Yasahashi sat in Kohaku's living room at 9pm, a half-finished bottle of wine on the table.
"You ready?" Yasahashi asked, kicking her legs on the blue carpet.
"Almost." Her girlfriend's voice was muffled from behind the bathroom door.
Yasahashi checked how much wine was in the bottle and poured the rest out into her glass, calling out as she finished the bottle: "I'm sure you look fine, babe."
"Please be quiet, this practice takes very delicate precision."
Yasahashi sipped her glass and grinned. She was impressed the Uchiha had agreed to this in the first place, and surprised bu the woman's dedication.
Soon, a dark form appeared in the narrow hallway. Yasahashi looked up to see a beautiful, unfamiliar woman with long white hair and a powder pink dress that fell in ruffles.
The urban planner stood and approached Kohaku in amazement. She studied her face, upon which stunning make up was flawlessly applied. As Yasahashi drew closer, the woman smiled, "My lipstick is still drying."
"Oh, sorry," Yasahashi blushed and backed away. "You look incredible."
Kohaku smiled, "Thank you."
Kohaku gathered Yasahashi's hands in hers and dipped her head past her lips to whisper into her girlfriend's ear, "Are you ready to go?"
Hanabi's bar was packed to the brim tonight due to the chunin exams being in town. Tsiro had employed his boyfriend, Tanaka with helping him behind the bar. Although, instead of easing the bartender's plight, the urban planning director seemed to be bumping elbows and making matters worse.
"Hey! I did NOT order this," shouted someone from across the bar.
"Ow!" Tsiro got hit in the back by Tanaka as he swung around to look at the heckler. He ended up spilling the drink he held all over Tsiro's pants.
"Oh, sorry Tsi-si," Tanaka groaned.
"It's- It's okay!" Tsiro declared in panic, focusing on cleaning up the mess, "Just go make sure that guy has the right drink, okay?"
Tanaka made his way to the other end of the bar to see that the heckler was… Takamaru. His drunken subordinate cackled and slapped the bar's surface.
"Not funny!" Tanaka growled.
"It so-o is funny..." Takamaru slurred.
Tanaka kept eye contact with the man while he walked over to the sink and poured a tall glass of water and then returned and slammed it down on the counter in front of him.
"Tha's not what I ordered…"
"Drink it, Takamaru."
"Hey, can I get some service over here?" came another voice.
Tanaka twitched and shouted, "No!" in frusteration. Then he cringed and said, "I mean.. Give me a minute.." he turned around to see that the other voice belonged to his other junior, Yasahashi.
"YOU!" He pointed.
Yasahashi and Takamaru air high-fived from across the bar.
Some actual guests heckled Tanaka for service, prompting to rain from the man's brow.
"I can't! I have to fix like three other people's drinks right now!" he shookhis head violently, spraying the guests with a shower of sweat.
Tsiro appeared and muscled his way infront of his boyfriend, "Just go clean those glasses after." Tsiro busied himself with taking orders and Tanaka darted over to the dish rack. He looked back at his boyfriend with a look of confusion.
Yasahashi wandered next to her drunken coworker, Takamaru, leading Kohaku by the hand. They managed to wedge themselves next to him at the bar, pushing out a couple of impatient patrons who were sick of waiting for service. Takamaru didn't notice them at first, as he was now busy regailing the person on the other side of him about some kind of grand spider-smashing heist he had to go on in his mothers house last week. Though, he seemed to be struggling to keep his listener's attention. Yasahashi cleared her throat and he glanced over his shoulder at her.
"OOhhh my gosh," Takamaru gushed and turned full around in his seat, forgetting himself and elbowing his previous listener in the chest. He looked at Kohaku, "Is this?" he looked to Yasahashi excitedly, "Is this her? The girl you-?"
Kohaku winked uncharacteristically with a tight smile, "Call me Kyoshi-chan!" her voice rang high.
Yasahashi nearly choked on her own spit. She held her stomach and had to turn away from the bar to mask her laughter, instead opting to laugh into a stranger's armpit.
