"ANKO!"

I winced. Scalding hot tea sloshed over my hand and onto my sweater. Cursing and shivering, I put the cup down and turned on the sink tap to let cold water run over my fingers. I looked grimly over my shoulder at Ino, who was staring at me in shock. "Good morning to you too," I grumbled.

"Shit, Anko, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you!" With an apologetic expression, she rushed over to me, pulled a few sheets of kitchen paper from the roll and dabbed the massive wad of colorful printed tissue onto my cleavage to soak up the thick drops of fruit tea. "I'll pay for the cleaning, I... oh no..."

"It's all right, Ino," I sighed and turned the tap off again. My hand was throbbing unpleasantly and my skin shone like a lobster shell. "I'll just put it in the wash, it'll come out with a bit of gall soap. But why are you shouting like that at this time of morning?"

Before Ino could answer and explain the reason for the unmistakable sparkle in her eyes, three figures entered the small kitchen.

Kotetsu Hagane, Izumo Kamizuki and Kakashi Hatake, the three misogynistic alpha wolves of our floor, were apparently still absorbed in the effects of an incredibly funny joke. They were laughing at the top of their lungs. Kotetsu noticed Ino and me first. His laughter died down a bit, but he asked with a big grin on his face, "Ooh, ladies, don't mind us, keep going."

Ino rolled her eyes, continued to dab at my cleavage unperturbed and hissed back, "One more line like that from you and I'll shove your moldy cheese down your throat!"

Izumo and Kotetsu laughed again, though Kakashi merely smiled, pointed to the cupboard we were standing in front of and asked, "May I?"

Panting, Ino pulled me aside by the arm, finally let go of my breasts and crumpled up the kitchen paper. After she had thrown it away and the three men behind me were chatting loudly about some sporting event and indulging in their coffee addiction, my dearest colleague stood up in front of me, conspicuously brushed one of her long, light blonde strands of hair behind her ear and said with pursed lips, "I have something to tell you, Beanie."

"Beeeaaaniee~" Izumo mocked behind me.

I ignored him. But because I felt a brief rage at the fact that these office bullies kept dragging my nickname through the mud, I didn't understand what she wanted from me at first. "What is it?"

Ino blinked. She looked rather impatient. "Well, I have to tell you somethiiing..." She made the same movement as before, although there wasn't a strand of hair left for her to brush away.

Because the fuckers were getting on my nerves with their "AND THEN HE SPREADS HIS LEGS AND MISSES THE PUK" and because Ino wasn't getting to the point like usual, I let out an exasperated breath – but then I saw it. Something sparkled on her left ring finger and caught my attention. It clicked in my brain. I opened my eyes and mouth and took her slender hand in mine. "'Tis not true!"

"It is~" Ino squealed happily and hopped up and down on the balls of her feet. "He asked me yesterday. And I said yes!"

"Well, that's quite obvious," I grinned and hugged Ino. "Congratulations, sweetie! Awesome, you're getting married..."

"Yeaah," Ino sighed, her eyes shining. "And... Anko?"

"Huh?"

"THEN HE HIT THE ICE WITH A FULL BROADSIDE!"

"Boy, keep it down a fucking bit!" I snapped over my shoulder and suddenly it was quiet in the kitchenette.

Kotetsu sipped his hot drink at a penetrating volume, smacked his lips and said calmly, "You're allowed to talk here, but we're not?"

"Talking yes, but you're shouting at each other with your hockey, it's unbearable!"

"ICE hockey," Izumo emphasized, waving his cup know-it-all through the air.

"Hockey, ice hockey, jacket, pants – I don't give a damn, Kamizuki, just shut the fuck up," I retorted.

"Uuuh, seems like someone needs a little entertainment.." Kotetsu snarled and ducked away as a precaution.

"Why so nasty, Beanie?" Kakashi asked cheerfully.

"Oh, shut up too, Hatake," I now hissed at him. "This kitchen does not belong to you."

