Hinata was buzzing with excitement. After countless shogi matches and mental training exercises (mostly bizarre lateral thinking puzzles she suspected Naruto was making up himself), as well as her nightly homework of playing shogi against her clone, he'd finally declared her ready for practical training and taken her to the Training Grounds.
Beyond the joy of advancing to a new level of training, there was another layer of expectation making her heart beat faster. Her and Naruto, alone in the vast expanse of the Training Grounds. His attention focused on her and her only. Their bodies in continuous, close contact...
Hinata shook her head. No. Whatever she may dream about at other times, whatever their relationship may be at other times, here and now they were master and apprentice. This training time was sacred, set aside from the thoughts and feelings of daily life, and she would not dishonour it by showing less than total dedication. Besides, she reassured herself, she could always fantasise to her heart's content afterwards.
"All right," Naruto announced, hopefully oblivious to Hinata's many thoughts. "Let's start off by seeing how good you are at taijutsu."
Hinata settled into a neutral Gentle Fist stance and waited for Naruto to come at her. Within a matter of seconds, she realised that he was good. Not on the level of the Hyūga experts her father had her spar against, of course, but far better than anything he'd ever displayed at the Academy. She said as much when she next caught her breath.
"Well, the teachers at the Academy mostly hated me too much to actually teach me anything, so when I stuck to the Academy style, I didn't have much to go on," Naruto explained. "Most of what I know comes from provoking people into trying to kill me, and then learning from their styles. You'd be amazed how quickly you pick things up when you regularly fight people way more skilled than you are. It's even better when they're angry enough to use techniques they'd normally try to keep secret.
"And now I have shadow clones as well. They're not as good as real people for picking up new moves from, but they're always available, they give me complete freedom to experiment, and they do a perfect job of showing me my own weaknesses. I get great mileage out of them when my normal partners aren't available."
"Oh? So whom do you normally spar with?"
The answer surprised her.
"Sasuke, of course. What, you think I piss him off just for the fun of it?"
Hinata considered this in light of everything she knew about the two boys. "Actually... that is what I think."
Naruto shrugged. "All right, you got me there. But I've learned more from doing that than from all the Academy teachers put together. I never said this and you can't repeat it, but that guy's taijutsu is really something."
Hinata giggled.
Naruto decided this was a good time to move away from the subject. "Let's step up the pace a little!"
Naruto threw out a quick punch, then immediately moved to avoid her counter. Within a few exchanges, it became obvious that while Hinata had a very respectable defence, her offence was half-hearted by comparison. Naruto was just starting to think about the implications of this when his foot slipped on a wet leaf.
Falling forwards, he instinctively grabbed the nearest solid object for support. Unfortunately, the nearest solid object was Hinata, who'd just moved in to take advantage of an opening.
Hinata went down, with Naruto on top of her. Naruto managed to avoid headbutting her as they landed, but his movement instead brought his mouth up, and his lips brushed lightly against hers. At this, Hinata gave a squeak, went bright red and collapsed in a dead faint.
Naruto froze. "Hinata? Uh, Hinata?"
In a strange sort of karmic revenge for the suffering of Kakashi-sensei, a script started writing itself in his head.
Hinata: (waking up) "Kyaaaa! Naruto, you pervert! How could you take advantage of me like that?"
Naruto: "What? No! Hinata, I swear I never did anything!"
Hinata: "Do you take me for a fool? Get out of my sight. I never want to see you again!"
Exit stage left.
Hinata's father: (entering stage left) "How dare you violate my poor, naive, innocent daughter who also happens to be my precious heir?!"
Naruto: "What? No, it's just a misunder—"
Hinata's father: (glowing with a blue aura of doom) "No excuses. You will pay for your crimes. Hyūga Certain Kill Ultimate Death Technique: Fist of Eternal Torment!"
Naruto: (dying in agony) "At least... I'll get to see my parents in Heaven..."
Hinata's father: "No, you won't. Perverts and molesters like you go straight to Hell!"
Demons rise from beneath the ground to drag Naruto's soul into the cold hells. The people's cheers and sounds of jubilation drown out his cries for mercy.
