...
...
...
HI MY LOVELY READERS! 8D
So I know I've been neglecting Chouji, and I hope this interlude kind of makes up for it.
I've always had difficulty writing Chouji... I can never get his character down right. So if he seems OOC, I apologize.
By the way: OMG. I NEED A MOMENT. THIS INTERLUDE IS NOT IN TEMARI'S POV. O.O
I think this fanfic is becoming more epic than I planned it to be. Sigh.
Just curiously (and maybe because I like making my fans happeh :3),
WHICH NARUTO CHARACTER WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE NEXT?
...
...
...
My Boss The Genius
...
...
...
INTERLUDE SEVEN
...
...
...
Chouji waved as his parents exited through the automatic sliding doors of the hospital, heading for their car. They had been delayed at the airport coming back from the Carribean on their anniversary, and Ino had scolded them viciously when she saw them enter her hospital room. Her apparent check-in to the hospital was much less important than their special anniversary trip that they had spontaneously decided to take. Ino could be so weird sometimes, he mused.
He turned back, taking the elevator back to his friend's room, finding her entertaining herself by folding paper cranes. It was one of her side hobbies, trying to make one thousand paper cranes. She never had time to fold them though, first because of her tenacious school schedule, then her time-consuming FBI occupation, and finally her explosion into flower arrangement and floral wedding design.
"How many are you up to now?" he asked her, forgoing his potato chips to take a seat by her bedside. She shrugged, ever the perfectionist as she checked and re-checked the corners to make sure it was folded perfectly in half.
"Six hundred and seventy-three, including this one," she muttered. Her fingers were quick and precise as she finished it off, smiling brightly at the red paper crane. It was placed in the box resting on her legs, amongst other brightly-coloured paper cranes.
"You're close," he commented. She shrugged again, reaching for a purple piece of origami paper.
"Not close enough."
The two of them sat in silence, Chouji contenting himself with watching her fold the paper four ways, running her nail along the creases to make the lines sharper. He wondered what she would wish for once she finished a thousand cranes.
"Are you hungry?" she asked him, and he shook his head. Ino fondly rolled her eyes. "Chouji, if you're hungry you should go eat something. I know I tell you not to eat too much all the time but—"
"I'm fine, really," he said, cutting her off. "I just want to sit here with you." I just want to make sure you're really alive.
Her eyes softened, and he knew that she understood his underlying meaning. She reached out, ruffling his hair.
"Ino!" he exclaimed, jerking away. The florist laughed, grinning cheekily at him, but stopped messing up his hair and went back to her crane folding. She hummed a tune as she did, bobbing her head to the beat. She was trying to distract herself, Chouji thought, from worrying about Shikamaru. He had called already and reassured them he was alive and he was home, but the two of them knew that Shikamaru was probably injured. Run-in's with Hidan were too difficult to survive without a few lacerations. And Ino was probably killing herself imagining what kind of injuries he was sporting, because the genius was stupid enough to not mention his injuries.
"He's fine, Ino," Chouji found himself saying, trying to reassure her. Her hands shook a bit as she continued folding, her face pinching up.
"But how fine?" she asked. "Is it just little scratches and cuts? Did he get a black eye? Or shot in the shoulder like me? You know him, Chouji! You know that he's not going to take care of himself because he's a stupid idiot who would avoid hospitals if nothing else but to stop Sakura from telling me and me yelling at him and lecturing him and nagging him—"
"Ino," he cut in gently, seeing her starting to hyperventilate. "If it was really serious, he would have come in."
"I know," Ino sniffled, her eyes tearing up. "I know, Chouji. But I'm so scared. What if it's worse the next time he fights Hidan? I don't want him to have to come to a hospital, Cho-kun. I can't… after what happened to you and Asuma I can't…" She broke off into gasps, covering her mouth and trying to stop the inevitable tears. He knew how severely his brush with death terrified her, not only because she had reverted to her childhood pet name for him, but also because of the weeks after his stabilization. The coddling almost made him lose his mind.
Ino cried silently, the gasps stopping. There were just tears, silent trails that she could not stop. Most people would imagine that Ino was loud when she cried. Her face would be red, and she would yell and scream and take great, big, heaving gasps. But most people never got to see Ino cry because she was naturally such an optimistic person. Those who did, though, knew different. She was loud when she was happy, yet quiet when she was sad. Chouji thought it was fitting. It all balanced out.
She shivered as she cried, and Chouji felt a heavy weight in his chest as he watched the tears disappear under her hands. When people cried, others usually tried to comfort them, tried to tell them everything was okay, everything would be fine. And maybe that was okay for other people, but for Ino it was different.
Chouji opened his arms, and his blonde-haired childhood friend fell into them, burying her face in his neck, wrapping herself in his warmth and kindness. He simply sat with her, waiting long minutes for the shuddering of her body to lessen, waited until it went away completely. He knew she stopped crying at one point, but she did not back away. That was fine with him, because this was how it always was. This was how it was supposed to be. He would not pretend to know the exact specifics of her complicated, often conflicted friendship-relationship with Shikamaru. He was just confused as anyone else was about it. But he knew that Ino was his dearly loved, kind-of-scary older sister, and he was her always-there teddy bear.