Chapter 14: I Can Dream About You

Yoshino sighed, looking around at the growing stacks of building materials that were destined to go back to Konoha. She shook her head – just like going on vacation – they were going to be bringing more stuff home than they took out with them. Still, she supposed this was good for trade overall. Konoha had a surplus of labor at the moment, there was an abundance of construction going on here in Wave and also an abundance of raw materials.

She looked at the stacks of lumber. To her, wood was wood. But the properties of the varieties of hardwoods that grew here in the Land of Waves seemed to be of particular interest to their clients. They'd be a veritable caravan on the way back to Konoha with all this stuff in tow. Something to do with the density of the fibers made it particularly weather resistent so the Leaf carpenters were anxious to work with it back home.

She sprang up into the trees to better overlook the cordoned off area. It might be good for business and trade but the ever expanding field was becoming more and more difficult to watch. Yoshino wasn't the only chuunin who thought so and they'd brought it up to the team leader and he had reluctantly agreed that they needed to post a second guard.

Mugato Uchiha, everything about the guy was so…surly. Sure, she understood and respected chain-of-command, it was important to a well-ordered unit, but Mugato treated the chuunin like mere underlings. It was distasteful to say the least. He was the complete opposite of her last team leader, Asako, Yoshino thought sadly to herself.

Ugh, five days into a two week mission and the hours were dragging by. It was a lovely afternoon and she wanted to slip off into blissful daydreams about Shikaku but that wouldn't be fair to her clients. Daydreaming in your off-hours only, Sakamoto, she told herself.

It was easy to want to retreat into daydreams. This mission was slipping easily into the drudge-work category. There was no violence or crime to speak of, no need for any battle tactics. Any minor altercations that did come up were handled either by the construction team leaders if it involved their personnel only or by Wave's local police force if local citizenry were involved. She'd heard of a few brawls, some stolen tools from various worksites, but not much else.

The city had the potential to shape up into a nice resort, unfortunately for now there was so much construction debris that it was really cluttering up the area. Plus it had rained recently and much of the cleared areas were now muddy, soggy messes. When you could find a nice spot on one of the beaches to relax in off-hours, the construction noise in the background made it not the most restful places to be. "Bustling" was certainly a good way to describe the city, but it was so far removed from what she was longing for right now.

Trying not to slip into full-blown daydream mode, she let her mind drift back to the first time she'd spent with Shikaku at the deer meadow. It was so quiet, so peaceful, the two of them had been completely alone, almost as if they were the only two people on the planet. No sounds of construction there, only birdsong and the chorus of crickets and cicadas. His arms around her had been so warm and strong, his voice deep and thrilling…

Speaking of voices she heard a couple of them now. Turning her focus to the sound she recognized one of the carpenters at the gate, not arguing with a delivery person so much as questioning him.

"You're sure? I didn't know anything about this load but okay, bring it on in. I can't imagine what our freight charges are going to be getting back home, but that's somebody else's problem."

The man looked up at her and waved, "Oi, Yoshino, I came back to pick up some stuff and found out there's more cargo to add to the lot. I'm letting him in, okay?"

She nodded back, "Thanks for letting me know."

After the guy had dropped of the additional lumber, Yoshino saw another figure approach.

Oh, crap.

Be careful what you wish for.

The chuunin had asked to work in pairs up since the storage lot was now so large and the stacks of lumber made observation difficult. So Mugato had said he'd set up a schedule starting today.

Crap.

One of the more unpleasant surprises on the outbound trip had been that the team wouldn't consist of only the four chuunin and two jounin who had met in the assignment room five days ago. Tsuyoshi Uchiha, Mugato's nephew was also on the team.

Apparently on the schedule she'd been assigned as his partner this first day.

She hoped the schedule allowed for some variability in the rotation. It would be a real pain in the butt to be stuck with this jerk the next, she counted quickly in her head, nine days.

"Yoshino-san," he sneered, looking up at her.

"Tsuyoshi-san," she acknowledged back, trying to keep the sneer out of her own voice, he wasn't even worth that. Ever since they'd gotten here he'd been following her around, it seemed like he was always behind her, or at team meetings, crowding next to her more than absolutely necessary.

Since he was technically thirty minutes late for the start of this shift she thought she should fill him in on the comings and goings since she had gotten here. "Zatoshi the carpenter is in the storage shed picking up some tools and there was a delivery just before…"

He cut her off with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Yeah, yeah, I know, I saw it all back at the tent."

Yoshino rolled her eyes. What a jerk. He didn't even have a reason for being late, wasn't even pretending to have one. He was what? All of twenty yards away, having his morning tea and just deciding when he'd get around to showing up for his assignment.

But then she sighed, there was no one to report him to, no one to complain to. She'd discovered very early on that he wasn't even just from the same clan as Mugato, he was the man's nephew.

She peered down at him from her perch up in the tree as he sat down against the fence opposite her. Dark hair, dark eyes and an utter jerk. How could he be the complete polar opposite of Shikaku?

Why couldn't he have been one of the ones assigned to this trip?

At least there was one saving grace on the trip – so far there had been no call to "reception duty." So even though there was grumbling among the rest of the chuunin about having to pack "gear" (she laughed to think of that dress as gear) they'd never use back and forth, still she was glad there had been and didn't appear to be on the horizon any reason for her to have to get dressed up in front of Tsuyoshi again. She couldn't say why that thought bothered her, it just did and that was enough.

Nine more days.

She was going to be slipping in and out of daydreams a lot.