Naruto Primer: Hyuuga Neji
Get a Hobby
One day, Neji was in his favorite training area. He was training.
In fact, the day before that, he was training too.
And he would train the day after and the day after and the day after.
Forever and ever for all eternity.
On this particular day, Neji was NOT doing the Macarena. He wasn't sneaking turkeys into anyone's bags, he wasn't going to Build-A-Bear and he wasn't watching movies and he wasn't going camping and he wasn't playing laser tag and he wasn't doing all that OTHER stuff that he's been doing. All he was doing was training.
All of a sudden, Tenten and Lee came over. "Hey, Neji, we're going to the beach now!" said Lee. "This is your LAST chance to come!"
"I already told you that I do not want to go to the beach." Said Neji, stopping momentarily to look at them. "I burn easily and I can't swim…" he caught himself. "…Well."
"You could fix those two problems if you just went occasionally." Tenten pointed out.
"Well, no, I don't want to go to the beach." Neji said.
"You really need to get a hobby or something." Said Lee.
"I DO have a hobby." Said Neji. "What do you think this is?"
"You need to take a break from this and do something else." Tenten said. "Like…um… well, you could start a collection! Of stamps or Magic Cards or something!"
Neji gave her this LOOK that just said to run along now.
So Tenten and Lee sighed and left.
Neji resumed his training. After a few rounds of bird counting, he stopped again. He started wondering…maybe he really DOES need a hobby. He had tried to convince himself that he enjoyed training by himself all day ever since he got caught doing the Macarena, but he couldn't really lie to himself anymore.
So, after a moment of reflection, Neji began his long, treacherous journey to…The Hobby Shop!
"If I can't find a hobby here then there's no helping me." Said Neji as he opened up the door and stepped inside.
It was quite the large hobby shop…filled with…presents and boxes and bags!!…among other things of course. So Neji began to wander up and down the isles, looking at all the potential things that could eventually become his new hobby.
He picked a model airplane off a shelf and looked at the back of the box. He dismissed it as no fun at all and placed it back on the shelf. As he rounded the corner of the isle, he spotted Kiba at the other end, picking up small containers of paint off the shelves and showing them to Akamaru.
"You like this color?" he asked Akamaru. "I don't know. It might make you look kind of femme." Akamaru started barking and then Kiba looked up to see Neji. "Hi." He said.
"Hi." Said Neji awkwardly as he pretended to be interested in some buttons that were in individually wrapped bags.
"I didn't know you had a hobby." Said Kiba. "I've never seen YOU around here before!"
"I'm just…picking something up for someone." Said Neji.
"Oh." Said Kiba, turning back to Akamaru. "Well anyway, Akamaru. I refuse to use lavender. You have to pick a more butch color."
Akamaru barked in response.
"Don't come crying to me when all the macho dogs say that you're gay." Said Kiba as he took the paint off the shelf and put it in a little carrying basket. "You're the one who's going to have to live in a lavender doghouse, after all."
Neji decided that he was above this conversation so he left that isle.
He entered an isle that had blank doll body parts in different packages and clothing that could be altered and applied according to the builder's needs and wants. Dolls were only for little girls and Neji was NOT a little girl (no matter how much Sakura wanted him to be one) so he quickly left this isle as well.
He walked up and down all the isles, trying to find something that he might be interested in. Maybe there WAS no helping him! What if he had gone so far into the abyss of stiffness that he could never ever come back?
Just when he was about to exit the Hobby Store feeling very depressed and all around unhappy, he was stopped by probably the oldest woman in the entire world who was holding two bags.
"Excuse me," she said pleasantly. "Do you think you could help me carry my bags to my car?"
"Uh…" said Neji. "Um…"
As bastardly as Neji might be sometimes, he wasn't about to turn down an old lady who needed help carrying her bags to her car. So he agreed and took the lady's two bags and followed her EVER so slowly to her car. She got into her car that was probably older than she was and rolled down her window. "Thank you so much, young man!" she said. "It's nice to have young people in this world who are willing to do something to help a lady like me!"
She backed out of her parking space and drove off.
Neji was about to go back to being sad and depressed about not having a hobby when he looked down to find that he still had the lady's two bags. "Oops." He said but by the time he looked up again to find her, she was already too far away, even for his Byakugan!
He sighed and looked in one of the bags to see two knitting needles and two balls of yarn.