Curtain.
-o-
When he was younger, Naruto's visits to Leaf General Hospital would provoke no greater reaction than "Must be Thursday". These days, he garnered more attention since his visits were less frequent and so the betting pool had time to grow. But nothing could have prepared him for the immediacy of the response he got today, when he barrelled through the hospital doors with an unconscious pre-teen girl slung over his back.
"What's wrong with her? Is she going to be all right?" Naruto was near panic. His first aid training hadn't covered anything like this. Had he been taught wrong after all, like with everything else? The Academy instructors wouldn't have sabotaged his ability to save other people's lives, right? He should have done more self-study. Why wasn't he more prepared?
The doctor's cold blue eyes watched Naruto through a pair of steel-framed glasses. Naruto could feel his soul being weighed in the balance.
"She will be fine in a few hours, young man," the doctor told Naruto in an even, dispassionate voice. "I believe it is merely a case of excessive sensory stimulation. Now, would you like to tell me what you did to bring about this state of affairs?"
Part of Naruto was going red with embarrassment, while another was going pale with worry at the implications, to the net effect that his complexion did not change.
"I didn't do anything!"
"I see," the doctor held his gaze for a few seconds. "And is that what you intend to tell Lord Hiashi when I inform him that infamous troublemaker Uzumaki Naruto has just hospitalised his beloved daughter?"
Naruto's internal struggle ended abruptly as panic conquered all other feelings and unilaterally banished the blood from his face.
"You wouldn't really do that, would you?"
Naruto should have been analysing, calculating, looking for a way to take control of the conversation. Why wouldn't his higher brain functions respond?
"I'm afraid it is part of my oath as a doctor to take all steps necessary to ensure the welfare of my patients. And if I cannot make you admit the truth, I'm certain Lord Hiashi will."
"Look," Naruto said in a voice that was intended to be reasonable but came out pleading, "we were sparring and we sort of fell over and… I guess our lips may have touched each other's… and she fainted! It was a complete accident! She'll tell you as much when she comes to! And, and, anyway, if I was some sort of molester, would I bring her to the hospital?"
The doctor said nothing.
"And I'm a fricking ninja! If I'd done something wrong, I would at least have come in disguise!"
The doctor said nothing.
"Look, I'm not disguised at all!" Naruto shouted desperately. "I'll prove it!"
He promptly punched himself in the face.
The doctor blinked with awe at either Naruto's determination or his stupidity, but seemed to accept this as evidence that he wasn't under the Transformation Technique.
"Please don't call her family!" Naruto all but begged.
The doctor stroked his short, neatly-trimmed black beard with a glint of amusement in his eye. "Ahh, the pieces begin to fall into place. Perhaps I can accept a compromise. I will leave the matter to Lady Hinata's discretion, and she can inform Lord Hiashi herself if she so chooses."
"Oh, thank you!" Naruto gasped with relief. The immediate crisis averted, his brain belatedly started working again, and a thought occurred to him. "May I stay here until she wakes up? Even though it was a complete accident, I sort of feel responsible."
The doctor considered it for a second, then nodded. Subtly inclining his head to indicate an end to the interaction, he left the room and returned to his work.
-o-
Naruto sat down next to Hinata's bed and looked at her. There was a gentle softness to her features he'd never noticed before—maybe because he'd never really paid her appearance that much attention, or maybe everybody looked like this when they were asleep and Naruto had simply never had the chance to find out. And while Hinata's pupilless Hyūga eyes normally added a touch of inhumanity to her appearance—as a small child, Naruto had found the Hyūga terrifying—asleep she looked like any other girl. It made the distance between them seem a little smaller.
The silence was a peaceful one as Naruto watched Hinata's sleeping form, pondering her taijutsu abilities and where he could take her training from here. He also pondered her sudden loss of consciousness and how to make sure it didn't happen next time. Was it because their lips had touched? No, that would be ridiculous. Just a coincidence. It wasn't like it had been a kiss or anything. That would have made it his first kiss, and probably hers too, and that kind of thing simply didn't happen to Uzumaki Naruto.
