Notes: I was listening to William Fitzsimmons while I wrote this. His voice is so beautifully depressing! D:

Disclaimer: Characters aren't mine. ):

Chapter thirteen

How love spells really work

TenTen scratched her head for the tenth time in the night. She hoped Neji's father, who was staring at her as if she had two heads and five eyes, didn't think she had lice or something, because the real reason she did that was because she was really nervous.

She didn't expect the dinner to be this… awkward. She had met Neji's family before, and they had been polite. But now that they knew she was Neji's girlfriend, they didn't seem nice anymore. His father had been staring at her and asking her weird questions like "What are you going to do for living when you grow up?" and "How many kids would you like to have?", and his mother glared every time she looked at TenTen.

They didn't seem to like her, and TenTen was panicking. If Neji's parents hated her, things would get difficult. She hoped they wouldn't be cruel enough to force Neji to break up with her. But she tried to stay calmed. They probably are just testing me because they want a good girl for their son, she told herself, and I have to make them realize that I am that girl.

Beside her, Neji coughed discreetly. "Dad," he said, and said man stopped staring at TenTen to look at his son. "TenTen used to practice karate, too, and she was really good."

"Ah, really?" Neji's father said, raising his eyebrows and smirking. He looked at TenTen again. "But you don't practice anymore?"

TenTen shook her head. "No, I stopped when I was thirteen, because I thought karate wasn't an appropriate sport for a girl."

TenTen smiled, thinking she gave a good answer. But the concerned looks her in-laws gave her made her smile vanish. She heard Neji sighing.

"Every Hyuuga woman practices karate," Neji's mother said. "It is a tradition. That was actually how I met Neji's father; we both won first place in an important tournament when we were teenagers. Even Hinata practices karate, though she isn't great. So I don't agree with your opinion, darling; karate is a wonderful sport, and everyone can practice it."

Her tone seemed to say, "You don't know what you're messing with, so shut up," and TenTen wanted to disappear in that same moment. Luckily, she quickly found a way to get out of that embarrassing situation.

"I said I thought it wasn't an appropriate sport for a girl," she said. "But I realized later that I was wrong. Sexes don't really matter. And I still love karate, but I started to get into swimming and it became my passion."

That seemed to shut Neji's mother up, and TenTen smiled.

"So you swim now," Neji's father said and TenTen nodded. "You seem to like sports very much."

"I do," TenTen replied, and she was glad they finally got into a conversation she enjoyed. "When I'm running, swimming, kicking or whatever, I feel like a totally different person. I feel completely free. And I don't care people may think I'm a tomboy because I like to do exercise, which is totally not true." At this, Neji's mother smiled, pleased. "I just like to do what I like to do, and I like to be who I am, and no one can change that."

Neji's father smirked and nodded. "You are very wise, TenTen," he said, calling her by her name for the first time in the night. "Now I know why Neji picked you as his first girlfriend."

TenTen beamed and turned to Neji, who had a microscopic blush on his pale cheeks. She couldn't believe it; she was Neji's first girlfriend ever?

She couldn't be happier.

"Thank you, Mr. Hyuuga!" TenTen said, and smiled widely at Neji, who only smirked back.

America was boring. Especially New York. Or so Hinata thought. Probably if her friends would have been there with her she would have had a good time walking though the colorful streets and going to those cool places she heard her soon-to-be step-mother talking about. But they weren't. She only had her Dad and that shallow fiancé of his, Ashley; but they were too busy having a romantic dinner somewhere away from her. So, practically, Hinata was completely and miserably alone.

The only good thing was that she had a large, luxurious room for her own in one of the best hotels in the city. But after more than ten hours locked in there, things started to get boring. She already jumped on the queen-size bed until she was out of breath; she already saw what channels the TV had; she already ate a delicious desert… There was nothing else to do, and she wasn't allowed to go out by herself (not that she would've dare; new places she didn't know scared her).

Hinata was BORED.

She sat on the couch near the window and stared at the lights of the city. Tears clouded her sight when she started thinking about her friends… and about Naruto.

