Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Otherwise, Kushina would have been revived in the middle of the war and trolled everyone.

HUGE THANKS to my beta SeverNSkull for the amazing work ;w;

Warning: Language, because Anko. Also, the age gap, so this will be a Slow Burn to keep things ethical (and, well, mostly because I love to keep people frustrated, bear with me :D).

Enjoy!

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Chapter 2

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On the following day, as soon as she arrived at school, Naruto was attacked by both a very excited Ino and an equally excited Sakura.

"He answered me! He answered me! Look!" She exclaimed, presenting her wrist to reveal a beautiful rose drawn there. "Mommy said he must be an artist because the drawing is sooo pretty!"

Naruto blinked, before grinning widely, her heart beating wildly. "That's so awesome, Ino! Then he likes flowers too!"

"Yeah! Maybe he'll make a drawing of me too?" Ino giggled. "I have to think about what I could write next!"

Naruto nodded, a huge smile on her face. Sure, she was happy for Ino, but more than anything, she was just happy that both girls had come looking for her to let her know about the answer. It meant more to her than they could ever imagine.

"So did you ask who it is?"

Ino blinked. "Uh, no, not really. I guess I could though? It's a bit like exchanging letters, right?" She then turned her attention to Sakura, who was smiling happily at her. "Did you ask your soulmate?"

Sakura's smile faltered, letting a deep blush appear on her cheeks. "Um, no, I didn't try again. I, um, I don't know what to say. Maybe it's better to wait? Maybe... he'll talk to me first next time?"

"Heh, you can wait and see, but I won't!" Ino laughed, her eyes sparkling. "I want to talk to him some more!"

Naruto nodded with a bright smile and briefly sent a subconscious glance down at her arm. She hoped she would also get an answer soon.

"Class is about to start", Sakura reminded the two of them.

"Right!" Ino realized and headed towards the building, quickly followed by Sakura.

Naruto followed after them and was about to join them when she came to a halt, her smile falling from her face as she clenched her fists. Was it okay to go with them now? Sure, they had wanted to let her know the end of the story, but that didn't make them friends. Did it?

"Naruto?" Ino asked.

Naruto realized that in her musing, both girls had turned towards her and were looking at her expectantly.

"You're not coming?"

Her eyes widened and she felt like her chest was about to burst out of sheer happiness. A toothy grin formed on her lips and she ruffled the back of her short hair, chuckling shyly. "Yeah, I'm coming!", she called, breaking into a run to join them once more.

When they arrived in the classroom, the three of them all sat at the same table with Ino in the middle. Around them, children were laughing and chattering. Naruto usually felt left out, but for once, she didn't even notice the other children, too focused on her new friends besides her.

"When are you going to ask him?" Sakura inquired, eyeing Ino curiously.

"I don't know. What if he doesn't want me to know? It's not too early, right?"

"I don't think it is. You can give him your name first, that way you'll be even!" Naruto suggested.

Naruto didn't think twice about making the suggestion. After all, she would do the same if she was in Ino's predicament. Every once in a while, when she was feeling particularly lonely, Naruto would make her way to the middle of the market square and yell her name at strangers. There was no one to reprimand her for it or tell her not to so she didn't think it was rude. Besides, names were important. Sometimes they were the most important thing someone owned.

Ino nodded, a serious expression on her face. "Alright, I'll do it."

She took a pen and after a few attempts, she began writing on her left wrist.

I am Ino.

She appraised the words carefully and closed her eyes with another nod, satisfied with her work.

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Iruka was proud of his job. Despite having a rough childhood, he had managed to become a responsible shinobi who could protect his village and its inhabitants at any cost. That is why he liked the concept of teaching the new generation. If he could guide the children of Konoha to help them become accomplished adults as he had, it would be his greatest achievement. Or at least, that was his intention until he was interrupted by an outraged cry in the middle of a very important lecture on the Five Great Nations and their leaders.

Standing in her place, Yamanaka Ino was glaring daggers at her hand.

