Chapter 5

Beat'd by Black Sparrow

During Shiori's second year in Konoha two things happened that stood out of her normally peaceful days, number one was that Inoue-san finally opened up a bit. She let it slip that she was a former Jounin that had graduated a year after the current Hokage and had retired after the second shinobi war because of her injury, she also told Shiori in passing that she still had living family but that they hadn't visited her in over ten years.

Shiori felt outraged on the woman's behalf, in the region she grew up in something like that would have been unthinkable. If somebody was too old or injured to live alone and still had family they would take care of their elder without complaint or having to be asked, it was just a given. Knowing Inoue-san as the strong and independent person she was Shiori refused to pity her; that would have only hurt the kunoichi's pride after all.

The second event that ripped Shiori from her routine was the Uchiha massacre.

It was the topic of the conversations even months after it happened. The people were shocked and frightened that something like this could happen in the middle of Konoha. There was a surge of sudden emigrations throughout the first few months but this calmed down pretty soon when nothing else happened. Shiori now at least knew roughly where she was in the Naruto timeline. The Konoha eleven would be still in the Academy for some time and war and destruction was still some years off.

The black haired teenager had come to love her life in Konoha and didn't want to leave it even if it meant that she would have to weather invasions and destruction. Still, to give herself the option of leaving the shinobi village if things got too bad the girl decided to wait until the Chunin exams and then decide what to do.

During her free time Shiori had also started to try herself on western recipes that Eliza remembered. Most of the time those attempts went spectacularly wrong because she either hadn't the right ingredients at hand or something about the temperature or amount of the dough went wrong. Those few attempts that turned out right were celebrated and after Shiori felt confident that she wouldn't mess up, she even started to present her desserts to Inoue-san, whose critical taste buds helped Shiori adapt and improve them further.

To Inoue-san's question if she wanted to become a professional cook Shiori only shook her head. She enjoyed cooking yes, but it was more of a hobby for her than an occupation that she wanted to do day in day out for the rest of her life.

"So what would you like to do then, if it isn't cooking?" Inoue-san sounded genuinely curious while she watched Shiori taking care of the used plates.

The black haired fourteen year old hummed thoughtfully before she said slightly reluctant, "To be honest I probably would like to have a tea house similar to Echizen-san. There I could offer the different sorts of tea that I would mix together or even some of the desserts. Hhm, yes that would be nice." Shiori smiled completely immersed in her dream.

Inoue-san snorted amused before she stretched lightly and turned back to her book, the old woman seemed to ponder something, before she shook her head.

A question was burning in the back of Shiori's mind and after she had finished with her chores she sat across from Inoue-san and asked reluctantly, "Inoue-san what requirements do shinobi have to feel at ease at a tea house? I see so few of them at Echizen's place."

Inoue-san just smiled wryly at Shiori before she gave in and said, "Well first and foremost, the room has to be well lit, there can't be a corner where a potential threat could hide…then the tables should be spaced out enough so that they ninja can move in case of an attack. To the food and the drinks…ninja are paranoid Shiori-chan; if they have no way to check for poisons they probably won't drink or eat it. So food and drink preparation on the table if possible…oh and the windows, no tables right beside the window, somebody could take aim from outside and easily kill them, or at least wound them."

"Oh, so the windows should be high up, that nobody can look inside," Shiori tried to clarify.

"Hhm…yes possibly. So what would you serve in your tea house besides tea and desserts?" Inoue-san prodded further.

"Eh, probably standard things like curry rice and a fixed menu at lunch," Shiori contemplated.

Inoue-san nodded to this before she turned once again to her book. Most of their afternoons were spent like this and both of them enjoyed the quiet company of the other.

Shiori who had grown quite a bit since arriving in Konoha and was filling out more and more now that she didn't have to go without proper food for months on end. In the last half year her breasts had developed quite a bit and she needed to start wearing a bra underneath her clothes, another change in her body was the start of her period. Thankfully Konoha had their own version of hygiene products that could be bought in the apothecary or the grocery store.

Her maturing figure also attracted all kinds of attention from the males in the market and streets. Shiori had been approached by more than one blushing teenager that asked for a date, which she had always respectfully declined. The civilian wasn't feeling the urge to date any of them, especially not with her mental maturity being so far ahead of those civilian teenage boys but she would probably try to have a relationship when she entered her twenties.

Since she had been a child she had always dreamed of having a love marriage and family of her own. Now here in Konoha she actually really had a chance to realize this dream with somebody she genuinely liked opposed to the arranged marriage that had been normal in Kawa and to which Shiori had resigned herself to.

And so the years flew by and Shiori turned fifteen and then sixteen. She was still working for both Echizen-san and Inoue-san and really enjoyed her work. Throughout the years she had started a slightly distant friendship with some of the civilian girls that worked in Echizen's tea house and manned the food stands in the market. They included her in gossip and pointed out bargains or new shops to her but Shiori never really connected with any of them on a deeper level or even attempted to build up a solid friendship.

When the concerned black haired civilian had come with her findings to Inoue-san said old woman had just snorted and shook her head in disbelieving amusement, which led to Shiori feeling even more out of her depth.

