Half way through this chapter I thought of a different title for the story. 'To care or not to care' but I'll stick with this one.

Chapter 2

You can either accept it and move on or don't and have it ruin you.

His words echoed in her head. They wouldn't leave her alone. Ever since the talk by his car right through the night and now that she was awake again she could still hear them. Now here she was lying in her bed, not wanting to go to school. She was tired. She had hardly been able to get to sleep with what he said nagging her so much, not even Muse could get her to sleep.

She didn't want this to destroy her. She was always trying to be stronger. Something like this shouldn't destroy her. She tried so hard to be nice and likeable and polite and seen by Naruto only to get seen and dumped. Dumped! How could she not feel destroyed? How could she not be affected?

'What if I stopped trying?' she thought staring up at the ceiling. The thought was preposterous. 'If I did that Father would kill me.… but then I would be able to be myself and not try to please anyone.'

The heartache of the break-up did get to her. Did Naruto even care about how she felt? Just because she didn't get mad didn't mean she wasn't affected. It didn't mean that she wasn't hurt by this. Did he consider that?

'All this time I've been trying hard to be liked but I hardly even have any friends, only Temari and Ten-ten. Maybe I should change. Maybe I need to look at things differently. Maybe I need to work on me and stop being what people think I should be. There are so many times I don't want to be polite or nice.… Father would kill me for this.' she rubbed her stomach lightly in thought as she continued to stare at the ceiling. 'Ok today, I'll just observe then I'll try to decide if I should... then he will help me. Willingly or unconsciously.'

She sighed pulling the earphones out if her ears. "First step in Operation Self-change: get to school."

XXXXX

Getting out of Neji's car she began her walk to her class. She paid attention to just exactly who acknowledged her, who noticed her and those who didn't. She could count who noticed her on her fingers and only half of them acknowledged her. That just went to show how important she was as the eldest daughter of the president of Hyuga Corp. Neji on the other hand was greatly loved, everyone knew him. That was because he was on the football (soccer) team and one of their strikers. Naruto was on the team too. So was Lee, Kiba, Kankuro, Gaara, Chouji, Shino, Sasuke, some guy named Suigetsu, another one named Juugo and Shikamaru. Shikamaru and Gaara were goal keepers but Shikamaru was the captain. Then there were a few reserve players. Having an adopted brother and a boyfriend on the team and two girl friends that have connections to it caused a girl to know more about football than she normally would on her own. It also made her have a few friends that were on the team but even then they didn't talk much. They were the people who noticed and the few that acknowledged her. Temari and Ten-ten were nowhere in sight but that was to be expected since they were in a higher year than her.

It took no time to find Naruto and evidently it took no time for him to forget her. He was leaned on the lockers talking to a certain blond girl that was twirling her long and shiny hair in her fingers. They were laughing and gosh they looked good together. He didn't even notice when she walked past them. She quickly made it to her class and away from them. She only carried her folder in her bag for the day so she didn't need to stop at her locker at all for the day. It was right beside Naruto's so she didn't exactly want to go there anyway.

She entered her classroom and looked around at the few others that were already there. There was no one there that she actually talked to but there was one that she would have to talk to soon enough. She took a deep breath and began the walk to the back of the class room.

Sasuke paused in composing his very angry text to his brother when an unusual pair of feet sat beside him. 'Sneakers, small sneakers, creamy white skin and dark blue capris.' He followed the unattractive capris to an equally unattractive cream jacket to a veil of blue tinted shoulder length black hair. He watched this definitely unusual girl that even dared to just sit beside him and not ask first. As if feeling his gaze she looked up from her folder at him and their eyes caught. He looked into her quizzical pale eyes and frowned. A thin brow rose at him in mild shock. He must have glared at her by accident. Oh well. He smirked instead and watched confusion flood her eyes.

'Tch. Too easy to read.' he thought ignoring her and returning to his text-rant about hiding his socks. Would you believe Itachi had the gall to reply: "No little brother, you just don't know where the socks are usually put."?

He spent the rest of the day between texting angrily with Itachi about socks and his brother's evil way of hiding his things and watching the small unusual Hyuga girl. He hadn't realised he had at least three quarters of his classes with her until she suddenly decided to sit beside him in the morning. They hadn't spoken either but at least she wasn't the zombie she had been the day before. That had been exceedingly annoying. If anything today she was attentive. So attentive it almost seemed like she was trying to analyse everyone in every class. She had begun to ignore his moments of watchfulness after the first three times. She must have realised that he didn't want to do anything in school for the day and left him alone. If only other girls allowed him the luxury of not being bugged by them. He inwardly sighed at the thought. A girl on the other side of the Hyuga though, thought that he was looking at her and so wouldn't stop sending him looks and attempting to look attractive. It wasn't working. He was being blinded slowly but surely.