Aww, Naruto, she groaned mentally, lying down and putting a hand on her forehead as she started sobbing. She missed him; she missed him so much. She wanted to put her arms around him and smell that familiar cologne of his mixed with the faint smell of ramen. But she couldn't, because she was here, in New York City, and he was there, in Japan…

The high-pitched sound of the telephone ringing made Hinata jump and fall off the couch. She groaned an, "Ouch, that hurt," but quickly stood up and picked up the phone.

"Hello?" she said, in English, of course, because now she was in America.

"Umm… Hello?" A familiar voice with a strong Japanese accent said in English, and Hinata's gray eyes widened. "Is Hinata home?"

"Na-Naruto!" Hinata exclaimed, smiling.

"Hinata?" he asked.

"Who else?" Hinata asked, speaking in their mother tongue again.

"Ah, is it really you?" Naruto asked. "Wow, you have a really good American accent." He laughed.

Hinata laughed, too. "Yeah, thank you, and, no offense, but yours suck."

"I know." She could hear the grin on his face. "How are you, Hinata?"

"Not good," she murmured as the smile disappeared from her face. She sat on the edge of the bed. "I kind of miss Japan."

"And that's the only thing you miss?"

Hinata smiled again. "No. There's something else I miss even more. Someone else, actually."

"Oh, and who is it? Sakura? Ino? TenTen? Maybe Temari…?"

Hinata giggled. "Yeah, I miss them, too. But I miss you even more, Naruto."

"Are you serious? Why would you miss me, Hinata? I'm not worth it!" he joked and they both laughed. "Okay, to be honest, I… miss you, too, Hinata. A lot."

Hinata's eyes started to water and her lower lip trembled. She quickly laughed and blinked the tears away. "You're going to make me cry!" she said.

"You already made me cry." Naruto sighed deeply. "You don't imagine how painful it is to see my friends with their girlfriends while I don't have you here with me."

"At least you're not dealing with a stupid American woman who's about to be your new Mom," Hinata murmured, frowning at the memory of Ashley and the annoying smell of her cheap perfume.

"Is she really that bad?" Naruto asked.

"You've no idea. She just wants to marry my Father because he's rich. She doesn't even love him. Actually, I don't think she loves anyone but herself."

"Sounds bad," Naruto admitted. "But you've to pretend you like her, right? Even if you don't. Because either way your Dad's isn't going to let you come back to Japan."

"I know," Hinata sighed. "I really kind of hate him right now. He doesn't leave me another choice. I tried to tell him what I really think about his fiancé once, but I've told you how he is. He just started yelling at me and saying I was being a selfish little brat and blah, blah, blah."

"Damn, he seems more high-tempered than Sakura! I don't know what I'm going to do when I ask for his permission to marry you. He's gonna kill me!" Naruto laughed, but Hinata didn't laugh with him. She froze, with her eyes wide and her mouth agape. When she didn't reply for a while, Naruto asked worriedly, "Hinata? Are you still there?"

"Uh… yeah." She bit her lips nervously for an instant. "But what you said… would you marry me, Naruto?"

"Are you proposing to me? But I am the one who has to propose to you!"

She couldn't help but smile. "No… no, Naruto, I'm not asking you to marry me. I'm just asking... would you really marry me? Is that what you want?"

Naruto paused for a moment, in which Hinata started to panic. What if she said something wrong? What if he got the wrong message? What if she hurt his feelings? Or what if her questions made him think harder and decide that he actually would never marry her?

But then Naruto laughed and finally said, "Of course I wanna marry you! I mean, I know we've been together for only, like, four months or so, but… wow, it's embarrassing to say this, but… I think I love you."

He said the last part so lowly that Hinata barely heard him, but she did. A wide smile appeared on her face and her cheeks turned very pink. And when she replied, "I think I love you too, Naruto," she suddenly forgot about everything but the person laughing through the phone she held tightly against her ear.

