Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
"I'll be fine, Ino-niichan." Kihona flounces onward towards the Academy. Inoichi follows behind her wringing his hands despite being only eight to her six.
"But Kiho-chan." She looks back over her shoulder at him with a decidedly unimpressed look. He splutters, but continues. "What if you meet a bully? Or, or, what if you forgot your bento for lunch, or if the Sensei-" She slaps a hand over his mouth to prevent him from further talking, and giggles.
"I'll be fine, Ino-niichan." A quick kiss to his cheek later, she bounces through the door of her Academy classroom.
The inside brings her up short though. There are so many people in here. There are practically no open seats, and she's suddenly not as confident as she'd been in the hallway that she'll be alright. Where do I sit? Her eyes slide over the full seats, the groups of giggling girls bunched together and shrieking in laughter every now and then, and settle on the empty seat next to a boy with the palest blond hair she's seen besides Cousin Ishari.
He's sitting alone on the bench, in the seat closest to the wall. Well better not miss the empty seat and end up having to stand around like an idiot. Kihona takes a running start towards the place on the bench besides him.
"Hey," she says, as he turns to look at her with big blue-gray eyes. "You look like Ino-niichan" And he does, he really does, but he seems surprised so he must not know who Ino-niichan is. Still he hides his surprise well, and only growing up in a clan of mind readers had taught Kihona to be discerning.
"I'm Kaito." He offers and Kihona smiles despite her earlier nerves.
"I'm Kihona! But you should just call me Kiho-chan like Ino-niichan does!" She holds out a hand between them, and he hesitates, but they shake on it. Behind her, the girls on the next bench over break out into gasps and snickers.
What's their problem?
She turns around to glare at them, but before she can say anything, Sensei clears his throat at the front of the room, and they are beginning.
She sits down with Kaito-kun at lunch and pulls out the gigantic bento that her mother had packed her that morning, and Ino-niichan had forced her to bring. "Hehee, did you see Tsume-chan punch that stuck up Hyuga across the room today?"
Kaito-kun turns to look at her, a puzzled expression in his eyes. "Who's Tsume-chan?"
"Oh, she's the girl with the black dog, and red triangles on her face, you know?" Kiho tosses a strand of her blond hair over her shoulder, so it doesn't fall into her rice. "I think her actions towards Hyuga was the funniest thing that happened this morning."
"I don't know." Kaito pulls a single pack of store bought onigiri out of his bag. "Why would you find that admirable?"
"Here." Kiho offers him a piece of mochi and some of her rice. "I want to be able to stand up to people that are mean, too." And wouldn't that be a nice dream? To be strong enough that no one would ever be able to hurt anyone she cared about? "Serves him right for stepping on her dog's tail."
"It's alright, you know." He says, and tries not to take her food. "But I don't think Hyuga-kun did that intentionally."
"Hey, Kiho-chan, why're you spending time with that loser?" Fumi's standing over them with her hands on her hips. "Everyone knows that he's the son of a foreign whore." A muscle twitches in her cheek and his knuckles stood out as white as rice paper on a winter morning and she is so, so angry. What right to you have to say something so awful?
She doesn't even realize that she'd slapped the awful girl before she stands there chest heaving, hand stinging. "Get out."
Fumi stands there, eyes wide with shock and Kihona can not bear to look at her. I've never slapped her before. "GET OUT!" The girl touches her reddening cheek. "NOW!" Kiho roars and advances. Fumi takes one look at her and flees.
Kaito's shoulders are shaking when she turns back to him, his tears plopping onto the plastic wrap of his cheap onigiri and she makes a vow to herself. He's going to be my little brother from now on. I'll take care of him like Ino-niichan takes care of me.
"Ne, ne, Kaito-kun, are you okay?" She does her best to smile encouragingly. I'm different from her, you see? I won't ask you why they're mean to you.
He draws in a shaky breath. "I'll be okay, Kihona-san."
She slaps a hand over his mouth. "Call me Kiho-chan."
Sensei's advancing on them, and Kiho turns to smile at him. "Good afternoon, Sensei!" He's frowning, which is unusual, because he had smiled easily that morning when he'd come to her name.
"Fumi-chan told me that Iwa-kun had slapped her." He tilts her head up so she looks him in the eye. "Do you know anything about this, Kihona-chan?" Iwa-kun? Oh, she must have meant Kaito-kun.
"No." Kihona smiles. "Fumi upset Kaito-kun by calling his mother a bad word. I slapped her."
"You don't need to lie for him, Kihona-chan. Lying to a superior is wrong, you know." Sensei's words are sharp, but he tries to keep his tone gentle.
Her lips tighten as she frowns. "I'm not lying."
It looks as though Sensei is about to say something else, but another voice breaks in. "The troublesome girl isn't lying even if she is bossy sometimes."
"En-kun!" And it is Nara Ensui, a year older than her, but destined to be her genin teammate since birth. They'd known each other since they before they could crawl, but he'd been in the other class. She hadn't expected to she him. Oh but this is wonderful. Sensei has to believe both of us.
