Season:
Summer
Namikaze Minato sat on a bench in the park under the shade of a tree, hiding from the hot summer sun. His friends either were on vacation with their families, working summer jobs, or had other plans, so he was left to his own devices. With nothing particularly interesting on television, and with the weather being so fair, he'd come out to the park to sketch and maybe compose a haiku or two.
In the open field in front of him, a bunch of older guys and a girl were playing a game of soccer. They looked similar enough to each other that he thought they were related—brothers and sister, or cousins. The one girl was about his age, with long red hair woven into a rope of a braid.
She vaguely reminded him of that private school girl who had run him over in the spring as the sakura petals began to fall.
But this girl seemed rougher, louder, wilder. This girl dressed boyishly in an over-sized T-shirt. There were smears of mud on her face and grass-stains on her knees. She shouted rude, sometimes crude things at her opponents and even her own teammates.
Minato simply couldn't picture that beautiful girl being like her.
Shaking his head, he reapplied himself to his sketching.
Normally he doodled cute, cartoonish toads—toads of all sizes and colors that wore clothes and smoked pipes and carried swords. His Uncle Jiraiya—who wasn't really his uncle, just his godfather—had a thing for toads; his whole house was decorated with them. If his uncle ever wrote a children's book about the toads he loved so much (instead of the explicit romance novels he was known for), Minato would happily illustrate them.
But today he was drawing foxes. Last semester he'd taken an elective course on traditional mythology, and kitsune—fox spirits—had caught his attention. Foxes were fast becoming his second-favorite animal.
This particular sketch was turning out to be a halfway decent kyuubi no kitsune.
Maybe I'll add some red to it…
"Hey, look out—!"
Kushina loved the summer. There was no school, for one thing. And the weather was great, which meant plenty of outdoors time. And it was warmer and less rainy in Fire Country than it was back in Whirlpool, so it was even better.
Summer also meant more free time for her college-bound brothers. The three of them had taken time off their summer jobs, and college-graduate Kenshin had taken some vacation time, to come to Konoha and visit her. And distant cousin Hachiro had decided to tag along for some reason. So for the week-long visit, the small house that she and her father now lived in was ridiculously crowded.
But that was okay, because she loved them all…some of the time anyway.
Eager to take full advantage of the beautiful weather, she'd persuaded them all to come out to the park and play some three-on-three soccer. But when they'd divided up, she'd gotten the short end of the stick. Arashi had a soccer scholarship, and he teamed up with Ichi-tora and Ni-tora—identical twins who could practically read each other's minds. She was stuck with Kenshin, who sucked at the game, and Hachiro, who seemed more interested in checking out other guys. They weren't keeping score, but Kushina's side was losing badly.
Friendly game or not, she was more than a little frustrated, and when Arashi taunted her for the nth time she kicked the ball as hard as she could right at his face.
…He ducked, of course.
And the ball kept right on going and creamed the guy that Hachiro had been trying to surreptitiously ogle for the past ten minutes.
"Smooth imouto, real smooth," Kenshin muttered. "Go fetch the ball and apologize."
"Yeah, yeah…" Kushina growled and slunk over to get her ball and make nice with whoever she'd clobbered.
Getting the soccer ball was no problem.
Her victim was something else.
He'd fallen off the bench he'd been sitting on and was still laying prone. It didn't look like he'd moved an inch. And when she got a good look at him, she found that he was out cold.
And familiar.
Yellow hair… I've seen that before but…where? She nudged his shoulder with her toe. This guy… He didn't budge, so she knelt down by his head and poked his cheek. …Did I kill him?
Apparently she said that last bit out loud, and everyone descended upon her all at once.
"Killed him?"
"Did you really, little sister?"
"Is there blood?"
"Should we cover it up? I mean—"
"—we can't let imouto go to jail!"
"Shut up!" Kenshin snapped, and silence came. He shoved Kushina aside and touched the boy's neck. "He's still got a pulse; you just knocked him out cold. Must've hit his head on the bench when he fell." The eldest brother sighed and dragged a hand over his face. "Arashi, check his pockets for a cell phone. Kushina, check his bag."
Kushina was more than happy to let her big brother manage this mess, and mutely did as she was told.
His bag (still on the bench) was full of books. There was a small stack of library books, a few nature magazines, a few sketch books, and a ragged collection of notebooks. And she found a couple of pencil boxes, filled with all kinds of pens and pencils—regular and colored.
What a nerd, she snorted. Who goes outside on a beautiful day, and just reads or doodles or…whatever? That's boring.
She spied another sketchbook laying on the ground and rescued it before either of the Tora twins trampled it as they milled around, watching Kenshin attempt to reach someone on what she presumed to be her victim's cell phone. As she tried to un-wrinkle some of the pages, she noticed the things he'd been doodling. And it was all…very good.
Two toads wearing jackets were playing shogi on a giant mushroom. A fox with too many tails was playing with an orb in a forest with giant trees. And there were diagrams of ancient weapons favored by "ninja"—kunai, shuriken, those sorts of things. Some were finished pictures, with great detail and vibrant color. Most were rough sketches; various unrelated scribbles cluttered on the same page. But it was all beautiful and far beyond anything she was capable of.
I creamed an art geek… She sighed and flipped through some more pages, ignoring her brothers and cousin. I feel like a real jerk now… Art geeks are such wimps.
Then she found a drawing of a girl. The girl was dressed in a school uniform and had long hair. It was a pencil sketch, so there was no color, but…
Weird. That kinda looks like…me. Kushina blinked. And those little things look like sakura petals—
Yellow hair. Spiky yellow hair. Like sunshine or a dandelion.
Oh my god…it's him.
It was the public school boy she'd run over back in the spring. He was the unbearably cute boy who had called her pretty. He was the strange boy who for some reason carried a girl's hair clip in his pocket, and had no issue putting it in the hair of a girl he'd never met before.
First I run him over, now I give him a concussion. She closed the sketchbook and sighed. …Great.
"Hey, he's coming around!"
Kushina shoved everything back in his bag and pushed through Hachiro, Ichi-tora, and Ni-tora who were clustered in her way. The blonde was half-sitting up and staring around at them, a dazed look on his face. She found his blue eyes weren't the least bit mesmerizing when they weren't focused on hers, or able to focus on anything, really.
"Dude, how many fingers do I have up?" Arashi asked, shoving two fingers in the guy's face.
"…Six?"
"Not quite," Arashi chuckled. "What's today's date?"
"I…" He trailed off and apparently forgot that he'd been asked a question. "Where am I?"
"Okay, he totally has a concussion."
"Thank you captain obvious," Kenshin muttered and pressed a black and yellow cell phone into her victim's hands. "Just hang out here; someone's coming to pick you up, okay?"
The blonde blinked at him. "Okay?"
"Right," Kenshin sighed and turned to her. "Seeing as you're the one who scrambled his brains, you sit with him until that woman I got a hold of picks him up." He picked up the forgotten soccer ball and started to leave. "I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to get some lunch."
"Food!"
"Hey, wait for us!
"Yeah, wait!"
"Do you want me to stay?" Hachiro asked hesitantly.
"Nah," Kushina grumbled, waving him off. "Go make sure they don't eat everything in the house, okay?"
"Sure thing!"
And then she was alone with the blonde, artsy, concussed boy.
"Hi," he smiled. "What's your name?"
She told him. And told him, and told him. But it always seemed to just slide in one ear and out the other.
He won't remember, she thought as a ridiculously busty blonde woman—some family friend, and luckily also a doctor—led away the boy she called "Mina-chan." Thank god he won't remember…
Now if only I could forget him…
