A/N: Flashbacks in italics. I don't own Naruto. Reviews are appreciated~

Six years had passed, and not much had changed. The group of five (or occasionally, six) was as close as ever and would often gather at Shikamaru's place and play a couple games of shogi; play video games at Naruto's or do just about whatever they felt like. They had become genins and having been assigned into the same group, Kiba and Hinata had a lot of time to deepen their friendship as well as establish a closer friendship with Shino, who had relaxed a bit since their years at the academy.

Team 8, which consisted of Hinata, Kiba and Shino, was often kept professional by the last one. Every time that they had to do something without their teacher Kurenai, Hinata and Kiba would figure out something to do that often had nothing to do with ninja training. Whenever the two of them would be about to start a water fight or a speed race in the woods Shino would clear his throat and simply ask, "How does this help us become chuunin?" That alone was enough to get Hinata and Kiba back on track.

Throughout the years Kiba had learnt a few things about Hinata. Firstly: she had a high pride that was not to be wounded. Secondly: she was most likely never going to be a hundred percent honest with him. Lastly: she was his soul mate - as a friend.

The blue-haired girl jumped on Kiba's back and ruffled his hair. "Yo, what's up?"

Kiba tried to put his hair back in order (what order?) and looked at Hinata with faked annoyance. The girl laughed and smacked his back which was enough to break him down from his tough act. "About to go practice with my mom; she promised to teach me a new jutsu. You?"

Hinata grinned and pointed in the direction that Kiba was sure led to the training field. "About to go practice with Kurenai-sensei, she said she'd teach me some basics of genjutsu and help me with my gentle fist."

Kiba nodded and congratulated Hinata, happy to see that she, too, was going to learn something new. And not something basic either – genjutsu! He knew that he could never use it, so he was fascinated to know that soon his best friend could.

"Tell me what it's like, okay? I need to hurry now though, see you later!"

"Have fun and master that jutsu, Kiba-kun!" Hinata shouted after the brown-haired boy that ran off, waving at him even though she knew he wouldn't see. It was a habit, she waved a lot in general.

Kiba had been excited for their training sessions, but he wasn't aware that Hinata's training sessions didn't only include Kurenai, but also Sakura and Ino – the former was talented in genjutsu meanwhile the latter one was curious and wanted to be with her best friend. While this didn't sound threatening, it turned out that in a sense, it was.

Occasionally Kiba would take Akamaru out later than he should've. When he became a genin and was allowed a later curfew from his mother, he took the late walks more and more often and began to notice that Wednesdays and Fridays were the nights when he was most likely to come across Hinata, who would just wander around on the stone paving at the edge of the village, her arms stretched to her sides to give her balance.

On those evenings Kiba would usually observe her for a while, as if to see if she had company (which she never did) before he approached her. After the first few times she stopped being startled and stopped walking around, but instead she would usually sit on a branch of a maple tree and jump down when she thought that Kiba was close enough.

One of those Friday nights Kiba saw Hinata stand at the very tip of the usual maple tree. Akamaru let out a bark, which startled the girl for the first time in a while, and she rushed down.

"Yo," Kiba greeted her and began walking to the field near the area they met at. The field was always quiet and empty, which had allowed the two to meet in thrilling secrecy for the few years that they had done that. Next to it was a shallow river, in which Hinata would sometimes let her feet soak as she walked on the stony bottom.

Kiba preferred staying dry, which practically meant that he was never going to stay that way – every time Hinata walked in the river, she'd make sure to do a few sudden jumps that would cause the water to splash onto Kiba's clothes.

"Are you excited about tomorrow's mission?" Hinata asked cheerfully as she let the river rocks massage her feet. It hurt a bit, but in a way she liked the feeling of the edges rubbing into her skin. Kiba threw a stick for Akamaru to fetch and excitedly let out a positive answer.

"Totally! I've never been to Kumogakure before, so it'll be exciting to see and smell all the new things," the brunette explained in excitement. Hinata laughed lightly and jumped out of the river.

"I'm actually kind of nervous," she mumbled as she sat down next to Kiba's feet, which prompted him to sit down as well. "I don't deal too well with thunderstorms, and there's bound to be a lot of lightnings in there, right?"

Kiba nodded thoughtfully and made a mental note of observing Hinata during the mission, just in case she'd need some support. As he thought about the building she lived in, he couldn't help but raise an eyebrow. "Don't you live in a really thin-walled house though? How do you manage?"

