being her helpful self, decided to make it easier on the both of them.

"He is financing the competition too," she said, smirking at the way Kakashi's face became desperate and then angry in a span of one second.

"You, old hag, will it kill you if you don't go around telling people's secrets?" Hatake was cursing at her, red in the face. Tsunade seemed to only get encouraged by his anger, using every opportunity to tease him and further get on his nerves. Until the art teacher's next words, that is. "No wonder you are an unmarried spinster."

"Look who's talking about marriage! At least I have a sex life. Something I couldn't say about you, Mr. Virgin!"

Kakashi's face got even redder, to the point that even Hinata had to agree with Tsunade's remark that his blush could rival hers. Kakashi's embarrassment didn't last long, however, because his arm started acting up again, cutting short all the fun they'd been having.

"At least I'm not old like–" he began but stopped abruptly, doubling over in pain with a hiss.

Immediately all the playfulness evaporated from Tsunade and Hinata's faces. The older woman went towards the medicine cupboard while Hinata rushed to Kakashi's side.

"Sometimes I forget about the arm," he said, and Hinata noticed how he was trying to downplay his suffering with his attempt at a smile. He's come a long way, she noted for the umpteenth time. Before, his pride wouldn't have allowed him to admit his weakness like this. Now he was sort of letting her see that side of him. "And when it hurts like hell I think is when I start to remember," he joked, as if confirming her observation.

"It doesn't seem to bother you that much," Tsunade too noticed the positive change, handing him his painkiller medication.

"You think?" Kakashi asked, drinking his dose in one gulp. To Hinata he seemed genuinely surprised, with his gaze pointed downwards to the now empty cup. After a few seconds of deliberation, he looked briefly at her, as if interrupting his pondering, before turning to his arm to continue whatever thinking he'd been doing.

After a few more minutes of rest, Kakashi's pain calmed down, and they were able to return to their light banter with ease.