"I'm just giving that back," Kakashi replied serenely. "But it's not my fault if you can't stand up to us with your tender little voices. So stop bitching around." He lifted his shoulders and drank his coffee.

"Bitching?!" I growled. "Ohoo, you haven't seen me bitch yet, Hatake." God, I hated that guy. He still thought he knew more than me, just because he had shown me everything back when I started at the KGI – Konoha General Insurance. As if he was my boss and I was his office girl. Disgusting.

"Oh I haven't?"

"Definitely: No."

He grinned furtively. "I wouldn't subscribe to that. Your temper seeps through the floor here every day. Beanie."

I narrowed my eyes a little and certainly tried to kill him with my gaze. "If you continue like this, you'll soon need a diving suit when you get to work."

"It's already in the closet," Kakashi smirked.

"Hopefully it's not buried as deep as your pitiful capacity for kindness, love and above all: self-reflection, otherwise you'll die a lonely death, drowning miserably in my temper."

Kakashi sighed. I had obviously hit a nerve. His crooked grin faded a bit and he said, "Come on, let's keep talking in my office."

The three of them left, I threw a middle finger after them and now found the peace I needed to devote myself to Ino and her clunker of engagement ring. It was very simple, but beautiful – and thus perfectly suited Ino herself. "It's awesome, honestly."

"Yeah, isn't it?" Ino couldn't get out of her grin. "Anko, what I wanted to ask is, do you think you'll get enough social energy to be my second bridesmaid?"

I stared at her in amazement. "What.. I? I shall be your second bridesmaid?!"

"Not shall," Ino warned with a serious eyebrow crumple. "Want. Don't worry, you don't have to prepare anything, I know that you often don't have the energy for such things. But I would like you to stand next to me in front of the altar on my big day and enjoy this moment with me. If you don't want to or need time to think about it, just say it, it's okay. I'm not angry with you, you know me."

"Huh," I said and couldn't help but admire Ino a little. We had known each other since university, and after our useless business studies we had coincidentally started working as clerks at KGI at the same time two years ago, and only then did it turn out that we actually got along quite well. Every now and then we had gone out for a drink, but otherwise we hadn't had much to do with each other outside of our working hours. Nevertheless, she knew me well enough that she could assess me as a person better than many others in my life. Whether in a few months I would be ready to stand in front of many strangers in an exaggeratedly pretty dress and celebrate someone's wedding or not, I couldn't tell yet. But I knew that Ino wouldn't judge me if I wanted to back down in between, so I said with a feigned bow, "It would be an honor."

Ino squealed again. "I want my bridesmaids to wear lilacs." Who would have guessed that. "But I'll choose a fabric and a tone that suits your hair."

I slapped the flat of my hand on my hard-to-tame, lavender mop. "You don't have to go extra for me..–" I began, but Ino put an index finger to my lips. "Hush. Don't feel bad about it. I know I'm going to look hot that day, but I don't want you to drown in my shine." She got a fire in her eyes and although she had only received the proposal yesterday, she was already very obviously planning her entire wedding down to the last detail. "And the arrangements will be white with pale purple roses in between. And the carpets—"

Laughing, I hooked on Ino. "And you're making fun of me and my weird bursts of energy. Come on, let's take a discreetly early break today and you tell me in all the details how you imagine this major event and, above all, how Sai pulled off his kneeling."

My desk would hate me, I was aware of that. Especially before the turn of the year, work piled up because far too many people thought to themselves just before Christmas, "Ah, I'll tickle out a few more bucks to start the new year with a nice little sum in my account". Others wanted to dust off the premiums if they signed up for a new policy before December 31. And then there were those who seemed to have nothing else to do before the holidays but finally replace their old electric kettle, which had broken when they moved house in July. Lazy bunch. But I didn't have any concentration today anyway for all the applications, so I sat contentedly opposite my favorite coworker in a small café one street away, sipped my hot chocolate with cream and scolded my brain like every time for the damn ear worm 'drop it like it's hoooot~' as soon as there was a drink above room temperature nearby.

