((A/N: Title taken from the song "Sweet Tangerine" by The Hush Sound. I'd recommend listening to it! Also; the Ueno clan is my own invention, as far as I'm aware it doesn't exist in canon. If you're interested, you can read a bit about their history during the Warring States period in my other Naruto fic, Wisteria And Roses(still being written tho, chapter 4 is in the works as I upload this). Also, the image(for those of you not on mobile who can actually see the pic lol) is my own art, of Mizuki Ueno!

I hope you enjoy the read!))


Mizuki Ueno was born on August 29th.

She was born with the signature silver hair of the Ueno Clan, but her eyes were a light brown instead of the expected purple. No matter, they thought, she simply took on genes from both parents. Her fair skin was healthy, her body plump with baby fat. Moments after she was born and placed in her mother's arms, securely swaddled in a wisteria decorated blanket, she laughed. Laughed long and loud, all bright gummy smiles and happy eyes.

The Clan celebrated for a week straight. She was the first child to the Clan Head, the girl who would become the Clan heir. She would spend her life training to fulfill her role in the Ueno's future in Konoha, and one day, when her parents passed away, she would take on the responsibilities of leading them to newer heights and a brighter future. The Clans in Konoha were always competing to be 'at the top' in a sense, despite there being no clear list of any sort of outer Clan hierarchy in the village. Still, from a young age the people of the Ueno Clan made it clear that they had high, high hopes for this bright young girl.

Mizuki Ueno made it clear as early as possible that she had no interest in any of this.

At three, her father tried to convince her to paint the Clan symbol with sumi-e. She had drawn smiley faces, stick figures of her family, and a single butt that she childishly lost her marbles laughing at every time she looked at it. Her father had laughed with her, saying she was a menace of a girl.

At four, her mother tried teaching her the Clan hierarchy. Little Mizuki Ueno had thrown a fit out of sheer boredom, crying until her face turned red and making a mess of her mother's painting room. She'd been reprimanded harshly for that, scrubbing pots for a week amongst other little punishments.

At five, her little sister was born. Kaoru Ueno. She was born with the perfect Ueno Clan looks - a head of perfectly soft, silver hair, light purple eyes the same shade as wisteria, and fair, delicate looking skin. Like a porcelain doll. She was a healthy, bouncing baby, just the same as Mizuki had been. Mizuki fell head over heels in love the moment she laid her muddy brown eyes on the young infant. One night, she clutched the tightly swaddled child to her chest under the strict supervision of her tired mother. With her brown eyes full of tears, she looked up at her mother and said in her childish, stumbling Japanese;

"She can become Clan Head instead of me, right?"

Her mother had been so furious. She sent Mizuki away to her room for the rest of the next day, the young girl eating her breakfast and lunch in her bedroom and only being allowed out again for dinner with her family. Mizuki didn't understand why she'd gotten into trouble for that - it was a legitimate question, in her mind. Little Kaoru had the perfect Clan looks, surely they would have preferred someone with "perfect genes" to lead them to a better future? The Clan elders had always been fond of pointing out how Mizuki had the brown eyes of her father - the man who'd married into the Clan, not been born into it - and a complexion just a few shades too warm to match her mother's looks.

At six, she had another little sister. The healers had been worried about her mother, telling her that it was unwise to have children again after only a year of healing from her last pregnancy. She told them it was a conscious choice and she knew what she was doing - but Mizuki had heard the late night discussions between her parents. She knew that this pregnancy was not a purposeful one, her mother was just too proud or too stubborn to admit as much. And she absolutely refused to terminate it for her own health.

Her second younger sister was named Noriko Ueno. She had their father's light brown hair, but their mother's wisteria purple eyes. Mizuki loved her, too. She spent every waking moment tending to Noriko's needs. She fetched her toy when the infant girl threw it across the room in a fit of baby rage, she made silly faces to keep her entertained when the babysitter was busy with Kaoru, and on nights where she couldn't sleep, she cradled the young girl in her arms as delicately as she was taught to hold her mother's fine tea set.

