Author's note: I can't reveal the exact pairing of the characters (especially OC) since it will spoil the fun of upcoming chapters. But I give out a hint that her love interest is one of the canon male shinobi and he's the same age as her. (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. Therefore today I decide to go shopping at the market for proper food.
Dining at the restaurant is not an option since I do not have enough money to afford 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. It's either the brands that I've been searching for are costly, or that I have always been a picky-eater.
It seems that I have no choice but to cook.
Now that Momiji isn't here to prepare meals for me, I realize that I've taken her for granted.
Ugh, I shouldn't have slacked off when I had the chance to.
Back then, I tried learning some simple recipes from her. But the outcome had never been what I wanted. 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. Her loud voice gains the other two's attentions who are walking alongside with her.
"Oh, you mean Nina?"
Choji's hand has never stopped 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.
Too average for Sasuke's taste, that's for sure!
Combined with all the data she has gathered from the people around, mostly Sakura, Ino assumes that Nina is nowhere good enough to be her love rival.
"What's wrong, Shikamaru?"
Curious about his abnormal silence, Ino asks him.
"Don't you find it weird? Appearing out of nowhere, no clear background or motive yet still being welcomed to stay in our village almost instantly."
Watching Nina slowly disappears into the crowd up ahead, he explains.
"And what's more, she joined Konoha's shinobi quad and started doing missions like anyone of us. Without going through any proper inspections beforehand."
Shikamaru sighs as he finds 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. From what I've heard about her abilities, Nina's definitely not a threat."
While Ino thinks that Shikamaru's overthinking the situation.
It's pointless for Genin ranked shinobi like them to get fed up over such matter. 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.
"Anyway, I'm hungry. Let's go grab something to eat."
He suggests his teammates to find a nice place to feast.
"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, consuming various type of treats are not considered proper food. What he needs is something that is served in big amount, like grilled meat.
"Man, what a drag..."
In the end, Shikamaru has to suffers from the two's foolish argument until they get tired of it.
Isn't that the Ino-Shika-Cho? Interesting trio as always.
From afar, Nina watches the three's quarrel briefly before taking off to the opposite route. Hoping that one day she'll be able to get to know them naturally.
As they're on their way to the training ground, Sasuke and Sakura come across Nina. While Sasuke ignores her presence completely and moves on, Sakura stays behind with Nina for a small chat.
"Going shopping?"
Notices the groceries bags in her hands, Sakura asks her.
"Yup, I just finished. Are you going to train with Sasuke?"
"Yes! Sasuke-kun agreed to let me help him today!"
Seem to be influenced by Sakura's happiness, Nina smiles as well.
"Say, that's a lot of fresh ingredients. You know how to cook?"
Sakura's surprised by the sight of several type of food sitting neatly inside her shopping bags.
"Sort of. There's still a lot for me to learn."
And 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 that her eyes aren't paying attention to the content inside but to the boy in navy blue shirt up ahead. And the further he gets away, the more anxious she becomes.
And about half a minute later, she returns the book to her.
"You know, you don't have to force yourself to act friendly with me."
Not wanting Sakura to miss her training session with Sasuke, Nina urges her to leave.
"What?"
"Hurry up. Or you're going to lose him."
Just like that, Nina walks off without looking back. Leaving Sakura behind, completely bewildered and speechless.
What the heck?! Here I am trying to get to know her better and she just shooed me away like that!
Irritated by Nina's uncooperative attitude, she stomps away.
..
...
At the hospital's hall in the afternoon when Nina's still recovering from Kakashi's Genjutsu attack.
"Try to be nice to Nina. Get close to her and make her feel comfortable while staying here. Also let me remind you that this is Sandaime's wish."
Kakashi spoke to his students at their small group meeting outside of Nina's room.
"No problem!"
Grinning brightly, Naruto held up two fingers making a V sign. Thinking that he would still help her fitting in with the Konoha's lifestyle anyway even if Sandaimei didn't order him to.
"Good. What about you two?"
Then Kakashi turned to the other two standing nearby.
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 were reluctant to follow with his strange instruction.
In Sakura's case. There was already Naruto, who could mostly do what she could do. And she'd rather hanging out with Sasuke or her close friends than a complete stranger.
"I don't mind, I guess."
However after recalling to Nina's horrible condition and what's she had been through to stay alive, Sakura agreed to help.
"Why would I? Isn't that suppose to be your job to begin with?"
Meanwhile Sasuke dismissed the ridiculous idea. What he needed most at the moment was to prepare for the upcoming Chuunin exam, not fooling around and playing the family game.
Yesterday, they had to retake the bell test because Kakashi wanted to check Nina's abilities in teamwork. Despite failing miserably, Kakashi approved for her to join their team officially.
"She did what I expected her to do. So why not?"
And Kakashi explained the reason for his decision.
"Let's inform her when she wakes up!"
Sakura suggested to surprise her teammate with the good news and Naruto agreed. 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 then, I ended our conversation abruptly because I had a feeling that if it kept on going, she would started convincing me to go training with them.
It's rare for Sasuke to have Sakura accompany him willingly. That's why I didn't want to ruin their time together.
Perhaps I should find a way to apologize to her properly later on. For now, I'm going to take a nap.
Afternoon.
"Naruto? What are you doing here?"
The moment stepping out of the front door, I find Naruto's standing right before me and his hand's gesture looks like it's about to knock on the door.
"Staying at home all day is too boring so I'm gonna do some training! Wanna come?"
Therefore he asks me to join his usual training session.
"Sure, I have nothing to do anyway."
And I find no reason to refuse his offer.
Training ground.
"So, what are we going to do?"
Standing in the middle of the area, I ask him.
"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 my teeth cringed. Again? I'm getting tired of eating at that shop already.
"Sakura and Sasuke! I'm going to ask them to join."
And before I can excuse myself, Naruto's already run away to catch up with his teammates.
Guess it's too late to back out now, isn't it...
Due to Naruto's constant nagging about friendship, the Genin couples reluctantly 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.
"Hey! Do you know that-"
It's so bad to the point that even Naruto realizes something's wrong and tries to bring up several interesting topics for us to chat with. Only for them to end 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.
"See you later."
After enjoying our bowls of ramen and Sakura's yelling at Naruto for being too annoying, we part our ways to get home.
"See you."
Since Naruto and my house are close to each other, we leave in the same direction while Sakura and Sasuke takes different paths.
After taking a few steps away however, I tell Naruto to go home first before turning around to find Sakura. Once seeing the silhouette of that pink color far up ahead within the dark street, I call out.
"Sakura!"
"Nina-chan? Why are you here? Aren't you going home with Naruto?"
Sakura's shocked to see me approaching her from afar, out of breath.
"I'm sorry."
Taking a deep breath to calm myself down from the nervousness, I begin to apologize.
"Huh? For what?"
And her eyes widens in surprise, still not figure out what is going on.
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 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 my confession however, 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."
"Huh? Why?"
This time I'm the one who's surprised.
"It's hard to explain..."
Sakura recalls to what happened at the hospital's hall. When 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 weren'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.
"That... would be great. Thank you."
Finally catching up what she's thinking. I nod, smiling to her in appreciation.
The next day.
"Sasuke...?"
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.
"What are you doing at someone else rooftop?"
For some reasons, he doesn't look very pleased to see me here...