"Yasahashi, is there something wrong? Did I do something strange just now?" Kohaku, or rather, Kyoshi-chan asked.
This was the first time that Yasahashi laughed so hard in her life that she couldn't speak for a full minute.
"I thought it was fine," Takamaru said politely, looking at his friend's girlfriend.
"Oh man…" Yasahashi finally faced them, "K-Kyoshi-chan, I know I told you to put on a different personality, but.. I wasn't expecting that."
Kyoshi-chan smiled sweetly and fluttered her eyes, "Oh, was it too convincing?"
Miss Heaven-Scroll and Miss Earth-Scroll were putting on an interview skit on stage tonight. They had a guest from the Hidden Sand Village called, Miss Fun-In-The-Sun, who seemed to be dressed for the beach for some reason, even though the Sand village has no beaches.
During the show, the bar crowd calmed down a bit and Yasahashi was able to properly introduce Kohaku to Tanaka and Tsiro. Though the two love-bird bartenders could now afford to relax a bit, they seemed to be avoiding eye contact with one another.
Kohaku was enamored by the drag show on stage and was dead set on meeting both Heaven-Scroll and Miss Earth-Scroll, so they stuck around much later than Yasahashi normally did, and found the two queens in their dressing room relaxing with the toads.
"What is it, girls, do you want me to sign something?" asked Miss Earth Scroll. She was flipping through a magazine called, "Konoha's hottest jonin."
In her act, Miss Earth scroll wore antlers and a dress made of deer-skin, she had epoxied multiple eyes on to her forehead so that it looked like she had 8 like a spider, and her heels were those types that make you look like you've got hooves. On her back she wore great big butterfly wings like Miss Hanabi. Some would call Miss Earth Scroll's outfit eclectic, but she would always reply with, "Everything on the great Goddesses' earth is eclectic, hon."
She and Miss Heaven Scroll were both dressed considerably down at the moment. She looked up at them through her thick eyelashes when she realized they weren't leaving.
Kyoshi-chan took an eager step forward and pulled out a small booklet from her purse. She held it out at arms length towards Miss Earth Scroll, "Can you sign this for me, pleeeease?"
Yasahashi hadn't been informed about any of this, though had become used to not knowing what to expect after being hit again and again with more of this extremely un-Kohaku-like behavior.
Miss Earth Scroll sighed and reached for the book, flipping it open to a random page and signing with a pink pen. "Here you go, doll," she handed it back.
Miss Heaven Scroll smiled sweetly and in soft tones also agreed to sign. Yasahashi watched the affair with amusement. She nodded to the other queen, "Thanks for the show tonight."
"Of course," Miss Earth Scroll said, "I live for my night."
Kyoshi-chan returned to Yasahashi's side.
"You done?"
She nodded and stuck a tongue out. Yasahashi looked away in disbelief.
Before they headed out the door, Kohaku stopped one last time. She turned to Miss Earth Scroll, "Um, Excuse me."
"Hm? What else is it?"
This time she replied as Kohaku, her voice shifting into a deeper tone. "I… Do you have any advice for ninja who wish to be promoted to high ranks in the day time, who cannot risk their night-time identities getting released?"
The queen did not look up from her magazine for a moment, until she finally opened her mouth and said, "Sorry, do I look like an advice column?"
Miss Heaven Scroll didn't look too responsive either, she avoided eye contact with them.
Finally, a deep, sing-songy voice chimed from the hallways door behind them: "Just don't think about it too hard, my sweets." Miss Hanabi entered the room and put a hand on both Yasahashi and Kyoshi-chan's shoulders, "Like the shadow of death which follows all ninja around, it's best to just live in the moment and enjoy life free from fear."
"Oh, how poetic," Miss Earth Scroll said.
The butterfly queen laughed, "You two should get back out to the bar. Yasahashi, I think your senpai out there could use a shoulder to cry on!"
And so it was on this night that Tsiro and Tanaka officially broke up for the first time, all their withheld emotions erupting into a drama which proved far more enticing than anything Miss Hanabi could come up with.