He was in the middle of one of his texts when he felt that the Hyuga had reversed the roles of the 'watcher' and the 'watched.' He finished what he was doing and looked back at her. There was silence between them.

"Teach me how to not care." she finally spoke.

'...' Sasuke's mind drew a blank. Not many persons actually talked to Sasuke but no one ever asked him to teach them anything especially how to not care. 'Is she implying that I don't care? Well she wouldn't really be wrong there but there are a few things I care about... Ok maybe only two things.'

"You mean to text in class?" he asked with no change in his facial features. "It's quite simple. You pick a contact, type a text and press send. Do you know the proper steps in texting?"

"That's not what I meant." she said turning a light pink that he thought she didn't know how to text. Which teenager didn't know how to do that? "I meant how not to care about anything."

"Why?"

"It would help me to accept things better. They wouldn't get to me." she told him. He was shocked that she would think of something like that. It was valid reasoning.

"Fine. We have a project to work on." he said looked away from her expressive eyes. "Tomorrow. In the library."

'Why did I accept? She's a nerd, a wimp and a girl. All of those care too much to not care!' he mentally berated himself. His face remained a blank slate of indifference while he had an internal argument with himself.

"Can we begin the first stages of our project now? This class is boring." she said and he stared at her. Well, he didn't have anything better to do anyway. He could never get less than an A either, that was a no-no.

XXXXX

There was constant work on the genetics project because Mr Yakushi wouldn't accept anything but the best and neither would Sasuke or Hinata. Hinata soon realised that Sasuke was just as much a nerd as people said she was and completely hated losing or even coming second best. If her non-caring attitude progressed it wasn't by much. She had stopped being polite to the other students and had decide that she wasn't going to cut her hair ever again even though her father always wanted her hair to be perfectly shoulder-length and it was due for a cut that weekend. The weekend had passed and gone and it had not been cut. Her father would be pissed when he came back from his business trip.

One more thing she decided that Monday morning while getting ready: she wasn't going to hide her temper. Sasuke said he would help her but he hadn't addressed it yet. She guessed that if he didn't joke to let people know he was ticked she could do the same. That would probably be hard though because while she was getting irritated a lot easier recently (that ran in the family anyway) she still didn't like hurting people's feelings. It was a miracle that the day she decided this she was completely invisible to the world. But of course something had to happen.

She was simply walking out to the parking lot to go with Neji to go to the library downtown. He didn't know her partner was Sasuke yet. She had added another part to the project that would conclude it while he was at football (soccer) practise. Now that it was almost finished she could just go and wait for him to come so all they had to do was perfect it. Then the driver would pick her up from the library. So yea, she was just walking from a classroom to the parking lot when Ino slid around the corner with a smile on her face.

"Hinata Hyuga." she crowed slowly strutting to the shorter girl. Hinata felt a twinge of fear flutter through her as the girl continued her predatory walk. Girls like Ino were dangerous for girls like Hinata. Girls like Hinata were always the prey. For all Hinata knew she could have her crew just around the corner lay waiting her. "What a little twat you are."

Hinata froze her logical, intelligent side kicking in. 'Twat? That's not a word. Did she mean twit?'

"To think that he dated you. How could he manage?" Ino continued brushing her hair over her shoulder. Damn that hair. Ino smirked. "He must have felt sorry for you. You're so unattractive and nerdy."

Hinata knew she was a little nerdy and she knew she didn't have the best looks but did this… thing really come just to taunt her?

'Would she really just go out of her way to make me feel bad?' were her exact thoughts on the presence of Ino.

"I'm surprised he doesn't have your germs all over him. I guess he didn't get too close to you even when you were dating." Ino said and Hinata coloured to a light shade of red in what Ino thought was embarrassment, but Hinata knew was anger. Ino smirked even wider.

'We were very close!' Hinata raged in her mind.

"You see this?" Ino said and made a motion to her body. The body that had guys lining up to date her. "This is the perfect work of art that you will never get. He left you for this and this will be all over him. Your fat will never meet this beauty."

