—Wait, soft?
The 'trap' that was waiting for me on the other side bounces off my head and harmlessly hits the floor. It leaves behind some powdery residue in my scalp.
I touch the top of my dyed-blond hair and look at my hand…this is…chalk?
All of the tensed muscles in my forehead loosened. I look at the small gray thing on the ground and pick it up…it's…
…A chalkboard eraser? What the hell? This isn't the academy, where did someone even get a chalkboard eraser…?
Wait a sec, this can't be Nii-san's handiwork. Uzumaki Shinachiku is a true challenge-the-world rebellious type, the kind that likes nothing more than to prove someone wrong. His pranks and jokes were always elaborate schemes that caused public outcry or tested the victim's skills as a shinobi. He wouldn't do something as stupid as this. The old 'chalkboard eraser above the sliding door' trick falls firmly in the harmless mischief category, which means…
"Aha—hahahaha…"
I hear a laugh from someone who has no concept of an inside voice nearby. I look to the source, sitting on the staircase of the foyer, and I see…
The top of the Hokage's hat, staring right at me. Only, it's not the Hokage who's wearing it.
Sticking out underneath it, I see a pair of legs and feet with their sandals still on. Keh, punk, what do you think you're doing, not taking your shoes off at the door…
I step towards them. I hear their snickering multiply with each one I take.
When I reach eye level with them on the stairs, they throw the Hokage headpiece that they're hiding behind in the air, and reveal what I already knew—
A girl that always wore orange-and-blue, tomato-red hair that reached down all the way to the back of her knees, and blue eyes that were just a little steelier than mine.
Her Konohagakure forehead protector was affixed right where it was supposed to be, not slanted nor worn anywhere else but straight across the forehead. It was the same way that all fresh-out-of-the-academy genin unstylishly wore their first headband, before they grew into it and got a little less proud of the fact.
Dad's mentioned before that she takes after our grandma on his side of the family…Kushina, I think that was her name. A lot of the elderly villagers like to remark that her red hair is beautiful and that it reminds them of her.
"JAAN-JAAN!" My thirteen-year-old little sister throws her arms above her head, all 150 cm of her amped up with pure energy. "The culprit was none other than me, Uzumaki Hanami!"
She doesn't use the more neutral/passive 'watashi'/'atashi' like most girls do, even when she's speaking to a superior or elder. She only uses the rougher 'ore' and 'oresama' to refer to herself. Just like Shinachiku and Dad do.
I sigh, and pat her on top of the head, ruffling around that lively red hair of hers that seems to have a spirit of its own.
"I let my guard down. It's my defeat." I smiled. "Good job, Nami."
"Eheheheh…" Nami, her eyes closed and her pumped-up fists up to her mouth, happily snickered to herself, proud.
It'd probably be more normal for someone to be mad about something like this, but I'm just happy it's not Shinachiku who caught me this time. Shinachiku's the true master of danger and terrorizing the innocent. Nami's just the harmless apprentice that follows him around like an imprinted duckling. Usually her pranks are really obvious and lack any subtlety to them, so it's pretty uncommon for me to fall for one like this—something I'm kinda embarrassed about right now, by the way. I fell for my little sister's childish trap, even after taking all the precautions that I've learned in the years of pitting myself against my much more talented older brother. I guess that's just a sign that I need to be more alert and try harder next time.
I'm occasionally on the receiving end of my brother and sister's chaos, but I'm mature enough to know I shouldn't be causing it. It's just stupid, I'd never stoop to down to doing all the irresponsible stuff they do…
…Well, I guess there was that one time at Hokage Rock that I mentioned earlier…and I was doing some mean things to Shino-chan when I woke her up a little bit ago, too…
…Alright, maybe I'm not perfect either. I try to be the most levelheaded and responsible one out of the three of us, though, honest.
—The Hokage's ceremonial headwear that she threw up in the air falls down slowly, swaying side-to-side like a loose paper off the top of a school building on a still-winded day. It lands lopsidedly on my head, crowning me the Nanadaime in some sort of bizarre coronation ceremony.
Nami sees this, and her snickering exploded into full-bursting laughter, falling over on her side and digging into the clothes over her belly with her roughened fingers. She's wearing an orange hoodie with a black whirlpool stitched over her stomach—the symbol of the long-lost Uzumaki Clan that we're descended from.
Going back to what's on top of my head, though…what do you call this thing, anyway? You know, that thing the Hokage wears on his head with the white veil and the red-and-white flap on top with the character for 'fire' on it.
'Hokage Hat'? Kinda feels disingenuous to call it a 'hat'. That sounds like any regular thing you could put on your head, pretty anti-cultural.
'Hokage Veil'? Well, there's a veil on it, but there's also that rectangular thing on top. This one should work most of the time, but what if I wanted to describe the veil part specifically and not the hat thing as a whole? I'd have no way of distinguishing the two.
