07: Time for laundry.

Monday, April 10, 2017, morning

"Hinata-sama, are you ready?" Itachi asked, looking at his watch.

My right eyebrow twitched up and I wanted to face him in a slapdash way, but held back. I was still within the boundaries of the Hyuuga estate and here I had to wear my mask. "Yes," I said quietly. I picked up my bag and put it in the crook of my arm. "Itte kimasu," I murmured to the shoe cabinet – the only one who wanted to listen to me. Actually, I could also give myself these phrases, but they had been taught to me. At Itachi's side, I walked to the bus stop and while we waited, I glanced at my new bodyguard. He wore his suit with the tie again, had combed his wavy hair into a loose side parting just like on Friday and a small shoulder bag was around his upper body. If I didn't know better, I would think he was a mature, extremely attractive first-semester student. His attentive, if somewhat tired gaze, which he let wander through the streets, rounded off the picture damn well. I took a deep breath. I had a little hope that his snooty manner on Friday was due to a certain nervousness about his new job, but honestly Itachi Uchiha didn't seem like someone who was easily upset. If he got in my way again today, he would get to know my other side. I was his protégé, yes, but that didn't mean that he was allowed to treat me disrespectfully. All in all, I was still the damn princess of the Gin'nome-kai, his current employer, and even though I never used this title otherwise, I would love to play this card with him – even if it was so that he could get shit from whoever was standing above him.

"Itachi, you seem tired," I said, simply so that it wouldn't be so quiet.

He looked at me with a frown. "Don't worry, Hinata-sama. My performance doesn't suffer as a result."

"Is everything okay with you?" I asked timidly.

"Are you worried about me?"

"Am I not allowed to be?"

"Hm," Itachi said and lowered his eyes briefly. "I guess so."

"See? Is everything okay?"

He grumbled. "The last week was honestly quite mixed and I didn't get much sleep on the weekend, if you really want to know."

"Got wasted?"

Itachi snorted in amusement. "I think I'm getting too old for that. No. But that shouldn't weigh you down. As I said, my performance does not suffer from it. I'll take care of you."

At these words I raised my eyebrows. I couldn't judge this guy at all. And that drove me crazy because I still didn't know why he was here and if he was a danger to me.

When we arrived at the campus, we went directly to lecture hall 41-B. As always, my appearance was hardly noticed, but Itachi immediately rose attention. He had just set foot over the threshold when I saw some quite nice fellow students, with whom I hadn't really talked before, turned their heads like curious meerkats, as if their eyes had been magically attracted by the Uchiha. A whisper was sparked among them and one of them, a blonde with a big boobs named Ino Yamanaka, trotted straight towards Itachi. "Hello, who are you~?"

"Itachi," my bodyguard introduced himself. "I am—"

"Ooooh, you have phat eyes!" Naruto Uzumaki, the class clown of our year, bawled from somewhere behind me, pushed me half to the side as he stumbled past me, and shamelessly pointed at Itachi's face.

He narrowed his "phat" eyes when he saw how I could only prevent myself from flying onto my mouth by lunging to the side, and if looks could kill, Naruto would now be lying completely torn to shreds on the ground.

"Tell me, are you pumping?!" squawked Sakura Haruno, one of Ino's friends, as she pricked Itachi's taut upper arm, which was clearly visible under his jacket.

A chatter started and Itachi's head, smoking with rage, stood out from a crowd of fangirls – and Naruto – which amused me deliciously.

Leisurely, I sank into my chair next to Shino. "Who is that?" he asked and showed critically crumpled eyebrows towards Itachi and his steadily growing fan club.

"My great-cousin from Tokyo," I said, struggling to suppress a grin. I put the water bottle on the table, the laptop next to it and booted it. Itachi Uchiha had given the best performance one could have as an rather inconspicuous bodyguard.

In my back there sounded an angry "Enough! I don't want to marry you, please, leave me alone now, and no, you can't copy my eyes as contact lenses, and you, hands off me!". Murmuring was the answer and a panting Itachi built up in front of me. "Hinata."

"Huh?" I asked innocently, blinking up at him from below.

Itachi grabbed his temples, took a deep breath to calm down and suddenly addressed Shino. "Hey, you, you have to find another seat."

