I fiddled absent mindedly with my chopsticks under the basking glow of Ichiraku's lanterns as the candles flickered behind the thin rice paper. The cook came up to me again, his warm smile and cracked voice offering a meal, but I just wasn't that hungry. Mai had texted me only minutes ago about how her mom was making her stay in for a "family meal" but she would sneak out after to meet me in the park.
"Kyoko!" a small shrill voice rang out in the stand as a small girl jumped up on the seat next to me.
"Hi Mira." The little girl bounced on her seat, her black hair whipping about behind her shoulders as she glanced excitedly around her. Mira's brother arrived shortly after and sat on her other side, his exasperation apparent from the scowl set in his face. "Sibling troubles Hiro?"
"Shush!" Hiro's command was a bark, forceful and raged, "Mira, don't run ahead of me! I won't take you out again if you run off like that every time!" Hiro leaned against the counter on one elbow, his head in his hands as his sister and I stared at him. Mira's grin slipped from her face as she stared at her brother, the excitement draining from her face.
"But-but onii—" Mira gazed at her brother, her blue eyes wide and woeful. Hiro turned his head in his hand to look at his sibling, his similarly dark hair spilling over his eyes and around his hand.
"Imouto," Hiro sighed, his sister's sorrowful gaze mitigating his anger. He turned his face back into his hand, using his fingers as a shield for his eyes. "I didn't mean it…" Mira's expression lit up as if she had just been told the greatest news of her life. Hiro sighed into his hand again, much to my amusement; whether he sighed at his sister's ability to control him or the fact that she was only seven was the question. Hiro continued grumbling into his hands as a waiter returned, asking if we would like anything.
"Shurinpu ramen," Mira piped up.
"Gyuuniku ramen please," I asked. The waitress's pen could be heard scratching onto her note pad as she took our orders. Last and definitely least, she turned to Hiro who ordered the same as his sibling. With the sound of other approaching children, Mira jumped down from her seat and went to join them in their chattering flock.
"Having fun on sibling duty?" A chuckle managed to escape as Hiro sent me a dark glower.
"You've got it. But I don't mind all that much." Hiro glanced over to his sister, her grinning face one out of a gaggle of many academy students. His eyes were glazed over with complete admiration and adoration, an emotion I had only known him to show his sister. I leaned over to him, following his gaze to his sibling. "She has you whipped. And she knows it too." I whispered, leaning back into my own seat. Hiro pushed himself back up to a sitting position as he pinched the bridge of his nose.
"I'm sure you would know." Hiro mumbled to himself as he blinked his eyes a few times to allow them to become accustomed to the late and shallow lighting.
"And how would I know that exactly Kimura-onii?" The waitress set all three bowls of ramen on the counter with a wooden thud. Finally using my chopsticks for their designed use, I clamped a few noodles and brought them to my mouth as Hiro's gaze burned into me. "What?"
"You don't have any siblings?" I raise an eye brow questioningly, wondering where the hell his logic was coming from. "Come on, you spend all of your time out of your house and are usually training or getting into some trouble. That practically screams attention deprived child." Now he looked to me for an explanation.
"Unless I don't have any siblings and I'm not attention deprived. What is your diagnosis now?" I took up more noodle and some of the vegetables in the bowl as Mira grasped her own bowl and returning to her friends. Hiro stared thoughtfully into a space somewhere in front of his eyes as he brought some ramen to his mouth.
"Why are you here alone then?" I rolled my eyes at Hiro's question, not really intending to answer. But Hiro's gaze was unnerving and he continued to question me.
"Why do you want to know?" My voice had risen, causing a few pairs of eyes to turn our way. Hiro stared at me as if I was insane, his gaze singeing my conscious.
"We are now teammates and the fact that I don't even know that you don't have any siblings shows that we're not a great team." He gave me a stern glance. "A good team can work together by using each other's strengths without even speaking. And we know nothing about each other. How are we ever supposed to be able to work together?" A rage filled snap was about to hiss out of my mouth when there was a loud racket.
"HEY GUYS!" Both Hiro and I immediately dropped to the counter, my forehead thudding against the wood counter and my bowl clanging in reaction.
"I see you decided to join us for ramen, Naruto…" Hiro's voice wasn't more than a mumble as Naruto occupied what was previously Mira's seat. Three other people sat to my left.
"And I see your team decided to come as well…" My mumble was half lost into the wood counter as I lifted my head to look at the three to my left: Sasuke who was staring at me like I was some misbehaving child, Sakura who was blushing and staring at Sasuke before waving at me quickly, and Kakashi who was reading some orange book. "Great. Now leave me alone. I am kind of in the middle of a conversation with my teammate here." All I got in response was a "hn" from the Uchiha. A growl escaped my lips and Naruto humphed. "What?" I question quickly.
