Green Tea: Hello! Welcome to the second chapter of How To Smile! I hope you enjoy this chapter!

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or the characters, but Ayame is mine, and the plot is mine.

NNCS: I hope you like the story! Thanks for reviewing

Stacey:

How to Smile:

Chapter 2: The Room

Shino followed Ayame along a worn dirt road, he organized his thoughts.

Why was he doing this again?

He didn't know.

He supposed it was because he didn't have anything to do.
Or maybe it was because of those bright blue eyes, begging him?

Nah.

-----------------------

When he arrived at her house, he was surprised.

It was a normal, plain, two-story house, with an average red tiled roof, and ordinary white stucco walls, surrounded by a well-tended, standard flower garden.

Based on Ayame's personality, he was expecting something along the lines of a crooked wooden shack painted in every color of the rainbow...
Oh, with flowers growing out of the chimmey, of course, complete with patchy blankets hanging on the rafters of the house, along with the onions and leeks.

He felt slightly disappointed at the normality of it all.

"Eh? What's wrong?" Ayame smiled as she turned around to face the hesistant Aburame.

"It's..." Shino stopped, unable to go on. What was he doing here? He barely knew her, and now he's coming to her house? A girl's house no less...

"Oh my god! You're shy, aren't you? That's so cute!" Ayame giggled.

Shino felt himself blush... a little... very little... tiny... micro... bit. Come to think of it, that was the first time he blushed.

"Oh my god! You just blushed! Hahahaaa! Kawaiii!" The russet-haired girl clutched her stomach, laughing helplessly.

Shino flinched in surprise. This girl... wasn't supposed to be able to see that... Wasn't his collar high enough to cover his face?

Once again, as if she were reading his mind, Ayame answered his question.
"Don't worry, I'm just really good at reading people's faces, especially yours. I specialize in you. But I already told you that! Come in already!"

Ayame pulled on Shino's sleeve and dragged him inside the house, and into the kitchen.

-----------------------

"Ara... Ayame, who's this?" A elegant brown-haired woman asked, looking up from a pot of boiling soup. The bug-master was surprised again. He expected Ayame's mother to be far more eccentric. Why was her family so... normal?

But the woman that stood before him looked much like any other perfectly normal, japanese housewife. Ayame shoved Shino forward.
"Mama, this is Shino-kun! Shino-kun, this is my mother, Yukina Soramachi."

The woman smiled kindly at him.
"I finally meet the boy that Ayame always talks about. And my, you do look just like how I imagined!"

If Ayame was embarassed, she showed no sign of it and dragged Shino off to see her dad.

Shino on the other hand, blushed for the second time in his entire life. Did Ayame really talk about him so much?

"Papa--! This is Shino-kun!"
Ayame once again pushed Shino into the room, which turned out to be the study.

A man with gentle blue eyes and greying russet (much like Ayame's) hair swiveled around in his leather office chair, holding a thick, green, paperback book.
"Shino-kun? You mean, THE Shino?" he asked in a deep, but slightly fragile voice.

"Haiii! THE Shino!" Ayame danced giddily from one foot to the other.

The older man looked over to Shino, and like his wife, smiled.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Shino-kun, my name is Masao Soramachi, as you know, I'm Ayame's father."

Shino wasn't quite sure how to respond, but he was saved from the ackward task by Ayame, who quickly dragged him off to somewhere once again.

-----------------------

As they walked up the stairs to Ayame's room, Ayame fiddled with the large ornamental lizard clipped in her hair.
"As you can see, I got my eyes and my hair from Papa, and I got my smile from Mama AND Papa! Although Papa doesn't know where I got my personality from. Both of my parents are quiet people, so I suppose I made my personality all by myself!"

"Indeed." Shino thought to himself as she opened her door...

The dark-haired boy stepped into the room... and once again, entered the odd world of Ayame Soramachi... except this time it was horrifically unnerving.

The walls of her room were covered by layers of pictures of his team, from Hinata, to Kiba... to him... In fact, there were lots of pictures of him.

It seemed like on every table there were stacks of more pictures, from Akamaru to close-up shots of Hinata's Byakkugan. The floor was also littered with more pictures and odd scraps of fabric and magazine cutouts.

In short, the room looked like a humongous scrapbook, from the picture-plastered walls, to the sea of clothing and fabric covering the floor, to the patchwork bedding, and mess of random objects tossed haphazardly on the single table, dresser and chair in the room.

A very messy, chaotic, colorful, scrappy, patchy, scrapbook.

Shino couldn't help but wonder why she had a empty raspberry jam jar and a bicycle training wheel on her desk, all laying next to a gigantic sewing machine.

Ayame didn't even look slightly abashed. She shoved aside various pieces of odd clothing, much like the one she wore and looked around a little expectantly.
"Well?"

Shino didn't quite know what to say.

He didn't want to be rude, but this was... frightening. Yes, he didn't use that word often, but it wasn't every day that he walked into a room covered with pictures of him.

"Yeah, I know, Hinata thought the same thing when I first showed her as well."

Shino gulped. Was she... what they called... a rabid fangirl?

"Nah, I'm not one of those, I just specialize in information gathering. That's why I know you so well. And that's how I'm able to read what you're thinking right now." She finished, sucessfully answering his questions.

She turned to her wall and picked out three pictures of him, all seemingly identical.
"See these? They look like the same thing, right?"

She stuck her tongue out at him as he nodded.
"Wrong!"

She quickly grabbed a tassled professor cap from no where and jammed it on her head. Then she straightened her back and cleared her throat dramatically.
"Ahem, ahem."

Using a wooden stick as pointer, she pointed at the first picture of him. He was staring forward, glasses up and collar covering half of his face.
"This is a snap-shot of Aburame Shino's amused-at-Kiba-because-he-just-messed-up face. Notice the faint wrinkles under his eyes and the lowering of the eyebrows by a millimeter. Almost, there's a reflection of Kiba running around on fire in the shades."

She pointed at the second.
"This is Aburame Shino's annoyed-at-Kiba-because-he's-being-stupid face. His forehead is more stretched out and his upper-cheek muscle is flexed. Once again, the shades show a picture of Kiba making a face at the subject, Aburame Shino."

The wooden stick tapped the last picture. "This is your disappointed-because-you-didn't-get-your-way face. The cheek muscles are slightly tilted to the right side on both cheeks and the eyebrows are slanted as well."

She grinned and tilted her head, like she always did.
"Any questions?"

He stared. And stared. And stared some more.

She giggled, turned around and shuffled through her drawer once more, humming a strange tune that she later on swore was in F minor. (Which she also claimed, was the sexiest key that anyone ever composed in.)

Shino stared at her strange patchwork tunic of flowers, noses and cliff edges.

So strange.

Green Tea: Ugh. That royally sucked, but oh well, I really want to finish this story... Review please, if you're reading this. Thankies!