O' Spider Lily that grows on the mountain called Waiting, is there someone you also promised to meet this autumn?

-Ono No Komachi

Our last mission as Team 8, huh?...Will Kiba and Hinata remember me when it's over? ...That is, unlike that time Naruto couldn't remember my name...Not even an insect would make that mistake. The reason is because even an ant remembers the scent trail left behind by his comrades...It seems I'm always the last-

But just like every other time Shino talked, his private musings were cut off by Kiba's bark shattering the buggishly harmonious calm of the Sora-Ku forest.

"First, I'll track this guy down with my nose," Kiba rambled on. "And then when I find him, send in your insects!"

"It seems you've never met a Beekeeper before," Shino quietly called him out. "In that case, leave this to me."

"And what are you gonna do? Challenge him to a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors again?" Kiba remarked. "No way I'm gonna let you take all the credit for Hinata's wedding present! Besides, I've met plenty of bees and keepers before. This one won't be any different."

"Beekeepers are honored sages in their clan," Shino said. "So, unless you like getting stung, I suggest we-"

"Hey, do you think that cat-girl we met back there is still talking about us?" Kiba interrupted him again.

"Why? You got a crush on her?"

"Huh? Are you crazy?" Kiba downplayed his interest with a dismissive wave. "Nah, it's nothing like that. This is a crucial time if I'm gonna become the Hokage. There's no time for love!"

"You're too easy to read, Kiba," Shino shook his head, walking ahead of his teammate.

Or maybe it was Shino who read him too deeply.

Always the first to notice the subtlest changes in his teammates, even when they remembered him last.

"Mastering jutsu is more than just about technique. It's about detail," Shibi Aburame always lectured his son, when Shino complained about his rowdy classmates. "Every person, including Kiba and Naruto, knows something you don't. Learn from them."

And so, the young bug master became a collector of his teammates closely guarded secrets.

Like why Hinata always fainted when she saw Naruto. How badly Kiba wished he could prove himself as a respectable alpha male. Or how much Kurenai Sensei's heart still terribly hurt for Asuma.

And Shino?

Could anyone look at him now and guess what he wanted most?

But that was an unfair question to hold against his teammates. Why, you ask?

Because not even Shino understood Shino sometimes.

And when he really thought about the question, Shino couldn't answer it for even himself.

"Dreams, huh?" He contemplated the conversation he'd left off with the Academy students back at the Leaf. "The first step in following your dreams is to..."

The logical answer to that question was simple.

Dream it.

But Shino's dreams weren't an insect, or a hidden jutsu, or a ranked mission, all of which he had successfully mastered as a ninja.

There was no fighting style for attacking a dream, and no summoning scrolls to know what a dream looked like.

"Therefore, how does one know it's a dream that's been found, once one has found it?" Shino wondered.

Shino thought a dream meant looking out for his friends as a member of Team Kurenai.

But now, not even that could be his forever.

Now, he was alone again.

And wasn't that the very opposite of a dream?

Because wasn't the best part of dreams being able to share them with someone else?

After all, Naruto had been right.

Quietly bearing the pain of being alone is completely out of this world.

And humble as he was about accepting his fate, Shino still couldn't quite sit with the fact that the start of every one of his dreams ended in him being alone.

And letting go of the people he cared most about was the most unbearable.

Torune. His teammates. His mother...

They never seemed to stay by his side in the same way he wanted to be by theirs.

After all, what was it everyone called him back in the Leaf?

Stoic? Quiet and off-putting? Unreadable?

A creep?

Maybe that was the burden of being a good shinobi.

Maybe his ninja way in the art of silence was exactly what it took to get his missions done.

Because what good would he be to his village or his teammates if he wasn't so good at hiding the real Shino?

How formidable of a shinobi would he be to the enemy if he wasn't the cool, calculating mystery his clan was notorious for?

Would powerful shinobi like Kankuro of the Sand still be shaken at the thought of fighting him in the Chunin exams?

Shino had to admit...he kind of liked it when people ran from him. When they said things like, "I wouldn't want to fight that bug guy".

Still...How could they call him stoic and matter-of-fact when the very force driving him as a shinobi was love?

Love for his clan, his teammates, his village, and his sworn loyalty as a ninja to avenge the weakest of the Hidden Leaf, even at the cost of his own life.

But the only ones who understood all that were Shino and his bugs. And it would always be that way.