No, it was nothing more than a training accident. Those happened all the time at the Academy, at least to Naruto. And besides, there was no need to jump to conclusions just because he happened to have touched lips with a girl. Why, it could have been anyone. It could have been Sasuke.
Oh, cold hell, he'd just imagined kissing Sasuke. He almost wanted to call back that doctor from earlier so he could ask for some brain bleach.
Naruto was distracted from his self-inflicted trauma when Hinata began to mutter quietly in her sleep. Naruto politely ignored her, but then he caught his own name.
"Oh, yes, please, Naruto..."
He reeled back. That couldn't be right. No way. She was probably dreaming about him offering her tea or something. Yeah, that had to be it. No matter what it sounded like. Or how it tied in with a few other things he'd started to notice.
And anyway, no girl had ever liked him. Admittedly, Sakura used to be nice to him, once upon a time, back before she fell for Sasuke and her personality did a 180. He'd never forgotten that she had been one of the first people in his life to treat him with kindness, but the flames of that passion cooled with every passing day as he watched her grow up more and more two-faced, sickly-sweet to those she liked and angry and violent to those she didn't. These days, most of the reason he asked her out was because it was a low-effort technique for reinforcing his image as an idiot, and one that only became more effective over time.
"Naruto..."
That was it. He couldn't stay here a second longer. Naruto wrote Hinata a quick explanatory note and ran for the exit.
-o-
"Gentlemen," Naruto exclaimed back in the safety of his own flat, having restored himself through the calming power of hot cup ramen, "this state of affairs cannot be allowed to continue."
He paced back and forth before the rows of chairs, the clones sitting on them watching him attentively. The chairs, which were also clones due to his flat's lack of furniture, watched him attentively as well.
"Now, I will be taking any suggestions on how to resolve the situation. Yes, Naruto Five?"
"Sir!" the clone raised his arm. "We could infiltrate the Hyūga Clan compound and attempt to seize strategic intelligence assets, which is to say her diary."
Every Naruto knew from manga that all girls had diaries in which they regularly wrote their innermost thoughts. Nevertheless…
"Rejected!" Naruto Prime snapped. "Know your classics, man. She would inevitably find out we'd read it, and then she'd hate us forever. And besides, sneaking past a clan of ninja who can see through walls? Really? Why don't I run through the Inuzuka compound Transformed into a cat while I'm at it?"
"Sir!"
"Yes, Naruto Twelve?"
"We could ask her straight out if she likes us."
"Are you mad, private?! Do you have any idea how awkward things would get if it turned out we were wrong and she had to explicitly turn us down?! It could jeopardise her training!"
"Hey, how come I have to be a private?" Naruto Twelve demanded petulantly.
"Have you completed any missions that have furthered the cause of the Worldwide Uzumaki Naruto Coalition?"
"Well, no, sir. You just created me five minutes ago."
"Exactly. Now shut up."
Naruto Prime turned back to the whiteboard. His diagram of Hinata left something to be desired—if not for the label, it could be confused for a particularly shy cabbage—but it did come with a detailed list of facts and objectives, and no excuse was too small to use his full range of exaggeratedly bright markers. Naruto had discovered to his delight that, whereas merely touching normal clones was enough to dispel them under any and all circumstances, writing on a shadow clone disguised as a whiteboard did not automatically cross the damage threshold. It unlocked so many glorious possibilities that Naruto almost wished he was still at the Academy with its array of unsuspecting targets.
"Sir!"
"Yes, Naruto Three?"
"I think I have a cunning plan."
The plan Naruto Three outlined was very cunning indeed. As other clones offered input, pointed out flaws and suggested refinements, Naruto Prime's grin grew ever wider.
-o-
"Hey, where's Sasuke?" Kiba asked. "Didn't you invite everyone to the public baths?"
"Eh, he'll turn up. Even he has to wash his hair sometime."
Naruto carefully scoped out the area. Shikamaru and Chōji were relaxing in the hot bath. Chōji was apparently oblivious to the world, while Shikamaru was idly poking at some stray bubbles.
