VII.
"So...you are gonna be a ninja, Rika-nee?" Sasuke asked skeptically from his perch on my shoulders, where I held onto his legs to keep him from toppling right off. Kid was hyperactive and fidgety—if I didn't watch him every single moment he'd probably fall into the river. The only problem with his current piggy-back ride was that he had a habitual tendency to tug on my hair—just like he did when he was a baby.
Kid had problems.
"I swear, if you pull my hair one more time, Sasuke…"
He let go of the strands he was messing with and folded his arms across the top of my head obediently. Still tapped his fingers against my hair, though.
"I dunno," I continued, answering his question. "I just said I'm training. Seems like I can't get away from it no matter what I do." Last he heard, I firmly denied ever taking part in the lifestyle. No wonder he was doubtful, being told one thing and then flip-flopping to another. Hope I didn't mess his head up.
"Are you gonna awaken your Sharingan? Itachi's already gotten reeeally good with his," the kid bragged, and I could practically hear the smirk in his voice. How endearing. And annoying.
"Who knows." Itachi had probably already mastered his, just like Shisui. Unlike them, I probably never would even if I did somehow manage to acquire mine.
But—the way Sasuke talked about it was so naïve. I wonder just what they told him about the dōjutsu. Surely not something like, 'hey, little guy, you'll get your very own Sharingan when you witness the murder of your entire clan! And then later on, when your teammate nearly dies, you'll get another tomoe!' Right on. Sounds like the life.
"Then, what are you learning now, Rika-nee? Itachi promised me he would help train me when I'm old enough to attend the Academy, but that's so far away..." he trailed off, but his intent was apparent.
"I'm not gonna teach you anything, so don't even ask."
"Eh, stingy."
"I don't know that much. I can do a couple katon jutsus. I'm not too bad with kunai, when the targets aren't moving. I suck with shuriken. And genjutsu? Haha, what's that?" Pretty sure I wasn't even at child Obito's level at this point and that wasn't exactly something to be proud of, aside from the Fireballs I could do really well when I put actual effort into it.
"What kinda hand seals do you know?"
"All of 'em. Well, sort of. I still have trouble with the bird and dragon seals, though. I forget what they look like 'cause they're kinda complicated." Couldn't just tell him I was too damn lazy to commit them to memory properly.
Satoshi was fair with his training (Kou was another story), but I was a difficult student. I wasn't even sure if I could become an official shinobi with a home-school ninja crash course—maybe he would send me up to the Academy when a genin exam took place after arranging something with the teachers? If kids like Itachi and Kakashi could graduate within one or two years—disregarding the fact that they were geniuses—the curriculum must have been pretty flexible. Not to mention, big-name clans tended to train their own in addition to sending them to Academy classes. There had to be some kind of workaround.
...But then I would have to be a part of a team. Ugh.
"Hey! It's Shisui!" Sasuke suddenly shouted out, and I saw his little arm reach out as he pointed down the street towards someone who, from behind, actually did look like Shisui. No idea how he recognized him so fast, though.
Wait—he wasn't alone. Any other time I probably would have overlooked it since he was a popular guy, but there was a cute girl standing pretty close to him—just one and not like, ten—and the two were chatting. They looked pretty happy.
"Hey—"
"Shh! Hold on, Sasuke!" I reached up and did my best to cover his mouth before he got Shisui's attention, which was really difficult when I was trying to balance him on my shoulders at the same time—and I swear I didn't almost drop him again. We took cover behind a food cart when Shisui and his girlfriend (as in, female friend, because who knew if they were dating?) turned in our direction. They were too far away to have heard, but knowing Shisui, he'd pick us out in the crowd immediately even if we never called out.
"Huh? What's wrong, Rika-nee? You don't want to say hi to Shisui?"
"N—" I paused. Well, I was still pretty pissed at him from our stormy confrontation last week. I didn't really want to see him, but for the sake of the interesting situation unfolding before us, I'd put aside my annoyance. "No, it's not that, Sasuke. It's, uh—hey, how about I do teach you something I learned about after all?"
"Really, Rika-nee? Yeah! Teach me!" Sasuke wriggled and I lifted him off of my shoulders and set him on the ground beside me before he could fall on his own. "What are we gonna do?" He grinned, all baby teeth.