"I've found comfort in old photos," Hinata smiled and let her back lower to the grassy ground. Akamaru was walking on the other side of the river, clearly interested in what was going on in the bushes of the small forest nearby. Kiba stretched his back a bit before grinning at Hinata.

"But this time you'll have the whole Team 8, so everything's gonna be fine," he said reassuringly and had just made Hinata sigh in relief when he sneaked his hand to her side and began to tickle her mercilessly. Hinata yelped and stifled a scream before she returned the attack, tackling Kiba to the ground and tickling his sides. The boy laughed and seemed to like the tickling, which frustrated Hinata – what was the point of a tickling war when it wasn't like torture?

"You could at least pretend that you don't like it!"

Within a few months Kiba began noticing changes in Hinata which only got stronger as months went by. Slowly but visibly she became more feminine: her actions were more graceful, her language had toned down a lot just as did her voice, and suddenly she wasn't up for everything that the boys were.

What was, however, the most striking change was that every time one of the boys would invite her somewhere, she'd decline – she already had plans with Sakura and Ino.

Kiba was disappointed, but so was everyone else. It didn't feel the same without Hinata, somehow she had managed to be a big part of the glue that kept the boys together. It wasn't like they'd drift apart just because she left them, but it was different.

Shikamaru lost his best shogi opponent, Choji lost his favorite person to share his food with and Kiba lost his best friend. Even though they still occasionally saw each other during practice and missions, it wasn't the same.

Kiba felt as if Hinata had shut a part of herself inside, and that was exactly the part of her that he missed. Instead of playing around with Kiba, Hinata would now quietly hum something as she helped Shino to put up the tent – what was up with that? And what about her cutesy-cute jacket? Where was the dark purple shirt and the black hoodie she'd sported for the past forever?

Kiba was well aware that people matured and changed throughout the years, but to him it all just seemed like a load of crap.

A Friday night, and Hinata wasn't anywhere near the maple tree. Kiba stayed near it for a while, smelling the air in search for the fresh scent of the Hyuga, but was disappointed to not find a trace of it. Akamaru tilted his head and barked. Kiba sighed and rubbed Akamaru behind his ear.

"I guess she won't come," he huffed and walked to the field alone with his partner. The dog was visibly upset, but so was his owner. It wasn't the first time that Hinata hadn't come, but he still kept on hoping that one night she would be there, waiting for him with a wide smile all over her face.

When the duo reached the riverbank, they began a race to the end of the field. Naturally, Akamaru won, but Kiba cared more about the motion anyway. During the fourteen years of his life he had learned that exercise of any kind was the best way for him to clear his mind, and if it also provided Akamaru with some kind of an activity, it was only better. Besides, the dog liked to win, so Kiba gladly gave it the pleasure of doing so.

"Another one?" Kiba suggested to his partner, who had already shot far ahead of him. The brunette shook his head in amusement as he ran after the dog. When they came back to the place they had originally began the race from, Kiba could hear voices coming from the forest. He walked closer and climbed up a tree, quietly jumping from branch to branch until he found the source of the voices. Akamaru followed suit and whined when he sensed the tension building up in Kiba's body.

What Kiba's dark eyes saw was a sight of Ino, Sakura and Hinata, but he wasn't sure of what they were exactly doing. For all he knew it could've been a training session, since Hinata was still practicing genjutsu. However, his thought of a training was quickly proven wrong as the girls sat down, spread out a blanket and took some kind of pastries out of their small bags. He raised an eyebrow, unimpressed.

"You guys won't believe what happened today!" Ino exclaimed excitedly whilst handing her friends two pieces of fresh-baked cake. The two other girls showed visible curiosity, and therefore the blonde continued with a wide smile on her face, "Shikamaru confessed to me!"

Kiba's face fell as he tried to imagine his friend with the blonde, but was unable to quite see the picture. It was known that he had been interested in Ino for a while, but Kiba had never imagined that the guy would confess. Didn't that usually mean that he wanted to date her?

"Congratulations, Ino-chan!" Hinata and Sakura said in unison and tapped their friend on her back. She had a rosy color on her cheeks as she accepted the words.

Kiba wrinkled his nose. He gave it three months.

He left the area bitterly, with an upset Akamaru walking beside him. He had a hard time understanding why and how Hinata had exchanged them and their traditional nights out into two gossip-y girls and cake.

Besides, the smell of fresh pastries had made him awfully hungry.

"Kiba-kun, what are you doing?" Hinata inquired with that now polished language and voice of hers, crouching next to the pouting boy. He glared at her, shrugging.

