98. Puzzle
Puzzles. She loved to solved them. Being crosswords or persons.
Everyone was so complex. Secrets lurking in every corner. As shinobi scattered inside the village to do their patrol around the city.
She could see from the flower shop window, every furtive glance some boys gave girls as they walked by. How that brunette jonin went all flustered as that green eye special jonin gave her a friendly wave from across the street.
She loved them. Puzzles. They kept her mind sharp. Which was always good for a Yamanaka. But there was one puzzle she had yet to solve.
A puzzle with so many turns and road blocks. That kept her awake at night trying to make sense of all the things that moved this certain individual to do certain things.
She could spend hours pondering in all the things she knew of this person.
He was blond. His hair a mess of spiky locks. Only kept at bay by his black hitae-ate. Those bright blue eyes. That shone so much with all the emotions portrayed in them that she could drown in them. That warm feeling she felt whenever she was near him. He was such a friendly person. Humble and sincere (sometimes too sincere). He was powerful, she could tell not only by his towering form. But because she had bare witness to the massive destruction his jutsus had on somebody.
But he was also such a reserved person. Nobody knew where he lived (that she knew of) except for Shikamaru. Nobody knew of his past, of his childhood, of his parents. Did he had a girlfriend? What did he do besides missions and training? What kind of music did he listen to?
He was always there for them if they ever needed his help, but he never asked them for something in return.
Why? Why couldn't she keep him out of her mind?
It was starting to frustrate her to no end.
"Why am I so obsessed with him?" she said to no one in particular.
But she knew the answer, it was because he was a puzzle. And she loved to solve them.
It took her most part of a year to gain his trust enough for him to begin to open up to her. But once she had done it. She knew everything that was to know about him. She discovered that he doesn't like mornings. That he only ate ramen because it was the first home made meal he had ever tasted. She knew his parents were dead, and he didn't have any other family other than team seven, mainly Kakashi-sensei and Sakura.
She also knew that he smelled like forest after a rainy day because he was always on some training ground because he hated being alone, and he didn't live with anyone.
She also knew that he was quite the ladies man, he had five or six girlfriends, but they were all civilians so they got fed up with him being away most of the time and had ended things with him.
She also knew that his stamina could also apply to other areas besides fighting and toning his body.
She also knew he had a mole on his left hipbone. And a little tattoo of a spiral at the end of his back.
He also enjoyed the finer liquors he could find. Sometimes he would be seeing sipping a cup of sake with the Hokage on the other side of the table reminiscing about his shishou. Or that after a gruesome mission he would be closed off to the world and he would drink himself to forget about it.
Or that he had never had a proper birthday party until she had come along.
She also knew that his father was the forth Hokage and his mother was the second vessel for the Kyuubi after the first Hokage's wife had died.
She also knew he didn't like vegetables, but he ate them any way. whenever she asked why, he would smile and change the subject subtly leaving her pondering about that smile, it was always somewhat sad, but also loving. and that always let her puzzled.
He also loved the color orange. when she asked him about it, he said it was because it was the combination of red and yellow. that left her even more puzzled, until she saw a picture of his mother at the Shinobi registration records.
He was no longer a puzzle or a mystery to her. But every day she realized she learned something new about him. And she realized in that moment that she would never grew tired of getting to know the enigma that was one Uzumaki Naruto. And she loved every minute of it