Shino's made his eyebrows meet above his sunglasses again. "Excuse me? I always sit here."

"After a week, you can't call it 'always'," Itachi said in his calm and, to my ears, clearly derogatory manner. Although I was sure that Shino heard that too, because he gave a "Kst", got up again with his backpack and shuffled along the row of tables to a free seat at the very end. Silently, Itachi sat down between me and a guy named Choji Akimichi—a chubby man with brown hair and pink cheeks who "secretly" ate chips during every lecture, probably thinking no one would notice—and grumbled quietly to me, "We had something discussed, Hinata-sama."

"Correct," I replied just as quietly. "That I don't flirt with you and don't introduce you as my boyfriend, my lover, my stalker or anything else. And you'll notice that I didn't. They didn't associate them with me at all. The only one I've talked to about you is Shino, who now thinks you're my great-cousin from Tokyo, and whom you've just wiped off the map of the world. So. It's not my fault that you're so handsome and therefore get such attention all by yourself. But you know what makes 'girls my age' tick. Don't you? Then why are you surprised?" My eyebrows twitched up and with a good portion of satisfaction on my part, Itachi had nothing to reply.

He wouldn't have been able to do that anyway, because Hatake came in at exactly that moment. He walked past me, leaving his whiff of wood and himself in the air that made me sigh. Why? Why did they all have to smell so good? Since yesterday morning I had forced myself not to think about him and this incredibly embarrassing encounter at the Snake Bites. Hatake was supposed to be molding around in a deep drawer of my brain. Suppressing feelings simply didn't help. Shit.

"Good morning, I hope you all had a pleasant weekend," he greeted his course, put his bag on the lecturer's desk and turned to the eagerly listening faces. My breath stopped for a moment. Hatake was still wearing his dog-fur cardigan in that wonderful shade of vomit that I wanted to rip off him for many reasons, and his hair was more disheveled than ever, but something about him had changed: He had shaved and seemed to have gotten a good night's sleep. His skin was pale, but no longer pasty, his hair, albeit tousled, shone silver and his eyes sparkled with joie de vivre compared to usual. What had happened to him? And what had he done with my Professor Doctor Grouch van Dogmansion? Looking like this he almost approached my ideal image of him, only the perfect haircut was missing. It was a pity, because the support groups probably lost their advertising face. "Today you are all part of a field study. At least kind of. I will show you the recording of an interrogation. The person shown raped and killed an eight-year-old boy. The case dates back more than twenty years and has already been clarified. The suspect was acquitted after three years in pre-trial detention, this is her last interrogation. I want you to study the record carefully, take notes on anything that you think might be relevant, and tomorrow we'll discuss the case. The video will fill the entire lecture today, so let's start right away. Has anyone here not understood the task?"

No one moved until a hand was raised in the front row. "Sensei, may I ask what we have to pay attention to?"

"You may, Naruto, but I won't give you an answer to that. I give you a hint: This interrogation has fundamentally changed the way justice is administered today, and not without reason. But I want you to understand why that is. And for that you have to bring a little brainpower," Hatake explained calmly, closed the blinds with a remote control, started the projector and opened a video player.

The face of a woman appeared on the clean whiteboard, who was asked questions from the background. Next to me, Itachi slid around in his chair and I looked at him in the glow of my laptop screen. His face was pinched as he watched the woman, and I looked at her more closely. Twenty years ago, the cameras hadn't been as good as they are today, but I thought I could see a red glow in their eyes despite the poor resolution. Again I turned my gaze to Itachi. Was she also an Uchiha? I became curious and gave the interrogation my full attention.

The woman had a cool expression on her pretty face, and now I could clearly see her bloodline. She was an Uchiha, no doubt. Maybe not by name, because at the bottom of the picture was mentioned, "Hisayo Jougatani, 29.06.1997", but her ancestry could not be denied if you knew what to look out for. And she had something to do with Itachi, at least he seemed to know her and didn't think well of her. I would ask him about her later, but I doubted very much that he would answer me.