"A toast to TenTen!" Ino exclaimed happily, raising her glass to the brunette in front of her. Sakura and Temari, both at either sides of her, raised their glasses too and cheered.

"Thanks, girls," TenTen giggled, raising her glass. "But, hey, Ino, you deserve some credit, too. Without you and your awesome skills at choosing cute dresses, Neji's family would've never approved me."

"A toast to Ino, too, then!" Sakura exclaimed, and the four girls sitting on the carpet of TenTen's room raised their glasses once again.

As they drank the apple juice in their glasses, Sakura started to think about Hinata. How I wish you were here, toasting with us, she thought nostalgically. It had been a month since her friend had left to America, and things were definitely not the same.

Sakura felt so incomplete lately. First, Hinata left, and then, she broke up with Sasuke; what was next? It was as if her world was slowly starting to shatter in thousand pieces…

"Sakura," Ino called her, waving a hand in front of the pink haired girl´s face. "Earth to Sakura! Are you still there?"

Sakura blinked and looked at her, startled. "I'm sorry… I was deep in thought," she said.

"Yeah, I could see that." Ino smiled sadly. "Thinking about him, huh?"

Sakura shrugged. "Yeah. But also about Hinata. I miss her… and, yeah, I miss him too, I guess."

Ino sighed and took a sip of her juice. "Yeah, I miss my ex-boyfriend too. It's funny, you know? I just realized that I became single just a day before you."

Sakura laughed. "Hey, it's true… Anyways, let's not think about men tonight, okay?" She turned to the other side, expecting to see Temari and TenTen sitting there, but they weren't. "Hey, where are the others?"

"Wow, you really spaced out," Ino laughed. "They went downstairs to bring some more apple juice."

Sakura started to say something else, when they suddenly heard a tapping noise coming from the window. The two girls stood up, alarmed, and carefully started walking towards the window. Is it a burglar?, Sakura wondered as her heart beat furiously against her chest. Ino reached for the window's lock, but before her fingertips even touched it, the window's doors flew open.

"Boo!" a dark-haired girl exclaimed, jumping inside the room, making Sakura and Ino scream and fall to the floor.

"Dammit, Kim, you scared the shit out of us!" Sakura yelled, taking deep breaths, when she recognized the girl – well, fairy – standing in front of her.

"I swear I almost got a heart attack," Ino said, as she and Sakura started to stand up. "Why the fuck did you do that?"

Kim was smirking, with her hands on her hips. She shrugged and said, "I don't know. Just for fun, I guess." When the girls glared at her, she rolled her eyes and added: "What? You humans can't take an innocent prank?"

"What's going on?" Temari asked, alarmed, as she ran into the room, with TenTen behind her. They stopped when they saw Kim. "And what are you doing here?"

"Don't tell me you forgot," Kim replied, frowning. "Didn't you look at the sky tonight?"

Ino looked at the window and saw the moon; it was silver, bright, beautiful… and of the shape of a perfect circle. "It's full moon," she whispered, and when the other girls heard her, they followed her gaze.

"It's true," TenTen said and she turned to Kim, frowning. "But you were supposed to come in the morning, weren't you? Besides, you didn't have to enter my house like that."

Kim smiled wider. "C'mon, it was funny! Besides, you should've seen these girls' faces." She pointed Sakura and Ino and laughed. "They were priceless! But anyways, I only came earlier because… well, I don't know, I had nothing else to do, I guess." She shrugged.

Ino sighed and ran a hand through her long hair. "Whatever. Whose turn is now?"

"I remember I said Sakura." Kim smiled at said girl.

Sakura sighed. It had been less than a month since she broke up with the boy she loved the most and she really didn't feel like being a ghost for a day while a fairy gets into her body and explored the human world.

She was having troubles, and all of them had to do with her ex-boyfriend. There was nothing between them anymore… nothing, not even friendship. She had acted as if she couldn't see him ever since they broke up, but the pained look he gave her every time she ignored his existence was a torture for her. Sakura just wanted to hug him and tell him that she loved him and that she never wanted to leave his side. But she couldn't. Her stupid ego kept saying things like, "He hurt you and he doesn't deserve your love," and she knew it was right, so she listened to it.