At seven, Mizuki noticed that she was spending less and less time with Kaoru. She tried to search for her little sister more often, tried to ask her for a game of hide-and-seek or to play pretend together. For some reason, however, Kaoru's time was being spent up with their parents. Every opportunity she got, Mizuki tried to play games with her sister, and every opportunity she got, Kaoru was whisked away for another lesson with Mother. Admittedly, little Mizuki felt a sting of bitter jealousy for the first week after realizing this, something about being an eldest child and wanting the proper amount of attention the title should have gotten her, then quickly forgot about it. Her childish mind wouldn't let her focus on it for too long, immediately distracted with her youngest sister's need to be picked up and spun around. That was something she could do well.

At nine, she meets a little boy. He looks like he's older than her, but just an inch shorter and so she took a great deal of pleasure in calling him little anyway. She was wandering around the Ueno Clan grounds with a stick, poking the dirt at random intervals as she went, and found him standing underneath one of the wisteria trees grown on the property.

"Who're you?" He'd asked her with narrowed black eyes and a mess of spiky, black hair atop his head. There was a pair of goggles stuffed into his pants pocket.

"Who are you?" She countered with all the haughty indignation a nine year old girl could muster. It was quite a lot. "You're on Ueno grounds."

He stood up from where he had been kneeling in the dirt, wiping his hands on his black pants before offering up a smile to her. The smile was big and reached all the way to his eyes, something that her father had taught her meant it was a real smile, not a fake one that some people gave you when they wanted something from you. He taught her a lot about how to tell when someone was being fake with you.

"I'm an Uchiha!" He puffed up with pride, pointing a thumb to his chest with a grin, and though Mizuki knew the Clan name and the importance it held thanks to the various lectures she had always tried to get away from, she didn't quite understand what that had to do with the situation they were in.

"That's nice," she said, but it was a lie. She didn't care at all. "But you're still on Ueno grounds. Go away or I'll call the guards."

She crossed her arms over her chest, stick forgotten on the ground and an angry pout on her features. Something about this boy not answering her question all the way had ticked her off. She wanted to prove, somehow, that she was someone he should listen to. The only solution her nine year old mind conjured up to fix this issue was to flaunt her family name and the power behind it. Maybe if she had been just a bit older she could understand that that was, in fact, exactly the same thing this other boy was doing to her by introducing himself as an Uchiha.

His dark eyes widened, and he quickly stuffed the pair of goggles over his eyes.

"Wait, wait, I'll go! Ah, you're not nice at all!" He shouted, a nervous lilt in his voice as he began inching around her like she was a feral animal.

Mizuko Ueno stomped her foot on the ground, furious. "I am nice! I'm a nice girl! Otou-san says so!"

The Uchiha boy got a few feet away from her before he pointed at her in an exaggerated expression and said, "Your otou-san's a liar! Meanie!" Then he stuck his tongue out at her and ran away, clear off the Ueno Clan grounds altogether.

For all her childish maturity, being insulted still stung. She sniffled wetly to herself, now alone, and brought up one foot to stomp on the ground as hard as she could - it was a tactic her father taught her, something to do to get rid of the "extra energy" when she was mad, and though it made her leg sting sometimes if she stomped too hard, it tended to work - before she finally noticed something and paused.

She put her leg back down on the ground, her balance not quite good enough to stand on one foot alone, and wiped away the tears in her eyes as she looked down at the area the boy had been crouched in.

Worms. Two worms, all wet and wriggly, were trying to dig their way into the dirt. She was sure they had been out in the sun just an hour ago, she'd come out here a while back and stared at the drying out worms with a sense of curiosity, not understanding that they would die if they stayed in the dry sun. The Uchiha boy had moved them into the cool shade, then? Why?

She pouted, remembering the sting of his insult and turning around to walk back to the Clan compound. She wanted to complain to her father about the mean little boy, wanted to find Kaoru and play tag, wanted to cuddle close to Noriko and forget her worldly worries (she didn't have many as a little girl, but it sure felt like she did).

Three months later, she met the little boy again. He was walking down a street with two other people, a girl and a boy. Mizuki was clutching her father's hand, walking down through the marketplace together and using her puppy eyes when necessary to get a sweet treat that she knew her mother wouldn't let her have if she were here. The moment she spotted him, she stared and stared. She had a vague sense that she knew him from somewhere, but couldn't quite place a name to it. Eventually, she stared so much that the companions he had with him noticed her, as if they could feel the sting of her brown eyes on the back of their necks.