"Okay, this isn't something I should be telling you, but... I'm on a super-secret mission right now. Shisui is my target and I have to follow him—but he can't know it. It's the most important that he doesn't notice. So, if you're gonna help me out here, you have to promise me you can keep quiet and stay out of sight, too, Sasuke."
"I can, I can!" he yelled, but quickly lowered his voice. "I mean, I can. I promise." The expression on his face was so serious I almost laughed.
"Great. If everything goes well, I'll buy you something good from Auntie Uruchi and Uncle Teyaki's shop, okay?"
"'Kay!" He grinned, but winced at the volume of his voice. "'Kay."
For all intents and purposes, it looked like Shisui was on an authentic date.
The girl he was with was a good-looking non-Uchiha (they were easy to pick out in a crowd, plus everyone in the clan knew everyone else) kid with chestnut-colored, bobbed hair and dark eyes, dressed up in a cute, pale blue yukata that was about as short as a mini-skirt—I wasn't sure what those were called but they were pretty popular among the girls these days—and, because the material didn't entirely cover her legs, I could see a kunai holster on her left thigh. When I looked closer, I could see her forehead protector tied around her neck. She was a shinobi, too. A fashionable one, to boot.
And she was looking at him with eyes. The doe-y, head-over-heels kind.
Or maybe her gaze was just naturally sultry, since they were perpetually half-lidded. She looked at everyone like that.
Shisui, on the other hand, the dolt, seemed totally oblivious. She was probably the one who asked him out, if it was like that.
"Who's she?" Sasuke murmured from beside me and I dropped my hand on his head to keep him from leaning too far out from behind the building we were spying from.
"No idea. Girlfriend, maybe."
"Shisui has a girlfriend?" he hissed, glancing up at me in surprise. "But girls are—I mean, no offense, Rika-nee, but—girls."
"Nice observation." This was really the kid who would grow up to be an ultra S-ranked threat to the ninja world at one point. I ground my palm against his spiky hair in a half-hearted noogie. "Don't be like that. It's just something that happens. I'm sure you'll have a girlfriend, too, one day." Eventually. Oh, yes, eventually. And then a wife. Would have been inclined to say or boyfriend, too, but…well.
"Ah, they're coming this way," Sasuke pointed out, and when I looked, Shisui and the cute girl were really close—like, barely a meter away, but they were distracted. I snatched the kid up in my arms and dove behind a nearby storage crate, smacking my head against the edge in the process.
"Ow ow ow, shit—" Sasuke's eyes widened in alarm. "Shiitake mushrooms! That's what's in this box!" I quickly pointed to the label slapped onto the side of the crate which, incidentally, was exactly as I said.
Who was the one who said I would make a good shinobi, again? I could barely pass as a proper spy. At least I could think pretty fast on my feet to keep from teaching a kid some nice new swear words, though. Sasuke soaked up new words and phrases like a sponge.
Fortunately, this little incident didn't arouse any suspicion—except from the shopkeeper who ran us off with a broom when he found us hiding behind the produce crates.
"What are they doing, now...?" I muttered, holding Sasuke up so he could see over the edge of the display of bonsai we'd taken refuge behind, while Shisui and his date browsed one of the shops nearby. From what I could see, it was jewelry and trinkets.
Were they that serious already? He hadn't even mentioned any girlfriend before!
...And they were only eleven!
"Lookin' at boring stuff. When is this gonna get exciting, Rika-nee?"
"Learn to have some patience, kid." It was plenty exciting for me. Like some kind of real-life drama show on TV—Emiko and Satoshi didn't approve of things like that, so we didn't even have a radio in the house. One time, long, long ago, I'd been a TV junkie. This was all I had, now.
"Ah!" I grinned when Shisui held up a hairpin or some type of hair ornament—if he was any kind of romantic, he'd try to match it up to her hair—but then set it back down in its display case with a frown, looking puzzled.
What an idiot.
Then, his little girl-friend rushed over to him modeling a shiny hairpin herself, doing a happy little twirl and fluffing her hair a bit, and even though he smiled in response, he was still confused. Then, he reached out and removed the pin from her bangs before examining it, testing the clasp to make sure it wasn't fragile, checking the weight as it sat in the middle of his palm—
Sasuke was right. This was so boring.
