Hinata walked through the village, going to Ren’s training after the academy classes ended. Surprisingly, she had a stalker today, so she had to walk around, ducking into side-alleys, suddenly breaking into a run, even jumping onto the rooftops to change the streets abruptly.

But her stalker was frustratingly good at tailing her. At first, she found it amusing, but after an hour, she was starting to get annoyed almost to the point of visibly snarling.

She was already late to her training! She was half-considering to just gentle fist the shit out of her stalker until he falls unconscious. The only thing stopping her hand was the fact it wouldn’t be so easy.

She would have needed to get serious and show her capabilities in public, which could blow the weakness act with her clan. It was not worth it.

So, Hinata decided to try diplomacy first.

She ducked into another side alley, but after a few steps, she abruptly turned on her heel, crossed her hands under her chest, and greeted the boy who had run into the side alley just a few seconds later with an unamused glare.

It made him freeze in his tracks with a ‘oh shit’ look on his face and Hinata’s anger slightly eased as she inwardly giggled.

“Why are you following me, Uchiha-san?” She tried to keep her voice flat, but her inner amusement seeped out. She was still simmering with anger, but fortunately for the boy, she disliked violence.

And sage, how she wanted to smack him upside the head right now!

They stared at each other in silence, Sasuke showing a complicated and broody expression while Hinata waited for his answer with a raised eyebrow.

“You are acting like Naruto. I’d expect stalking from him. He does it regularly when he wants to prank somebody.” Hinata casually added.

She was no Ino at screwing with people’s minds but even a deaf and half-blind child would know that comparing Sasuke to Naruto was going to rile him up after going to the same class as them for several years.

Sasuke’s cheeks gained a pink dusting from embarrassment as he realized that yes, Hinata’s insinuation was not all that incorrect. He was stalking her. For a moment, he gave Hinata a butthurt glare, but then he averted his eyes, and Hinata giggled, making him duck his head further from the sheer shame.

Honestly, he didn’t understand half of the feelings that suddenly assaulted him, and it was as confusing as it was frustrating.

“As if I’d act like the loser.” Sasuke grumpily muttered under his nose, trying to get Hinata to focus on something other than his stalking, “He had vandalized yet another store yesterday.”

He was glad to notice it worked. The girl visibly winced.

Hearing him, Hinata let out an exasperated sigh. Naruto’s relationship with Karin did him a whole lot of good. He stopped being the dead last, and his taijutsu improved by leaps and bounds. He even stopped pranking people so much, but not even Karin could get him to stop completely.

Before Hinata had met Ren, she thought that Naruto’s pranking was justified. That he was brave for fighting back in a relatively harmless way against people who disliked him and treated him badly. She was a very naive girl back then.

Ren had explained to her the perspective of shopkeepers. He told her to imagine being the owner of a clothing store and having your entire inventory, worth tens if not hundreds of thousands of Ryo, ruined by an orange paint bomb because one of your shop attendants acted rude toward Naruto.

And while the Hokage did offer them reimbursement when they complained, it was done with great reluctance and exasperation. Plus, the Hokage was a ninja. He would have his ANBU do a short investigation, find out why Naruto acted out, and then pay the shop owner only fifty percent worth of the damages because technically, the prank was provoked by someone working in the shop.

The Hokage was not above wiggling out of problems like this, and the shop owners would usually, with a heavy heart, accept the offered fifty percent because it was better than nothing.

Of course, it was practically a ‘Here is some money, stop complaining and shut up already’ kind of deal.

They had a good reason to fear Naruto’s presence in their shops. They knew that some of their rivals had gone bankrupt because of him. So, they watched him like hawks to the point where they seemed hostile and made him feel uncomfortable when shopping with their attitude.

Because he was a very disliked menace among the business owners.

Sadly, that just perpetuated the cycle. Naruto sometimes took that attitude personally and lashed out with another prank.

Hinata even knew that Ren had tried to explain this to the boy three separate times when he occasionally met him at Ichiraku. But it was just not to be. Naruto always slipped back into pranking, eventually.

This wasn’t a situation where Naruto was the victim. Both parties were guilty and deserved to be kicked in the butt for it.

Shaking her head in exasperation, Hinata refocused on Sasuke after giving Naruto’s situation a second of thought. She was aware that the Uchiha was trying to divert her attention. He succeeded. But because of her training, her mind worked much faster than before. So, unfortunately for him, she was only distracted for a second or two.

“That still doesn’t answer why you are stalking me, though.” Hinata pointed out before comically widening her eyes with a loud gasp, “Don’t tell me!” She put her hand in front of her mouth to portray shock and gave Sasuke the best innocent look she was capable of making. “Are you perhaps trying to find where Ino lives because you fell in love with her and want to steal her used underwear!?”

The boy gave her the flattest look she had ever seen in her life. It almost made her being late to the training worth it. Almost.

“No.” Sasuke deadpanned with a disgusted frown.

“You do realize she is only flirting with you to be annoying, right?” Hinata’s lips twitched into a half-smirk before falling back into a small smile.

That took the Uchiha by surprise. “What?” He asked as his eyebrows furrowed and his body language became much less confident.

Hinata only shrugged. “If you flirted back, she wouldn’t get her enjoyment out of your reaction, and she would quickly lose interest. She might bat her eyelashes at you and say she wants your babies, Uchiha, but the bimbo is usually full of shit.” She told him exasperatedly. “She will never put out for you. She wants…” The girl trailed off as she realized that she got too into ranting about Ino and fucked up.

Telling him about their teacher was not something she wanted to do. But she had already started her sentence, and Sasuke was now looking at her with curiosity.

Inwardly whining at her blunder, she let out a small sigh and continued, “I mean… She already has her eyes on somebody else.” She tried to play it off, but it was obvious that the Uchiha boy was now very interested.

She liked him better when he was a broody little antisocial sissy.

Slowly nodding his head at the unexpected information that destroyed quite a few of his preconceived notions, Sasuke stored it in his mind for later and finally decided to get to the point of why he was stalki-, er, trying to catch up with his classmate.

“I talked to Neji Hyuga-” He started, and Hinata groaned.

“Of course you did.” She mumbled.

“-and he said you were not trained by the clan.” Sasuke said with an overly serious expression, “I want to know who is teaching you.”

Hinata silently considered his words, her expression becoming blank. She knew this was going to happen one day. She hoped she could gaslight Sasuke into thinking she was trained by her clan, but apparently, her marvelous cousin screwed that option up for her.

He was another thing that Ren put into perspective for her. Family Neji might be, and deep down she still loved him as a brother, but if Sasuke was the sissy little bitch of their class, then Neji was the sissy little bitch number two, free trial edition.

At least Sasuke had a proper reason to act out. She felt very bad for her Uncle’s fate, but Ren literally beat her pity for Neji out of her. The lil’ bitch hated her for being unable to resist a jonin when she was a five year old kid. A jonin who managed to infiltrate the very heart of the Hyuga compound.

It was utterly foolish.

Huffing in annoyance, Hinata chewed on her lower lip for a moment before deciding that she didn’t want to deal with this situation.

“I… you know what? Fine. Come, I will introduce you to my teacher. The rest is on you.”

She decided to throw this problem at Ren. She might love him to death, but this and that were two very different things.

—

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