The girl, who had hair the same shade of brown as Mizuki's eyes, nudged the dark haired boy with her elbow, pointing over at Mizuki and saying something. Both the dark haired boy and his other boy companion, someone with grey hair just a few shades too dark to be Ueno silver, turned to look curiously. Mizuki was too far away to hear their words, but she found that she didn't like being pointed at. It felt like they were whispering secrets about her, and she tugged on her father's hand to get his attention.

"What is it, Mizu?" He asked, a gentle smile on his tanned features as he looked down at his daughter. His brown eyes were prettier than Mizuki's, the girl always thought, but he denied it every time she said as much like a false accusation.

She pointed a finger at the boy with spiky hair, a frown on her lips. "He called me mean," she said, doing her best to not mutter. Her mother always told her that muttering was 'unbecoming of a lady', and though Mizuki didn't always understand what that meant, she knew that if she did things that were unbecoming she would get into trouble.

Her father followed her finger, looking on curiously. He blinked in surprise. "Just now?" He asked, confused.

"No!" She shook her head of silver hair. Before she could say more, someone shouted a quick 'hey!' and she turned to look.

The girl with brown hair was clutching the spiky haired boy by the elbow, dragging him over to them. She was pretty, Mizuki thought, and had purple markings on her cheeks. Sometimes shinobi have paint, her father had explained to her once many years ago, and sometimes they have stickers. Mizuki wondered which one this girl was wearing. If she tugged on her cheeks, would the purple wipe away? Or come clean off like a sticker?

"Hello," her father greeted them politely, still a bit confused by his daughter's earlier words but offering a shallow bow anyway. He put down the apples he'd been looking over for bruises.

The brown-haired girl bowed back, deeper than her father's as a sign of respect. "I'm sorry to interrupt you, Ueno-san," she said in a sweet, cheerful voice. The correct honorific for Mizuki's father would have been -sama, but he didn't correct the girl. "But my teammate here apparently said something rude to your daughter. He's here to apologize."

"Oh," her father looked down at Mizuki. She told him the boy had called her mean, and she felt a sense of vindication at her words being proven true.

The spiky haired boy looked down at his shoes with a frown, scuffing the open-toed sandals in the dirt like he didn't want to say what he was being told to say. Mizuki could understand that. Sometimes she did something funny to a Clan elder, like making a fart sound with her mouth when they sat down or putting a bug in their drink, and her mother forced her to say she was sorry even though she wasn't.

The boy behind him, with grey hair a few shades darker than Mizuki's, looked at her with intense dark eyes. Mizuki felt uncomfortable under his gaze, like he was searching for something in her eyes. She purposefully looked away from him.

The brown haired girl whacked the spiky haired boy on the arm, and he yelped and quickly did a shallow bow.

"I'm sorry I called your otou-san a liar!"

Mizuki frowned, apparently unhappy with the apology. She hadn't even thought about that part, too caught up in the personal insult he'd said. "You called me mean!"

Her father looked back and forth between her and the boy, a bit confused but mostly amused. His daughter was young, and he found it rather funny how she categorized which insult was the worst - saying that the Head of the prominent Ueno Clan was someone not to be trusted, or saying his daughter was a bit mean. If he were stricter like his wife, he was sure he would be insulted by the boy's words.

Instead, he laughed it off and waved his hand.

"It's alright, it's alright. How about I buy us all some dango and we forget it ever happened?"

Predictably, his daughter agreed immediately, the temptation of her favorite sweet treat too much for her to ignore in favor of the insult having gone un-apologized for. The girl with brown hair and the Uchiha boy both nodded along as well, bright smiles on their faces at the kind gesture of a stranger. The boy with grey hair was unreadable, looking away and stuffing his hands in his pockets.

"I'll pass, thanks," he said in a polite yet uninterested tone, turning around to walk off on his own.

The girl with brown hair turned to look at his back, worry in her eyes. "You don't want to come with us, Kakashi?"

Kakashi. It was the only name that Mizuki had gotten from the trio so far, so she mentally filed it away as something important.

"I don't like dango," he said matter of factly. The brown haired girl accepted the answer with quiet resolve, turning around and smiling at the two Ueno strangers again.

