[Warning: Excessive of swearing in this chapter]

The outside windows of the Pink Book shop were freezing cold, especially without gloves, as I set my face in front of it and peeped inside. Each shot of wind that blew on my open face tortured me and it made my legs tremble on top of the sidewalk ice that never melted until spring. The inside of the shop looked so toasty and warm, the walls almost had a light brown look to them. I wiped off the fog on the window from my breath and looked inside and little longer. Then I slowly and carefully walked to the front door, trying my best not to slip. Just as I grabbed the door handle my feet slid and the weight of my hand clenched to the door handle made me slam my left side into the door way in the fetal position. I cursed under my breath as I struggled to get up.

The next try I grabbed the handle with my cream colored scarf, saving my hand some body heat. As I turned the knob I heard the sound of a locked door. I had come too late. As I carefully turned around to walk back to the window I realized just how dark it would be at that hour if it weren't for the street lights. It was about 7:35 at that time and the temperature was a little below 0 degrees. I had come to the book shop to pick up my story that I had left on the desk after my shift had ended. As I looked in the window again I saw it laying on the desk patiently.

Then I saw the inside door to the bathroom open. My boss walked out with a content face and a magazine in his hands. I knocked on the window with my coat sleeve over my hand, and it caught his attention as I planned. He smiled as I waved quickly and pointed to the door. Saying anything then would have been pointless and in vein with the walls in the way. He walked over to the door and opened it after unlocking it with his keys.

His walk was almost like a waddle, most of his hair had fallen out from age, he had almost no chin from the angle of his neck and chin fat, his nose was pointed heavily and he was short and stout. The only think keeping me from calling him "The Penguin" (Batman's enemy) was that he never wore a tuxedo or a tall "Honest Abe" styled had. Plus, he was one of the kindest old men that I knew.

"Hello, Tomi!" he greeted me as he let me inside the door. "So, whaddya' need?"

"I accidentally forgot my story here…" I said. "I'm not disrupting any work of yours, am I?"

"Oh no, your fine! Did ya loose your keys?"

"No." I said as I walked to the desk while rubbing my hands and arms together. "I thought I'd make it by closing time."

"Oh, okay. You need anything else?" he asked as he rubbed his dry hands together.

"No… but I think I'll just sit here and warm up for a little bit." I sat down behind the desk as I shivered from the sudden temperature change. My boss nodded and walked into his office room, which was to my right. I let out a sigh of relief and looked up at the ceiling. It was made of Stucco, and it always bothered me because I always thought the bits would fall down on me. I looked back down to the leg space in the desk and realized why the man from before had looked so failure. There was a small collage of photos of "frequent customers", and his photo was there among 13 others.

"Ohh…" I said under my breath. I then remembered what he had said about visiting tomorrow afternoon to help me with my writing and my stomach flipped! I was always very shy around strangers and I hadn't shown any of my story to anyone yet… now this stranger was not only going to read ALL that I have written in it so far, but I will have to take his criticism!

I started to feel the annoyance I had felt before. I started to rant in my head all over again about how he knew nothing about me and how he had no right to criticize my work. I didn't even knew if HE wrote anything! And so on and so forth. I let out another sigh to calm down and stood up. My body temperature had gone back to normal so I was finished here. I grabbed my story and prepared myself to leave for the chaos that is what I call the 'Kare Family House'. I don't refer the 'Kare Family House' as a home because it just never was to me.

"See you later, old man!" I called out to my boss. Once I reached for the door handle I heard a ruckus coming from his office. There were shuffling and clangs and shoves.

"Hold on, Tomi! I still need to give you something!" Is what I barely heard my boss say over the noise coming from his office. "You paycheck- I forgot to give it to you earlier!" I heard him open and slam drawers shut, move papers and pencils around and stop from place to place.

He nearly busted through his office door as he showed to me that he had finally found my paycheck. His tiny round glasses were a little crooked, so I could tell that he had been searching hard for it.

"…Thank you." I said as I took the paycheck from his hands and I wore a large grin as I looked at it.