As Tsiro and Tanaka shouted and broke bottles and feelings, Yasahashi couldn't help but wonder where her other coworker had gone off too, he was no where to be found. Truthfully, Takamaru had wandered off to make out with someone and would wake up embarassed and thoroughly done with alcohol and it'd effects.
"Hey-hey-hey!" Yasahashi yelled at her two bickering friends. She jumped behind the bar and tried to get between them but they were shouting over one another and moving so erratically she couldn't get a hold on either of them. Some watchers boo'ed her for trying to break it up.
Miss Hanabi tapped the mic on the actual stage behind them and cleared her throat, but very few divided their attention. "Looks like I have a tough act to beat!"
Kaeda wasn't answering her door. She hadn't been for the past few weeks. She hadn't been replying to any of Yasahashi's notes or letters.
"Kaeda, open up," Yasahashi yelled, pounding on her friend's apartment door. She could hear little Haku babbling in there, "I know you're home."
No response.
Finally after a moment, just as Yasahashi was about to knock again, Kaeda opened the door. She looked annoyed.
"What?" Kaeda asked.
Yasahashi shook her head in disbelief, "Why are you avoiding me?"
Keada's eyes showed some form of remorse, she shut them to hide the feeling, "I'm not... " she sighed and held her hand to her face, "..avoiding you… Sorry, come in."
Yasa followed her friend in to her home. It was… less immaculately clean than before. Considerably less. Laundry was scattered in piles through out the room and every surface was covered with a myriad of objects.
"Don't say anything." Kaeda growled. She vanished behind a pile of papers on the dining room table.
Haku ran up to Yasahashi and hugged her leg, "Aunt-yyyyy!"
"Hi, Haku. How are you?" Yasa asked.
"I'm funky!" he struck a goofy pose then galloped over to the couch where he tried to do a handstand up against a pile of laundry.
The papers on the table were a myriad of bills and invoices. Yasahashi busied herself with helping clean up a bunch of dirty dishes and empty wrappers, stealing glances at the lingo on Kaeda's strewn documents. What they said was… interesting.
"You doing freelance again?" Yasa asked behind the clank of dishes and running water.
Kaeda flared her eyes, "I'm doing what I can. Mizuki owed a lot of money..."
"And you gotta pay that? He's a criminal."
Kaeda bawled up a piece of paper and threw it across the room. It bounced on the trash bin's edge and fell on the floor. "The Konoha government doesn't reimburse gambling debts."
"Ah."
Yasa sudsed up the dishes and started whistling to herself while she scrubbed an old pot that had fried egg yolk burnt to the bottom.
Kaeda came into the kitchen and started cooking dinner, "You want gyoza?" she asked.
"Sure."
"Good, it's all I got."
"Kaeda, if you need help with groceries, just let me know."
The ambitious woman was silent as she pulled out some frozen gyoza from a cardboard box in the freezer and dumped them in a pan full of oil over the stove. She lit the flame and sighed. "Thanks."
They cooked in silence, the gyoza beginning to sizzle. Yasa drained the sink and began drying the dishes on the rack. Haku ran in and out of the kitchen wondering when the food would be done.
Yasa handed Kaeda a dried plate and she took it and started putting the fried gyoza on it. She dropped one on the floor and cursed loudly.
As she kneeled down to clean it up, she spoke: "You and I just aren't lucky in the ways of love, are we, Yasa?"
Yasahashi dropped a dish in the sink. It made a big thud noise that Haku shrieked at.
"Sorry, little man," she said.
Haku stuck his tongue out at her and started making helicopter noises.
She looked to Kaeda sadly, "What about Haku? Don't you feel lucky to have him?"
The woman's face reddened and she glared at her friend, "Of course I do!"
It was a girls night like any other. The three went out to a loud bar and laughed together over calorically dense food and drink. Kaeda laughed and pointed to different people around them, it was always her hobby to try and decide who were the top three people in the establishment she would want to be her future husband. Mizuki was there tonight, but he didn't even rank.