But then again, it wasn't meant to entertain.
I straightened up, no longer needing to hide, and held my hand out to Sasuke after Shisui and his little girl-friend said their goodbyes before parting ways oh-so anticlimactically. "That's it for this mission. Come on, Sasuke. Let's go get you something to eat before I take you home."
"What, already? That was... whatever." He gave up pretty quickly. Probably noticed it wasn't so exciting after all. "How did I do, Rika-nee?" He grabbed onto my hand and swung our arms back and forth as we headed in the opposite direction Shisui went.
"You did pretty good, Sasuke."
"Yeah! I can't wait to tell Itachi about my first mission ever!"
"No!" I squawked out a really undignified noise and floundered my hands before grabbing him by the shoulders. "No, you have to keep this top-secret; just between us. Take it as a lesson in confidentiality as a shinobi-to-be." Jeez. If he told Itachi, no doubt Shisui would find out, and then things would get awkward fast.
"...Okay." He stuck out his lower lip and frowned at the ground, looking crestfallen.
Maybe it was a little cruel, making up a mission and then making it so the kid couldn't brag about it to his beloved bro later on.
Oh well. I'd make it up to him.
I ruffled his little duck-butt styled hair again and grinned. "Come on, I told you we'd go to Auntie and Uncle's bakery, right?"
"Yeah!"
We ended up going back to the market district when I remembered Mikoto sent us out for groceries before we'd gotten sidetracked.
I said my goodbyes to Sasuke and Mikoto after delivering both her child and her groceries to their house, politely rejecting the offer to stay for dinner because Satoshi mentioned wanting to continue our training in the evening earlier that day. He wanted me to become proficient with all of the hand seals before moving on to other things, like taijutsu—which was going to make me cry, I was sure. Mainly because Kou would be the one to help out with that and he didn't discriminate against kids or girls.
He was kinda rough.
No wonder Shisui was so talented.
While walking towards my own home, I dug through the bag filled with sweet buns I'd picked up at the bakery. Auntie and Uncle—no notable relation, but everyone seemed to call them that regardless—were damn skilled at making all sorts of awesome pastries. They had pretty much everything under the sun and then some.
Emiko would hate me, but... I didn't think a little dessert before dinner would hurt. I unwrapped my favored custard-filled bun and grinned, preparing to bite a huge chunk out of it, but someone smacked my shoulder out of nowhere, startling the crap outta me, and the bun toppled out of my hands, cuing a mournful imaginary choir as it descended in slow-motion and landed in the dirt at my feet, tragically.
"No!" I whirled on the asshole who interrupted that beautiful moment between the sweet bun and me and shook a fist at them. "You—why—Shisui! Why did you do that? You scared me and look what happened! Jerk!"
Of all the people to run into. But—no, he did that on purpose!
"Rika..." Shisui glanced down at the paper bag I held safely in my other arm, which was filled with no less than three more of the same pastries, but he didn't say a word about it. Wisely enough. "Hey, why are you getting all out of sorts? I knew you and Sasuke were following me, you know. You were both plain as day." He set a hand on his hip and eyed me wearily. "What was that about?"
I shrugged and looked through the bag filled with sweets, counting what remained, puffing out my cheeks. Ah. One of Shisui's favorite pastries was among them, too. That only ticked me off more. Still, I managed a terse, unhappy response. "Sasuke's idea."
"Somehow, I doubt that."
"Doubt it all you want. He's a nosy brat." Okay, it wasn't the best defense, but like hell I was admitting to anything. I turned on my heel and started walking away, but he quickly fell into step beside me.
"Rika...are you still upset?"
"Me? Me, upset? You're the one who lost it!" I dug my feet into the ground and glared, hugging the bag of pastries to my chest to keep from smacking him in the face with it, because I'd already lost one and if they were all somehow crushed my heart would be crushed, too. And I liked these sweet buns a lot more than I liked him at the moment.
Shisui stopped too, grimacing as he held up his hands in surrender. "Right, right. About that... I said some things I shouldn't have. I guess I was a little out of line." He shrugged a little, letting his eyes trail away before returning them to me.