Kiba and Shino were still washing, and Sasuke was nowhere to be seen. And as far as Naruto knew, Hinata, Sakura and Ino were in the girls' section on the far side of the dividing wall (which, while tall, did not reach all the way to the ceiling for reasons of air circulation).
The time had come.
Outside the entrance to the baths, a man leaning against the wall felt his headband disappear. He nodded to the woman next to him.
Once in position next to the women's half, they erupted into an eardrum-wrecking shouting match.
"But Yumi, can't you see I love you?"
"Don't lie to me, Hitachi! I saw you last night with that floozy Kihara! If you really cared about our baby..."
"You mean the baby you had with that ANBU assassin? He told me all the sordid details, Yumi! What would your pacifist brother say if he could see you now?"
"You leave Sōichirō out of this!"
Every genin was captivated by the steadily escalating drama—except for the one who had written the script.
Naruto walked nonchalantly up to the far corner of the dividing wall, as far as possible from the entrance and its entertainment. He looked around to make sure no one was watching, and then put his fingers together.
"Multiple Shadow Clone Technique!"
In a matter of seconds, a column of shadow clones reached the top of the wall. The one at the top then proceeded to create more shadow clones, all pre-Transformed into slim cushions, letting them drop to form a neat stack in the corner of the women's side. Finally, it created a clone pre-Transformed into a standard-issue small wooden bucket. As the bucket fell, the impact dispelled the cushions one by one, and slowed the bucket until it finally touched the floor without the slightest sound.
A few seconds later, the couple at the entrance agreed that love conquered all, and decided to give their marriage one more try. They walked away arm in arm, vanishing into puffs of smoke once safely out of sight.
Shadow Clone Naruto, concealed in bucket form, was now in position to listen to the three girls talk about boys. It was a core teaching of manga, his sole source of information about romance, that this was what invariably occurred when girls were alone at baths or hot springs together. Granted, manga also warned that any boys peeping on them would inevitably get caught, but then most boys didn't have the Multiple Shadow Clone Technique.
With the afternoon's free soap opera over, the girls resumed their conversation.
"Um, Sakura, Ino..." Hinata said timidly. "Can I ask you something?"
"Sure, Hinata," Ino replied.
"How do you know if you like a boy?"
Jackpot! Naruto truly was the greatest genius of his time, and gifted with flawless timing to boot. He felt guilty that he (or more precisely Naruto Four) had ever questioned the absolute reliability of manga as a guide to life.
Sakura fielded the question. "How, huh? Well, your heart beats faster when you look at him, and you want to spend all your time with him, and you feel like you're the only person who realises how amazing he really is, and you really want him to notice you..."
"Oh, come on, Sakura," Ino interrupted. "Quit filling her head with that soppy crap."
She turned to Hinata. "Navel-gazing is a dumb way to do romance. You think you might like a guy? Go talk to him. Invite him out to do stuff. Maybe ask him on a date. And then if you decide he's fun to be around, it'll be easy to figure out the rest from there."
"And these are all things you've done with Sasuke, are they?" Sakura sneered. "Or have you just been reading too many magazines?"
Ino crossed her arms defensively. "At least I know what I'm supposed to do. I'm not the one who's spent all this time twiddling her thumbs on the same damn team as the guy she likes. If I had this much time with Sasuke every day, I'd have him eating out of my hand by now!"
"If you had this much time with Sasuke every day, he'd realise what a thick-skinned pig you are and dump you in a flash! He doesn't need a moronic tomboy like you!"
"Um... Sakura, Ino... please don't fight..."
"Oh, but he needs an over-sensitive drama queen who couldn't fight her way out of a paper bag?" Ino countered, ignoring or possibly just not hearing Hinata.
Her voice rose to an improbably high pitch as she raised the back of her hand to her forehead and gazed pleadingly at the ceiling. "Oh, save me, Sasuke, I'm so girly and helpless!"
"What was that? You think you're a better ninja than me now? Did you forget who kicked your ass in the last three throwing exams? Let me remind you!"
Sakura grabbed a nearby bucket and threw it at Ino shuriken-style.
However, the bath was expansive, and the bucket wasn't going to be winning any aerodynamics prizes anytime soon, so Ino had all the time in the world to duck out of the way.