"Thank you for the offer! I'm Rin Nohara! It's very nice to meet you!" She bowed low again, in respect and gratitude for the promised treats. When she raised her head, she looked over at Obito with a smile, and the boy grinned and pointed a thumb to himself just the same as he'd done all those months ago during his first meeting with the silver-haired girl.

"I'm Obito Uchiha!"

Her father smiled down at the children before him.

"I'm Yuuta Ueno. This is my daughter," he placed a comforting, warm hand on Mizuki's back and she offered a smile to the two. "Mizuki Ueno."

Obito finally apologized for calling her mean over their dango, and she accepted it with a smile. She made him pinky promise not to call her any names anymore, and he agreed to it with a grin and a firm nod of his head.

When she turns ten years old a few months later, her mother announces another pregnancy. The healers did some tests and announced with a hesitant smile that her mother "told signs" of another girl (Mizuki had no idea how they could "tell signs" of the gender of the baby before it was born, but she didn't have the mind to ask them either). Her father cracked a joke about being desperate for a boy this time around, but Mizuki could tell he was only kidding. He loved his daughters dearly, and they loved him just as much.

True to their word, the healers came back months later only to deliver another girl into the Ueno main family. This girl was named Suzume Ueno, and had an unusual coloring to her hair. Most of it was the silvery white color of the Ueno bloodline, but a few strands in the front held the brown coloring of her father's. Her eyes were purple like wisteria, and her skin was the same tanned color as her father's as well.

Some people made comments about little Suzume's hair, but Mizuki silenced them all with stern words of the repercussions that would come about when insulting the Clan Head's daughter. They shut up very quickly. Mizuki knew what it felt like to listen to people whispering about the way you looked - she'd grown up with the whispers about how the firstborn daughter didn't look like a pureblood Ueno - and she refused to let her baby sister deal with the same thing.

Sometimes Mizuki still looked into the mirror and cursed her brown eyes and too-warm skin tone.

When she turns eleven years old, Kaoru goes on a long trip with their mother. Mizuki didn't know where they'd gone off to, and a small part of her wanted to throw a fit and demand that she should have gone as well because she was the oldest, but a larger part of her was just glad to be able to sleep in while her mother was away.

It was always her mother who held up the strict routine that Mizuki had gotten used to over the years. Wake up with the sun, wash in the morning, practice kanji and painting and tea making, spend the day doing various chores and physical labor, then wash in the afternoon and head to bed. Mizuki had never understood why she had to wash twice a day - she never got that dirty, and she especially didn't understand washing early in the morning. Brushing her teeth was fine and made sense completely, as her morning breath was gross and she was glad to be rid of it. But she didn't get dirty while she slept, so what was with that?

Sometimes she thinks her mother gives her extra work to do for fun. To make up for the early years of Mizuki refusing to learn Clan things.

She still refused to learn Clan things, actually. Maybe her mother was still making up for it.

On the first day, she sleeps until it's almost noon, waking up several times but deciding she was just too warm and comfortable to get up. She only fully wakes when a dirt-streaked Noriko comes bounding into her room and flopping down on top of Mizuki's futon with all of her five-year-old body weight. Mizuki learns that young children are heavier than they look and lets out a quiet wheeze as the air is forced from her lungs.

"Nee-chan! Get uuup, tou-san is making breakfast!" The girl was all giggles, the idea of their father cooking a funny thought to her. Mizuki knew that he used to cook much more often, when she was a very little girl. She remembers his home-cooked meals with fondness; sometimes he had let her join him, and she'd been enraptured with the idea of making raw materials into delicious foods ever since until it had become a well-known hobby of hers. She wondered why he ever stopped and left the cooking to some Clan servants to begin with.

She grumbled something under her breath, digging further into the comforters of her bed. Noriko found this to be unacceptable.

"No! Get up, get up, get up!" She jumped up and down on top of Mizuki, and the older girl almost - almost - gave in just to make her stop. But she was nothing if not stubborn, a trait her father often said she got from her mother.

"Get- off- Noriko-!" She said in between grunts as the girl hopped up and down.

"I want food!" She cried indignantly. "You gotta get up!"

