A/N: Well, here I am again, your humble writer.
This chapter will be random, as it is with nearly all of my writing pieces…
And I think I've just thought of a new Naruto fiction idea…all of my ideas seem to be really different and random…
First frozen kunoichis, (by the way, The Perfect Place I now consider an utter failure…-sigh- The characters are so OOC…), then werewolves living in an orphanage, now mental therapy patients, and next…cough. Well. You'll just have to see then….-smiles evilly-
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Day 18
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"Yakumi," Tenten read off the large sign above the curry shop. Written in large, red kanji on a wooden board, the sign was tacked up right above the modern glass double doors so that all of passerby could see it. She turned to Neji, curious. "Toppings. Why, do they have a lot of sauces or wasabi or something?"
Neji only shrugged and pulled open the door, waving her inside with a slight air of impatience. "You are here to eat, not to speculate about their sauce capacity, correct?"
She rolled her eyes and strolled past him. "I can hold the door myself, you know," she complained mildly, but smiled at him anyways. She held the second set of doors open for him. He raised his eyebrows slightly. The host had her back turned when Tenten and Neji entered the room, but her shock of watermelon red hair fell all the way to her waist. Tenten furrowed her eyebrows. Red hair.
She turned around after she had finished stuffing a sheet full of house specialties into one of the plastic coverings between the hard covers of a menu. She turned around, smiling, her coal black eyes framed with oval-shaped glasses.
"Go right on in, seat yourselves," she sighed, flipping through a menu. Then she took a double take, the kind that belonged on a comedy rerun. Her eyes widened behind their lenses.
"Tenten?"
"Hi, Karin," Tenten sighed, smiling slightly. "Long time, no see. You work here?"
"Uh, yeah," the redhead said, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose, seemingly not sure how to receive her ex-friend. It was almost amusing to watch Karin so unsure. Usually, the redhead was an explosion of sarcasm and nasty, very loud comments. She used to kick their classmate Suigetsu a lot in elementary school, Tenten remembered, and took a tiny step back.
"So…" Tenten muttered.
"We may go in, I believe you said," Neji prompted calmly, giving Tenten a slight nudge, as Tenten seemed to have temporarily dislocated her locomotive functions. Although she and Karin still doubtless attended the same high school, she had not seen the redhead around for a very long time. She was filled with a sudden gratefulness for Neji and his lack of normal human emotion. He seemed to reflect all awkwardness in every situation, although he did tend to create some pretty strange moments. People were always uncomfortable around him for some reason they couldn't name.
"Yeah, go ahead," Karin said, in her usual confident, careless tone of voice, hoisting herself up so that she sat cross-legged on half-circle reception desk. "Business is slow today."
Tenten forced herself to move, (well, Neji practically shoved her forward), and plopped down at the nearest two-person table she found, and rested the side of her head against the window, sort-of watching the traffic out of the corner of her eye, watching Neji out of the other.
He sat down quietly, rearranged the fork and chopsticks sitting by his plate. He didn't ask who Karin was like a normal person would have. Instead, he said, "That girl is not very adept at fixing menus."
Tenten gawked at him. "Right…your point?"
Neji shrugged slightly. "None. Just an observation." He scrutinized her a bit more carefully, so Tenten turned back to looking out of the window, carelessly draping the napkin into her lap. It was paler than crimson, darker than salmon, but too washed out and faded looking to be a true blood red. She toyed with the corner, where the hemming was coming out.
Another waitress came over to take their order, thankfully not Karin. Tenten sighed in relief and placed an order for the house special curry. Neji ordered that too, except he ordered his mild and Tenten said extra spicy.
"I thought you were the man here," she said.
Neji stroked a strand of his long, lush brown hair absentmindedly, blinked so slowly that it looked like he was batting his eyelashes. "Are you sure?" he said sarcastically, (Neji and sarcasm simply did not mix; in his dull, monotone voice, it sounded positively…well…just not right).
Tenten snorted. "What girl has a voice like yours? I don't think guys could even talk as monotonously as you do."
Neji shrugged again. "Hn."
"Monosyllabic freak."
"Ah, but less is more, Tenten."
"Not when you're supposed to be carrying a conversation. Damn it all, Neji, sometimes it feels like you ignore me when you're actually talking to me."