"Like you care, Hyuga," he hissed and threw a flat stone into the river. Hinata sat down and looked at the flowing river, occasionally stealing a glance at Kiba. It wasn't like it was easy for her, either, making female friends for the first time in her life. She was so scared to let go of her friends yet she felt the thirst to talk about girly stuff and do girly stuff. She wanted to talk about boys, braid her hair and make flower arrangements. Yet, she also wanted to stuff her mouth with potato chips, aggressively beat Naruto in a video game and have stupid arguments with Kiba that always ended in laughter.

Simply put, she was confused.

"I know that I've become distant, but it's still me, Kiba-kun," she said softly, stroking Kiba's covered arm. He pulled his arm away and stubbornly hugged his knees.

"It sure doesn't feel like it. For the six years that I've known you, this has never been you," he muttered and closed his eyes. Anger was slowly stopping its boiling inside of him and his heartbeat was about to return to normal. Hinata, however, was just about to get angry.

"What—what do you know? Do you know me? You know what I've shown you, but have you ever seen me?" she snapped and immediately stood up, her hands clenched in fists. "Hell, Inuzuka, what do you know?!"

As she stormed off, Kiba couldn't help a small smile creeping its way to his lips.

'That's more like her.'

Hinata, on the other hand, broke in tears as soon as she reached an area where she knew she was alone. She was so confused, so confused with herself. Who was she? What was she like? Who was she to demand Kiba whether he knew her when even she didn't know her? She took in a deep breath before walking closer to a river she could hear flowing nearby; with the help of byakugan it was easy to locate it.

Arriving at the river, she found a still area where it expanded into a pond. She took a good look at her slightly blurry reflection and scrutinized it.

Her eyes screamed that she was a Hyuga.

A lot of her other features claimed that she was a female.

But besides those trivial things, who was she? She knew that her appearance wouldn't help her solve the question, but it didn't stop her from wondering. Who on earth was this Hyuga Hinata? Was she feminine or was she more of a tomboy? Had she just grown out of her phase of hanging out with her male friends, or was she suffocating her real self to accustom herself into the general Hyuga model?

She wasn't able to deny that it felt good to actually exist to her family for once.

Two weeks later, Hinata hadn't exchanged a single word with Kiba - the rest of the previous mission had been completed in utter silence between the two. Akamaru had almost come to her several times, but Kiba had usually stopped him while still forcing a small smile on his lips that he then aimed at the girl. Hinata was unable to return the smile.

With time, Kiba became more and more aware of how far the Hyuga was drifting from him; how far she already had. It made him worry and it disappointed him, but in the end all he could do was to accept it. He, too, had his pride, and it was difficult to come over it.

"Have you ended your friendship with Hinata, or how come you've become so calm? Is everything okay?" his mother asked during dinner one day. He moved a meatball on his plate with wooden chopsticks before sighing heavily.

"She's changed. I haven't properly spoken to her in…" he stopped so that he could count, "four months, I'd say." He didn't count the clash during the latest mission, as it could hardly be called talking.

As sad as his mother was that her son was feeling so down, before she could stop it, she slipped the sentence that would resurface the anger from six years before. "Didn't I say that you shouldn't hang out with her? She's got nothing but a negative influence on you."

Kiba let his chopsticks fall onto his plate and stood up with his palms slamming hard on the table.

"You just don't get it, do you? She was the best thing in my life, and now it's as if she doesn't exist. So stop saying that she has a negative influence on me when she's so much more than that!"

Watching her son storm out of the house just like six years earlier, Tsume tightened her jaw. "Should've kept that one in, huh, Kuromaru?"

Kiba found a comfortable seat on a roof in the center of Konoha, from where he watched people walk in the streets, with Akamaru on his back. Somewhere in the distance he was able to recognize Hinata walking with Ino and Sakura, and meanwhile his initial reaction was to turn his attention elsewhere, he couldn't help but stare – and listen.

"It'll be okay, Hinata-chan. Maybe you should talk to him?" Ino said with a soft voice, patting her friend's back. Hinata sighed and slumped her shoulders, muttering a quiet "who knows."

"Look, if you won't, we will," Sakura said, full of determination. A small light in Hinata's eyes dimmed down before it was able to even light up properly. She was so, so unsure. She missed her best friend, yet she found herself helpless and incapable of changing things, changing herself.

"I'll… see about it," she muttered before giving a reassuring smile to her friends. Kiba rested his chin against his right hand as he observed, and he could swear that his sensitive nose smelled a noticeable amount of stress hidden under vanilla-scented perfume.

Damn, he even missed the perfume he used to tease her about.