So if Kim screwed something up in her already screwed up life, Sakura wouldn't be able to bare it anymore.

"Hey, Kim?" Sakura said to the fairy, smiling kindly. "Why don't you take TenTen's body first?"

Kim gave her a skeptical look. "Why?"

"Well… because…" Damn, she didn't have an excuse. "Ugh, I don't know, Kim! Just… Please, I'm begging you. Let me be the last one."

Kim looked like she was going to say no. Sakura panicked for a second. But then TenTen stepped forward and said, "C'mon, Kim. Let her be the last one. I really want to, you know, pay you, as soon as possible."

The fairy started considering it then, and after a few moments, she finally said, "Alright, whatever. But next month you won't have any more chances, Sakura."

Sakura smiled with relief and nodded. She gave TenTen a grateful look, who only smiled back.

"You better not ruin my life while you're in my body, Kim," TenTen warned the blue-eyed fairy.

"I'll try," Kim said as she took a step back to be exactly two meters away from TenTen.

Sakura and the two blondes of the group watched as Kim closed her eyes and put her palms together. The fairy's form started to disappear at the same time as they heard a gasp. Then they heard TenTen's voice saying, "So cool!"

"Alright," TenTen – now Kim – said, clapping her hands. "Last time, when I borrowed Ino's body, we had some problems, remember?" The girls only rolled their eyes at the memory of skipping school to find out where the hell Kim had gone. "So it's more convenient if I tell you what my plans are," Kim continued. "TenTen is going to skip school for a day. Tell people she's sick or something. I'll finish exploring the city tomorrow. But tonight I'm going to explore something that a fairy friend of mine told me about called Internet or something."

"Internet?" Temari repeated, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah, my friend said it was part of the human world, too. And since I'm going to be nice and let TenTen look like a good girl that doesn't go out in the night in front of her parents, I'll stay up all night locked in the room."

"Stay up?" TenTen's voice was heard. Sakura noticed it seemed to come from her left. She had a kind-of-ghost beside her, but it wasn't creepy. Cool.

"You think I'd waste my time sleeping?" Kim laughed. "Hell no! Time is gold, kiddo. And the deal with you guys is getting over; I actually have just two days left to know how being human feels like, and I'm not gonna waste them."

TenTen sighed. "Whatever," she mumbled. "But try to be discreet, because I'm not allowed to let the computer on all night."

"Compu-what?" Kim said, making a face.

"She doesn't know what a computer is," Ino murmured, shaking her head.

"I have the feeling that this is going to be a long night," Sakura said as she ran a hand though her hair.

"Hey, Kim?" Sakura said lowly to the fairy in her friend's body.

It was past midnight. She had just finished teaching Kim how to use the computer and the Internet, and the room would've been completly dark if it wasn't because of the computer and the moonlight coming from the window They were lying on the sleeping bags they had spread on the floor of TenTen's room, with the computer in front of them, as Temari, Ino and TenTen's invisible spirit slept on TenTen's queen size bed.

Kim was currently very amused as she read in Wikipedia false articles, as she had called them, about her kind: the fairies. She didn't even look away from the screen of TenTen's laptop as she replied an, "Hm?"

"I need to ask you something," Sakura said. Her heart started beating faster, and the beats were so loud that she thought even Kim heard them.

"Uh-huh," Kim mumbled again, as she clicked on the word "ethereal" and started to read a new article.

"It's something really important," Sakura said, kind of louder this time, and getting annoyed.

Kim got her pay-attention-to-me! message and looked at her. "What?" she spat back.

"Okay, um…" She wet her lips and looked away. "I was wondering… Uh, first of all, I have some news to give you. I… well… Sasuke and I broke up."

"Really?" Kim asked, but she didn't sound interested at all.

"Yeah. I… I kind of started to get too clingy because I was afraid of losing him, but… he sort of got tired of me and, well, dumped me." Despite the lump in her throat as she said this, Sakura smiled, as if her pathetic-ness was funny.