Ino was already getting into her wedding with Sai and honestly, her now fiancé couldn't have given his beloved a better Christmas present. "Look, here, that's what he had organized yesterday," Ino said and held out her smartphone to me.

In a picture I saw a boat made of fine wood decorated with artificial snow and mauve-colored voile. It almost looked like something out of Lord of the Rings. Speaking of which, I mustn't forget to take my father's film boxes with me when I went home again, so that I could snuggle up comfortably on the couch together with Konan for the almost twelve hours, as I do every year on New Year's Eve. "Beautiful," I enthused and nodded.

"Then we sailed across the river and under the bridge where we spent our night together, he got down on his knees. It was so romantic, I cried." She locked her phone and was about to put it away again, when I noticed the photo on the always-on display and held her wrist tightly. "Is that him?"

For others, it might have been weird that I didn't even know what Ino's longtime boyfriend looked like, but we didn't usually talk about him too often. But now that I saw the face of a young man with black hair, pale skin and a narrow smile next to Ino's handsome one, I suddenly felt very warm on the back of my neck. "Sai" was not an uncommon name, and I would never have considered the idea that Ino's Sai was a Sai who had witnessed my uncontrolled self-destruction all those years ago.

But he was. The very Sai I had hoped would be able to console me about my professor smiled up at me. Shit. I had slept with the future husband of my work bestie. And they had been together for umpteen years. Oh, please don't tell me..

I took a big sip of my cocoa. "Tell me something about him. Where and when did you meet?"

I highly doubted that Ino knew how different and damn in love she looked when she talked about Sai. "We met at an art exhibition. My boyfriend at that time, Sasori, he was older than me, but actually a very nice guy, dragged me along. Half the time I just stood by while he argued about art with his best friend. At some point I went outside and smoked and then Sai came and asked me for a light. And somehow we got into conversation. We talked about God and the world. After an hour or so, Sasori came out, was really charged because of his argument, and wanted us to leave, but I found the conversation with Sai so stimulating and wanted to stay. Shit, you're probably thinking I wanted more from him, right?"

"No," I interjected immediately. "I know you're not one of those girls." I waited jitterily for her to tell me when exactly this damn art exhibition was, so that I could be sure if he might have cheated on her with me.

"Well.." Ino muttered somewhat absent-mindedly. "Looking back, I have to admit to my shame that something may have grown in me back then. Sai and I sat on this bridge for a very long time and talked. We kept in touch even after that. But I swear: When I realized that I felt something for him, I sat down with Sasori and clarified things with him. He was surprisingly understanding, admitted himself that he wasn't really happy in the relationship with me anymore, but because he didn't want to hurt me, he never said anything. Crazy thing, by the way: he's been with Deidara, his art buddy, for three years now. Turns out he's homosexual, he's not really into women at all, he never actually realized or wanted to accept that before. Was a bit of an ego crunch, I have to admit, but that explains why sex with him was always so... well, strange. Almost mechanical in a way." Fascinating, also had nothing to do with the actual topic. I gasped quietly, which Ino didn't miss, and she went on. "And yes, after that I approached the matter with Sai more seriously. We dated, got together at some point, then moved in together, and now I'm sitting here wearing a ring. He told me that he knew from that first day that I was the love of his life." She smiled, cheeping. "Who would have thought that I would be the woman who experiences such happiness..?"

"You deserve all the happiness, Ino," I said encouragingly, but could hardly contain myself anymore. I didn't know how to package my request more subtly, so I asked directly, "When was this exhibition?"

Ino tore herself out of her certainly rapturous thoughts, looked at me thoughtfully and finally said, "Shortly before our graduation." Fuck me hard.

"Do you know when exactly?" I didn't even try to hide anything anymore.

"Why do you want to know?" Ino asked with a laugh that was far too innocent.

I took a deep breath and decided to be honest with her. "Because.. Well, you know that I used to be quite active. And.. Well, just before we graduated, I slept with Sai. So.."