"Sorry about the delay- it slipped my mind! …and you busted out of here pretty fast-- or faster than usual at least." He said with his arms folded.

"Heheh… Yeah, I've had a little on my mind today." I looked at the paycheck again and noticed something. "Umm, Old man… this…" I held it closer and rubbed my eyes. "I think you made a mistake. This says I'm getting more than my actual pay roll…!"

"No, you earned a little bonus." He said with a smile, "You've been working hard and you're a good kid." My smile grew larger as my hands gripped the check a little harder. "Spend it on whatever." He said.

"Thank you so much!" I said with excitement. He nodded his head and said:

"So… tell me… how're things going with your… uhh… what would you call him… would you call him your father or…?" My smile slowly faded as he said that. I knew who he was talking about (not the man from before) and just thinking of him made me feel disappointed.

"…Oh. Let's see… I guess… I guess I would call him my step uncle." I said, my face was now straight. I looked down to the ground and felt my shoulders slump.

"Yeah. How're things going with him?" He asked me. Then I knew why he had really given me a tip in my pay check. He was concerned.

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Chapter 3: Holes in a puzzle piece

"You cannot be free if you do not reach for help, and you cannot love if you don't love yourself." - Natalie Grant.

Chapter theme song: Awakening by Mae

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I lived with my step uncle, his daughter who is five years older than me, and my brother who would soon turn eighteen. My step uncle was in his forties at the time but he appeared older. He drank a lot and was often gone on a mission, to the bar or downtown. Whenever he and I were in the same building he would be drunk or cranky and worn down.

His personality is rough and everyone who knew him knew just who he really was. He never beat me or took advantage of me, but he yelled. He yelled a lot and he always called me worthless. I always passed it off that his life as a ninja was stressful, surrounded by death of comrades and friends and that his addiction to alcohol was the cause of his roughness. I was mostly right.

"Things are good!" I told a worthless lie. I could tell that it was worthless when I saw the expression on his face. It was the same.

"…I see…" He said in a softer voice, "Has he gotten calmer since the last time I saw him?"

"Huh? When was…?"

"Oh, maybe about a year ago. I think it was when you and I met?"

He and I had met when I was fourteen years old, as you most likely assumed already. I was helping host a party held for my brother who had been promoted to Jonin. My step uncle had been ranting to me in private in the kitchen and I was burst into tears. My aunt had passed away recently from that time and that time was when he started to get addicted to alcohol to "ease his pain" about his wife, my aunt, my second mother.

My boss was a ninja at the time and decided to join the party. He heard the yelling coming from the kitchen and helped get him away from me by holding a conversation with him as I walked away. I think my boss had more hair back then and a little more color to it too. Not too much longer he retired from being a ninja and took the job as manager for the Pink Book Shop and settled down.

"Ummm, well he's better some days than others." I said, "I can't blame him, he really loved my aunt." My boss nodded and we both felt a melancholy press down. Everyone loved my aunt… and she was the missing piece to my step uncle. Now he was just an unfinished puzzle all over again. "Thank you for the bonus! I'll be sure to spend it on something nice!" I said as I finally opened the door to leave. I had pushed the thoughts of my aunt and step uncle to the back of my mind and tried to decide what to buy. The cold wind made me want to go back inside, but I also wanted to go back to the 'Kare family house' so I could make some supper. Ah! I realized, I could just buy my own supper tonight!

Now I was walking downtown, where the wind was broken by the buildings and there were always people walking. The snow was graspable from sand and the people walking by helped make the place feel a little warmer. The murmur from the people walking around was comforting and it made me feel a little more relaxed. I looked to my left and saw several restaurants but nothing that I liked, Mexican food, Chinese food, bleh! I finally found a good looking classic diner styled restaurant and got a seat immediately.

The temperature felt great and the food cooking smelled even better! The music wasn't really my favorite genre and the lighting was a little dim today, but I didn't mind that much. When I sat down in the small poofy red round chair I looked around for a waiter or waitress. Instead I found one of my least favorite people.