"So?" Kim said, turning to the screen again. "What's your real point?"

"Well, I was wondering…" Sakura paused. Was she really going to say this? It was a weird idea, she knew that. But the thought had been trapped in her head for too long, and it was getting her crazy. She had to try, at least. "Would it be possible for me to make him fall in love with me again?" she finally said. "With a love spell, I mean."

Kim looked at her, and Sakura was surprised to see that the fairy didn't seem to be expecting that question. "Are you serious?" she asked, and Sakura nodded. "Well… I think it is possible."

Sakura's green eyes widened. She felt something tickle inside of her stomach, the same kind of feeling she felt when Sasuke asked her to be his girlfriend. There is hope, was the only thought in her mind, and, for the first time since she broke up with Sasuke, she felt really happy.

"But I have to warn you something," Kim suddenly said, and her tone made Sakura's mood change. She turned to her and noticed that the frown in her – TenTen's – forehead wasn't an angry frown. It was a… worried frown. But… why would Kim worry?

"Sakura," Kim said, staring into her eyes. "A fairy spell is destined to bring happiness to humans, even if they have to pay us something back. The love spells are the most difficult ones. Do you have any idea why?"

Sakura shook her head as she wondered, What the hell is her point?

"It's because they don't exactly make people fall in love," Kim said. "Not even magic can play with humans' feelings."

"Then how do they work?" Sakura asked, now confused.

Kim smiled. "What our love spells do is making the person unable to take you out of his mind for an entire day. If the person feels absolutely nothing for you, he'll think it was just a weird day and forget about it, and then the spell will result as a failure and the fairy will have to explain you what I'm explaining you now. But if the person already feels something for you, the spell will kind of open his eyes and make him realize…"

"… that he loves me," Sakura finished for her and Kim nodded.

It all made sense now. They hadn't forced the boys to fall in love with them; it wasn't against their will. They could've forgotten about them; everything could've stayed the same. But the boys did feel something for them. They liked them, probably as much as the girls liked them back. The boys just needed to realize what their real feelings were.

Sakura covered her mouth with a hand to quiet her sobs. If only she would've known this before, Sasuke and she wouldn't have broken up!

"Why are you crying?" Kim asked, making a face.

Sakura shook her head. It wasn't time to cry; she needed to know more. She sniffed and said, "So if I make the spell and Sasuke thinks about me during an entire day, he won't fall in love with me again, because he now hates me, right?"

"Uh… if you put it like that… well, yes," Kim replied as she clicked into an article about Lilith. "I don't think it would make him love you. He'll actually get annoyed for thinking so much about you, and probably hate you even more."

Sakura sighed and turned over to lie on her back. She stared at ceiling and murmured to herself, "So there's no hope for me. Sasuke won't love me again. It's… it's really over."

Ino heard the whole conversation.

She couldn't sleep at night. Ever since she broke up with Sai, she had slept for only five or four hours per day. But Temari was snoring lowly beside her, and she was sure TenTen's invisibility didn't keep her from sleeping. She didn't want to wake her friends up, so she decided to just lie on the bed, listening to Kim's constant comments about how false Wikipedia's articles were, until she could finally sleep.

But then Sakura asked Kim a question Ino couldn't ignore. She heard Kim's answer, realizing the fairy sounded as honest as ever, and her heart skipped a few beats.

To be honest, she also had Sakura's idea. She also hoped she could make the spell again to have her Sai back. But now that she knew how the spell worked, Ino knew that was impossible. Even if Sai couldn't get her out of his mind for an entire day, it wouldn't make a big difference, because she knew how much Sai loved his art. A day of missing his ex-girlfriend would not make him throw away the happiness he must've been having in France, with his mother and his art school.

A tear ran down her cheek as Sakura murmured the same words Ino was thinking.

It's over. It's really over.

Notes: Longest chapter evaaaaaaa! D: Anyways... One word: Revieeeeeeeeeew *w*