Further down the lecture hall, Hatake moved. He climbed the long steps to the exit. As he passed my seat, a small piece of paper suddenly landed on my keyboard. Irritated, I stared at it. Out of the corner of my eye, I checked to see if Itachi had noticed anything, but he kept his eyes fixed on the whiteboard. I randomly stroked the keyboard, pinched the snippet between two fingers, leaned back comfortably in my chair, put my hands in my lap and carefully unfolded the message. The paper said, "come to the toilet alone"

My heart skipped a beat. What did Hatake want from me? And why did he convey the message to me so arcanely? There was only one way to find out. I stood up with the crumpled note in my fist, but Itachi had already grabbed me by the wrist. "Where do you want to go?" he whispered soundlessly close to my ear.

"Pee," I breathed back. "Do you want to come with me?"

"Yes," Itachi replied and he walked ahead of me out of the lecture hall. My heart had found a rhythm again, but it was much faster than before. When Itachi saw Hatake in the toilet, I didn't know what was going to happen. What would he think? Would he draw the wrong conclusions? Would he attack him?

We reached the nearest ladies' toilet. Itachi ordered me silently to wait, disappeared into the washrooms, and returned after a minute. "Everything's clean."

"Well, I hope so."

"Wag," Itachi growled, crossed his hands behind his back and nodded to the door. "I'm waiting here."

"Oh, won't you wipe my ass?" I shook my head violently. "I'll report that to my father. What if I injure myself and bleed to death in agony?"

Itachi's eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.

I left him alone in the corridor, waited for the door to close behind me, and finally looked around. Itachi hadn't lied, everything was indeed clean here. Astonishing. But what now?

Before I could think about whether I might have caught the wrong toilet, I heard a click and Hatake's tousled hairstyle peeked out from behind the last cubicle. He moved his head to the side and indicated to me that I should follow him. I did, although I still didn't feel comfortable with the matter. He wouldn't hurt me—at least I hoped so—but why the game of hide-and-seek? I squeezed into a tiny broom closet in the corner and Hatake closed the door, so that we were enveloped in complete darkness. Only the fine, red beam of light from a functioning smoke detector made the blackness fade at least a little bit.

Hatake was very close to me due to the narrowness of the room, which drove heat into my ears. "I need to talk to you," he whispered in a husky voice that made me shudder. OH, PLEASE NOT NOW!

"Why here?", I whispered back.

"Master key. He thinks this is closed."

"You have a master key for the storage room in the ladies' toilet? Isn't that a bit.. sus?"

"Huh, now that you say it, kinda, yes. But I didn't see any other way without raising suspicion. We don't have much time either. Therefore: Why is Itachi Uchiha with you?"

I gasped. "You.. You know him?"

"I do. And I know to whom he belongs. Hence my question: Why is he with you?"

"He.. i-is my great-cousin from Tokyo."

"Please don't lie to me, Hinata. He could come in at any moment. I know that he is a member of the Akaiisan-kai, and I also know that your father is the head of the Gin'nome-kai."

"What?! But.. How? Since when?"

"I happen to know a bit about legal history and the name Hyuuga has been popping up more often since the fifties. I simply combined these two facts." Smart. "Before you think wrong about me: I don't condemn you for it. I mean, it explains some things for me, but that's not relevant. Much more important is: Do you have the feeling that you are in danger?"

I answered before I thought about it. "Yes."

"Does this man from the other day have anything to do with it? This Shiranui?"

"No, Genma is a cop and asked me to be his informant. My head has been spinning a bit and I have a suspicion that Itachi was assigned as my bodyguard for a reason. Sensei, I'm afraid. He is an Akaiisan-kai and works for my father to take care of me. It's like holding two negative magnets together and expecting them to attract each other. I don't know why Itachi is here, but that he is.. is unsettling."

"I understand.." Hatake paused for a moment. "I know Itachi. Or rather, I have known him years ago. I don't know what he's like now, but he wasn't a bad guy back then."

"So.. are you telling me to trust him?"

"No, not exactly. I just think.. I don't know. There really seems to be something brewing and you should take care of yourself, Hinata." He sighed and his warm, slightly minty breath brushed my forehead. My vagina made itself known, of course. I ignored that bitch. "Were you not at university on Tuesday because of your family?"