"Oh, is that how it's gonna be?!"
She leapt backwards, out of the bath and towards the washing benches, where a stack of other such buckets provided plentiful ammunition.
Fortunately, there were no other customers in the women's section of the baths. Once Hinata sensibly moved to the furthest possible corner from Sakura, there was no one left to get hurt in the crossfire. This was just as well, as buckets began to whizz through the air like two swarms of bees engaged in a mass jousting match. A few struck each other in accidental but stylish parries, but most went hopelessly wide only to be returned at even greater speed.
Naruto wasn't too worried. He was aware that, in the worst case scenario, a sudden impact could dispel his disguise. It was one reason why he'd decided to use a shadow clone. Any impact hard enough to get rid of the disguise would destroy the clone as well, and he'd made sure the clone was making as little effort to maintain itself as it could get away with.
This was why he was busy pondering whether to wait and see if the conversation resumed once Sakura and Ino (metaphorically) ran out of steam, or to cut his losses and disappear in the chaos, when Sakura reached over and tried to pick him up. He felt her touch as it began to disrupt his disguise—and then her hand slipped off the wet pseudo-wooden surface before the pressure could extend to the clone underneath.
A naked Naruto popped into existence in the middle of the women's baths.
"Urk."
"Naruto? What are you doing here?" Hinata asked, her expression conveying nothing but ordinary puzzlement.
Naruto was stunned. Why was Hinata not covering up? She was still mostly underwater, so it wasn't like he could see anything, but even so manga dictated that a girl could only have one instinct in this kind of situation.
That had to mean she liked him, right? Naruto couldn't think of anything else it could mean when a girl was OK with you seeing her naked. After all, if it had been Sakura, she'd have punched him through the ceiling by now. Wait, where was Sakura?
"Secret Kunoichi Art: Shatter the Spheres!"
On the other side of the dividing wall, Naruto collapsed in agony as the destroyed shadow clone's experiences came back to him.
As soon as he could move again, he ran for the changing rooms like a man possessed. He had to escape at any cost! This level of danger might even warrant the use of his secret techniques—if he could only suppress the incredible pain enough to concentrate on chakra. He really should have listened to his manga's warnings.
Unfortunately, the time he'd spent lying on the floor in the foetal position had been enough for the girls to get dressed and move to intercept.
"Gwerk!" Naruto choked as his momentum was arrested by Ino's hand around his throat.
"Uh, can we... talk about... this?" he managed to force out.
"Oh, we will," Sakura smiled sweetly. "Afterwards."
-o-
The doctor had refused to give Naruto an estimated recovery time, which was never a good sign in his book. He lay back, staring at the ceiling while alternately pondering Hinata's reaction and reflecting on what his plan had taught him about infiltration. Next time he had to be more careful. He did not enjoy being trapped in a hospital bed feeling like a packet of crisps after five minutes with Chōji. About the only thing he had to be grateful for was that he had a private room—presumably because no patient would be prepared to stay in the same room as the loathsome Nine-Brained Demon Fox.
After some time, the door opened to reveal the last people Naruto wanted to see.
"Um... we're sorry. We may have gone a bit overboard." Sakura and Ino bowed together, just shallowly enough that Naruto couldn't be sure if they were genuinely repentant or gleefully mocking him.
"I think you broke my everything."
"I hope you've learned your lesson, Naruto," Sakura admonished.
"I definitely have," Naruto said in a voice of the purest sincerity. The lesson, of course, was to always have more than one backup plan.
"Oh, just wondering," Ino went on in a suspiciously casual voice, "which one of us were you trying to peep on?"
Amateurs. At least the Academy teachers had tried to be subtle with their trick questions.
"Is there any answer to this that won't make one or both of you furious with me all over again?"
The girls exchanged glances.
"I told you he was smarter than he looked," Ino told Sakura.
"But now we can't settle our bet," Sakura complained.
"Uh... the doctor said I need lots of peace and quiet... so..." Naruto lied.
"All right. See you later."
The girls left before his fragile body could be put in any more danger.
-o-
"Hey, loser."