After Inoue-san noticed that this topic genuinely distressed Shiori, she had sighed and answered her employee, "Well it doesn't surprise me. You have a good, sensible head on your shoulders which is much more than most civilians can say, even the so called adults. You are simply too mature for them, ninja would probably be a more appropriate company for you." Inoue-san sighed once more before she continued, "It's a shame really. If you had been born in Konoha you probably would have made a decent kunoichi with your quick mind."

Shiori wasn't sure if she felt flattered or terrified by the prospect of a ninja career if she had been born in Konoha; thankfully Shiori didn't have to answer to Inoue-san's laments and simply continued with her duties.

But with Inoue-san's explanation Shiori stopped worrying so much about making close civilian friends. If she met somebody who would suit her character that would be great but Shiori wasn't going out of her way to find such a person. Instead she slowly but steadily increased her amount of dessert recipes and tea mixtures. Throughout the years she also developed a rough plan for the day when she had enough capital to start up her own tea house. For that reason Shiori had even started to buy potted tea plants and dried the leaves herself, this made it possible to experiment with the differences in quality and intensity. She was a well-known and most welcome guest in the Yamanaka shop by now and both elder Yamanakas liked to sneak samples of obscure tea leaves for her to try into her orders. Shiori even bought a cinnamon tree from them, which the black haired teen had planted on the collective roof patio of her building in a big pot. The hot and humid climate as well as the shade from the other buildings made it an ideal growing location for the cinnamon tree. It had shot up in the two years since its purchase and now was the time to cut it down close to the root. For this purpose Yamanaka Inoichi-san had specifically come to her home to show the black haired teen how to cut it and then helped Shiori with removing the wood from the roof patio. The Yamanakas would use the wood in whatever way they needed, while Shiori was now waiting for fresh shoots to come out to harvest for her own use.

In Shiori's mind her life could have gone on like this forever, she loved the tranquility of Konoha's streets in the morning and the busyness during the day. She even had a few run-ins with Konoha's green beast Maito Gai who was running on his hands through the streets or doing other outlandish exercises on the rooftops.

The ninja of Konoha were mostly a friendly lot, interspersed with bouts of arrogance and rude behavior but Shiori knew that assholes were a human ailment and didn't exclude the chakra using part of the population, so she just shrugged it off and didn't take it personally. And just like Inoue-san had predicted she liked to interact with the ninja a lot more than with most civilians who were most of the time gossips, backstabbers, ass kissers or couldn't see past their own nose.

Strangely enough during the four years she had spent here she never had a run in with Naruto or the other main characters of the manga with the only exception being Ino-chan who she saw regularly thanks to her parents flower shop. Shiori also believed to have seen a dark pineapple head and a chubby boy with chips in his hands walking through the streets but when she had turned around they were always gone. But back to the lack of cannon characters, after Shiori had thought a bit about it, this did made some sense the academy was after all close to the Hokage tower while she lived in the outskirts of Konoha and only commuted to the market district because of her work, shopping and the Yamanaka shop. And yes Konoha was big enough that you could avoid somebody for years on end if you just chose different districts.

So when Shiori found on a Wednesday afternoon a dead Inoue-san in her bed, she didn't know what to do at first. She had already seen dead bodies before, thanks to her grandmother and parents but just like with her grandmother, Inoue-san's death hurt immensely. It took Shiori a while until she could drag herself away from Inoue-san's bed. The black haired young woman then took one of the clean white linens in the hallway cupboard and gently laid it over Inoue-san.

After that she locked up and made her way to the hospital where she informed the personnel about finding her employer dead in her bed. She was immediately accompanied by a medic-nin as well as two workers from the morgue. A quick examination confirmed what Shiori suspicions, Inoue-san's injury had finally gotten the better of her which had led to organ failure. The attending medic-nin had taken one look at Shiori's face and had promptly reassured the shocked civilian that Inoue-san had died peacefully in her sleep without feeling anything. After the end of the preliminary examination the two morgue workers removed the body and the sheets from the bed and then made their way to the hospital with the body.

Numb Shiori removed the groceries and everything perishable from the apartment before closing down the flat and bringing the key to Inoue-sans attorney, Atsuka Heiji-san. The rest of the day Shiori spent grieving in her home.

When the black haired civilian arrived at Echizen-san's tea house the next day, her employer took one look at her face and sent her right back home. There Shiori spent the rest of that day in her futon, with a big box of homemade cookies, tissues and some tea to calm her nerves. She had now lost the second attachment figure in her life, she felt suddenly really alone in Konoha.

On the second day after Inoue-san's death Shiori had herself so far under control that she could work at the tea house again even though she was less cheerful than normal. Now that she lost her second income, Shiori should have probably started to look for additional work as soon as possible but she felt unable to search for anything that could replace the work at Inoue-san's place so soon after her death. For the rest of the week Shiori looked tired and sad whenever her usual customers arrived for a tea ceremony. After the first day back at work Shiori had enough self-control to hide her mood as soon as the tea ceremonies began but her guests still noticed her melancholy. It went so far that they even asked the owner what was wrong with her; Echizen-san herself was worried about Shiori. The tea house owner knew that this death had hit Shiori hard and she hoped that she would recover soon; the quiet and friendly young girl had been very easy to come to like.

While she was fighting with a grief induced depression Shiori was mostly unable to make any rational thoughts pertaining anything farther than a day a time so she was completely surprised when at the end of the week she received an invitation to the opening of Inoue-san's will.