'I am not fat!' was Hinata's indignant thought as Ino walked away swaying her hips wickedly. Anger boiled in Hinata making her almost snap her phone in half when she yanked it out of her pocket.

XX

"Where is Hinata?" Neji voiced when the team stepped out of the school to no one.

"I don't know isn't she working on a project for tomorrow?" Ten-ten asked from beside him. She wasn't on the football team but she was on the track team and was dating Neji. Sasuke raised a brow slightly at hearing this but did not move his attention from what Suigetsu was saying.

"I think she left earlier." Ino said innocently from her place wrapped around Naruto's arm. No one smart (Neji, Sasuke, Shikamaru, Gaara, Kankuro) bought it. Hinata didn't go anywhere without Neji or he at least knew where she was. Sasuke had a project to do with her; she wouldn't just abandon it when it was due the next day. Ino sounded way too innocent for Shikamaru's liking. Gaara and Kankuro considered her a sister since she was so close to their own sister so they knew the girl couldn't just up and go anywhere without someone in the family knowing.

Neji had his cell phone out in a second and was walking like a man on a mission to his car. Gaara and Kankuro were just as serious right behind him to Kankuro's monster of a van. Ten-ten followed along. Hinata was one of the few friends she had and that girl didn't just up and disappear, at all.

"What's with the rush?" Ino whined when even Naruto and Kiba had near panicked looks on their faces.

Sasuke was half way to his own car trying not to look as if he was rushing (he never rushed) when Ten-ten yelled "Wait!"

All heads turned to her as she plucked a paper off Neji's windshield. She read it quickly and sighed relieved. "She's at the library doing her project."

The group relaxed almost instantly. Sasuke continued his walk to his car in true calm. He'd never admit he almost freaked that his recently acquired half-shadow had disappeared. Ok so maybe she was growing on him but that didn't mean he should freak.

XXXXX

"Of all the things to happen today, that little blond..." Hinata was thinking crossly when she was interrupted by Sasuke walking over and saying the obvious.

"It's finished."

She glared up at him. "Of course its fricking finished moron." she snapped causing him to look at her shocked. She slapped a hand over her mouth with wide eyes. "I'm so sorry."

Sasuke relaxed into his usual state and took a seat beside her. "If you don't snap at me how will you snap at others? Don't apologise for being angry. Anger is good."

"Is that supposed to be a lesson?" she asked him lowering her hands to the table.

"Lesson?" he asked.

"You forgot." she stated and he raised a brow at her. She stared at him blankly. 'That explains a lot.'

"Is there a reason why you're looking at me like that?" he asked resting his head on his knuckles with his elbow on the table.

"You forgot you were going to help me to not care." she told him and he seemed to think about it for a moment.

"You can think of it as one but here is the real lesson." he told her and looked at her straight in the face. "No matter how much you don't care there must be something or things you care about or you will have no honour."

"What do you care about?"

"You don't have to know. You must choose for yourself." he told her and she looked away from him as she thought.

"I care about my family and my grades." she said finally.

"Then forget about everything else. Nothing else matters." Sasuke told her and she nodded with a small smile. Sasuke was struck with how innocent she looked. Her eyes were just so open and her face was clear. 'What could have possibly bothered her? … Why did it even bother him?' He rested his head in his hand propped up on the desk again. "What did Ino do to make you leave?"

Hinata's smile faltered and her face took on a look that Sasuke was sure no one had seen on her before, anger. "Do I look fat to you?" Hinata asked after a moment. He took in her baggy clothes down to the little part of her skin that was showing where her pants stopped. Her calves where thin

"Yes but your legs are too thin for you to be."

"Well I'm not."

"That's why you're angry?" he asked disbelievingly. That was such a girly thing to get angry about. To think he had thought she wasn't like those superfluous girls that seemed to be everywhere.

"No. I'm angry because she actually went out of her way to taunt me just because I used to date Naruto and now she is and just because I'm not some pretty girl with a models body!" she growled angrily drawing a line down her paper and completely ruining it. Sasuke watched on with a detached look. That was better.

"Hyuga, you don't have to have a models body to be beautiful." He told her calmly while he inwardly asked: 'Why am I helping her?' She looked away from the paper to him with wide eyes. Advice and compliments weren't something Sasuke usually gave to anyone. "You don't have to be overly pretty or glossy to be beautiful either."

She smiled at him again and this time his heart almost stopped at the sheer earnestness of it and the way her face lit up. "Thanks."