Before I begin the chapter, I want to say something. I realize that it's something that I haven't really said yet: Thank you. I may not say it very often, but I am VERY thankful to everyone who reviews, favorites, or alerts this story. Even just seeing the hit counter for it go up really makes my day. So once again, thank you. I really am very grateful.

Now, I know that I said that I'd explain Chouji's escape technique this chapter (see previous ending author note), but unfortunately it isn't here. I apologize for that, but I can promise that it will be in the next one, so if you care, just hang tight for that. And by all means, you're welcome to guess at it.

Anyways, I'm done talking, so on with the chapter!

Reflecting is Troublesome

"Shikamaru, are you listening?"

Even though it was barely over a week ago that he had heard those words before, Shikamaru didn't bother to respond this time. He had a lot on his mind, and Temari was being troublesome. He just hoped she didn't decide to open her fan and send him flying for ignoring her.

He really couldn't fault Temari for being upset, though. He was being inattentive, but right now he simply had too much to think about and didn't have the time to placate the foreign jonin. Temari, of course, just having managed to acquire a new peacekeeping mission to Konohagakure (a fairly easy task when you have a brother that's the Kazekage and feels incredibly guilty for his past cruelties), had no idea of the events that had been transpiring while she was gone. Predictably, the wind ninja had upon arrival sought out Shikamaru and promptly attached herself to him, taking slight notice that Ino was nowhere in sight.

Shikamaru, however, didn't need nor want company right now. He needed to think, and that meant that Temari was nothing more than a bother at the moment.

"Shikamaru, come on. You went out with that little brat, the least you can do is treat me to lunch."

Once again, Shikamaru ignored the blond, lost in his own thoughts. Even though he was a "genius" that could think up over 200 battle strategies and tactics within a matter of minutes, he was completely drawing a blank now. After all, what's one supposed to do when your very male best friend confesses his love for you, then finds out you've heard him do so, and is now avoiding you even more than before you knew? Even just wording it in his mind gave him a headache.

It wasn't as if he could talk to anyone, either. Asuma-sensei, his usual first choice for advice, had passed away. Chouji was at the center of the whole mess. Kiba and Naruto…well, they had their own fair share of problems right now, and Shikamaru was considerate enough to not give them more. After the stunt she pulled, he was not speaking with Ino at all now, and there was NO way he was going to talk to his parents about this.

Temari was beginning to get angry now. When she had first found the boy that morning, she had been thankful that the little Yamanaka brat was nowhere in sight, and absolutely thrilled when Shikamaru didn't run or protest in any way to her linking her arm with his. However, the boy obviously had his head in the clouds today, more so than usual. The only way that Temari knew the boy noted her presence was the non-committal grunts he gave every now and then. Had her relationship with the shadow ninja been more passive, she would have noticed that something was very wrong with him. Unfortunately for them both, Temari was currently more concerned about claiming the boy at the moment than worrying about him.

Meanwhile, Shikamaru was still lost in his own thoughts. His mind kept on going back to that confession. Aside from the obvious, what stuck out the most to him about the whole thing was that these weren't new feelings. Chouji had said that he had felt that way for years. During that time, the two of them had trained, ate, fought, worked, and slept (in separate sleeping bags, of course) together. How in the world did Shikamaru not notice how his best friend felt? Of course, Shikamaru would be the first to admit that romantic relationships were not his forte, but still, he should have noticed something. He racked his brain, recalling all their time together, trying to pinpoint any signs or hints that his friend might have given him.

"Grr…Shikamaru!"

There was nothing. Not one blush, or stutter, or anything else. Chouji had done what everyone in the village, including Shikamaru, never thought that he'd be able to. He had kept a secret.

Shikamaru knew that a part of him should have been angry for that. After all, they were best friends, and weren't best friends supposed to tell each other everything? There were, however, two reasons why he wasn't upset with Chouji at all. One was the obvious fact that Shikamaru was the focus of that secret, so of course Chouji wouldn't tell it to him. That would be the same as a love confession, and naturally Chouji was afraid of that.

