Chapter 12:

"I'm home!" Naruto called into the house spiritedly.

"Daddy's home!" Himawari ran into the entryway to greet him. "Daddy! You're home early!"

"Yeah, I know. I can have dinner with you guys." Naruto worked tirelessly to get home before sunset. It took several clones and the help of his friends to pull it off.

Boruto was in the middle of setting the table when his father came into the room. "You're here early. Thought you'd have a ton of stuff to do with all the trouble going on."

"What trouble?" Hinata asked, completely unaware of what happened that day.

"You can thank Sai for that, actually," said Naruto with a grin. "It'll take time for the new papers to get drawn up and printed and my office does need repair, so there's only so much I could get done. I'm probably going to have to work late for a while to make up for it, but it's gotta get done."

Boruto looked away. "I see. Ok."

"I planned on coming home early today anyway. I wanted to spend Valentine's Day with you guys."

"Ok." Boruto wouldn't look at him, refusing to show Naruto his smile.

Hinata made a special Valentine's Day dinner and presented Naruto with a huge heart made of chocolate with a frosting fox she had prepared earlier that day. Himawari told Naruto at length what she had done that day to help her mother. Boruto resisted for as long as possible but couldn't fight the urge to tell his father about what he and his friends had been up to.

Not once did Naruto get up to leave in order to do more work, making it a very nice dinner.

Unfortunately, Naruto's best efforts to get home early tonight proved very taxing. Shortly after dinner, while preparing to spend some quality time with everyone, Naruto fell asleep on the couch, completely drained.

Boruto scoffed. "He came home early just to sleep. How lame."

"Come on, Boruto," Hinata told him. "You know he tried very hard to make today special. But his job is very tiring and stressful. He must have had to work extra hard today just to get home at this hour."

Considering the amount of trouble Boruto's friends must have put him through, Boruto really couldn't blame him for passing out on the couch. Sai alone created extra work for him.

Which wouldn't have happened if Chocho hadn't made that tainted chocolate, which wouldn't have happened if her teammates hadn't made her feel so bad.

"I guess we all had a hand in this in some way."

Not that they had to worry about that anymore. After analyzing the chocolate, Shikamaru discovered that the cure was a chemical compound found in salt. His son's hunch was correct and they could rest easy knowing that everyone had returned to normal and wouldn't suffer any adverse effects.

Himawari draped a blanket over Naruto's body, tucking him in. She didn't seem to mind how the night was going. As long as he was home, awake or not, she could spend time with him and take care of him in her own way.

She tried to make him as comfortable as possible, explaining to her brother that if he was well rested, he might be able to work extra hard the next day and come home early then, too.

Boruto smiled. "Whatever."

Shikadai found Chocho sitting by herself on the footbridge looking out over the people passing by on the street below.

"Hey," he called calmly.

She looked up. "Hey."

Shikadai looked away, arms at his sides. She was still staring at him, which made him even more uncomfortable.

He came here with a specific intention but now he was losing his nerve.

Some things were better left unsaid; but that mentality ended up biting him back. Sometimes not saying something made matters worse.

He had to explain himself. He owed her that much.

"Listen," he began, "about what we said before… The whole, 'don't expect anything' thing… Um…"

He wouldn't look at her. It was hard enough to say it without having to see her face.

Remembering his mother's lecture about looking someone in the face in situations like these, Shikadai forced himself to look at her, but his eyes quickly drifted downward. Surely, having his head turned her way was good enough. His mother wasn't here to badger him about it, or hold his chin to make sure he looked at her directly.

He took a deep breath.

"I didn't mean it that way," he said. "It's just… Honestly, I was under the impression it meant something else."

"Like what?" she asked.

"On account of so many girls using the holiday as a way to reveal their feelings for guys they like. I hear them talk. How giving them chocolate is a way of telling them without telling them. They're making their feelings known."

In school, a lot of girls talked about giving chocolate gifts to their crushes and if the boy gave them something on White Day, it meant the feeling was mutual. He would often hear girls support each other or even dare one another to give chocolate to a certain boy.

"But you can give chocolate to friends and family and coworkers, even teammates," Chocho told him as if it were obvious.

"Yeah, but I was only focusing on one aspect of it. The whole romantic thing," he explained, feeling a little calmer now that they were talking. "I thought you giving me chocolate was your way of saying you had feelings for me. So, if I gave you something in return, it would be the same as me saying I had feelings for you."

She raised her brow. "Really?"

"I know it's stupid now that I think about it." He looked to the side. "I thought by ignoring you, I was saving your feelings. I didn't want to lead you on. Now I realize by doing that, I was hurting your feelings in a different way. Instead of leading you to think I wanted to be more than friends, which I don't, I made you think I didn't care about you at all. Which also isn't the case. So I'm sorry."

Getting an explanation did clear quite a few things up. This was all unintentional. He thought he was doing the right thing, in his own way. It took him a while, but he finally realized his mistake.

"Boy, you guys are clueless," she said with a smirk.

Shikadai grimaced. "Yeah, well, the point is I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. Neither of us did. Inojin and I both felt the same way. I just thought you deserved to know why we did and said what we did so you didn't think we were being mean on purpose or that we didn't care. Obviously, we do, just…"

"Don't worry about it," said Chocho, standing up. "Neither of you guys are man enough to be my guy."

Shikadai knew what she meant but couldn't help feeling insulted at the same time.

"But I have to admit, you guys did get a bit cooler in my eyes."

"Oh?" He looked at her.

"Yeah. It takes a real man to admit his mistakes and apologize to the woman he hurt."

He stared at her.

"Better than ignoring it," she finished. "Glad I got an explanation. So thanks for that."

"Well," Shikadai looked away again. "If we're going to work together on missions, we need to trust each other. It'd be troublesome if you thought we didn't care about you."

She smirked again.

Few people knew about the love poison and even those infected by it understood little about it. Sai was perfectly fine after getting the antidote. Mitsuki's group was concerned about his condition, given how long he had been under its influence, but after some rest he was feeling like his usual self and was ready to train with his team.

Shikamaru and Naruto decided to keep information on the love poison on file, particularly the antidote, just in case this happened again. They didn't ask Chocho how she discovered it and felt it might be best if that information remained a secret just in case someone tried to duplicate it. It was better to have information on the antidote than the actual poison in this case. However, analyzing the chocolate did lead to a wealth of information, so they didn't need to ask Chocho in the first place.

Naruto was touched by Chocho's team and felt everything they had been through was punishment enough and Shikamaru agreed. When people asked about the state of his office, Naruto just told them that it was a little mishap with an unnamed shinobi and not an attempt on his life. Since the village was chaotic on a regular basis, with young ninja using jutsu they still hadn't perfected and absentminded shinobi putting something down without warning anyone, people accepted this and didn't ask any further questions.

There was once an incident where an exploding tag got snagged on someone's sleeve and accidently detonated, so Naruto's explanation wasn't that farfetched. When Tsunade was the Hokage, things were broken on a regular basis.

As far as Chocho and her team were concerned, things had gotten back to normal very quickly. She didn't even hold a grudge after hearing why her teammates refused to give her anything and said what they said. A simple explanation and apology from the two of them was enough to satisfy her… and being treated to lunch after training.

Though the two boys did seem to view White Day in a different light, now seeing that the response wasn't a declaration of love but a way for the boy to simply repay the girl for her kindness and show their appreciation.

Looking at the holiday from a different perspective, Shikadai and Inojin decided to make it up to their female teammate and get her something for the first time. They decided food would be better appreciated than anything else and agreed to give her something special next month.

The end!

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