Neji stared at her without answering. The waitress was back, setting plates of steaming curry with chunks of potato evident under the thick brown sauce, poured over rice. The smell positively curled under Tenten's nostrils. She smiled and happily raised a fork, her squabble with Neji forgotten, (now that she came to think of it, it seemed like all of her conversations with Neji were squabbles).
"Mmmm," she let the curry melt into her tongue, the spices prickling the insides of her mouth. "This stuff is good," she gulped after she had swallowed the hot sauce.
Neji was quietly eating his mild, no-spice curry, his white eyes watching her as they always did. Neji seemed to constantly record everything going on around him, like an ultra-aware, human security camera. It made Tenten feel creeped out and also a bit grateful at the same time. All her life, she had relied on her martial arts skill to look out for herself and sometimes her mother too. Now Neji looked out for her. Sort of.
The heaping plate of curry was gone in another half hour. She wiped her mouth with the napkin and sat it on the table. "Bill?" she called to the waitress the next time she passed idly by, no customers but them to serve. She nodded and vanished into the kitchen for a moment before coming back.
Neji calmly, matter-of-factly, reached into his pocket for the yen notes, but Tenten stubbornly also laid a couple of bills on the table. "I don't like letting other people pay all the time," she said.
Neji hesitated for a moment, and seemingly decided that he did not want to argue with a Tenten that was hyper on spicy curry. "Alright."
As they got up to leave, Tenten realized that she didn't unconsciously distance herself so that she wouldn't have to touch Neji's scaly skin anymore. They weren't really walking close together, but it seemed like they walked out of the shop like Tenten might walk with Naruto or with Lee. With a friend.
Tenten ignored Karin on her way out of the door.
O0O
"Tenten, hello, it's Yumi," said the answering machine once Tenten got back.
She sighed, waiting for the inevitable.
"Would it be alright if you checked in at the office today sometime in the afternoon? You can find me in my office, and if not, I'll be in the filing room. We've got a lot of work to do! Thanks, bye."
Beeeeeep, went the answering machine as the message finished playing back.
Tenten sighed again, this time more deeply, and pulled her Nikes back on.
O0O
The office building wasn't any less cold than it had been on her previous visits. She dreaded what would await her in the file room: doubtless she would have so many files to organize that she would die reciting alphabetical order with Yumi cackling above her.
When she pushed open the metal door with the blue sign "STAFF ONLY" printed on it, she was surprised to see that it was not Yumi that was there, but another woman. She had her black-gray hair in a messy, spiky ponytail on top of her head and round eyes of the same color. She wore a tan jacket with a high color. She grinned rakishly at Tenten.
"You Yumi's intern?"
"I…guess so," she said uncertainly. The woman's arm moved slightly when she turned back to her files, and her name tag was made visible: Mitarashi Anko.
"She's not here, and she's not in her office. I think she's with a patient, actually," Anko said conversationally. "Ah…" she groaned as she stood and stretched her back. "That's the spot." There was a tattoo on her neck that Tenten glimpsed: three black dots in a circle. Where had she seen that before…?
Anko caught her staring and adjusted her high collar a little so that the mark disappeared in the fold of fabric. "You recognize it?" she said, her eyes bitter. Tenten shook her head no.
"It's Orochimaru's mark, but you wouldn't know who he is. Drug dealer." She watched Tenten for a reaction, but Tenten gave none. "I don't do that kind of dirty business anymore," Anko said in a much more subdued voice than she had been using. "It's common knowledge around here that I used to do illegal dealing, but they took me on anyways. Nice people." She shrugged.
"Well, I dunno why I'm telling you this. I don't even know who you are," Anko laughed loudly. "I don't really believe in secrets. Secrets killed my childhood." She glanced at Tenten. "Anyways, help me out with these files, would you? Yumi should be out in a while."
Tenten nodded shakily.
Of course she knew where she had seen that mark before. On the back of Uchiha Sasuke's neck, abysmally black against his marble-like pallor, a permanent brand of his dark past and biggest mistakes.
O0O
"Enjoy yourself?" Ino said absentmindedly when Tenten came in, her nose buried in a magazine about the latest hot gossip on celebrities.
Tenten shrugged. "Yeah, sure." She cracked her neck and rolled her shoulders back. The filing cabinets looked innocent enough, but then you pulled them open and saw the looming piles of folders, in complete chaos, knowing that you were the one that had to organize them. She winced.
"You know, we really have to get a life," Sakura suggested. "All we ever do is lounge around in the room and read, or argue, or use the internet downstairs. We never do anything fun."