Mizuki threw the covers off, finally unable to withstand any more of her younger sister's "method" of waking her up. Noriko smiled when she saw Mizuki sit up straight, but quickly let the grin drop when she saw the angry expression on her sister's face. Mizuki's clothes were a wrinkled mess, half in thanks to her night of moving about in her sleep and half in thanks to her morning routine with Noriko. Her silver hair stuck to her face in the warmth of the room, and Mizuki wiped them away with a frown.

"Am I… in trouble?" Noriko asked in a quiet, miserable voice. There was dirt smeared on her hands and cheek, and Mizuki noticed with a frown that she got it all over her futon and blanket. Noriko deflated from her earlier bouncing, lowering her head of brown hair and folding her hands in her lap.

Mizuki wanted to keep up the angry look, wanted to teach Noriko to not do that anymore, but when she noticed the young girl was taking on the "proper form of a lady" that their mother taught them to do, she snorted. That was her attempt at appearing sorry? To fold demurely and act all proper and calm?

"Oh! I'm not!" Noriko returned right back to her earlier smile and cheerful tone, her sister's amusement the only confirmation she'd needed of not being in trouble.

"Yes you are," Mizuki said in a tired voice, a small smile still on her face as she moved to stand. Her futon was a miserable mess thanks to her sister's actions.

"No I'm not!" Her little sister laughed, getting up and running out of the room, shouting a quick, "breakfast!" on the way out.

Mizuki shook her head at the girl's antics. She stood up on her tippy-toes to stretch, yawning loudly. As soon as she was done getting all the stiff tiredness out of her body, she leaned down to fix her futon and take the now-dirty comforter off. Even though her mother wasn't here to check the tidiness of her room and make sure there wasn't a hair out of place, Mizuki found herself doing it anyway. Maybe the good habits would actually stick.

"Good morning," she called out tiredly as she entered the dining area. The room was filled with a delicious smell, something savory and sweet mixed together. She peered curiously into the kitchen where she watched her father's back as he flitted from one burner to the next. Again, she had to wonder why he ever stopped cooking homemade meals altogether - he was good at it. Not only at the speed and dexterity of it, but his food always tasted downright delicious, too.

He turned around at her voice and smiled, his long brown hair tied into a low bun.

"Good morning, Mizu. Did you wash up?"

She pouted at him.

"Okaa-san's not here, why do I still have to do it in the morning? Can't I just bathe before bed?"

He tutted, shaking his head at her as he turned back around to continue his cooking. "You don't do it just because your okaa-san tells you to. You do it because it's a good habit to form, okay?" Mizuki didn't quite believe him, still firm in her ideals that she had no reason to bathe in the mornings because there was no way she got so dirty while she slept, but she grumbled out some words of affirmation and left to clean herself.

She placed a big, wet smooch on Suzume's forehead as she walked past, sending the one year old girl into a fit of laughter.

"Me too, nee-chan! Me too!" Noriko called from where she sat beside the infant girl, looking at her elder sister with wide, hopeful eyes. Somehow, Noriko had already gotten clean from earlier, now spotlessly sitting at the breakfast table. Mizuki leaned over and placed a kiss on her forehead too, wiping her brown hair away from her eyes. Noriko giggled. Mizuki had no idea how the girl remained so excited and energetic this early in the morning.

The rest of the day passed in a mostly quiet blur. Nothing out of the ordinary happened - it turned out that, despite their father always being the more lenient of their two parents, he was determined to stick to the routine their mother set for them anyway. Her sleeping in so much on the first day was apparently just a mistake on his part, having sent Noriko to wake her up hours earlier only to find out the girl had gotten distracted when spotting a stray leaf on the porch just outside the main doors that she thought was a butterfly. When she learned it wasn't, she went on a search to go find one.

That explains why she had dirt on her while waking me, Mizuki thought with a blend of amusement at her sister's antics and bitterness at having to do extra chores in washing her comforter.

The second and third day were a little louder, filled with just a little more energy from the two youngest girls as their father tried to juggle handling them on his own and taking over Clan duties with their mother gone. She was typically the one who did most of the work, and when Mizuki had asked about it once, her father had explained that it was her mother that was Head of the Clan while her father was just… the husband to the Head of the Clan. He'd married into it, not been born into it, so the duties and responsibilities technically weren't his to handle.