I took a deep breath and nodded. He couldn't see much of me, but I knew he understood me and I didn't have to say it out loud.

"Thank you for your trust."

"What should I do now? Today is the first day that Itachi accompanies me and I don't want to admit it, but I'm afraid all the time that he wants to secretly kill me, so it looks like an accident. Maybe on behalf of my father, because he no longer sees me as useful or knows that I am disloyal to him. Or on behalf of Madara Uchiha, because he.. I don't know. Maybe he wants another war between our clans, I could imagine that. No matter from which direction, I feel like a pawn for some big plan."

"Shit.. I.. I'd love to help you, but I don't know how. There are two syndicates behind you right now, the situation is tricky."

"Hm, you don't say."

"I'm sorry, Hinata. That's not what I meant. I think the best way out is the police, and even that is risky."

I stayed silent.

"Hinata, I.. I don't know how I can help you, but if you need anything, please come to me."

"I won't."

"Why not?" Hatake asked, sounding offended.

"Because I don't want to drag you into it. You have a normal," I snorted, "less clichéd life than I do and, despite my pessimism, hope for a happy ending. If you also set a foot into this madness, you won't get out of it. Please, Sensei, just leave it at that. I'll manage this situation somehow."

"And what if not? If you.." He couldn't finish his sentence.

Carefully I put my hand on his chest – and my vagina freaked out again. It was warm, muscular and a strong heart was beating underneath. I sucked in a hissing air. NOT NOW. "If there should be more than just delicious miso brew in the pot, then so be it. For my sake, go to Genma, tell him everything you know, including me."

"But I know next to nothing about you."

"Well, you know more than anyone else."

"Is that so?"

"Yes. But please, you have to promise me that you will stay out of it. Please."

The chest under my hand slowly rose and fell and again his breath brushed over the top of my head. "All right. I'll stay out of it."

"Thank you."

"But please, go to the police and get as much help as you can."

"That's easier said than done."

"I know, but you don't have to go through this alone. Listen? You are not alone."

I smiled weakly and was about to say something when the door flew open and glaring neon light flooded the room. Intuitively, I narrowed my eyes and blinked at the tall, black figure standing there in the washroom.

Hatake had raised his hand against the blinding light and murmured, "Itachi.."

"Hello, Taicho. May I ask what you're doing?"

"It's not—"

".. what it look like?" interrupted Itachi. "Well, to me it looks like you're having an affair with your student."

"What?!" Hatake gasped, shaking his head hastily. "No! No, we.. We're not having an.."

"Hinata-sama, come with me," Itachi said briskly.

"Where?" I asked defiantly.

Itachi glared at me furiously. "I just gave you an order. Come along."

I stared back just as angrily. "You know.. you said you'd stick to me even if I fucked borderline stupid athletes in the library. So you wouldn't have a problem with that. Now you're crying because you see Hatake-sensei and me STANDING in a broom closet. Your brain seems to work strangely."

"What did you do here then?" asked Itachi, putting on a know-it-all face. "I listen."

"Singing lessons," I replied promptly. Finally, my unbridled brain was good for something. I wouldn't let Itachi just get me down.

"Ah sure," he snorted. "And? Who has the better lungs?"

"He, definitely."

"Don't take me for a fool, Hinata." Finally, the -sama was dropped and we met on the same level. "I'm going to take you home now, and you"—he pointed to Hatake—"you're going to get into a lot of trouble."

From the side, I heard Hatake open his mouth to say something, and I was finally fed up. "Itachi, come down for God's sake!" I put my hand on Hatake's chest again. "This is what we did. Where do you see 'a relationship' here? Do you even know what that looks like?" I just acted without thinking. I stood on tiptoe, pressed a kiss on Hatake's lips, believing that he reciprocated the pressure, and turned back to Itachi. "THIS is what it would have looked like if we had a relationship. With more passion, of course. Maybe he would have been hard and had a hand on my tit. Or on my ass, I don't know what he prefers. But this" – I twitched my arm, my hand still resting on his chest, in which a heart was beating rapidly – "is not a fucking relationship. Chill your socks, my goodness."

Itachi stared at me speechlessly.