"We g-go to the park s-sometimes," Hinata volunteered faintly.
"Excuse me, but unlike you three, I actually have friends," Ino said haughtily, throwing her magazine against the wall, (apparently, the gossip wasn't good this week).
"I find that very hard to believe," Sakura said in a wry face. "With that pig-like mug of yours," she continued solemnly, "Who would dare try to befriend you?"
"Hey, what exactly is wrong with me?" Ino retorted angrily.
Sakura pretended to ponder. "You mean besides all the obvious stuff?" she piped up a few seconds later. Ino growled, a sound that would have made a bulldog proud. Tenten shuddered. Blonde girls who looked like they belonged on a cheerleading squad shouldn't be allowed to make that kind of sound.
Hinata promptly ignored them, leaning over to rearrange the flowers in the vase between the bunks.
"So…why don't we go to the pool?" Tenten shouted once Sakura and Ino had started insulting each others' mothers.
Sakura turned to look at Tenten with the same kind of look she would have given a plant that decided to get up and do the tango. Ino's tongue was poking out from between her teeth, her blue eyes contemplating whether to scream at Tenten or keep screaming at Sakura. Hinata looked at all three of them like she very much wished that she had just stayed safely back at the Hyuuga Compound. Tenten really didn't blame her.
"You know, that's not a bad idea," Sakura admitted grudgingly. "I can't believe we didn't think of that before."
"Hello, it's summer," Ino rolled her eyes. "Of course we're going swimming, I was thinking of that all along."
"Right. Well. We can go tomorrow afternoon," Tenten sat down on her bunk, pushing down the blankets that she had made in the morning for once.
And that settled matters.
O0O
"Oh, come on, Hinata, it isn't all that difficult!" Ino called, knocking once more against the bathroom door. "It's just a bathing suit! It's not like you're naked! Hinata! Please come out? I need to pee!"
Sakura snorted and crossed her arms, leaning against the wall. "I don't think you'll ever persuade her to come out."
Ino rapped her knuckles against the door impatiently one more time, and was about to give up when it swung open. Her blue eyes widened in surprise.
"Wow. You came out," she laughed.
Hinata had her arms wrapped her front, carrying a neatly folded pale blue towel which covered most of her black one-piece swimsuit. She wiggled her toes nervously at all the attention.
"Shall we go?" Sakura suggested. She tied her black towel around her like a Greek sash and sauntered out of the door without waiting for an answer. Ino rolled her eyes and followed. Hinata shuffled forward sideways.
"Hinata-chan, it's just a bathing suit," Tenten said gently, resisting the temptation to laugh at Hinata's comical behavior.
Hinata nodded timidly. "I k-know," she stammered. "I never got t-to go swimming much b-before."
"…you won't sink like a rock, will you?" Tenten asked warily.
Hinata smiled slightly and shook her head no.
"Then you'll be perfectly fine," said Tenten.
O0O
It was a nice day for swimming. The weather was hot and dry, but the sun wasn't shining too brightly. The asphalt sizzled a bit under their toes as they hopped about putting down their towels on respective chairs. There were a few people lounging around: Tenten recognized a few.
Anko was there, as was Chouji, the boy with the potato chips that lived on Tenten's street. Although anybody could come to this pool, it was mostly just people who lived in Tenten's community. A lot of the time, she could name every face that she met here.
Ino sat down by the side of the pool, and delicately dipped her feet in, arching her shoulders back and checked to see if there was anybody she knew around, or any guys below twenty.
Sakura climbed up to the tall diving board and jumped up into a graceful midair summersault, landing into the water in a straight dive. She surfaced a few moments later in the middle of the pool, laughing.
Hinata cautiously waded her way in down the steps to the shallow end, flinching every time she went down a step when the cold water surrounded her. She shivered, feeling her way down with her toes and gripping the edges of the stairs.
Tenten didn't bother with all the quietness of her roommates. She let out a whoop, took a running start, and did a hearty cannonball, (albeit an uncoordinated one), into the pool. Ino scowled as she was splashed.
They continued to spend the rest of the afternoon playing marco polo, (Sakura always won, but they could never prove that she had been cheating), wrestling in chickenfight, (here, Tenten won, every single time), swimming some laps, and growing pruny n the Jacuzzi.
It was only at the end of the day that Tenten realized that she was supposed to have gone to Neji's house at two.
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A/N: Hope you liked it!