Still, eventually he settled on calling in one of the other Ueno women to babysit the young girls. Although Noriko whined at not being able to spend all her time with her father, she was more than glad to have other children to play with. Suzume slept through most of the days, either eating or crying about something when she wasn't.

On the fourth day of no mother and no Kaoru, Mizuki finally asked her father where they had gone and why they were away for so long.

"Kaoru is meeting with other Clan figures, Mizu. Her mother went with her because it's the respectful thing to do. It would have been insulting to send me in her place, because I'm not Head of the Clan, get it?" Mizuki had paused, then shook her head no. She didn't get it.

Her father put his ink brush down, in the middle of painting or writing something. Mizuki wasn't curious enough to look.

"You don't want to be Clan Head when you grow up," he said softly, like that would explain everything. Mizuki shook her head again. No, she didn't want that. All the politics that her mother tried to teach her, all the rules she was told she had to follow as an Heiress to the Ueno Clan, it had bored her all to death.

Suddenly, she remembered how Kaoru's time had been all taken up with their parents over the years. And suddenly, she remembered that her lessons of Clan politics and hierarchies had… stopped at some point. When? She furrowed her brows and wracked her memories, trying to recall.

Had it really been years since her last lesson with mother? Had she really never noticed all this?

"Kaoru is Clan Heir now?" She asked tentatively, like she was on the cusp of getting the answer right and needed validation.

Her father nodded.

"Kaoru is Clan Heir now."

Promptly after he'd gotten that lesson through Mizuki's thick skull, he'd been called away by a Clan member to handle something-or-another. Mizuki was told to go play with her sisters, or find something else to occupy her time with so she wasn't left doing nothing all day. She went on a leisurely walk, thinking over the conversation with her father and wondering how she felt about it all.

Firstly - she was relieved. Relieved that she was no longer Clan Heir, that she no longer had to do political lessons and learn every Clan Head's face and name. She hated seiza and tea ceremonies with pin-straight postures and her hair all done up in a heavy style on top of her head. She hated having to play a game of are-you-telling-me-the-truth-or-are-you-manipulating-me. She hated having to learn all the little tics people gave off when they were hiding something - she never even knew why that was important to begin with. It was a neat trick now that she had little sisters, for sure, but she had no idea why that was useful with Clans. Couldn't everyone just be honest with each other? What was with all the shadowy stuff and manipulating and owing favors to each other if they did something nice?

Secondly - she felt stupid. Looking back through her memories as if with a fine sift, combing through all her interactions with Clan members, she finally realized that the last time she'd had a lesson with her mother was when she was seven. Mizuki was eleven, almost twelve, now. Almost five years of no lessons or duties and she had never noticed. She was downright blind!

Thirdly, and the most important - she felt guilty. She wondered if Kaoru wanted any of this. She was a smart girl, devoted and calm, but just because you were qualified for a position didn't automatically mean you wanted it.

It was with this guilty sting in her heart that she found a familiar face.

She kicked a little pebble under her feet, keeping up with it as she walked like it was on the walk with her.

"Oi," a soft voice called to her. She looked up into dark eyes and grey hair. He wore a shinobi's hitai-ate on his forehead, something that Mizuki had never noticed before. She also hadn't noticed the bags under his eyes, and she wondered if they were new. He was sitting on a stone bench a few feet away from her, under the shade of a tall oak tree. His arms were crossed over his chest.

"Hello," she responded in a hesitant voice. What did he want from her? Why was he calling out to her, interrupting her childish brooding?

"You're…" He blinked at her, hesitating for a moment. "Mizuki Ueno?"

She pursed her lips, nodding. He didn't remember her name for a moment, and she couldn't deny she felt just slightly insulted at that. Then she tried to remember when the last time they hung out was, and she realized it's been over a year. She'd seen him and his teammates - Obito and Rin - around the village from time to time, but she never called out to them or asked them out to dango with her again. They always seemed busy and she had never wanted to interrupt.

"Yeah. You're…" She knew his name perfectly, but she paused to copy the way he'd referred to her anyway. "Kakashi Hatake."

He seemed to realize she was teasing, and his eyes narrowed. She grinned at him. She couldn't see his mouth underneath the dark blue mask he wore, but she knew the crinkles in the corners of his dark eyes meant he was probably smiling.