Ino's eyebrows rose. "With my Sai?"

I nodded embarrassed.

"And you're afraid now that this happened when I met him?"

I couldn't determine what emotion resonated in her voice. And that got me down. "Yes," I said honestly. "It's bad enough that I had a one-night stand with your boyfriend without knowing it, but that would be.. Shit. He says he knew it from the first day, and if he still.. well.. Fuck, Ino. I don't want to destroy your marriage before it has even begun."

Ino leaned forward a little and rested her chin on the heel of her hand. "If it was just a one-night stand.. When did you two.. you know what?"

I didn't even have to think about it for long. "At the frat party in March 2020." 'come, come, baby, come, be my toyfriend, let me play with you~' SHUT UP, BRAIN! This song and what happened during it really doesn't belong here right now. He is her fiancé, goddammit.

"Oh, you mean that party where they swam in the pool with the chimpanzee?" grinned Ino.

"Exactly that one." 'I wanna.. put you in my clooseet~'

"Where the boys almost burned down the house?"

"Yes.." 'BOUNCE dubdubdubdubduuu~'

"Where this hellacious insider regarding—"

"Yes, Ino, that's exactly the party I mean," I interrupted. "Now take away my fear and tell me that this fucking art exhibition was after that!"

Ino smiled diabolically, but she apparently decided against letting me continue to suffer. "I can reassure you. I don't have the best memories of that night, but I got to know Sai afterwards. To be more precise: on the first of April. Since then, this day has no longer been a joke for me, after all, it has led me to romance."

I sighed in relief. "Thank you, sister, so our friendship can live on. Otherwise, I would never have forgiven myself."

With a wink, Ino handed me her fist across the table and I pressed mine against it. "Don't worry about it. Even if, Sai and I didn't get together until much later."

'I wanna~' SHUT IT!

Smiling gratefully, I started to drink the rest of my cocoa. Huh. Now all I had to do was see Sai again and expose myself to the shame of facing an ex-lover of mine whose wedding I was to witness. Wonderful.

Back at the office, I turned on the album One Love by David Guetta on Spotify because my brain was craving those long-forgotten tunes, and buried myself in a huge pile of papers. Although I even skipped my proper lunch break, the mountain on my desk didn't get any smaller. Fuck. Christmas was just under a week away and I had actually planned to leave nothing unfinished at the turn of the year. As it looked at the moment, I had to go back to the office between Christmas and New Year, otherwise I wouldn't be able to meet my self-imposed deadline. Could I take a few cases with me to the year 2025? Sure, there was nothing at it. Did I want that? Absolutely fucking NO. I hated it when I didn't achieve my own goals. And I didn't even make many myself, because I knew exactly what made me tick. But this was important to me. I had never wanted to let my work slide.

At about four o'clock in the afternoon, Ino knocked on the open door of my small office. "Beanie? Don't do it too long, do you?" she said into Kid Cudi's singing – this massively nostalgic EDM playlist had simply taken on a life of its own. Strange.

I looked at the clock, cracked my neck vertebrae and looked at the still foot-high stack of documents next to my keyboard. I sighed heavily. "I'm trying."

Ino smiled crookedly and said goodbye to me with a small wave.

My gaze was sluggish and I felt my concentration fading, but I forced myself to work on four more cases and just on time, when the small digital clock in the lower right corner of my monitor jumped to 17:00, I shut down the PC. It was about time. My stomach was already roaring loudly and I had to admit to myself, I just couldn't take it anymore. So shortly before the holidays, my work liked to pile up and yet I was surprised every time how much it was in the end and how hard it was to keep up.

I wrapped up in my thick, short winter jacket, puffed an oversized scarf around my neck and left the building with my handbag. On my headphones, I just let Spotify's selection continue to play and reminisced about that infamous frat party where a world record for canned beer long jump had almost been set – if a judge had been present.

