"Shino? Hey, Shino!"
It was Kiba's voice.
Dazed and slightly disoriented, Shino sat up.
Wincing and blocking the sunlight out of his eyes by shading it with his hand.
Why does the sun seem a bit much today?
Shino wondered.
"Hey, Shino," Kiba and Akumaru finally made it over to him. "What happened to you? You just disappeared all of a sudden! We gotta keep moving forward."
Kiba raised a questionable brow at him.
"Where have you been anyway? One minute you were behind me, the next you were gone."
"I..." Shino started.
But nothing came to him.
Just this gnawing feeling that he'd forgotten something.
Like deep down in the core of his soul, he was missing something, but he couldn't quite put it into words.
"I don't know," he said absently. "I must have gotten sidetracked. I can't remember what I was doing before you showed up."
"Now is not the time to be slacking on the job," Kiba said. "We got a beekeeper to find. I told you to keep up."
Beekeeper?
Shino glanced down at his side, where a full jar of honey wine shimmered golden in the sunlight.
Strange...
"I'm very sorry," Shino said to Kiba. "However, I did manage to get ahold of this."
"Whoa! When did you do that?" Kiba exclaimed, impressed. "I figured you were just lost out there somewhere."
"Lost, huh," Shino said, his mind still drawing blank as he looked down at the honey wine again. "Anyway, I think we found what we came here for. Now that we have Hinata's wedding gift, we should return to the village."
"You don't gotta tell me twice. I'm starved," Kiba said, making his way back to the path home.
Akumaru barked in agreement.
"Since you were the first one to find the honey wine, I guess that means you get to treat us," Kiba volunteered Shino to pay for lunch.
"Not a chance," Shino bantered back.
Taking the honey wine jar in one arm, Shino followed Kiba back to the path.
But paused only for a brief moment to look back at the forest behind him.
Even so...I just can't stop feeling like I'm missing something...
Then it hit him.
"Hey, what about that girl?" he asked Kiba.
Kiba cringed.
Knowing good and well that Shino knew good and well he didn't have a chance with that girl they'd met before.
"Are you kidding me right now?" Kiba exaggerated disinterest. "Did you really have to bring that up again?"
"Sorry. You don't care about her anymore?"
"I'll just write her a letter or something," Kiba said, waving dismissively as he continued walking. "Come on. What do you say we hit Yakiniku Q on the way back? My treat."
"Yeah," Shino said, though deep down he knew the mysterious and unexplained emptiness he felt wasn't hunger. "Sounds great."