"Well, look who it is!" She said as she walked up in all her fake glory. "It's the mini fuzz bag!" she and I have a competition going of who can call the other the most names.

Who is she? She's what people would call my sister- but she's my step-uncle's daughter. She was twenty years old at the time, Jonin, shiny blonde hair, striking blue eyes, tan skin, perfect figure. But she has a crippled personality and reputation. She thinks that everybody looked at her like a goddess, but everyone except for my step-uncle sees that she's just a-

"Whore bitch!" I greeted her as I only looked at her from the corner of my eye.

"Sasquach!" She called back.

"Fat fry!"

"Short round!"

"Limp noodle!"

"Lard lover!" She said as she started to smirk.

"Douche bag!" I was starting to run out of insults. I started to think of the most obvious thing about her and use it as an insult.

"Tool!" She started to give me a fast noogie by lightly putting her arm around my neck and pressing and rubbing her knuckles against the top of my skull as fast as she could.

"Slut!" I forced out as I attempted to get out of her grasp.

"Rat bag!"

"Twit!"

"Twat chops!" I stopped after she said that and turned my head around to look at her.

"What the hell does that mean?!" I asked. She slowed down her noogie and shrugged her shoulders. "Well get offa me or I'll scream!!" She just grabbed me tighter and started her noogie all over again.

"Haha- oh common! Screaming is ALL you can do, you jizzbeard!" I could start to smell that she had used her expensive perfume again.

"So what's that perfume you're wearing today? Whore de Skank? Haha-AHH stop! I'm serious!! Let go, Reina!!"

"Okay, fine, fine!" She said as she let go of me and went back a step. I tried to correct my hair but it seemed like she put in some of her specialty chakra webs to keep my hair messy. I groaned as I tried my best to straighten it back out but it kept a brown mess of sticky strings.

"Wow, what an improvement!" She said as she gave the most annoying laugh in the world- I could not even begin to EXPLAIN who disgusting her laugh is! I wanted to say 'Yeah, it looks a hell of a lot better than yours!' but I knew that it would be lame. I looked back at her after attempting to get my hair fixed and she had her arms crossed and had a large smirk on her face. She was still laughing a little bit from her lame insult while I rolled my eyes.

"At least I don't live with my dad at twenty years old…"

"At least my daddy's alive!" As lame as that might sound to you, that one actually struck me. It isn't the first time she's used that on me either. My parent's died when I was around three or four years old. The only things that comforted me about this fact was that I barely knew them and I knew that they died as hero's.

About twelve or eleven years before, the town had been attacked by something called the Kyuubi. The fourth hokage sealed this monster away with a very difficult technique that took a lot of chakra. With the size of the Kyuubi it took the chakra amount of three people. That was where my parents come in. My brave parents gave every last drop of chakra to the Hokage, and it was just the right amount to seal it away. Without any chakra a ninja either passes out or, in my parents case, they die.

Like I said before, I barely knew them. It doesn't mean that I don't miss them or wish that they were here. I went back to my first and only memory of them. Although everything about them seems blurry to me and I don't remember many details, but I can see them clearly. I was three years old and my parents had high hopes for me.

"Hold on tight, Tomi!" my father said as he held me close. We were standing on the border towers of the town and they both were lifting me up onto the top railing. I was giggling non-stop as I swayed my legs in the air. They had me by my hands and my mom kept one of her hands underneath me just in case. Everything looked so big back then, just the border towers alone looked like the Great Wall of China!

"Be careful, what if she falls?!" My mother said quietly hoping that I wouldn't hear a negative comment. My father just laughed and said:

"Oh she'll be fine! Look, she's having the time of her life! Isn't that right, Tomi?" I laughed back and nodded my head as fast as I could.

"See? She's not afraid of heights!" My father said, looking over at my mother. "I think she should enroll in the ninja program! I think she'd be a great ninja!" My mom nodded in agreement.

"What do you think of that?" My mother asked me in a baby voice, "Wanna be ninja's like mommy and daddy some day?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah!!" I laughed as I looked over to her.

