Author's note: I can't tell you guys the exact pairing of the characters (especially OC) since it would spoil the fun of upcoming chapters. But I can reveal a tiny bit that her love interest is one of the canon male shinobi and he's the same age as her. Though I can safely say that the boy is not Naruto because I really adore the NaruHina couple. So I don't think I'm going to change any of that.


Chapter 5


The next morning at the market.

Unlike Naruto, I can't live off consuming instant ramen or Ichiraku ramen forever. So today I decide to go shopping at the market for proper food. Sadly, anything from restaurant is definitely not the case since I do not have enough money to afford 3 meals like that for the whole month straight. At least not until I get my hands on several missions that reward with good incomes.

After spending almost an hour going through several type of canned food, I still cannot find one type of dish that suited my taste. Perhaps it mostly due to the brands that I've been searching for costs relatively cheap. But it can also because I have always been a picky-eater...

So the only option left is cooking... Which is something I'm very terrible at. Now that Momiji isn't here to prepare meals for me, I realize that I've taken her for granted. Man, I shouldn't have slacking off improving my cooking skills when I had the chance to.

Though I did learn some simple recipes from her back then, just in case for emergencies and sometimes Momiji asked me to. But the outcome had never been what I wanted it to be. Best I can do are some simple egg dishes and rice...

Meanwhile within the same street.

"Hey, isn't that the team 7's new girl?" Ino points at the short orange hair Genin wandering around the egg's stalls like a total weirdo up ahead. Her loud voice gains the other two's attentions who are walking alongside with her.

"Oh, you mean Nina?" Choji's head cocks to the side, his hand doesn't stop picking up the chips inside the bag and putting them into his mouth. While Shikamaru just stands there watching and doesn't seem too interested.

They've heard about this mysterious girl from the team 7 members a couple day ago but this is the first time they actually see her in person.

Ino had been worried about the sudden appearance of this new girl and how she was neatly placed into team 7. To think that Nina would have somewhat effected her progress in swooning Sasuke. However, most of Ino's distresses have been cleared out the moment she observes Nina through her own eyes. Combined with all the data she has gathered from the people around, mostly Sakura, Ino can safely assume that this girl is nowhere good enough to be her rival, in everything. Too average for Sasuke's taste, that's for sure!

"What's wrong, Shikamaru?" Notice the boy's abnormal silence, Ino asks him.

"Don't you find it weird?" Watching Nina slowly disappears into the crowd up ahead, he explains. "Appearing out of nowhere, no clear background or motive yet still being welcomed to stay in our village almost instantly. And what's not, she has joined into Konoha's shinobi quad and started doing missions just like anyone of us here. Without going through any proper inspections beforehand."

"I really don't get it. Just what's Sandaime's thinking?" Shikamaru scratches the back of his head and sighs. Finding it hard to with cope with Third Hokage's reckless decisions.

"Jeeze. Stop being so skeptical, Shikamaru. I'm sure Sandaime already has it all under control. Beside, she's only a twelves years old kid. From what I've heard about her abilities, Nina's definitely not a threat." Ino shrugs, dismissing his worries and assuming that Shikamaru has overthinking the situation.

Beside, it's quite pointless for them Genin ranked shinobi to get fed up over such matter because if there's anything happen to the village's security. There will be Jounin, perhaps even the Sandaime himself, to step out and take care of it.

"Yeah, even Naruto could take her down easily. Do you think someone like that would bring harm to our village?" Choji laughs, imagining the match between those two in his mind before feeling his stomach grumble. Therefore he suggests his teammates to find a nice place to feast. "Anyway, I'm hungry. Let's go grab something to eat."

"Didn't you just ate?!" Ino snaps after having wasted a whole morning wandering around the area doing nothing interesting nor contributing and Sasuke's still nowhere in sight.

"You call that a meal? That's nothing but an appetizer to me." To Choji defense, he points out that consuming various type of treats are not considered proper food. What he needs right now is something that is served in big amount, like grilled meat.

"Man, what a drag..." Shikamaru has no choice but to follow his teammates from behind and suffering from the two's foolish argument until they both are eventually tired of it and die down. Though their loud voices have also gained Nina attention as they pass by her spot while she's picking up the vegetable into her shopping bag.

Isn't that the Ino-Shika-Cho? After paying the shop owner, she stays and watches the three's quarrel briefly before taking off to the opposite route. Hoping that one day there would be a chance for her to get to know them naturally. Interesting trio as always.


While on their way toward to the training ground, Sasuke and Sakura come across Nina. Therefore Sasuke ignores her presence completely and keeps on walking while Sakura decides to stay behind for a small chat.

"Going shopping?" Approaching Nina, Sakura notices the groceries bags in her hands and she nods. "Yup, I just finished. Are you going to train with Sasuke?"