"Just a little?"
"Rika, I'm trying to apologize here. I'm sorry, okay? Will you forgive me?"
His usual grin was in place, but there was a tilt to his eyebrows—a nervous one. Otherwise, he seemed incredibly sincere and guilty over the whole thing (and he was right to be! It was the first time we'd spoken in a while and it ended up as a fight!). Back stooped slightly, hands in pockets, difficulty meeting my eyes—he didn't expect me to accept the apology.
It kind of hurt.
Well, he wasn't the only one at fault, here... I did say some pretty awful things to him, myself. Things like that just happened, sometimes, so there was no need to hold a grudge or hard feelings or anything. I knew that—or at least, I should have known that from the start.
I really was a kid sometimes.
I shifted the bag beneath one of my arms and sighed, setting my free hand on my hip. "You don't need to apologize, Shisui. We were both just bein' dumb. I mean, you seemed kinda stressed out and then I lost my cool. I don't think we really meant what we said, so... we're good."
"You mean it?"
"Yeah, you dope. I mean it."
"You're the best, Rika!" A second later, he grabbed me in a half-headlock, half-hug and ruffled my hair a little harshly, complaining—as usual—about how it just wouldn't sit flat against my head. Then, he gathered a clump of my bangs and snapped something around them before stepping back and beaming, proud of whatever he did. "I got you this as an apology anyway. Consider it an early birthday present!"
"Wha?" I touched the thing—a hairpin—and glanced around for a mirror or something to check it out with. Of course there weren't any around outside, but there was a bucket filled with water nearby.
It was difficult to see on the distorted surface, but there was a small, dragonfly-shaped barrette, wrought thinly in something silvery, messily holding back a section of my long bangs, pushed back near my right ear. The thing was pretty. Dainty, but not fragile. Who would've thought he'd actually have good taste—wait. I whirled on him and frowned, socking him in the gut. "This is what you bought today? Something for me? I thought you were on a date!"
One of Shisui's eyebrows quirked up as a smile tugged at his lips—he took the hit like a champ and didn't even flinch. "I figured you would—you're too nosy for your own good, Rika. But, no, that was just my teammate Kaede; I asked her to help me out."
"Oh, you do have teammates," I muttered, remembering that he actually had been a genin for a while now.
"Just the one," he replied, just a bit sadly.
So he'd lost a teammate—maybe that was one of the things that set off his Sharingan. A lot of things had happened with him and I really...didn't even know the half of it.
"But, you know, Rika, I really am sorry. I didn't mean to be so pushy. It's just..." he paused to adjust his forehead protector and sighed. "When I was younger, I kind of always had this idea that you, me, and Itachi would all become shinobi together and be a part of the same team someday, working together and all that. I knew it was just some dumb hope. Guess it was a little immature."
Damn. He was way more mature than me, no matter what he said. Apologizing and smothering pride are the hardest things to do, and he did it so easily. I was practically a brat compared to someone like him, and would still be even if I were my actual age.
I shoved the bag of sweet buns at his chest. "Here. It's my apology."
He took hold of it before they could all tumble out and looked up abruptly. "Rika—"
"I'm serious. I'm a total moron and you're way nicer than I'll ever be. Thanks, Shisui." I really was an idiot. There was no way he'd thought of me as some rival or stepping stone to lord his successes over. He was a kid who had his own dreams, too, even if they didn't hold up against something like clan loyalty and village loyalty. He was just a kid who wanted to have some fun with his friends while he still could.
"Like you said, we're good, right?" he began again, smiling slightly. "But, Rika...are you gonna let go of the bag or not?"
I shook my head, smiling brightly and digging my fingers into the paper bag tighter. "Sure."
"That's so confusing. Here, I'll give you one to make up for the one that dropped, deal?"
"Alright. Deal." I let go of the paper bag and held out my hand expectantly, and he relinquished the long-awaited custard bun without complaint.
And with that, our bad feelings and misunderstandings were resolved. All with the power of sweet buns.
Note: I'm sure you readers/reviewers have noticed but I've fallen inexcusably behind on replying to the reviews for this fic. Sorry! Hopefully I'll get that sorted out, but I do read them all, you know.
Anyway, thanks for reading and reviewing!