"Hey… HEY… HEY SHIT BURGLAR!!" Reina said, snapping me out of my memory and back to the present. "Were you even listening?" I nodded 'No', still in a slight daze. "Hmph. Well listen up! Daddy either has a big mission or a big bar party, and I'm going to a guy's place. So you're going to be on your own tonight."

"'Kay." I said, "So how many abortions have you had so far?" She put her arm around my neck again with an angry face. She opened her mouth to say something but an employee of the restaurant saw what was happening.

"Hey! What the hell are you doing?! You better stop this shit before I have to kick both of you out!!" the waiter yelled at us. Reina gave a small yelp of surprise and I felt as if I had been saved.

"Okay Mr. Waiter!" She said as she waved both her hands and backed up to leave, then said to me: "See ya later, nut butter!" She left in her usual hip swinging walk and once she opened the door I yelled:

"Hmph…" I growled.

"What the hell was that all about?" The waiter asked. Reina didn't know him, but I did.

His name was Shihere Akimichi. He was a chunin and worked nearly the rest of the day at the diner. He and I were the same age, almost exactly! I was born on December 9th and he was born on December 11th. He was over weight and not very attractive, his hair was brown and put up almost in an Elvis style. His cheeks had red marks on his cheeks that looked like many little red dots. His eyes were tiny and his eye brows were creepy, but none of that bothered me. He was my friend because he and I were the same in everything but looks… except in one little flaw.

"Oh, nothing unusual. Nothing to worry about." I said as I fiddled with my hair more, "But thanks for saving my butt."

"Well fuck, Tomi! I didn't know you could even swear!"

"I guess I make up for the swearing you do!"

"Pfft! Not back there! I've never even thought that you even hated anyone." He handed me a menu and I buried my face in it. I have tried everything on the menu before at least once. I had started my craze for this restaurant ever since Shihere started working here, I hadn't known anything about it before then.

I had ordered the tofu burger with grilled onions put on the side. I had to try to stop eating meat so I could loose weight. Shihere would always make an ironic joke saying that I was severely fat, when he was the fat one. I was 125 lbs and I thought I looked like I was 200 lbs, just like every other teenage girl that had vision.

The tofu burger had an okay taste to it, although I thought once I was half way through it that I should have ordered the steak and just forget about my diet. Once Shihere was finished serving other customers and had time to talk to me I gave him the usual complement.

"You need to thank the fuckin' cook, not me!" he laughed as he stretched out his shoulders. I noticed that he looked as if he was in quite a bit of pain, his face was tense and his hands were fists.

"You been working double shifts, Shihere?" I asked as I wiped off my mouth and licked off the remains. He let out a sigh and looked at the ground while nodding.

"It's been fuckin' killing me, I hate it so much but my dad is too much of a lazy ass to get up and work! I'm the only one who has to do any real work!" I handed him my plate and nodded. I had met his dad before. Let's just say he was a little strange in the head and probably wouldn't make it to fifty years old with his physical state.

You could hear and even smell the sizzles of meat cooking and water boiling and the collisions of cooking tools all the way from the kitchen by the time I was leaving. I started putting my coat back on as I braced myself to challenge the below zero temperatures. I looked outside the door window before I left and saw that there were few people outside now. I looked around the resturaunt hoping I would find a clock of some sort but they didn't seem to have one. Perhaps that was a way to keep their customers there longer?

"Shihere, do you know what time it is?" I asked. He shrugged his shoulders and then took out a pocket watch out from his pocket. "It's almost 10:00..."

"Gah!!" I panicked, "I'll see ya!" I was out of the door immediately. I always have to get to bed early so I don't feel like crap in the morning and if I ran all the way home I probably wouldn't get to bed until 10:30, so when I would wake up at 5:00 I'd only get seven of nine hours that I was supposed to get. As I ran as fast as I could while holding my thick story close to me and rubbing my cheeks to warm them up something popped up in my head and it was all that I could think about the rest of the night until I fell asleep.

That man was coming tomorrow. Was I really ready to share everything with a stranger?