CHAPTER 8

Uchiha Sasuke had never had a female friend before – save for Sakura, although for her case he began to consider her as one of his male friends ever since she stopped behaving sleazily towards him. The fact remained that Sasuke had never liked a female enough to consider her a real friend before.

Well, at least not until Hyuuga Hinata. Since the night of the interview, Sasuke turned his own words in his mind over and over, trying to make sense of what it meant to have Hinata as a friend. All throughout his life, Sasuke was avoidant of the female population because of the suffocating amount of lust they had for him. And while Sasuke was to some extent flattered, it quickly got very distasteful. Since then, he looked upon almost the entirety of the female population with carefully concealed disdain. Call him prejudiced if you will, but Sasuke was not budging on this matter because it was a carefully constructed self-defence mechanism to avoid getting entangled in female-related problems.

Ironically, however, it seemed that his seemingly obsessive tendency to avoid women had paved the way to his current problem, that is his failure to understand the dynamics of a healthy friendship between a male and a female. Hyuuga Hinata was too much for him to handle, and yet for each moment they spent together, a greedy part of him that he did not even know existed craved more and more of her attention. She was just so, so pretty, and so small – he wanted nothing more than to hold her close and protect her from this cruel entertainment industry.

At first, he told himself that the solution was to jerk off. Maybe twice this time for his evidently repressed self, just so that he could take the edge off. It was a classic, quick solution to the woes of an idol who had barely any time to do much else. At the back of his mind, Sasuke wondered if he was like all the terrible men that Sakura told him existed out there, who harboured lustful thoughts towards their female friends. If that were the case, he really, really had to find some way to control his shameful desires if he was going to maintain a respectful friendship with Hinata. The last thing he was going to do was to turn into a creep towards someone that trusted him.

With that last thought, Sasuke would end his shower ritual resolving to be nothing but a gentleman towards this one female friend of his. It was going to be awkward for him, as he had never tried being this nice to someone before, but he was going to try because female friends warranted a different, nicer kind of treatment than male friends, right? Hinata would surely not appreciate the dick jokes that he made with Naruto and occasionally Sakura, so he had to learn how to code switch between Team 7 and Hinata. It was simply the right thing to do.

And yet, the pretty little demon never ceased to test his patience, which was arguably a very not-nice thing to do. Whenever they met in the lift on mornings where they were scheduled to head to the filming site together, she would huddle up close to him and take a photograph of them in the mirror. Sasuke somewhat understood the appeal of mirror selfies, and he had to admit that Hinata took some fairly pretty photographs of their outfits, but he would never stop spiraling into a panic whenever she came up close to him, looking so blissfully ignorant of the heart attack that she was about to cause him.

Where was he supposed to put his hands? was the first question that plagued his mind for an entire week. It looked and felt awkward to put his arm on her shoulder because that seemed like what men did to their male friends; but to not touch her at all looked and most of all felt wrong too. One morning he swallowed his fears and rested his hand lightly around her waist, and from the satisfied noise that Hinata made after looking at the photograph, Sasuke decided that this was appropriate. He would stick to this then.

The second crisis came when he realised how frequently Hinata offered to share her food and drinks with him. It began when he saw her munching on a salad during an afternoon shoot. He noticed that her salads always looked different, and they were stored nicely in a lunch box, which led him to the inference that Hinata made her own salads. Ever since Sasuke expressed curiosity in her meal prep routines, she happily introduced her potato salads, apple salads, eggplant salads and the ten thousand condiments and sauces she seemed to have in her kitchen. And each time, Hinata would never fail to offer to share her lunch with him.

Well, the offer to share was not really the problem to him – it was the way she offered. The exchange between them would always go: "Would you like to try some?" followed by a gruff "Sure", and then instead of passing her lunch box to him, Hinata would scoop up a neat mouthful and hold it to his mouth. She did it with so much nonchalance, as if she was used to feeding her friends that way, and Sasuke being the sucker for the pretty demon that he was, would eat from her spoon. Every single time.

He frowned when he noticed her doing the same for Kiba whenever he asked her about her stir fry noodles – because wasn't he supposed to be special? Apparently not. Sasuke hated himself for even assuming for a moment that he was. Hinata was special to him – but not special special; she was simply in a category of her own because he did not have any other female friends, that was it. Yet, he had to consciously squash down the feeling of triumph whenever he saw Hinata unravel a box of salad – because he knew that dog boy would not go anywhere near the salad whereas he would. Who decided it was a good idea to have the word "dog" in their last name anyway? At least his ancestors had more sense than Kiba's.

The second crisis was compounded one day when Hinata approached him with her cup of iced latte to ask if he was feeling alright. Truth to be told, Sasuke was done filming for his fifth music show at this point so he really should have been used to the hustle after all these weeks, but it appeared that he was not as good as hiding his fatigue as he originally thought. Hinata gave him a sympathetic look, held out her iced latte and silently waited for him to accept the caffeine hit.