And indeed he has no choice. Faced with two clan children who insisted on the same story he could only send all three of them to scrub the blackboard, scraping gum off the seats, and clean erasers after school.
"Kiho-chan!" Ino-niichan bursts into the room as she claps two erasers together over the trash. "Where were you?" He grabs her by her shoulders and shakes her until her teeth clatter together in her head. "Do you know how worried I was? You could have gotten lost, you could have been hurt, you could have died and I would have no idea since you weren't there to meet me." He says this all in one breath, and then pulls her in for a bone crushing hug. "Don't do this to me, little sister."
"Yamanaka-kun." Sensei stands over the two of them with a frown. "Might I speak with you?" Ino-niichan lets go of her reluctantly and follows Sensei to his desk.
Kiho goes back to clapping her erasers. If there is a problem with her current predicament, then Ino-niichan would sort it out. He always does when it comes to her. He always moves forwards as subtle as a futon jutsu and twice as harsh as a hurricane. Most things didn't stand up to Ino-niichan's possessive rage. Sensei is hardly going to be an exception to the rule.
"What?!" She turns just in time to see Ino-niichan slam his hands on Sensei's desk. "You take that back right now."
Sensei's arms are crossed. "Your sister attacked another student today without provocation. She should be disciplined far worse than cleaning my classroom."
Ino-niichan crosses his arms as well, and his mouth sets into a hard, grim line, and his eyes are two flinty teal stones. He draws himself up into his full height. which comes only up to Sensei's chest, but the impressive scowl on his face more than makes up for it. "I am the Heir of the Yamanaka, and you've been impolite to my sister, Chunin." He spits Sensei's title like an insult. "You should watch your words." He whirls around and storms over to Kiho.
"Come on, little sister, we should take the problem to Otou-san."
Outside of the classroom, she tries to remove her wrist from his death grip. "Niichan..." He doesn't turn around and doesn't let go. "Wait! Niichan!" There's still no response from him and he attempts to march down the hallway. She sets her feet far apart and doesn't let him drag her. "Niichan, you're hurting me!"
It works too well. He drops her wrist as though it is a hot coal. "Where?" There's such regret in his face, such worry in the depths of his teal eyes, and Kiho feels almost remorseful. Ino-niichan, you're the best older brother in the world.
"It's okay. We just left someone behind in the classroom that's all." She marches back into the classroom to retrieve Kaito-kun only to find that Sensei is sneering at him from the front of the room."You shouldn't be here, Iwa-kun. You should just go back to the filth you came from."
Kaito-kun looks Sensei in the eye. "I don't think so." Sensei's hand twitches, as though he wants desperately to strike the child standing proudly before him.
Behind her, Ino-niichan makes a growl of rage and begins to drag Kaito-kun from the room. "You know what, I don't know your name, but you're coming to see Otou-san too." He turns a distinctly not impressed look up at Sensei. "Say goodbye to your job, Chunin. I hope your intolerance and prejudice was worth it."
They are halfway out the door before En-kun raises his head. "Oi, who's going to come get me?"
Kiho giggles and bounces up to him. "If you wanted to come over for dinner you should have just said so, En-kun." Most of the time, in her personal opionion, Nara Ensui is a waste of space, but today he'd been less lazy and more willing to help, so today she is more disposed to be kind to him. With that, all four of them end up at her house, as the sun sets over the rooftops.
Kaito-kun isn't exactly shy. He did have his own opinions. She could see it in the minute facial expressions he made when he thought there is no one looking. She saw it just earlier that day in the way he'd spoken to their ex-sensei, but he seems to keep expecting everyone in her house to drop what they are doing and suddenly tell him that their kindness is a joke. Kiho finds this terribly sad, but more than that, she finds herself terribly angry.
Who could have done that to him? Why would they do that to someone as nice as him?
So when Otou-san comes to turn out the light and tuck her into bed, she pulls him into her darkened room to sit in the chair at her table and crawls into his lap instead. "Why did Fumi call Kaito-kun's Kaa-san a foreign whore?"
Otou-san frowns. "Iwa-kun is foreign. It causes those with smaller hearts to be less accepting of him and his mother."
"We should get a new sensei." She mumbles with a hand clutching his shirtfront. So sleepy. "This one has a small heart and isn't accepting."
Otou-san kisses her temple and disentangles them so he can tuck her into bed. "I'll see what I can do, Kokeshi (1)."
It is enough.
A.N. I became really fascinated with Nara Kihona when I was writing her scenes during Bloodless, and I wanted to flesh out some of her childhood, and isolate a few defining features of her personality. Thus we get this snippet, entitled Flower Girl.
1. Kokeshi means little poppy, and is a nickname that I find to suit Kihona very well. White poppies in the Japanese language of flowers means rejoice, and yellow ones mean success.
~Tavina