Sasuke walked in through the door without waiting for an invitation, a heavy bag in his right hand.
"What's up, moron?" Naruto gave the reply demanded by shinobi etiquette.
"I didn't want you to lose the pathetic little skill you have while you're stuck in here, so I checked out a few books from the library for you. Not that I expect you to be able to read, but you can at least have fun looking at the pictures." Sasuke dumped the stack of books on Naruto's bedside table.
"Uh... thanks?"
Sasuke shrugged. "You're not much of a challenge, but I wouldn't want you to get even worse. See you, loser."
Naruto looked through the books with his more usable hand. Master Wu's Compendium of Fire Country Taijutsu. Meditation Exercises for the Chakra-Deficient. E-Rank Ninjutsu and You. Raiden Steelweaver and the Country of Zombies.
Naruto grinned and began to read.
-o-
Someone knocked on the door.
Naruto put his book down. "Come in!"
Hinata entered.
"Um, hi, Naruto. How are you feeling?"
"Not that bad, surprisingly," Naruto smiled. "I'm even getting the feeling in my legs back, though part of me wishes I weren't."
"Oh, that's terrible!"
"Don't worry about it." The important thing, as far as Naruto was concerned, was that he'd probably make a full recovery. He'd healed from worse injuries than these before, though admittedly those had only come one or two at a time. And thanks to industrial doses of painkillers, he was merely suspended over a yawning abyss of agony rather than plummeting into its infinite depths. If he'd been on civilian analgesics rather than shinobi ones, he wouldn't even be conscious right now, but the latter were designed so ninja could deliver urgent information no matter how injured they'd got while obtaining it, and were doing an amazing job of keeping him lucid.
"Is there anything you need? I could go get you books. Oh, you already have books. What about food? Or... or a pen and paper? Anything at all."
"Thanks, Hinata. How about a shogi board? Then you and I can have a game. If you want to, I mean.
"Thanks to you coming round so much," Naruto added, "I realised how boring playing with myself all the time really was."
Hinata gave him an uncertain look.
Naruto replayed his last statement in his head.
"With clones! I meant playing with my clones!"
Hinata giggled. "Yes, I can get us a board.
"By the way, what were you doing in the girls' section of the public baths?" she asked.
"Um." Naruto's mind flashed back to the failed infiltration, and the motivations behind it. "Can we put that on the 'for another time' list?"
"Of course," she said. "I'm very sorry Ino and Sakura hurt you like that."
Naruto winced. "Yeah, well. I'm just glad you didn't. You have actual taijutsu skills."
"Why would I do that?"
Naruto gave her a confused look. "Why wouldn't you?"
After considering this question for a few seconds, Hinata went, "Oh!"
"What is it?"
"I keep forgetting," she said. "Being seen naked by a boy is supposed to be a big deal, right?"
Naruto nodded, still at a loss. "Of course it is."
Hinata frowned in concentration for a few seconds.
"Do you know how the Byakugan works, Naruto?"
"I know it lets you see through solid objects and see people's chakra, and I know it gives you a wider visual range than normal eyesight."
"That's right. When it's on, you have 360-degree vision over a very large area. You still have one point of focus, like normal sight, but you see everything else at the same time in a sort of peripheral vision. I think that's as much as I'm allowed to talk about with non-Hyūga."
"OK?"
"So imagine living somewhere everybody can do that whenever they like."
"...Ah."
"Yes," Hinata said. "We do have ways of respecting each other's privacy, but they aren't anything to do with clothing. As soon as your Byakugan awakens, you can see that everybody's bodies are more or less the same anyway. You have to keep reminding yourself that you're not supposed to know what someone's body looks like unless you're, um, intimate with them."
Naruto reluctantly took this in. "So you didn't cover up when you saw me looking at you just because you don't have that reflex."
"Yes."
"Oh." Maybe he'd been wrong about Hinata liking him after all. It made sense, of course. He'd been an idiot to get his hopes up in the first place.
"Um... did I say something wrong?" Hinata asked uneasily.
"No, not at all," Naruto forced himself to smile. "Uh, it's pretty late, and I'm feeling kind of tired, so would you mind if we called it a night?"