It's just like what he told Hinata and Kiba during their game of rock-paper-scissors.

The less your enemies know about you, the less they will use against you.

If it meant protecting everyone he cared about in the end, Shino embraced his mystery.

That was his ninja way.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is-"

"Eh, did you say something?" Kiba interrupted him again.

Shino sighed.

Of course, Kiba wasn't listening.

Who could get a word in when Kiba was around?

There was no point in trying, but Shino tried anyway.

"Nothing...I just said that I envy you," he finished his sentence quietly.

And there it was again.

That emptiness feeding on him like a parasitic beetle.

A feeling so painful and damning that not even Shino could block it out of his mind.

"Oh, really? You do, huh?" Kiba replied half-heartedly, as he sniffed in the direction of every rock and tree that crossed their path.

But without any surprise to Shino, Kiba didn't seem interested in knowing more about the torment his teammate was going through, knowing Team 8 would no longer be a team.

In fact, Shino was completely forgotten as Kiba leapt ahead of him from tree to tree, trying to pick up the scent of the Beekeeper they were tracking into the Sora-Ku forest.

But Shino was used to that.

Sometimes, he liked it when Kiba got distracted and left him alone to his own thoughts.

Because Shino was about as good at explaining his feelings as Kiba was at listening to them.

Kiba always talks big...Maybe I've dismissed him too much because of that. However, who am I to criticize anyone?

"Shino! You gonna keep up or do I gotta leave you behind?" Kiba called back to him. "Wait, do you smell that?"

"You found something?"

"It smells like-(sniff, sniff)-Like honey."

"You mean you picked up the Beekeeper's scent before my insects could find him?" Shino doubted his fellow rival.

"Wait..." Kiba sniffed the air around him, looking around at the trees in perplexity. "I doubt it's that Beekeeper guy. This is different."

"It's something else?"

"Softer," Kiba reported. "Like a girl."

"Will you stop daydreaming about girls already?"

"I'm not daydreaming! I told you I can't think about women at a time like this! I'm the next hokage, you hear me?" Kiba defended himself.

"Over the top as usual," Shino remarked.

"Hey, don't look at me like that, Shino!"

"What do you mean?"

"You always think you're so cool behind your hood and your sunglasses!" Kiba declared. "At least that cat-girl actually liked me! That's more than we can ever say about you, Shino! What girl wants a guy who hangs out with a bunch of bugs?"

"You can say what you want about me, but leave my insects out of this," Shino answered. "Unless you want to tell them yourself."

"Sheesh," Kiba shuddered at the nightmarish idea of facing Shino in battle. "Let's just find this Beekeeper already and get the honeywine back to the village. By now, everybody's beat us in finding Hinata a wedding present. If you hadn't been late, we would've won this contest by now!"

"One shouldn't rush anything you wish to last forever," Shino reminded him.

"Ah, give me a break, Shino!" Kiba waved him off.

"If Hinata is to remember this gift as the best one out of the rest, then-"

But this time, it wasn't Kiba who interrupted Shino's wisdom of life.

He abandoned his own words when a small swarm of his insects descended like onyx raindrops around him. A female Kikaichū caught the knuckle of his thumb, fondly brushing her tiny black legs against the warmth of Shino's skin.

Content once again at finding her way back to Shino, her favorite home.

And when she did, Shino remembered again that he wasn't really alone.

"I see," he said to her, receiving the scavenging insect's report through the entwined connection they shared in his chakra. "So it seems someone really is following us. Kiba sensed her too."

He released the Kikaichū beetle again in the forest, with his next command, "You know what to do."

His shaded eyes followed his insect into the treetops, but before he could make a good assessment of where the mysterious onlooker was hiding, the air around him changed.

Out of nowhere, the green leaves darkened into a creeping fog that thickened and cornered him from all sides.

Making him lose track of Kiba ahead of him.

"Strange," Shino glanced around, alert. "I've never seen fog behave like this...could this be someone's jutsu?"

And if it was, how could he have unwittingly walked into someone's trap without his insects detecting it?

"Kiba!" Shino called out into the fog. "Where are you?"

Excited and buzzing with agitation, swarms of his insects came flying back to report to him.

"You guys don't know where he is either?" Shino asked surprised. "This is most definitely somebody's jutsu. Scatter."

He released his insects back into the forest.

"Take me to where she is."