It was freezing cold outside. For the first time in my life, my kidney protested. Normally it was able to cope with any weather which is why I could afford to show a little more hips than normal despite temperatures around zero degrees. Not that I was necessarily so massively proud of my body, but I loved crops, I've always had, I always would. In combination with tight skirts and fishnet stockings? Hello~ Sometimes it wasn't just a phase. Sometimes, yes, sometimes the riveted permissiveness dragged on into adulthood. Was it silly to walk around like that at 27, even though emos hadn't been in since 2014? Absolutely. Yet I didn't give a damn about the opinion of others, and as I looked at myself and my outfit in the reflection of the window of my crowded bus, while Avicii blasted my brain, held on to one of the loops and was pressed against the handle at the bicycle lot by a smelly suit wearer, I grinned contentedly. If you could get shocked looks from pensioners in beige, the impending bladder infection was worth it.

Because I just didn't feel like cooking today, and I wanted to get the Christmas present for my father anyway, I made a little detour to the shopping mall after I got off at my stop. It was stuffy, loud and smelled unbearably of perfume in here. Why, even though the next Sephora was one floor above me? What did I know. But that's just the way it was in such buildings.

With Marshmello on my ears, I strolled through the hectic crowds, who were certainly looking for the perfect gift for their loved ones with desperate faces. I was less stressed. Ino never wanted to have gifts from me, Konan wasn't a fan of the holidays anyway and what I wanted to give my father I knew for a long time: This large snake figure with the nicely framed ashtray made of some other material. It cost 19.99$, so it was easily within the budget that I imposed on myself every year. Anything under 20$ was ok.

The figure safely wrapped in several layers of bubble foil, I was looking for a snack in all the Christmessy madness that I felt like eating today. The one sushi shop? No, shut it, last time I got nasty runs from it. Just a sausage? A bit puny, isn't it? Something from the bakery? Oh yes, over-sweetened pastry were certainly good for my figure. But the pack of speculoos from earlier would certainly feel lonely if it didn't get the company of a pudding pretzel and a big piece of cream cake, wouldn't it?

'hey, hey, you, you, I don't like your girlfriend~' However we got from Tiësto to Avril Lavigne, now we were here. Choo-choo, the nostalgia train is in full swing.

I was single-mindedly heading for the rather exaggerated Santa Claus statue with the waving arm next to a bakery when I was tapped on the shoulder. I flinched, spun around and one of the headphones slipped out of my ear, so that I heard the noise around me much louder. I just caught my Bud before it hit the ground smeared with salt snow.

"Hello, Anko," I heard a familiar voice over a poppy Christmas song.

My head jerked up and my eyes fixed on a face that I had always found so incredibly beautiful. Long, black hair flowed over narrow shoulders and warm, reddish-brown eyes shone towards me in a friendly way. "Kurenai.." I gasped and stared at the young woman in front of me in amazement. I hadn't seen her for four years. For four fucking years I hadn't wanted to think about her and all that shit.

"How are you?" she asked, smiling sweetly, as she had always done. There was nothing deceitful in her feminine features, never had been, yet the little devil on my shoulder wanted to yell at her and beat her because she had stolen my professor. She couldn't even help it. Arse-birth was solely to blame for everything, for my heartbreak, for my trust problems. Shit, how much I hated him. And I hated even more the fact that my gaze slid deeper and captured a large curve on her belly. "Kurenai, you're pregnant?!" I blurted out, almost indignant.

Kurenai giggled a little and stroked her big belly. "Yes, in a few days our daughter will finally see the light of day."

"That.." I gasped and slapped myself inside. Why did it shock me at all? I knew that Mr. Arse-birth and she had married and a baby was the next logical step – at least for halfway socially acceptable people with stable life planning. And again: She couldn't help it. It was mean to condemn her. I had just had the misfortune to have been chosen as unimportant out of all the affairs with his students. And she was the lucky one who had received everything from him. Why did I feel so shitty about him again?! Wasn't I actually over him?

I took a deep breath. Contenance, Anko. You're an adult, so act accordingly. I smiled, perhaps a little fake, admittedly, and said, "I'm happy for you. You really shine." She deserved it, after all, she wasn't a bad person.