I took my hand from Hatake, didn't even look at him, but shrugged my shoulders and walked past Itachi, deliberately bumping my shoulder against his upper arm. Was that cool? With wobbly knees I left the bathroom and wanted to make my way back to the lecture hall, when Itachi caught up with me. "Hinata, please wait. Now wait!" Hatake was right behind him.

Itachi had grabbed my wrist, but I tore myself away. "Don't touch me!"

"What's going on here?" asked a deep and highly threatening voice. Its sound made my blood freeze in my veins. At first I only saw Itachi's startled face, Hatake's eyes in the background also widened. As if in slow motion, I turned around. A tall figure stood a little way down the corridor. In his expensive, black suit, he looked so out of place between the bulletin boards with colorful notices and a self-designed motivational banner for the university's basketball team that I thought he was a mirage triggered by my generally low blood sugar level and the adrenaline that rushed through my body. But he was actually there, Itachi and Hatake could see him too. Madara Uchiha just stood there with his flowing mane, perfectly trimmed beard and piercing red eyes that brought even Itachi, who should be used to them, to his knees. I felt him immediately let go of my wrist and saw him bow. "Madara-sama, forgive me. I didn't know you would be here today."

To experience Itachi so reverently tasted really good. But I could hardly be happy about it, because Madara's dark aura had me completely in its grip once again. And like last time, I didn't know if I found him attractive or should be afraid of him.

Slowly, Madara approached us. His shiny shoes clacked loudly against the walls with every step. I became hot and cold at the same time with every foot he took and without him even being in my immediate vicinity, my vagina pulsed again. How horny could one be, crappy bitch! I shuddered and noticed how Madara's eyes darted briefly into my face, but turned back to Itachi. "Itachi. I never want to see anything like that again."

"Yes," Itachi said, bowing once more.

Now Madara looked directly at me. "Did he hurt you?" he asked softly and I gradually had trouble keeping myself on my feet. What kind of insane charisma did this man have?!

I shook my head. "N-no, Madara-sa–" I broke off. I had clearly noticed his stiffening jaw muscles. "Madara. It's all fine. We only had a small argument."

"Regarding what?"

"Um.." I glanced over my shoulder. Itachi stared blankly ahead. Hatake, on the other hand, looked at me. How should I regulate this now without blowing the whistle on someone here?! After all, Itachi didn't know that Hatake knew that he was my bodyguard. And Madara didn't know what Hatake knew either. I had to protect him, otherwise he was certainly dead. And Itachi was too, if Madara knew that Itachi had become abusive towards me. No one should die because of my failure. And shit, neither should I! No one was allowed to know about this thing between Madara and me, but obviously his demands from Tuesday still applied and I wasn't allowed to treat him with the respect I would otherwise have shown him as a Yakuza boss. So I'm on a first-name basis with Madara, no -sama, don't drag Hatake into it and protect Itachi. Yeah, thank you very much. Come on, lying abilities, your time has come to shine! "Well.. Itachi and I had an agreement that I would always let him know when I went somewhere. You know him, he has this exaggerated protective instinct. And on Saturday I snuck out of the house to go partying, and Itachi got mad about it and we argued. To be honest, I'm still a bit foxy, but it'll be okay. We basically get along, my dear great-cousin and I." I hesitated, then I gave Itachi a little smack on the cheek.

A smile flitted across Madara's lips, but his irises darkened. "I understand. But if you can trick him so easily, your dear great-cousin had better keep two eyes on you in the future. Right? Itachi?"

"Yes, sir."

"Otherwise, the two of you will have to say goodbye to each other sooner than you would like."

"Oh, you're not serious, Madara. What is great-uncle Hiashi in Tokyo supposed to say about that?" Was I just taking it too far?

Madara approached me, and by the way the electrically charged air in the room changed, I could feel Itachi and Hatake tensing their muscles. They both went into fighting position. "You think I'm not serious, Hinata?" He was now standing directly in front of me and fixed me with his red wolf eyes on my very personal torture rack. I was glad that I was not a man and that everyone present here could see my arousal. He should fucking finally touch me! "You should know me better." He bent down next to my head. "You know that I can't stand contradictions," his timbre breathed into my ear and I had to close my eyes in concentration so as not to just faint from sheer lust. My breath was choppy and my heart galloped away like a lousy faggot. "Hinata.. Tell me—and you know I don't tolerate lies—what do you want?"