"He drew a pig?!"

On her right, Haruno Sakura held a hand over her mouth, while staring at her friend with wide eyes. It served in keeping Iruka from being able to tell whether she was trying to stifle a giggle or if she was shocked beyond words.

On Ino's left, Uzumaki Naruto was looking at her quizzically. "You think your soulmate is a pig?" She whispered loudly.

'Soulmate...?' Iruka deadpanned. By the Rikudō, even Uzumaki Naruto was talking about boys now.

"What? No! He's obviously making fun of me!"

"Ino, Sakura, Naruto."

Both Naruto and Sakura froze on the spot. Ino didn't seem to care though. She sat down and took a pen before she began to scribble vehemently on her left arm.

"Ino!" Iruka raised his voice this time. Where was these kids' respect for authority? Back in his days-

No, actually. He couldn't say much about that at all after his own childhood was spent pranking and disrespecting his teachers.

"But he made fun of me!"

"Who did?"

"The love of my life!" Ino shrieked in a shrill voice.

The ninja tried very hard not to roll his eyes. As irritating as it was, he had signed up for this. Once upon a time, he was six too. He knew how six-year-olds worked and how girls that age were more interested in the prospect of finding their future husbands rather than learning how to sharpen a kunai correctly.

He glanced towards Uchiha Sasuke and sent him a disappointed scowl. In return, he received a deliberate, confused blink from the boy.

As their teacher, and someone who spent countless hours a day among these children, he was well aware that his most brilliant student was quite popular with the girls. Sasuke seemed to find this pretty unfortunate, but perhaps that was another advantage of being an Uchiha; being able to distract your enemies with an attractive appearance. Somehow, Iruka found that quite believable and looking over at his angelic face, he would have never believed Sasuke would be able to harm a soul.

"Ino," he began with a long-suffering sigh, "No one was making fun of you. Sasuke has been focused on the lecture the entire time, as should you."

Despite Ino's disruption and the obvious pride that began to swell in his chest, Sasuke finally seemed to realize exactly what was said. Now, instead of pride welling in his chest, his cheeks bloomed a deep red as he let out a strangled shriek, "What?"

Following Sasuke's lead, the class erupted in an uproar.

"Silence!" Iruka warned, quickly restoring order.

"What does any of this have to do with Sasuke-kun?" Ino frowned.

Iruka stared a bit dumbfounded. "Do you not... Urm, have a crush on Sasuke-kun?" he asked in a soft, curious tone. Kami, could this get any more embarrassing?

"What? Of course not! That was yesterday, Iruka-sensei; I've found my soulmate since then!" Ino explained tactlessly, seemingly proud of her accomplishment despite her claim.

Iruka groaned. Maybe it wasn't too late to resign and go back on active duty?

While dealing with his other troublemaker, he couldn't help but notice that Naruto was sitting quietly, grinning broadly beside Ino. She had never really paid attention to her classmates before, not individually. As far as he knew, she didn't know Ino and Sakura at all, other than the facts that the two of them were good friends and that they always squealed when Sasuke was around. But now, to his surprise, a bond seemed to be forming between Naruto and the other two girls.

As he stood there, his eyes strayed to where she was peering at her blonde friend's arm, attempting to decipher the angry handwriting scrawled there. Apparently, it was the response she had written to her 'soulmate's' drawing of a pig.

WHAT IS YOUR NAME?

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"I swear there's some evil spirit haunting my body!" Shisui cried aloud. "It scribbles on it all the time! At first, I thought it was somewhat cute, you know? Asking me to become friends and all," he explained, before marking a stop. "Then again, I had gotten a bit drunk that night and I thought it was one of the guys who had written that... But a few days later, it was there again, saying that it was mean not to answer, and this morning I woke up with a-a-a skeleton head or whatever it was on my arm grinning creepily back at me! I felt like my heart had stopped! This thing is threatening me!"