"Look around. All the other seats have been taken up." I raised an eye brow at Naruto.
"Well, the ground is right there. Always has been and always will." I gestured with my hand to the dirt. Naruto crossed his arms across his chest in defiance to my suggestion. A hearty cough came from the jounin reading the book, to which I sent a quizzical stare. "Problem?"
"No no, no problem," he turned a page in his book as he paused to find his wording, "Just…observing."
"Answer my question." All of us turned towards Hiro, who was directing a glare at me.
"No. Not with all of them here."
"What question?" Naruto's anger towards me suddenly lifted as his curiosity took a hold.
"Naruto!" Sakura's tone was scolding, as if Naruto were a toddler.
"None of your damn business." I remained with my head on the table, this torture almost too much to take.
"So why are you here alone?" A hot, stinging rage was only getting worse as it became more and more pent up with all of their stares waiting for me to comply. But I forced the rage down, hoping it would explode in the process.
"It's better than being at home alone."
"What about your parents?"
"Oka's working. Oka works any hours that have the lowest amount of staffing because she doesn't have a young child who needs to be waited on hand and foot." The whole "Team" bit had gotten me to babbling on; as much as I disliked my team at the moment, I wasn't about to let us be a shitty team.
"And your Otou?" Not only Hiro, but all of Team 7 seemed completely intrigued by our conversation. Even though this wasn't an amusing topic, I chuckled, the bitterness of the laugh still clinging to my tongue.
"Wow, you really know just how to hit a nerve don't you." I paused, hoping they would leave well enough alone. "If you know where he is, let me know." Everyone's voices seemed to have left them when they heard that; their tongues tied as a stifled silence draped over our group like a thin veil. Even the jounin had glanced up from his book.
"Do you remember him?" Sasuke was the one that asked this time, a shock to all of us.
"Not really." One of the few things I knew was that my father had the same partially red hair. I didn't even have a name or why he left; just that he wasn't here today.
"Wait," Sakura paused, trying to ask in a way that wasn't going to set me off, "You didn't die your hair that color?"
"No." Pushing my bowl forward to the waiting waitress, I pulled out my wallet. Everyone went silent again.
"So you don't miss him?" Sasuke spoke up, his voice the same coldness it had always been but something had changed in the tone. I tried putting my finger on what I heard but it was too subtle. I pulled out some of the papers from my wallet and placed them on the counter.
"You can't miss what you never knew. Now, leave me the fuck alone." Mira returned from her friends to tug on her brother's sleeve.
"Onii, are you ready to go?" Hiro glanced back at his sibling, her hand still gripping the edge of his shirt.
"Yeah, we can go."
Pulling weeds, walking dogs, helping shopkeepers on inventory, helping people with their groceries, finding a lost dog, saving some damn cat from a tree: quote unquote "missions" we genin had been given over the last couple weeks.
"What the hell is up with these missions! I'm gonna go insane if we have one more mission that has to do with someone's pet!" Mai cried out, hoping that the message had reached the Hokage who was only ten feet and a pair of oak doors away from where we sat in the hall, waiting for our next mission assignments. Rika was next to the three of us, a bright smile on her face as she stared straight forward at the wall. The guard in front of the Hokage's door ushered us into the office, his stern gaze following us the entire way. As the oak doors closed behind us, I noted that we weren't the only Team in the cramped room. The Hokage's stern, wizened gaze met us as we stood before his desk, Team 7 next to us.
"Why are they here?" Hiro questioned the Hokage, giving him a straight stare.
"A good question; this and all other questions will be answered if you will only listen to what I have to say." We all kept our silence, a blanket of quiet anticipation flooding the office as the Hokage's gaze travelled over each of us from behind his clasped hands.
"You all have been asking for harder missions: something I am unable to give you to handle on your own." He took a momentary pause, as if immersing himself in the heightened anxiety that packed the room. "So we will now begin both Team 7 and Team 11 on the village's first experimental Dual Team mission." Everyone's jaw seemed to drop, mouths now gaping in silence. But that was completely in contrast to what it sounded like in my mind: screams of protest.
Naruto characters © Misashi Kishimoto
My OCs (Kyoko Tanaka, Mai Saito, Hiro Kimura, Rika Hatake, Takao, Kaizo, and Mira Kimura), this plot and this story © Midnight Writer 13/ Me