Before I had a chance to even think of an answer to de-escalate the situation and tame my libido at the same time, I suddenly heard softer footsteps, and at the corner of the main entrance, there showed up a man whose appearance I thought was almost as unlikely as Madara's. What the fuck was going on here?! Was I in a grandiose nightmare that just randomly threw all my cravings and fears into one pot?!

Genma stopped at the sight of this unusual gathering. His brown eyes wandered from one face to the other, finally stuck on me and he grinned. "Hey, there you are."

Madara straightened up again and threw palpable waves of his dark aura at the newcomer, which left Genma cold. My eyebrows twitched up as he walked right up to me, hugged me, gave me a bristly kiss on the cheek and said with gleaming eyes, "I actually wanted to surprise you and take you out for brunch. Well, shit, I should still work on my timing, huh?"

"Uh, Genma.. What.. Why are you here?" I stuttered, not knowing how to classify his appearance and his highly questionable action.

Genma grimaced. "Darling, you and your memory. Our anniversary? Forgotten?" He snorted. "You are and will remain incorrigible." He put his hand on my waist and said good-humouredly to the group, "Hi, I'm Genma, Hinata's boyfriend." He threw a peace sign into the round with his free hand.

My ears exploded and when I looked into the faces of Madara, Itachi and Hatake, all three of them showed a different composition of surprise, horror and anger. I was just wondering what Genma was trying to achieve with his performance, when I felt something. His thumb was right next to my spine and started tapping my shirt. But it wasn't just an absent twitch, no. Long-short-long-short-long-long-long-short-short. Pause. Then again from the beginning. Morse code. K and question mark. He wanted to know if everything was okay with me.

Was it? I didn't even know it myself. This situation was the strangest thing that could have happened here today. Two yakuza, with both of whom I had a complicated relationship, my professor, with whom not everything was quite normal either, and now a cop who had probably come here to recruit me again so that I could testify against my father and at the same time the enemy and business partner of one yakuza and the boss and also enemy of the other yakuza. Absolutely wild. And someone called the ambience in the Ame Club crazy.

I looked carefully at each of the faces in front of me: Madara, who was obviously leaning towards anger, Itachi, who was rather surprised, and Hatake, who clearly had horror in his eyes. At the moment the greatest danger certainly came from Madara, simply because he was Madara, but even he would never do anything if he was on a public campus, whether it involved blood or semen – or even both. Hatake just seemed to remain a silent spectator – good, at least he kept his promise not to interfere – and Itachi, if he really wanted to kill me, he wouldn't do so in front of witnesses. On top of that, I wasn't sure if Madara and Itachi knew that Genma was a cop and was investigating my father. Actually, we could all have been friends, after all, none of us liked Hiashi. At least that's what I thought, I still wasn't so sure about Itachi.

Hoping to assess the situation correctly, I placed my flat hand on Genma's firm shoulder blade and typed my answer with Morse code: Y

On my fingers I felt his muscles relax. "And you are..?" Genma turned to Madara after a few seconds of silence.

He turned away from Genma and me. "Late. Please excuse me, my appointment is already waiting for me." And with that he walked further down the hallway towards the stairs.

"Itachi," the remaining Uchiha introduced himself and jerked his head briefly. "Hinata's great-cousin from Tokyo."

"Oh really?" Genma said in a really convincing tone. Of course, he knew who Itachi was. And he also knew Madara, otherwise he wouldn't have reacted like that. Smart guy with a quick grasp and even better acting talent, you really had to give him that. A true Tanuki. "Hinata didn't say anything about a visit from relatives. Do you want to join us for the anniversary brunch or can I kidnap her for a few hours?"

"Um, Genma..", I muttered up to the cop. Now I had to save him from Itachi, after all, Genma didn't know that Itachi was my bodyguard and wouldn't leave my side. Nevertheless, I had to maintain Genma's role. Slowly I needed Sherlock's memory palace to keep all the secrets in my head, fuck. "I know today is our anniversary and everything, but Itachi hasn't been in Kyoto for long and we have a lot to talk about. Will you be very angry with me if we postpone this until tonight? When we're alone, I'll unpack everything, I promise."