When he took the plastic cup from her, he realised that there was a stain on the edge of the brown straw. It was a pink stain that could only have come from her lipstick! Sasuke felt the tips of his ears heat up. This was a completely unprecedented situation, so how was he supposed to react? Would it be considered rude if he grabbed a tissue to wipe the tip of the straw before drinking from it, or would it be even more egregious if he drank from the straw without wiping it clean first? Uchiha Sasuke was not about to be labelled some lipstick pervert after all!

In the end he inadvertently went for neither of the two options. Hinata must have noticed his dilemma because she gasped and made a hurried move to take back her coffee, presumably to wipe the straw clean herself, but Sasuke decided in the spur of the moment that he really did want that coffee after all so he reflexively held it further away from her. This led to Hinata clumsily falling over his lap, and in his violent reaction to having a very female person sprawled over him, his fingers gripped onto the cup with a force that was too much for the flimsy plastic to handle. The lid popped off and in the next moment, Sasuke realised with profound horror that he had spilled coffee over Hinata's head.

Great, now she is not going to be friends with me anymore, he lamented to himself. Yet, to his surprise, Hinata swiped away a few droplets of coffee from her bangs and laughed off the entire incident. Sasuke could not decide if he preferred to see a carefree Hinata or an angry Hinata. At least the latter would make him feel less bad – and she may even be a bit cute too, but he would never tell anyone that.

Now if Sasuke thought that this was all there was to his chaotic friendship with a woman, he certainly did not see the next thing coming. One evening, Hinata dropped by the dance studio to announce that their drama's promotional posters had finally been released. Apparently they gained a lot of public attention, with the majority of netizens singing praises for their visuals and expressing their anticipation for the premiere. Sasuke felt a well of embarrassment build up within him when Hinata told him this, and he could not for the life of him understand how she could just announce something like that without shame. Yet, her eyes were sparkling with so much amusement that he decided he was not going to rain on her parade.

As he stood in the middle of the dance studio, he let her run up to him like a clumsy little highschooler and jump onto him for a koala hug. His hands instinctively went to her thighs to support her weight, and the moment he felt her pressed up against him, he had to stifle a groan from how much his body welcomed her warmth. She was – in plain words – the best sack of rice that he ever had the pleasure of carrying, because she was the opposite of cold and hard. A small part of him wondered how she would compare with his bolster, but he hastily aborted this line of thought as it was a dangerous one to have when he had an armful of her.

After savouring the embrace for a moment which he could not ascertain to be too long or too short (see the first paragraph for why), he slowly let her down. Hinata made a cute noise when her feet hit the ground and she swivelled around quickly to go and make herself comfortable on the bench. Sasuke could not even get mad at her when her long hair slapped his face in the process.

She was just lying there in the corner of his studio now, wearing an oversized hoodie that looked like it had been thrifted from a vintage store at a night market, and those unisex black joggers that he saw her sporting when she was still a trainee. Did he mention that she was wearing a pair of pink avocado socks to boot? It did not take him a lot of time during the course of their peculiar friendship to realise that Hyuuga Hinata could be a fashion terminator sometimes, but somehow she pulled it all off. He briefly wondered if Sakura would ever touch those socks with a ten-foot pole.

As if she knew that he was eyeing her judgmentally, Hinata glanced up from her phone and stared at him with those sparkly pearlescent eyes. "I-Is something wrong?" she asked meekly. Sasuke shook his head and continued with his warm-up stretches while Hinata busied herself with something on her phone. For a good fifteen minutes, the only sounds that filled the studio were the soft clicking sounds of Hinata's manicured fingers making contact with her phone screen, and the occasional rustle of fabric from Sasuke's movements.

However, right before he clicked play on Spotify to begin his evening routine, he heard a high-pitched whisper from the corner of the room: "Do you think I should get gudetama socks?"

"That egg yolk character?"

"Y-Yeah."

Sasuke shrugged. Girls liked such weird things sometimes. If his memory served him well, gudetama was basically an egg yolk character with a butt, and girls fawned over it because it was apparently very cute. Well, not to Sasuke, but before a snide comment could make its way out of his mouth, he filtered it out in the last moment and replaced it with an encouraging remark – because Make Out Tactics Volume 2 taught him that it was imperative to be encouraging of a woman's feminine pursuits. Uchiha Sasuke was not about to be a cold-hearted jock to his only female friend after all.

He did not hear any response from Hinata for a few seconds after, so he assumed that his response was satisfactory. Well, now he could begin his dance routine. The music was blasting, and Sasuke was in the midst of an intricate choreography when he heard Hinata say: "Okay, I have ordered one pair for you too."

Well, fuck.

It took a great deal of effort, but Sasuke finally managed to come to terms with this odd bond that he had with Hyuuga Hinata. He knew that he was starting to like her a lot, but he was hesitant to admit to himself that it was the romantic kind of "like". There was a plethora of reasons really, like how he did not feel the urge to take her out on fancy dates like men did in the movies, and how he had never thought of bringing her home to see his parents – even though his traitorous mind told him that they would definitely love Hinata if he did, and Itachi would never let him live it down for the rest of his life the moment he scored a girl like her. Those reasons mattered, because they cemented the deep, deep divide between the affection that one could harbour for a friend on one hand, and a lover on the other.