The other reason was Shikamaru's concern for his best friend. Chouji had kept this bottled up inside of him for over three years now. Ninja or not, Shikamaru couldn't believe that was healthy. Lazy and passive as the shadow ninja was, even he would seek out advice from Asuma-sensei or his father from time to time when he had problems. Chouji, however, had kept this quiet from everyone. How had he managed to cope? How could he still have been smiles and sunshine all that time? He heard Chouji's words repeat themselves in his head:

"As long as he let me stay near him and hang out with him, I was happy..."

Happy? How could he have been happy? Shikamaru knew that, if he had ever fallen for someone, he wouldn't have been able to go for three years without telling anyone about it.

"Shikamaru, if you don't say something, I swear…"

Of course, that train of thought had brought him to another subject that he wasn't at all sure he liked thinking about. He had heard Chouji confession, even if he wasn't supposed to, so how did he feel about it?

Aside from the basic outline he had planned for his life when he was younger (marry a nice girl, have two kids, pay the bills, etc.), Shikamaru had never really thought about dating or romance before. After all, he was still young, and growing up with Ino and her various diets and Sasuke plots had led him to the conclusion that the whole mess of dating was entirely too troublesome. So, he had never had a date aside from games of Shogi with Asuma-sensei, and stayed out of the conversation whenever the guys he hung out with started talking about how pretty a girl was. He had plenty of time, and if "love" caused girls like Ino, Sakura and Temari to transform into hyenas, then he wanted none of it.

"Shikamaru! Gah!"

Because of this inexperience, however, Shikamaru had no idea how he should feel after he heard Chouji's confession. He had been shocked when he heard the confession of course, as well as guilty for not noticing his friend's feelings sooner. However, he didn't, or rather couldn't explain how he had felt emotionally. He knew enough to know that he should have felt something, and he had. Unfortunately, he had no idea what that something was.

He had felt light. That was the best way that Shikamaru could describe it. It didn't make a lot of sense to him, but the second he had heard Chouji speak the words, he had felt as if, for a moment, everything was silent, and if he wasn't careful, he was going to float away. Of course, Shikamaru had no idea what feeling "light" meant. He could have simply been lightheaded from the shock, or he could have subconsciously wished that he were anywhere but in that alley at the moment. Heck, for all he knew, it could have meant that he had been-

BANG!

Shikamaru fell back into a sitting position on the ground. After rubbing his now aching forehead a little, he looked up. In his dazed state, it took him a little while to realize that he had been so wrapped up in his own thoughts, he had actually walked into a wall. He blushed in embarrassment when he realized his folly. He hadn't done that since he was seven!

He quickly looked around, still embarrassed, to see if anyone had seen his little accident. He was surprised that Temari hadn't made fun of him for it. Now that he thought about it, why hadn't she tried to stop him? It was then that he realized that Temari was no longer in sight, and Shikamaru wondered when it was that the girl had left.

Ino was, for all intensive purposes, a nice young lady. Even though she did not feel as though she should be subservient to a man or meek in any way, she did believe that there were certain behavioral protocols that she as a lady should follow. One such protocol was her use of language. While boys could use rough words as they saw fit, girls should speak eloquently, and without curses or obscenities. Ino had always followed this rule. After all, what man would want to marry some rough and seedy woman?

So for Ino to admit to herself that she felt like crap, it was a big deal. Then again, considering how she had royally screwed everything up last week, it wasn't so surprising.

Ino was not a fool by any means. The minute Shikamaru had told her about how the two of them had talked about Naruto and Kiba, she knew exactly why Chouji had left. Admittedly, she couldn't totally fault Shikamaru for not noticing how his friend felt about him. The shadow ninja was a guy, after all, and this sort of observation needed a woman's touch.