Genma looked at me from above with an indefinable look. Then he grinned again. "How could I ever be angry with my little butterflower, huh?" I was taken aback, but immediately ignored this remark in my mind. Now was not the time to question that.

"Thank you, you're the best," I smiled and did something that briefly crumbled Genma's façade: I kissed him on the mouth. His short whiskers scratched my chin. His eyes widened a bit, but he caught himself within milliseconds, patted my head and let me go. "All right, see you later. Are you calling me?" I could see in his eyes that he was at least serious about this question.

"You know, sooner or later we'll get each other," I gave him the honest answer.

"I'm waiting," he smiled and waved goodbye to Itachi and Hatake. "Was nice to meet you!" With that, he also disappeared.

What remained was a booming silence, which Itachi was the first to interrupt, "Thank you, Hinata."

I turned to him. "For what?"

"That you lied for me. You have something good with me."

Smiling, I patted him on the shoulder and said, "I cannot lose my greatest great-cousin, can I?"

Itachi timidly lifted the corners of his mouth.

I sighed. "We should go back in, otherwise I don't know why Hisayo Jougatani was acquitted and revolutionized the legal system." I had already turned to the door when Itachi said, "She did it, but she was a master of manipulation and turned the head of the cop who interrogated her, so he fell in love with her and ended up making evidence disappear, which meant that they didn't have enough left against her." Itachi stepped up to my side. "Since then, two police officers have always been deployed during interrogations, and individual interrogations are no longer allowed in court." I felt my mouth open and a question was already on the tip of my tongue, which Itachi immediately answered me with a fake smile, "The boy was my best friend Shisui."

A gasp escaped my lips. "I'm sorry about that.."

"Me too," came from Hatake, who slowly approached us. "You chose the worst day imaginable to appear in my lecture, Itachi. I didn't know you were there until I saw your name on the attendance list."

Itachi nodded to Hatake. "Thank you, Taicho."

"You don't need to call me that anymore, we were only together at ANBU for one year," Hatake said quietly.

"I know," Itachi smiled. "But I haven't seen you since, and that's just how it stuck with me. If you had contacted me again, I might have gotten used to 'Kakashi' at some point."

"Would you have had time?"

"No."

"Well, that probably explains it."

"Yeah.. And I'm sorry about earlier."

"It's okay," Hatake waved his hand and his eyes twitched briefly at me, which swung back and forth during this extremely informative dialogue between the two parties to the conversation. "It's quite understandable that it looked strange."

"What did you really do there?" asked Itachi and had a rather gloating tone again. "That certainly weren't singing exercises."

"No, it wasn't," Hatake nodded. "We had to clarify something."

"What?"

"It's only Hinata's and my business. But don't worry, it's nothing inappropriate, at least not in that sense. We don't have such a relationship with each other."

It gong.

Hatake half laughed. "Those were short and highly uneventful ninety minutes. I should get back in and redeem my course."

"Yes, we have to get our stuff," Itachi said to me and I only said "Mh-hm" at first, but then quickly said, "Oh, Hatake-sensei? I'm sorry for the kiss. That was not.. well.."

"No worries," Hatake said with a smile and winked. "I know you."

Huh, that was an interesting development. I decided to eat something during the break today and maybe I would keep it in. My brain was just wasting too much energy.

be_my_ace: [King, can I ask you a question?]

King_size94: [Sure, Buttercup ]

be_my_ace: [Why exactly do you call me 'Buttercup'?]

King_size94: [Because you like to press flowers and once said you liked buttercups best because of their color.]

be_my_ace: [But then why this version? Why not something else?]

King_size94: [I don't know, it just sounds nice _ Do you mind it?]

be_my_ace: [No, everything is fine. But would you also like 'butterflower'?]

King_size94: [Would also suit you well. Do you want me to call you that from now on?]

be_my_ace: [No, Buttercup fits. It's smoother. Has become my second identity, so..]

King_size94: [You're confusing me :D Why are you asking all this?]

be_my_ace: [Mh, just like that. Tell me, are you into 69?]