Chapter 10

Beta'd by Black Sparrow

The first time Shiori noticed that Kakashi was sitting in her tea house was a week after she had sent him the homemade bento through her Chunin acquaintances.

The black haired woman had received the cleaned up Bento box along with the neatly folded cloth when she locked down the tea house. Inside the cloth was a small note with a 'Thanks' and a hemo hemo moheji, Shiori had giggled at the childish sign before she folded the note carefully and put it into her pocket, she hadn't been able to suppress the slightly flushed cheeks. This was Hatake Kakashi after all, she had read about his adventures in her teenage years and like many others had enjoyed the fanfictions that centered around the aloof ninja…it also didn't hurt that in this life he really was just as tall, broad shouldered and with a sexy aura around him as so many fanfictions had described him.

The silver haired copy ninja had sat down at one of the smaller booths in the back and was reading his book. Shiori had added those booths after a suggestion of some Chunin when she had asked about the lack of Jounin among her clientele and what she could do to make them more comfortable here. The booths were hardly visible from the entrance area front and also far enough away from the other tables so that the guests on those wouldn't feel uncomfortable and paranoid.

As soon as she saw the eccentric shinobi Shiori searched frantically for her head waiter, she knew that Sora-san didn't care for perverts, her quick interference thankfully stopped the severe elder man from walking over to Kakashi and giving him a piece of his mind. While her head waiter had a stormy expression on his face and looked very put out by the fact that Kakashi was reading porn in the tea house, he still listened to Shiori when she told him that they would have to take such behavior in stride as long as it was not too offensive.

After taking care of her head waiter, Shiori calmly walked over to Kakashi to take his order personally. During the whole process of delivering the food and preparing the tea Shiori never tried to catch a peek at the Jounin's face once. She did this out of respect for his privacy even though she was just as curious as the rest of Konoha's population, maybe even more so.

After it became clear that Shiori really wouldn't be peeking, the civilian nearly felt the physical relief from Kakashi when he picked up on her discreet behavior. She saw his shoulder slump in a different way than his normal slouch and noticed that he was slowing down with his eating and drinking. Now she felt guilty to even have entertained the thought of trying to sneak a peek. He was wearing this mask for a reason, whatever that may be and making him uncomfortable just because she was curious how he looked like was really deplorable.

Shiori refilled his cup of tea two times and brought him another cake before the silver haired Jounin actually paid and then vanished into the streets. He even left a generous tip which was more than unusual from what she knew of the normally so frugal Hatake she had read about in the mangas.

After that the silver haired Jounin became a somewhat regular customer at Mariko's, his continuing patronage brought another clientele to Shiori's tea house, the hyper paranoid and eccentric and so Shiori put up a second list of rules of conduct after Ai had a rather colorful encounter with Maito Gai.

.) When a guest doesn't want to show his face, like Hatake Kakashi, we will respect his wish! This means for you to concentrate on another spot, no matter how curious you are, your eyes will STAY AWAY from his/her face.

.) When a guest is as exuberant as Maito Gai it is okay to feel out of your depth but never ever show it in front of the guest, just roll with it and stay polite no matter what.

.) When a guest wants to prepare his or her tea themselves it is none of your business why; you just hand over the utensils and make your regular rounds before offering more.

.) When a guest requests privacy you discreetly indicate the privacy seals on the table; take the order and leave, when you return to deliver the order wait a short distance away from the booth until the guest has acknowledged you and disengaged the seal.

.) When a member of the Inuzuka clan or anybody with an animal partner requests a table, show them to the specifically designated area with the right Fuinjutsu seals and don't forget the second menu for the partners. Personnel with allergies, please reference the guest to another staff member.

In the months after Kakashi had started to visit her tea shop Shiori had commissioned the Fuinjutsu department a few more times to place privacy seals on every table as well as set up an area that vanished the smell and hair of the animal partners of the ninja.

The menu for the furry partners had been an idea of one of her younger waitresses who had an Inuzuka boyfriend. Said Inuzuka had happily supplied his help with choosing suitable dog food variations for nin-dogs. They now also kept dry and long nonperishable food for other species after consulting with their human companions if the animals were unable to talk. The only thing that they didn't serve were live animals. Shiori drew a line at that, Mariko's was a tea house that catered to humans first and foremost who may be disturbed by this and to be honest if the black haired civilian thought about all the cute little mice and bunnies that would have to die, she felt like crying.

As a result Shiori had nearly tripled the number of her clientele and was three months into her life as a business owner already thinking about rehiring for a second time and expanding her business hours. With the revenue being a lot higher than she had anticipated she was also thinking about outright buying the building and expanding upstairs, later Shiori decided that this was a thought for the distant future, she would have to wait at least a year to see how her business was going.