"His hair is too gray!" Kaeda exclaimed, "I am NOT into that…"
"It's the ninja world, it makes whole families so tired their children get born with gray hair," Yasahashi said.
"That must be it!" Kaeda laughed.
"Well if that were the case, the Uchiha would definitely be a clan of gray-haired ninja," Kohaku said, enjoying her beer, "We're a stressed out clan."
Yasa squeezed her girlfriend's hand underneath the table. They made eye contact and both agreed to something wordlessly.
"Kaeda," Yasahashi said, tapping their friend on the shoulder.
"Whaat?" Kaeda asked.
"I have to tell you a secret you can't tell anyone else."
"Hmm, okaaay,"
She leaned over and whispered into Kaeda's ear. Kohaku watched as their friend's face lit up in surprise.
"WHAAAT?' she exclaimed.
The freelance ninja sat up straight and looked between her two companions in stupor. Kohaku smirked at her as if to confirm what Yasahashi had just told her.
Kaeda smiled so big you could see the back of her throat glisten in the fluorescent light. "Well, then! So many things are adding up," she cackled. Then she stood up and put her hands on her hips, "But now I'm actually insanely jealous!"
Yasahashi laughed, "jealous? Why's that?"
The brown haired woman lifted her drink to the air and took a huge swig. A group of ninja boys who were to the left of them caught whiff of her spunky demeanor and cheered as she downed her drink. Then she shouted, "Well now I know I can't waste any more time looking for love if I don't want to be left behind by my friends!"
Kohaku was smiling wider than Yasahashi had ever seen her do before, Even Kyoshi-chan didn't smile that wide.
Kaeda slammed her empty drink on the counter and called to the room as loud as she could, "Alright! Who wants to be my husband?!"
On the way back from Kaeda's, Yasahashi stopped by the address that was Hifumi's old home, as it was along the way. The building was still standing, inevitably. Hifumi's parent's will must have left it to him, and as he was too young to make any decisions on it, it just sat there, gathering whatever damage uninhabited buildings tend to. It was sad to see a building she had designed fall to this state, although it was more than common in the ninja world.
The door was locked, but Yasa found a window open around the side that lead into the bathroom. It smelled like mildew and dust. Yasahashi dry coughed as she landed on the tile floor of the bathroom.
"Yeesh, probably should have worn a ventilator mask…" she muttered to herself. There was a scuffling noise and she saw two rats dart just out of her view point and go into a crack in the moulding. She made haste to get out of their territory.
It had happened upstairs, the top floor.
The roof collapsed and the water tower which was on top of the roof fell down and crushed the mother, father, and the family dog all at once. They didn't even wake up from their sleep to notice their last moments. As Yasahashi crept up the creaking stairwell, she felt a draft above her. It came from the parents bedroom, where a large tarp was lain across the chasm and was meant to keep the rain out. Moisture still crept in inevitably, the wood around the edges was rotted.
Pieces of the bed were still in the room, though the site itself had been thoroughly scrubbed of detail. Yasahashi shined a flashlight up at the chasm's edges, examining the exposed support beams and skeleton.
It could have been the construction crew's fault.
The water tower had not been part of the plans Yasahashi developed for this street.
Had she forgotten to account for additions of the future? No, there's no way she would have been so careless. Water wells were the most common additions to make to these city buildings.
It was getting late. She had been staring up at the roof for so long that her neck was becoming sore.
When she got home drank liqor and angrily worked on Professor Ayame's plans.
"Just tell me what I did wrong, old man!" she muttered to herself.
Her pen and eyes drifted over to the area of town which her professor had designed for Hifumi's family, looking for some kind of answer. But, the crazy old man didn't even include anything there in his schematics. It was an empty zone. There was a park over it. Some pathways. No buildings. None at all.
Yasahashi threw the plans across the floor and passed out on the couch.
Beep beep! Kakashi's Prius here. It's not healthy to eat too much processed food.
