((A/N: Another quick omake I wanted to write. Most of these are pretty short, I know, but keep in mind they're just small tidbits(as the name suggests haha) that I couldn't get out of my head and I didn't feel like adding it into the story itself.

This one is a small side story for Kenta. It delves into his personal life a bit, since every time he appears in the story itself, it's as Rae's bodyguard/teacher/friend/potential future bf. So here you go! Personal Kenta stuff!

Enjoy this chapter!))

Warm sunlight, bright and cheerful and welcoming, filtered in through blue curtains that were drawn open and tied back by neat knots, done with a precise hand. There was no sound other than the silent, barely there shuffling coming from the small bathroom connected to the bedroom.

Kenta Shimizu woke with the sun, and he stayed silent so as to not wake up his sleeping mother.

He flitted across the small bathroom, barely big enough to hold one person in it. It was nothing like the room he had once washed himself in when he had been invited in at the Shimizu Head's Main home, but Kenta was not complaining. It might have been small and stifling from time to time, but it was a part of his home. He had memories in that small, stifling bathroom.

He had been in this house since he was a baby, and he could vividly remember the baths his mother used to give him, and the small bears of bubbles she would create for his enjoyment.

He allowed a genuine smile to cover his features, but he didn't stop in his task.

Once the clothing was properly washed and rinsed, he took them from the basin and began twisting the clothing to get as much water out of it as he could. Afterwards, he put them in a small plastic bucket and carried them outside.

He glanced up at the sky, and his eyes narrowed in thought. The sky was still slightly dark out, with the sun's rays just barely coming over the Hokage Monument and filtering in through peoples' windows in the early morning, but from the looks of it, it would not rain today. Finally allowing himself to make the slightest of noise, a small humming from the back of his throat, he set out to putting each of the damp clothing pieces onto the lines in the front. They should be dry after lunch, some time before dinner even, if the wind kept going at the pace it was at now.

After the task was complete, he reached one damp hand upwards to brush the dark blue hair out of his face. It was down at the moment, and he remembered with a small tilt of his lips why he could no longer place his hair up into the small ponytail he had taken to wearing it in.

The Heiress to his Clan was an odd one, for sure. He had been perplexed when she'd taken his hair tie right from his own head, but he hadn't let it show.

After all, as a Branch member, anything that was his was hers.

With a smile that might have been just slightly bitter, he walked inside his home once again, masking his footsteps so not a single creak would sound out from the rickety floor boards beneath him.

His mother was still asleep, and he didn't want to wake her. She would need her sleep. Kenta knew she had a mission today that would take her out of the village, and would likely keep her away for a month or two. She had only just gotten back from a separate mission, but since the last mission she was on was only a few weeks long, she did not get long to recover from it since she had sustained no injuries from it.

As he set about to making breakfast for the two of them, he thought. He thought of his father, the older Shimizu man who had died years ago in battle when he was just a child. He'd been young, and of course he had wanted to cry and sob and call out for his tou-san, but when he had seen his mother, his beautiful mother who was the strongest woman he'd ever known, break down and cry herself to sleep every night, he didn't cry. He was the only other person in her life at that point, and it was in that instance that Kenta knew he'd have to be there for her. He'd have to be her rock while she coped.

And maybe he'd taken it too literal. Maybe he shouldn't have learned how to perfectly mask what he truly felt inside, or how to make people believe he was feeling something else entirely than what he really felt. His mother never seemed to know the difference, and perhaps that was why she was able to stop crying soon.

It didn't stop her from looking tired each morning, and exhausted each night she came home.

"Kaa-chan," he spoke silently, one hand resting lightly on his mother's shoulder. He let his chakra trickle out slowly through his hand, the skin contact with his mother's shoulder making their chakra mix in the early morning. Her chakra felt the same way she looked; tired and barely there. His was comforting and smooth against her rough, exhausted energy, and she blinked bleary eyes up at him. He smiled a smile that he did not feel. She smiled back.

"What's this? You made breakfast again?" She let out a gentle laugh, sitting up in her bed and accepting the small tray. "One of these days someone is going to notice that you're more of a mother than I am!"

And he resists the urge to wince. She says it in a genial, happy tone, a groggy kind of rasp to her voice, but he knows that it is not a joke. He knows she wants to be a mother to him, he knows she hates how much he had to grow up for her to pick herself up again.

He knows she is depressed about the fact that she could not have another child to baby.

His placid smile remains, even when a few strands of his hair fall in front of his eyes.

"Oh, you look just like your tou-san when you grow out your hair, darling," her voice is gentle, more genuine than before, and there is a small spark of life in her eyes for just a moment before it is gone. His smile is a little strained, but also a little more genuine than before.

Of course, that little spark of light in her eyes was the only reason he chose to grow it out in the first place.

"Aa, perhaps I'll get a woman as beautiful as you with this hair, then?" He jokes back, hoping that maybe he'll get that spark again. It does appear, and he's glad when she laughs a happy laugh that seemed more genuine than any laugh she used to have.

"Please, with your charming personality, I'm afraid I may have to fight for your attention in a few years!"

And the laugh he lets loose is not genuine, because he knows that isn't the case. She will always be the first on his mind, always the only woman he'll ever be worried about.

"Unless it's that young Heiress you're always hanging around, mm? Maybe I'll let you slip just this once..."

He does not miss the sly tone in her voice, or the fact that the spark is there again in her ice blue eyes, and he thinks that if the only way to make her smile again - truly smile again - is to suffer through her odd taunts about his relationship with his charge, then he will suffer through them. He still lets a small twitch come to his lips, a purpose giveaway to the amused embarrassment he does not really feel.

But maybe the slightest tint to his cheeks isn't purposely faked.

His mother still laughs, and he still considers it a success.

((A/N: I swear I did not mean for this to get so depressing. It wrote itself, though, as usual, and oh fuck I just gave him a sad childhood. Why would I do that to my precious salt bae? I don't know. Someone stop me before I write more depressing stuff about my characters' lives.

So basically his Dad died during the Third Shinobi War, and he grew up a little too fast so that his mother could mourn in peace without having to worry about the house or about money or food or anything like that. His mother is also unable to have more children bc of old injuries. Kenta had been, quite bluntly, an accident. A happy accident in his mother's opinion, but they certainly hadn't been trying for a kid at the time.

Leave reviews, reviews are love!))