Since the third week after the opening there wasn't a day the tea house wasn't filled to its capacity and from what she heard from the ninja reservations of tables and booths were jealously guarded.

As far as Shiori was aware her reputation in ninja circles was growing rapidly, her fast, polite and adaptable service as well as the fact that she expected the same standard from her personnel had earned her the respect of a lot of high placed ninja who rewarded her with their continuing patronage and word of mouth advertisement.

With her staff drilled in most responses and Sora, Ai and Emiko there to have an eye on the situation Shiori relaxed a bit and spent again more of her time back in her home where she created and reinvented recipes for the tea house. But even though the blue eyed young woman trusted her personnel to take care of things she was still a fierce believer of the phrase, 'Trust is good, control is better.' So she made surprise visits without telling any of her staff beforehand to check on the service standards. Until now there thankfully hadn't been any gross mistakes.

That changed when during one of these surprise visits a little blonde haired boy stumbled into the tea shop. While the atmosphere didn't change, there were suddenly a lot more eyes on the personnel and the boss, as in her.

Feeling the sudden increased attention Shiori turned around to see what had the ninja in such a tizzy. She then witnessed how one of her newer staff members tried to shoo the boy out of the tea house without creating a commotion. Shiori's gaze darkened, oh no she didn't! With some quick steps she was beside the waitress and turned to her employee.

"Thank you, Rei-san. I think you are in need of a break," Shiori said with a clearly fake smile that didn't reach her eyes.

Said woman gulped and vanished quickly into the back rooms of the tea house.

"Now then what do you want?" Shiori asked curious the little boy with the whisker marks on his cheeks.

Naruto, of that she was sure, looked slightly distrustful before he turned red when his stomach growled. Shiori giggled slightly before she pointed at her newest offer, prepackaged Academy student sized Bento boxes, an idea she had developed after a conversation with Hinata.

"Do you have something with Ramen?" the blonde boy wanted to know in a slightly too loud voice.

"I'm sorry but no we don't have Ramen here," Shiori denied somewhat amused.

Naruto's eyes went wide. "No Ramen…" it was nearly whispered but before he could say anything else his stomach growled again.

"Let me tell you what, you try the Bento box here and then tell me the next time if it was good or not," Shiori tried to reason with the ten or eleven year old boy.

"Okay," Naruto grumbled before he handed over more than the amount that stood at the blackboard.

Shiori returned the excess money to the confused looking Jinchuuriki and wrapped the box quickly with a second elastic strap so that it couldn't open accidently before waving Naruto goodbye. After the boy had vanished into the streets, Shiori gave Sora a quick hand sign that he was responsible for the serving room and made her way to the back rooms, the closer she got to it the more prominent became her frown.

Sufficient to say she laid into Rei-san about appropriate behavior especially concerning child customers before she fired her and informed Sora that they were in need of another server. None of her other staff dared to say anything against Shiori's decision and did their best to not give her a reason to fire them even if they disagreed with her, she was their boss and she was paying them a lot more than her competition did. So arguing about serving the Kyuubi brat didn't even enter their minds, they were just glad that it was Rei-san who had made that particular mistake as the first one and not them.

A few days later Naruto returned once more and made a beeline to Shiori, ignoring the woman that was behind the counter, to the quiet relief of said woman, she had lost her nephew during the Kyuubi attack and would have to practice some more to treat the boy neutral.

Shiori smiled down at the boy and Naruto grinned in return before he said, "It's not as good as Ramen but it's really not that bad."

Shiori snorted at the cheeky boy before she went with him to the counter, where Naruto pointed at the Bento Box with the least vegetables.

Shiori shook her head and scolded slightly before she said, "Of course you choose the box with the fewest vegetables, I should have known. You should eat more of those!"

"Ugh but I don't want to eat those yucky vegetables." Naruto pouted while he looked mistrustful at the colorful Bento that Shiori had in her hands.

The black haired woman shook her head before she said, "Let's compromise, you eat this Bento and I will give you something sweet for after lunch."

Naruto seemed to think about her offer before he reluctantly nodded, Shiori had to bite her lip to not burst into laughter, kids were so easy to bribe with sweets. She wrapped the box in a second elastic strap before packaging a piece of the strawberry cake into a second container and handing them over to Naruto, who handed her the money, this time the correct amount.

Before he could run out of the building Shiori asked, "Wait a second, you have been here two times now and I still don't know your name."

Naruto turned around and looked confused before he grinned up at her and said, "Uzumaki Naruto, dattebayo."

Shiori smiled at the cheerful answer before she said, "I'm Inoue Shiori, it's nice to meet you."

"You too, nee-chan," Naruto called before he ran out of the door.