Shisui's fear was palpable on the other side of the table, but Anko snickered at his expense. Whoever pranked Shisui and made him terrified of his own skin deserved a gold medal. She had never been able to get this kind of reaction out of him. And the fact that this was the reason he had asked her to come with him to the dango shop, well; that was even more cause for amusement.

"To think that our Shunshin Prodigy would freak out this much over a silly little drawing."

"Wha-?!" Shisui sounded scandalized by her teasing. "Look, it's one thing to fight an enemy when you can evaluate their strength and adapt, but," his voice cracked – a sweet side effect of puberty hitting, "how I am supposed to fight an invisible opponent who writes on my body?"

"You're just annoyed because someone managed to sneak up on you during your sleep," she taunted before plucking off another dango with her teeth.

Shisui gasped indignantly and grumbled something not-so-sweet under his breath.

"It's okay. It happens to the best. Well, not to me," she added, twirling the now bare stick between her fingers, "but you'll get better."

He stared at her for a few moments as he was evaluating her before he narrowed his eyes slightly. "It wouldn't happen to be you, right?"

She laughed boisterously. "As if I'd waste my time harassing a little brat like you!"

She definitely would have, had she had the necessary stealth to surprise that smug little shit. It was true that she might be considered a prodigy in her own right, but there was a reason Shisui outranked her despite being four years younger than her.

"Did you at least try to answer?"

Anko glanced behind Shisui as the boy turned in his seat to take a look at the man behind whose hands were stuffed in his pockets. He had an eternal senbon in his mouth and wore a bandana wrapped around his head, eyeing them curiously.

"Genma," Anko saluted from her place.

"What do you mean? Answer how?" Shisui asked.

Genma approached them and sat beside the curly-haired Uchiha. "You were talking about some mysterious writing popping up on your skin, right? The first time I heard about that was with Yondaime-sama."

Shisui raised his eyebrows in amusement as both him and Anko listened to what Genma had to say.

"Back when I was part of the platoon, I'd see him write on his hands sometimes. Or his legs, even. He told me that was his way of reaching his soulmate. And that the answers would get written on their own on his skin."

Both teenagers stared at him before Anko burst out laughing.

"Don't tell me you believe in that crap!"

Genma shrugged. "I saw it happen."

Shisui's brows furrowed. He looked once again at the drawing on his arm. Huge, round eyes in a petite face were staring straight back at him, and a smile made of irregular sharp teeth stretched the alien face.

He glanced back at Genma. "You're not the one pranking me, are you? Because I feel like one of you is trying to prank me."

Anko slammed her stick down on the table. "Oh, for the love of-"

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The clinking of metal on metal carried on the breeze as Naruto trained diligently in the forest behind the academy. Today, she only managed to reach the target four times out of ten while that Sasuke-bastard got the ten of them! Sakura-chan scored six of them and Ino-chan seven. She wouldn't stay behind, she had to train more!

When her hands started to hurt, she decided to take a break. She plopped down on the spot and stared at the target. She decided that something must have been wrong in the way she was throwing her kunai, but she couldn't understand why nor what to do about it. If only someone could give her some pointers she'd be fine.

She glanced down, her hands on her lap. Sakura-chan couldn't stay late after school, her mom always came to pick her up. And Ino-chan said that she was learning how to work at her family's flower shop. However, even though she couldn't spend time with them outside of school, she had grown much closer to the girls over the last week. Ever since the beginning of the whole 'soulmate' event, the three of them had grown inseparable and Naruto was content enough with that.

Sakura-chan hadn't tried to talk to her other half again, despite her oldest friend's pestering. Naruto didn't mind though, as long as they could be together, she wouldn't push her. On the other hand, Ino-chan wouldn't stop talking about her one and only. They had learned that his name was Sai and he wanted to become a ninja of Konoha someday.

At first, Sai was a bit reluctant to give information about his life, but he had underestimated his destined one's talkativeness and pushiness. And although Ino-chan was the one doing most of the talking, he eventually relented and gave her bits of information about him over the week. He lived in a small house with his older brother, Shin, he was turning eight soon (which made him over a year older than them), and he loved to draw.