'Hokage Headpiece'? 'Hokage Headwear'? Those sound too general. This thing looks kind of distinct. Like it feels like it should have some sort of name or resemblance to something else that I can appropriate the right word from.
If I were a writer right now, I'd really be stressing out over what to call this thing. Well, whatever, the ceremonial thing that the Hokage wears on their head whenever they're in the traditional robes. The one that Dad barely ever wears. That thing. It's on my head right now, and it's a little big for me…think I'm still at least a couple growth spurts away from it fitting.
I take it off and flip the '火' character towards me, gliding my hand across the top to dust off some of the dirt she's gotten on it.
"Where'd you get this thing, anyway?" I ask. "Isn't Dad still at the Gokage Summit in Ame? He didn't come home early, did he?"
"No~pe." Nami smiled from ear to ear, teeth gleaming. It was a pretty familiar sight. "I stole it from his bag last week, morning before he left. I've been saving it ever since."
I can kind of imagine our Dad showing up to the roundtable where the other four Kage are already sitting down, headwear all neatly laid out with their respective elemental kanji pointing perfectly towards the middle, while he just kind of stands there rubbing the back of his head—half-sorry and half-grinning while he explains that he left his hat at home.
Well, a minor diplomatic gaffe probably isn't that bad. It's nothing compared to that one year he went in his Sexy no Jutsu form and tried to get everyone to go along with it…a mental image which I am not going to ink in the colors of.
"—O-Kae-Ri! Mina-nii!" Nami suddenly glomps me below the neck, wrapping her arms around where the waist meets the chest. She squeezes air out of my lungs.
Some of that squid-like hair presses up against my chest and wraps around me, warmth trapped between its thicknesses.
I felt some red lines draw themselves diagonally across my face…it's…it's not like I'm glad my annoying little sister is hugging me, or anything…
"Nng…yeah, Tadaima, Nami." I wrap one arm around the back of her shoulders, in that sort of way shy and/or lazy guys half-hug back their mothers and girlfriends when they're in public and afraid of looking uncool.
Usually, the whole 'tadaima—okaerinasai' procedure is supposed to happen first thing you walk in the door, with the welcomee saying tadaima first and the welcomer then saying okaeri. Guess we messed up the order a little.
And usually thirteen-year-old girls aren't this innocent and clingy with their older brothers. My inner voice might sound too much like an old man sometimes, but it wasn't too long ago that I was thirteen myself and sitting in a classroom full of them. Usually by that time they've evolved (or at least begun the process of evolving) into the rolling eyes sort, laced with intermittent sarcastic bitchiness. This is usually accompanied with—or perhaps even caused by—an infection of sudden infatuation towards the cool kid in their class that they can't stop talking/thinking about. Guess Nami's still pretty pure in that regard.
—Mid-hug, I peer over her, suspicious. Shinachiku's not nefariously watching all of this from some concealed corner, is he…?
"Hey, Nami. Say, is, uh—" I look really shiftily to my left and right, darting my eyes around our house. "—is Nii-san coming back anytime soon?"
"Onii-chan said he had to meet up with Asu-chan and Nako-nee, or something. He said he'd be out all night."
'Asu-chan' and 'Nako-nee' meant 'Nara Asuma' (Inoi's older—and full-blooded—brother) and 'Tsunako' (Anbu girl from earlier) respectively.
And 'Onii-chan' meant Shinachiku. I'd like point out the difference here between the childish 'Mina-nii' that I got and the more classical 'Onii-chan' that Shinachiku got. I was kind of the silver medal on Nami's list of favorite older brothers.
"Mmm. They're probably out partying then. Or training. Or both." I say, feeling a bit of relief…it's not that I hate my older brother or anything like that. It's just…complicated. We're complete opposites, and it can be a little hard for us to see eye-to-eye a lot of times.
"Eh, forget him." I go on. "You hungry? Want me to make something?"
"Ramen!" She says, skipping over the 'yes' and 'please' parts. We'd been through this a lot.
"What, again…? Well at least I'm getting pretty good at making it…just add a 'please' on there for me. No one likes a spoiled rich kid with no manners, you hear?"
She usually gets away with it because she gives off such a strong little sister/daughter/granddaughter vibe to everyone older than her, but it'd be a serious problem if she grew up and thought she was entitled to everything as a grown woman just cause.
"Please make me ramen, and you'll be the best brother ever!" She smiles and hits me with her little sister beam.
"Well, if you put it that way…" I smirk and look away and up—putting a dainty finger to my forehead like I'm one of those skinny-armed manga characters that wears glasses and looks like a complete nerd, but is super-arrogant anyway.
"To the kitchen!" I snap my face back towards her and yell. "Let's go! Dattebaro!"
"Dattebana!" She shouts back.
—We advance on, running up the stairs towards victory…
…Then we turn around and run back down them a few seconds later. The family kitchen is on the third floor, not the fourth. Third floor. We knew that. We definitely didn't forget—