"Yes! Sasuke-kun agreed to let me help him today!"

"That's great." Seem to be influenced by Sakura's happiness, Nina smiles. Then the girl's amber eyes glance at Sasuke's back before returning to meet her green ones. Not saying anything more and just stand there awkwardly.

Catching a glimpse of several type of food sitting inside the girl's shopping bags, Sakura asks. "Say, that's a lot of fresh ingredients. You know how to cook?"

"Well, sort of. There's still a lot for me to learn." Nina shows her an amateur's cookbook that she just brought from the bookstore nearby.

While waiting for Sakura to scan through the pages, Nina notices the girl's eyes aren't really paying attention to the content inside but to the boy in navy blue shirt up ahead. And about half a minute later, she returns the book to her.

Once done putting it back inside the grocery bag, Nina turns to look at Sasuke again, who is now miles away from them, then back to Sakura, who is doing her best to hide away the anxiety, and finally to the ground below.

"Hey, uhm..." As Sakura's about to bring up another interesting topic to maintain their talk, Nina cuts her off however. "You know, you don't have to force yourself to act so friendly with me."

"What?"

"Hurry, or you're going to lose Sasuke." Nina gesture her head toward to where Sasuke is going and walks off without looking back. Not leaving Sakura a chance to finish what she has to say. "Wait-!"

What the heck?! Here I am trying to get to know her better and she just shooed me away like that! The inner Sakura's holding up a fist and fuming over Nina's uncooperative attitude. Irritated, she stomps away to catch up with Sasuke. Leaving the girl going home by herself as she's wished.

..

...

At the hospital's hall in the afternoon when Nina's still recovering from Kakashi's Genjutsu attack.

"I know this is quite sudden for all of you. But at least try to be nice to Nina and if possible, get close to her, make her feel comfortable while she's staying here. And let me remind you one more time, this is Sandaime's wish." Kakashi spoke to the three at their small group meeting outside of Nina's room.

"No problem." Naruto held up two fingers making a V sign and grinning brightly. Thinking that he would still help her fitting in with the Konoha's lifestyle anyway even if Sandaimei didn't order him to.

"Good." Kakashi smiled, pleased with his student positive answer then shifted his attention to the couple of kids standing nearby. "What about you two?"

Much different from their overly energetic teammate who would agree to almost anything that involved in making new friends and having fun, both Sakura and Sasuke acted quite reluctant to follow this strange instruction.

For Sakura's case, it was not only because Sasuke didn't enjoy the idea for one bit. But also because having to spend her time helping one person that she barely knew when she could just hangout with Sasuke and the others instead. Beside, there's already Naruto, who could mostly do what she could do. Sakura doubt that her contribution would have changed the situation much.

However after recalling to the girl's horrible condition and what's she had been through to stay alive, Sakura eventually agreed to go along. Much to Kakashi's and Naruto's joy. "Well I don't mind. I guess."

"So... Sasuke."

"Why would I? Isn't that suppose to be your job to begin with?" He dismissed the ridiculous idea and turned away. As there's no reason for him to waste his precious time onto such trivial matter. What he needed to do most at the moment was to train and be prepared for the Chuunin exam, not fooling around playing the family game.

They all knew that they had to retake the bell test yesterday because Kakashi wanted to check Nina's abilities in teamwork. Despite failing miserably, Kakashi still approved for her to join their team officially since she did try her best to act as a team with them and followed his instructions in order to gain the bell.

"Does that mean she passed?" Naruto asked his teacher again to confirm whether Nina had became a part of their team. The boy beamed with delight once Kakashi nodded. "She did what I expected her to do. So why not?"

"Let's inform her when she wakes up!" Sakura suggested to surprise her teammate with the good news and Naruto agreed to follow instantly. While Sasuke didn't seem to be much interested, more like annoyed that there's going to be another weakling staying in his team.

...

..

Nina's house.

After finish sorting everything in place, Nina sits in the middle of her room to take some rest. Taking the headband off her forehead and putting in on the table nearby, she sighs.

That was quite rude of me, I wonder if Sakura's angry. Back in the street I decided to end our conversation abruptly because I had a feeling that if it kept on going, she would somehow managed to convince me to train with them. It's rare for Sasuke to have Sakura accompany him willingly so I didn't want to ruin their time together.

I was sure Sakura meant well but it wasn't a good opportunity for us, and we both knew it. Perhaps I should find a way to apologize to her properly later. For now, I'm going to take a nap.

Afternoon.

As I open the front door to leave for some fresh air, I find Naruto's standing right before me and his hand's gesture looks like it's about to knock on the door. "Naruto? What are you doing here?"