Naruto twirled a kunai in her hand as she considered that. She hadn't heard any news from her soulmate, but having Ino's and Sakura's friendship was far too important to her to stay focused on that.

Regardless, she couldn't help but wonder. Why didn't he answer her? Did he know she was Uzumaki Naruto? Did he hate her like everyone else?

Sakura-chan and Ino-chan seemed to like her though. The day before, they had both shared their meal with her, since she had forgotten to pack hers. Nothing of the sort had ever happened to her before. And although they chatted all the time about boys, Naruto couldn't bring herself to mind it. At least they had stopped squealing whenever Sasuke so much as breathed! That and they also helped each other. Sakura-chan knew a lot of stuff from her books and Ino-chan knew a lot of ninja stuff that she had never heard of before. Between the two of them, she had learned plenty of new things and it was super fun to have friends!

Even though he continued to ignore her, Naruto tried to contact her soulmate that morning. Since Ino was always so happy whenever Sai drew something, she figured that maybe her soulmate would like it if she did the same. It didn't hurt to try. After all, he hadn't asked her to stop writing to him yet so she considered that that counted for something too!

She peered down at the drawing she had made on her arm. She was so hopeful for her soulmate to like her drawing that it took her several moments before she realized that there was something else written beside it.

Are you a ghost?

That wasn't her handwriting and it definitely wasn't there before. She wiped her eyes just to make sure and found herself blinking in disbelief. The writing was still there, she immediately let out a heartfelt cry.

She had finally gotten an answer! At long last, her soulmate had spoken to her! She read over it again just to be sure and grinned.

"Oh, I have to answer him!" she cried before she stood up and ran towards her bag. She threw it open and rifled through it to retrieve a pen, before looking back at the response and jotting down her answer.

I'm your soulmate, dummy!

She wrote it out quickly, eagerly waiting for him to answer again. She couldn't believe it had worked! He wasn't going to make her wait another week though, right? Her worries were lifted almost immediately when she saw all of her writing vanish from her arm. It startled her. What just happened? Did she do something wrong?

But before she could truly begin to panic, she saw new words forming on her arm.

Then why did you draw death staring at me?

She pouted and stared hard at what had appeared. Death? How do you draw death? She didn't even know what it looked like. Naruto thought over it for a moment before shaking her head. No, she hadn't drawn death; she was sure of it.

It wasn't me! I only drew a frog!

She had decided to draw something nice to make him happy, so she had taken her wallet Gama-chan and drew it, with its sparkling big eyes and its funny smile.

Ah, that frog. Yes. It was cute.

Naruto beamed. So it worked after all! Sai was a genius!

If I do more drawings, you'll answer me then?

Once again, all the words were erased as soon as she finished writing them, but she didn't panic this time. Instead, she watched in amazement and wondered how he did that. It seemed strange to her since it usually took her some time to wash away everything from her skin. Maybe he was taking a bath?

I'm sorry I didn't answer you sooner. I've never heard of this whole soulmate thing before. To be honest, I still wonder if-

He didn't finish his last sentence before he erased it, but she found it incredible to see each word form in real-time. It was as if she could feel his presence on her skin.

He began writing again.

I'm sorry I didn't answer you sooner. I've never heard of this whole soulmate thing before. You don't need to draw for me to answer you from now on. I'm here now.

She didn't pay much attention to what he had erased and nor did she remember, but she didn't think about it too hard. Instead, she couldn't contain the excitement bubbling in her chest. She let out a cry of joy, her eyes bright as she read his answer over and over again.

You gave your word!

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To be continued

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THANK YOU, EVERYONE, FOR YOUR FEEDBACK! It made me soooo happy! Although I love to imagine stories, your encouragement really motivates me to put my ideas into words! You're awesome! I hope you enjoyed this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it :D

Note: Ino means Pig. So, "I am Ino" equals "I am a pig" in Japanese. Yeah, I warned you, a very special sense of humor.