"Thank you," Kurenai glowed back and seemed genuinely happy about my words. If we hadn't fucked the same guy back then, maybe we could have become friends. "I hope that the calculated date of birth is correct," Kurenai continued and didn't notice anything of my inner turmoil. "Little Mirai is supposed to come on the 24th, so her birthday would fall on the same day that Asuma confessed his love to me and proposed to me a year later. A day with so many meanings. That would be very poetic."

My mouth twisted into some kind of grin. "Heh," I laughed, even though Kurenai hadn't said anything that was funny. But how the hell should I react to something like that?! Poetic my socks, sister. That was kitschy. And that from someone like Professor Arse-birth, who had never heard much about morality or decency.

"How about you?" she asked further, without addressing my strange grimace or my jittery bobbing knee. She seemed to be floating around on her kitschy cloud and saw everything through rose-colored glasses. "Do you have a boyfriend? Desire to have children?"

I could have been honest. I could have told her that nothing awaited me at home except a puny cactus that I barely kept alive. But there she was, Kurenai Yuuhi, by now certainly Kurenai Sarutobi, with her perfect face and hair and the perfect life for every kinky student, in her perfect wool coat and cashmere scarf, inquiring about my rancid life. Right now my outfit seemed indeed a bit silly to me. "Oh, I'm doing great. My boyfriend.." I hesitated for a moment, but then expanded my lie, nervously brushed my hair behind my right ear and said with a restrained giggle, "My boyfriend, Sai, proposed to me yesterday."

Kurenai smiled broadly. "Really? Oh, I'm glad. Congratulations, Anko!"

In order not to be found out because I wasn't wearing a flashy ring, I put both hands in my jacket pockets and swung back and forth briefly. "Yes, thank you. I'm very happy with him." Why exactly did I do this to myself..?

"And when will it happen?" Kurenai asked amicably, waving her eyebrows meaningfully and leaning forward a little.

"Mh," I said and twisted my mouth. How I hated such questions, honestly. "Sai and I don't want children. We're more of a bit.. well, unorthodox." Saved me from having to explain myself in the future if we ever bumped into each other again and I was still childless.

"Okay.." Kurenai murmured and actually seemed depressed. That probably didn't fit into her worldview. "Well, everyone as he likes, right?"

With my lips pressed together, I nodded.

Kurenai sighed. "And? Have you already bought all the presents for your loved ones?"

The change of topic was obvious, but I was happy about it. At the end she wanted to see a picture of "Sai" and by God, I didn't have any photos of anyone with me on my phone! "Yes, I just bought the last one." As proof, I lifted the bag that swung in the crook of my arm. "What about you?"

"Ah," Kurenai waved her hand, "Asuma doesn't want me to overexert myself, so he ordered me into the food mile. He's on his way and doing the last errands."

Arse-birth was here?! "Uh.. He's here too?"

"Yes," Kurenai nodded and looked at her slim, certainly damn expensive wristwatch. That guy had always earned well. As the son of the dean, this is hardly surprising. "He should be ready right away. Do the three of us want to eat something together and chat about old times?"

I stared at her in shock. Um.. Was it possible that this innocent angel in front of me didn't even know what her husband had done with me..? Either way, I didn't want to meet Professor Doctor Arse-birth under any circumstances. "I'm sorry, Kurenai, but I have to go. My boyfriend is already impatiently waiting for me with the food."

"Oh, of course," she smiled and let her well-shaped eyes wander over my body. What was the point of that? Did she think I was fat or something?! "Well then, bye."

"Mh-hm, a successful birth, or whatever you say in such a case." I raised my hand goodbye and now had no choice but to leave the mall without my much sought-after pudding pretzel. The conversation with my former fellow student had taken too much time anyway and if I wanted to get something out of my evening, I should go home now – yeah sure, all excuses, I didn't want to take any risks and face Arse-birth. Cowardly? Yes. Necessary for my pride? Absolutely.