"Staying at home all day is too boring so I'm gonna do some training!" Therefore he asks. "Wanna come?"

And I find no reason to refuse his offer. "Sure, I have nothing to do anyway."

Training ground.

Standing in the middle of the area, I ask him. "So, what are we going to do?"

"How about we spar? Do you need to exercise to warm up first?"

"Alright, let's do that."

After around thirty minutes of warming up, we start battle with each other like before but this time with the use of Shurike and Kunai, or any shinobi gadgets we can come up with. We keep going on and on fighting and the moment we're out of breath, three hours have passed and the sun is about to set.

At result of our ten matches, Naruto won 9 out of 10. Though I knew that for the last match, he had let me won on purpose and used it as a way to encourage me not to give up practicing.

"I'm hungry, let's go grab some ramen at Ichiraku." While on our way home, Naruto suggests us to dine at his favorite restaurant and I cringe. Again? I'm getting tired of eating at that shop already.

And before I can excuse myself since I have already brought groceries this morning, Naruto notices his teammates from far away and calls out to them. "Sakura and Sasuke! I'm going to ask them to join."

Guess it's too late to back out now, isn't it... I let out a sigh as we approach the Genin couple. And due to Naruto's constant nagging about friendship, they have no choice but follow us to the Ichiraku ramen restaurant to eat dinner there.

Ichiraku ramen restaurant.

We step inside to take a seat. With Naruto staying at the furthest to the left, then me, Sakura and Sasuke.

For the whole time waiting for ramen to arrive, neither I nor Sakura can pick up a proper conversation between ourselves and we keep averting our eyes awkwardly. It's so bad to the point for Naruto to notice something's wrong so he tries to bring up several interesting topics for us to chat with. However it only ends up in short answers or accidentally cutting each other sentences and dead silence.

Sasuke has also realized the reason for Naruto's sudden loudness but decides to ignore it anyway. After enjoying our bowls of ramen and Sakura's yelling at Naruto for being too annoying, we part our ways to get home. Since Naruto and my house are close to each other, we leave in the same direction while Sakura and Sasuke takes different paths.

"See you later."

"See you."

After taking a few steps away however, I halt and tell Naruto to go home first before turning back and run after Sakura. Once seeing the silhouette of Sakura's hair color far up ahead within the dark street, I call out to her. "Sakura!"

"Nina-chan?" Upon hearing my voice, Sakura spins around and shocked to see me approaching her from afar, out of breath. "Why are you here? Aren't you going home with Naruto?"

Taking a deep breath to calm myself down from the nervousness, I begin to apologize. "I'm sorry."

And her eyes widens in surprise, still not figure out what is going on. "For what?"

I stare at the ground, hugging my arm tightly and telling Sakura what's running inside the troublesome head of mine. Hoping that my explanation will clear out the unnecessary misunderstanding and we can return being friends again.

"For... saying that you forced yourself to act friendly with me. I really didn't mean it. In fact, I was happy that you tried to spend your time to get to know me, someone you had just met for no more than a couple of days."

After finish saying what I have to say, my glance turn from my feet to her face but Sakura averts my eyes. She looks troubled, whether because of my words or something else. I'm not sure.

Minutes later and there's still no reply from Sakura, I assume that she still hasn't forgiven me and decide to go home. As I'm about to turn away, I hear her voice. Quite faint but enough for me to hear. "I'm sorry too."

"Why?" I don't think *wanting to follow Sasuke anywhere and anytime* would be the reason here as the one who breaks our conversation back then is me, pretty much all of this ruckus is my fault to begin with. Strange, I wonder what she has to apologize to me for.

"It's hard to explain..." Sakura lowers her head in apologetic, recalling to what happened at the hospital's hall. As her teacher had told them to keep a secret about what they had to do and acted as natural as possible. "Let's just say that you wasn't exactly wrong about it."

Hearing so, I remain on my spot speechlessly and so does she. Looking at our feet awkwardly and unsure what to say up next. After a short silent moment that feel like hours, Sakura coughs into her hand to gain my attention and speaks up.

"How about we try again?"

"Huh?"

"You're still learning how to cook, are you not? How about I lend you a hand?" Sakura giggles at my dumbfounded face and offers to tutor me some cooking classes at my home. Considering that as first step for them to build a close friendship, slowly but steady.

Finally catching up what she's thinking. I nod, smiling to her in appreciation. "That... would be great. Thank you."

The next day.

"Sasuke...?"

"What are you doing at someone else rooftop?"

As I'm about to leave the area quietly after doing my daily exercise around the village while enjoying the beautiful sunrise. Sasuke, however, has caught me standing alone on top of one of the Uchiha's households early in the morning. Needless to say, the boy doesn't look very pleased to see me here...