She walked closer to him, forgetting her pebble altogether. When she got close enough, she plopped down next to him on the stone bench, close enough that the fabric of their shirts touched.

"How have you been, Mizuki-san?" He asked her, looking away. He looked uncomfortable all of a sudden, and Mizuki had no idea why. He sounded like he was trying to be all mature and adult-like, with the phrasing of his words and the level tone of his voice. She hummed in thought, looking him over. He was young, like her, but she didn't know how young.

"I'm fine. How old are you?"

The sudden topic switch caught him off guard and he looked over at her with slightly wide eyes.

"Er… Twelve. How.. how old are you?"

She smiled. "Eleven. You're one whole year older, huh? And you're a shinobi? That's so cool!"

Mizuki had never wanted to be a shinobi herself. Her mother was one, but she'd apparently retired years ago when she got pregnant with her first child. Her father wasn't one, but he was still strong and quick. Maybe he'd started training to be one years ago, but never went through with it? Mizuki filed a mental note away to ask him about it later.

A small blush crept onto Kakashi's face, looking down at his hands.

"You think so?" He asked, sounding torn between being uncertain of the sincerity of her words and being confident from the compliment.

"Yeah!" She nodded enthusiastically, leaning a bit closer to poke at his forehead protector. "You fight, right? You can do ninjutsu and stuff? That's amazing! I never wanted to be a shinobi, but I still think other people who are shinobi are cool."

He looked dumbfounded, apparently unused to this much attention. All his life, being a shinobi was just expected of him. He never thought it was anything special, other than in his early years when he'd wanted to be as great as his father-

As the thought crossed his mind, his mood immediately soured. He frowned beneath his mask - though the girl in front of him couldn't tell - and looked away from her with narrowed, cloudy eyes. He stood up from his spot on the bench and stuffed his hands into his pockets, looking down at his open toed sandals with a miserable look in his eyes.

"I gotta go," he said simply before he began walking off.

"Ah, wait!" Mizuki called. He didn't stop at her words, but when he felt her cool fingers tug at the fabric of his sleeve, he paused. He turned just slightly to look at her. She took in a breath, seemingly confused about what to do now that she actually had his attention. For a moment, silence.

"What-" He began, but as soon as the word flew from his mouth, the girl bowed deeply. He blinked, confused and curious. She bowed at the waist, deferring to him with deep respect. What had he done to earn this?

"Thank you for protecting us, Kakashi-san."

Her words stung his heart for some reason. He couldn't tell why - there was no insult to them, no hidden meanings behind a simple thankyou. He took a deep breath in, telling himself that he had to control his emotions - only a foolish shinobi would let his emotions dictate his actions (the emotions of protecting a teammate, as if that was more important than the mission itself).

She held the bow for a few seconds longer, then stood up again. There was a bright smile on her lips when she looked at him.

"You fight in the war, right? With your teammates? It's very brave of you. Please pass my thanks on to Rin and Obito, too! And tell them you guys are always welcome back for more dango! I'll even pay next time," her gentle smile turned into a teasing grin, patting the pocket of her pants as if she were rolling in ryo.

His hand twitched, suddenly needing to rub the back of his neck sheepishly, but he forced the nervous tic down and hid it by stuffing his hands into his pockets again. He fought the urge to look away from her earnest, kind eyes.

"...You're welcome."

With that, he turned around and left as quickly as he could without flat out running away from the girl.

She watched him go with a curious tilt of her head, then turned around and began walking back home. She needed to ask her father if he was ever in Shinobi training. He was way too quick to be a regular civilian, she thought.


((A/N: I really wanted to convey the differences that I thought there were between Shinobi children and Civilian children. Even though Mizuki is the eldest daughter in a prominent Clan, she's still not a Shinobi, and therefore she doesn't have to have that same maturity that ninja kids have to have. They're going out to war and fighting impossible battles at such young ages, so they don't have a choice in being mature and disciplined at eight or nine, but Mizuki is a civilian kid and is allowed to act more… normal. Childish and stupid, you know? So that's why she does silly things and still throws fits and complains about unimportant stuff, even though she's only a year younger than team Minato.

Reviews are love! Thanks!))