"Of course," Hinata said. "Sleep well."
And with that, she walked out, closing the door very gently after herself.
-o-
The next morning, Naruto got another visitor. Iruka-sensei came in with an expression of guilty concern and a bulging bag of fruit.
"I'm sorry it took me so long to come visit, Naruto. I only heard about what happened to you this morning."
"Oh, that's OK, Iruka-sensei. I'm just glad you came."
Naruto meant it. No matter what else happened in his life, Iruka-sensei was a rock-solid pillar of stability, a guaranteed source of affection, sympathy, and occasional ramen. He was the one person Naruto hated himself a little for deceiving.
"I'm sorry for what Sakura and Ino did to you," Iruka-sensei said. "As an instructor, it should have been my responsibility to teach them better than that. You're not trainees any more, and hospitalising a fellow member of the armed forces is a court-martial offence."
Naruto blanched. It wasn't that he enjoyed being beaten to within an inch of his life, but that didn't mean he wanted the two girls stripped of their ninja status, or imprisoned, or whatever happened to people found guilty in a court martial. Especially given that he had, when it came down to it, been the one to provoke them.
"The Hokage stepped in, though," Iruka-sensei went on. "They did only just graduate, and they both have good Academy records, so he's put them on probation. I'm sure they've been punished as well, but that's between them and the Hokage's Office.
"Now, I do have to tell you," Iruka-sensei's voice turned stern, "that peeping on girls in the bath is unethical and ungentlemanly, and I hope you realise that what you did was very wrong. Do you understand?"
"Absolutely," Naruto said in his best contrite voice. It wouldn't have fooled the likes of Old Man Hokage for a second, but Iruka-sensei's basic faith in human nature made him an easy mark as authority figures went.
"Good. I've brought you some healthy fruit and vegetables—make sure you eat them all so you recover faster. And do everything the doctors and nurses tell you to. They've got your best interests at heart."
Naruto nodded obediently. His experiences had led him to place medical professionals in the less awful category of adults. He didn't know if it was their oaths or the fact that they'd chosen a line of work that was specifically about helping people, or some other reason, but they never took the obvious opportunities to mistreat him when some accident or "accident" put him in their care. Or maybe like Hinata said, when you'd seen the insides of so many people, you realised how similar they really were, and superficial differences like being the host for a supernatural murder machine stopped mattering so much.
"I'm sorry I can't stay," Iruka-sensei said, "but class starts in half an hour. I'll try to come by when I can."
"Thank you," Naruto said with more sincerity than many people would get from him in their entire lives.
As the teacher headed towards the door, Naruto called after him.
"Iruka-sensei, did you peep on girls in the bath when you were young?"
Iruka-sensei went red. "No, and it was wrong then, too!"
And he left the room just that little bit too fast.
-o-
The next visitors, to Naruto's surprise, were Kiba and Shino, together with Akamaru (who was apparently enough of a ninja to evade the blanket ban on pets). Kiba shoved the door open with an abundance of energy; Shino closed it carefully behind them.
"Hey, Naruto. How're you doing?"
Naruto waved within the limits of his bandage-restricted movement. "Not that bad. I think my spleen's no longer inside out. How about you?"
"I'm fine. Thanks for inviting us out yesterday. It was good to unwind."
"Thank you for thinking of me," Shino added in his usual strangely earnest voice.
"Man, I can't believe you got beaten up by Ino and Sakura of all people," Kiba laughed.
"Hey, they got the first strike. I wasn't exactly in top form after the Kunoichi Special, know what I mean?"
Kiba winced and Shino shuddered.
"Listen," Kiba said, "we've got something serious to talk about."
"What's that?"
"I've been smelling your scent all over Hinata lately. Now, I don't mind, and frankly this may be the first time I've seen her properly happy, but I want you to remember:"
Naruto felt a chill.
"If you hurt her, in any way, they will never find your body," Kiba told him, looking him straight in the eye.
"Why?" Shino added, "Because I will feed it to my insects."
"Way to ruin a great threat, genius!" Kiba snapped.
"On the contrary, I believe mine was more original and had greater impact," Shino retorted.