Still, even though she knew, she wasn't all that sure that she should tell Shikamaru. She had no idea how he would have reacted if he found out that his best friend was gay, after all, never mind in love with him. Plus, that meant that the mass ninja was now competition. Ino had no qualms fighting over Shikamaru against Temari, but Chouji? The fight over Sasuke had nearly destroyed her friendship with Sakura, and Ino could openly admit that the day the pink haired girl broke off their friendship was one of the most miserable of her young life. She did NOT want to go through that again.

So, she had kept her silence. Instead of telling Shikamaru the real reason, she had fed him a story that was not only plausible, but also most likely true to some extent. The boy had bought it, and Ino advised him further. Considering the two parties involved, Ino believed that the whole matter would be resolved if Shikamaru simply apologized to Chouji. So, that's what she told him to do—after a few days.

In her defense, those few days were justifiable. Not only would Chouji be more open to talking as time passed, but also Shikamaru deserved to wallow in guilt for a while for being an idiot, no matter how cute he was. Still, her main goal was to get some time alone with Chouji before Shikamaru got to him. She and the chubby boy may have been friends, but if he was gunning for Shikamaru too…well, she didn't know what to do. Ino decided that the best course of action would be to gather more information before deciding on a plan, and the best way to find such information was straight from the horse's, or in this case butterfly's mouth.

She was a little surprised at Chouji's initial resistance. She had thought that one mention of food and he would have come running. Fortunately, she had a contingency plan, and had managed to get her friend to come to lunch by making it seem more about her than him.

The meal itself had been entirely natural. She needed him to trust her by the end of lunch so that he would be more open to admitting his feelings. Fortunately, Chouji was good company anyways, and the meal had been not only pleasant, but rather fun as well. She was more than happy to tell him about Lady Hokage's conference over jonin applicants (which had been completely true, by the way), and had been surprised at how serious he was over his own training. To be honest, assuming Chouji ever spoke to her again, she would have liked to do it again sometime.

Then came the confrontation. That had been a surprise for her as well as Chouji. Ino had assumed that Chouji's attraction to Shikamaru had stemmed from the current fight over him. The two of them were best friends, but now Chouji was losing his friend to Ino and all those other girls. Upon realizing this, Chouji would naturally want Shikamaru back, and that intense want would have morphed into a different kind of want, namely the romantic kind.

That scenario had been blown away very quickly. Ino hadn't been acting shocked when Chouji had told her he had felt that way for years. How was that even possible? Granted, she had been just a little kid at the time, but it had taken all of a week for Sakura to discover her feelings for Sasuke. Chouji had hidden his feelings for three years. Fooling Shikamaru was one thing, but she should have at least noticed something! She thought back to what Chouji had said at the restaurant, about how no one knew about Naruto and Kiba's thing together because they didn't want to know. Apparently, Chouji was speaking from personal experience.

Then Shikamaru showed himself, and everything just went downhill from there. The shadow ninja was not supposed to be there! He was supposed to be holed up somewhere, planning out the millions of ways he could beg Chouji for forgiveness. Yet there he was, plain as day.

After Chouji somehow managed to escape Shikamaru's hold on his shadow (how did he do that, anyways?), Ino had gone to get the unconscious boy some medical attention, then quietly slipped away and went home. She was fully aware of how much she had just screwed everything up for her friends.

Now, she was just sitting on her bed, looking out her window to the sky. She had been avoiding her teammates since the incident, partially out of shame, and partially out of fear that they would punch her face in. Not that she could blame them if they did. Still, she had not been idle the whole time. She had made this whole mess, and now she had to fix it, or at least patch it up a little.

Ino got off her bed and went to leave the house. She already had a plan. It was very simple so far, and probably wouldn't help that much, but she needed to start somewhere, and this was as good as any. After reviewing it in her mind for a few days, and deciding that this one, at least, wouldn't lead to a fiasco like her last plan had, she set out to put it into action.

Now, she just needed to find Sakura.

A/N: That's it for now. I'm not saying anything about Ino's plan right now, so you'll just have to wait. It's nothing that big, really. Anyways, I'll see you all next time. Can't wait, personally. The next chapter is going to be so fun to write! You'll see what I mean.