Hinata was not his lover, and it did not seem like she was interested in escalating this friendship of theirs into new territory, so it all checked out. Besides, he was certain that if Hinata started looking at him with lust, she would lose all the appeal that he previously saw in her.

At the end of the day, there could only be one correct answer to the question on his feelings towards Hinata: and it was that his love for her could not be romantic. It was the only way for them to continue with this level of closeness between them. He was not about to fuck it up by having weird talks – no, that was something he would never consider! Never!

However, the universe must have had something sinister planned for him because on the one day he decided to return to the dormitory with Hinata right after their shoot, he bumped into his family in the lounge on the ground floor.

"Otouto," Itachi greeted with a kind smile. "We have been waiting here for you to have dinner with us today. I texted you but you didn't reply, so we figured that you were busy. I hope you did not forget about us?"

Oh dear, Sasuke really did forget about this dinner appointment, but he schooled his features into a guiltless expression and nodded placidly. He turned to greet his parents right after.

Hinata bowed politely to all the members of his family before turning back to Sasuke and saying, "I-I'm sorry, I did not know that you would be having dinner with your family today. Maybe we can eat together some other time!"

Sasuke nodded apologetically, and he was just about to make a mental checklist of the food that he should buy to make it up to her, when Itachi smoothly glided between Hinata and the opened lift to block her entry.

"Hinata-san, is it?" he spoke to her this time.

Hinata looked up at his tall older brother and nodded with a look of amazement on her face. "Y-Yes. Thank you for knowing my name."

Itachi ignored her weird response and gestured towards the rest of the family. "We cooked a little extra, so we would be more than happy to have you join us for dinner this evening."

NO, NO, NO! This was a terrible idea, but it seemed that no amount of internal screaming could be telepathically transmitted to Itachi. Hinata was about to politely decline, when his mother approached them and all but dragged Hinata along to sit with her after deciding that she liked the younger woman enough. Sasuke was left gaping at Itachi in horror at the events that had just transpired, but his conniving older brother simply poked him in the forehead and walked back to take his seat.

The five of them squeezed themselves into a circle using the chairs from the café that had long been closed, eating off dainty little round tables that were much too small for the amount of food that Mikoto had prepared for their family. Hinata stared at every dish intently, as if she was mentally guessing the ingredients that were used for each, and this did not escape the matriarch's attention.

"Hinata-san, do you cook?" she asked.

"Y-Yes! I love cooking!" Hinata replied breathily. A rosy blush tinted her cheeks when she smiled while saying this. Itachi gave Sasuke a side-eye at this, which he responded to quietly with a roll of his eyes. They both knew that their mother was about to have a long conversation with Hinata about the culinary arts now.

Forget you came here for your son then, Sasuke thought pettily as he chewed on a piece of pork.

Adopt Hinata then.

Adopt the demon, and kick out this son of yours that can't have conversations about cooking with you-

"If you don't mind me asking, what's your relationship with our Sasuke?" Itachi suddenly asked. That snapped Sasuke out of his reverie immediately, as he turned to fix his brother with a furious glare. What the hell?

Hinata blinked in surprise at this question, and she gulped upon seeing four very intense faces, albeit for different reasons. To Sasuke's surprise, she did not begin to choke up and splutter out something contrived. Instead, she put down her chopsticks and smiled to herself. "Sasuke-kun is my closest friend," she replied honestly.

The lounge was so silent after this that they could hear an imaginary pin drop, so Hinata took this as a sign for her to continue. "I tend to keep to myself in a room full of people, so I did not get to make many friends when I was a trainee. At first, I was happy to be added to the final line-up for an idol group, because I thought I could make new friends there, but I chose not to debut with them in the end because I figured that I would not be able to handle the stress of being an idol. S-So now I am pursuing a career as a solo artist, and while I am happy where I am, I think it can get a bit lonely sometimes…"

Hinata pouted at the last part, and she looked up to see four shocked faces at her revelation. Perhaps they were shocked by her candidness, which was rare amongst celebrities, so Hinata was about to apologise for oversharing when Itachi spoke up. "That is very admirable of you, Hinata-san. My otouto is most privileged to have you as a friend."

Hinata beamed upon hearing his kind words and turned to look at Sasuke with a wide, radiant smile. She just had a long day with him, and yet somehow her skin looked like it was glowing now. "N-No. It is I who is privileged to have Sasuke-kun as my friend. It becomes easier to get through tough days when I have him to rely on."

At this, Sasuke averted his gaze and put down his chopsticks, feeling a hurricane of emotions swirl violently within him as he replayed her words in his mind over and over. Well, like he previously resolved himself not to do, he was not about to have the talk with Hinata anytime soon to keep their friendship; but if there was any lingering doubt about that decision before dinner, it had been brutally uprooted after this conversation.

Now it was clear that there was absolutely no way he could tell Hinata how he felt about her.