"Anyway," Kiba turned back to Naruto. "We've got a mission coming up, so we should go. We've been preparing for this one—that damn cat won't know what hit it. Right, Akamaru?"
"Woof!"
"We will return at another time," Shino said.
As they walked out, Naruto could hear them bickering over the best way to threaten someone.
-o-
"Oh, hi, Kakashi-sensei."
"Good afternoon, Naruto. How are you feeling?"
"All right. How are you?"
"Glad to hear it," Kakashi-sensei replied. "Now I should tell you that I'm very disappointed in your behaviour yesterday. It was conduct entirely unbecoming of a genin under my tutelage."
"I'm sorry, Kakashi-sensei," Naruto said, less contritely this time.
Kakashi-sensei continued his rebuke in a softer voice. "What possessed you to position yourself right next to the bath? If you wanted to peep on them from a secure location, why not transform into a ceiling light, or a wall fixture at a safe distance? Nothing is more important than managing lines of sight and minimising opportunities for interaction."
Naruto's jaw dropped.
"You still have much to learn, Naruto. But don't give up. I believe in your potential," Kakashi-sensei added at normal volume.
"Also, there's some very simple training you can do to mute the pain from injuries to your shadow clones. Remind me to show you once you're back on your feet.
"I'll check in on you in a few days. Get well soon."
-o-
Naruto was feeling a lot better by the time Hinata came by in the early evening. Not only were his injuries considerably less painful than before, but Chōji and Shikamaru had dropped by with some sweets and manga for him. He didn't really know Shikamaru, and had a feeling the bored-looking boy would just as soon have stayed home, but the fact that he'd come anyway was appreciated.
Naruto had spent some time pondering the mysterious and conflicting evidence regarding Hinata after his eyes got too tired for reading. On the one hand, she was happy to spend lots of time around him, far more than anyone else he knew. She apparently had dreams about him. She had an almost scarily high opinion of him (Naruto was awesome, but having other people acknowledge this was an alien experience.)
On the other hand, in all the time they'd known each other, she'd never said or done anything obviously romantic. She certainly didn't behave anything like Sakura or Ino, his only real-life references for girls in love. She didn't even seem put out by the knowledge that he regularly asked another girl out (admittedly with zero success).
In the end, he couldn't make head or tail of it all, and he couldn't ask anyone for advice because then he'd have to explain what it was he and Hinata did together. There was nothing for it but to shelve the whole thing until he could gather more clues.
"So," he beckoned to her, "ready to resume your training?"
"Yes, Naruto-sensei!"
He did a double-take.
"Say that again."
"Yes, Naruto-sensei?" Hinata repeated.
"Wow. That sounds even better than I thought. No wonder so many people become ninja instructors."
Hinata smiled. "Shall we play?"
"Sure!"
Naruto's concentration wasn't at its peak thanks to his injuries, and his mind wandered more than usual. As a result, there was more small talk with Hinata than he was used to. He noticed that she still carefully avoided any mention of her home life, but they did share a lot of laughs over the universal suffering of D-rank missions. Apparently the Team Eight experience involved Kiba regularly trying to bait Shino, and Shino being stoic and serious and strait-laced and generally exactly the kind of person who drove Kiba crazy. Captain Kurenai sensibly adopted a hands-off policy when it came to this sort of thing, which left Hinata trying to refocus the boys' attentions on the task at hand whenever Kiba started to mess around and Shino started to get lost in thought. Naruto felt a nice warm glow when Hinata told him that the training, despite the lack of easily quantifiable progress, was already making her more confident when dealing with her teammates. It hadn't occurred to him that making a sustained effort to change, even before she saw results, would already be enough to make such a difference to her mental state.
When Hinata left, Naruto made some notes (using the pen and paper she'd brought him even though he'd forgotten to ask for them), and then found himself looking thoughtfully at the enormous stack of books, manga and fruit on his bedside table. It seemed strange how here he was in hospital with a broken everything (he'd asked one of the nurses, and she secretly admitted this was an unofficial diagnosis where ninja were concerned) and he was still feeling happier than he thought he'd ever felt before.