For Kia~
It was her first day at the ninja academy, and already she was overwhelmed. Because all the kids there were so loud, and so rambunctious, and unruly and... and just about a million other things that the Hyuuga weren’t.
So Hinata sat in one of the half-empty row of seats in the top left of the classroom, not quite shoved in the corner, but nowhere near the loudest group of children, and paid strict attention to her new chuunin-sensei in hopes that if she listened hard enough to his lecture on various handseals then she would be able to drown everything else out. It had turned out to be a half-decent plan, and she was almost, almost, getting used to the idea that there were other children in the class as well and none of them looked particuarly mean so maybe there was some hope of enjoying herself, when about an hour after class began she was poked in the side. She squeaked - but just as quickly silenced herself and flushed because if there was anything a Hyuuga didn’t do, it was squeaking in front of an entire room full of people - and frantically searched around.
Nearly-white eyes met sky blue, and the boy hiding underneath her desk put a finger to his lips and grinned. Before Hinata could say a word, he hoarsely whispered, “Hey, hey, can ya slide over? But be quiet about it! Don’t want Iruka-sensei to notice-“
”…Naruto...”
Hinata did slide over a seat, indeed, because as soon as Iruka-sensei had drawled out the name the blond boy had jumped and whacked his head on the underside of the desk (right now he was holding his head, eyes watering from the pain, and cursing with words no seven-year-old should ever utter). Slowly, he crawled out and sat down, head propped up on crossed arms on his desk, and grumbled, while Iruka-sensei sighed and went back to his lecture (but not before marking Naruto for a detention on his class roster) and Hinata felt her blush starting to die down.
”Ah, ah, um, I’m s-sorry if I- um...” She finally whispered, eyes glued to her desk, about ten minutes later. Naruto only cocked one eye open, watched her for a moment, then shrugged and cracked a smile. “No problem. I’ll sneak by him tomorrow, for sure."
Kouri knew, well enough, that Kumi was not the end all and be all when it came to cooking - but the other girl could handle most dishes with relative capability and that the finished meal was, in most cases, highly edible.
However, give her a box of instant cake mix, and fortyfive minutes later you were faced with a monstrousity.
Which had to be the only reason why Kouri was in Kumi’s tiny apartment kitchen now, picking bits of eggshell out of the bowl of unmixed cookie dough ingredients (although, as Kumi had said in her own defense, it was an improvement that she had remembered to put the eggs in at all) as the other set the oven timer. “Sooo,” Kouri idly mused, picking the last shard of shell out of the bowl, “Why the sudden urge to blow your kitchen up?”
Kumi only sniffed, stepping away from the oven and wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. “Because I technically owe someone, tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? Oh, White Day!” Kouri brandished the electric hand mixer cheerfully, but it took only a moment to sink into a look of confusion. “...You’re giving someone something for White Day?”
”Like I said, I owe him.” The longer-haired girl pried the mixer out of her friend’s hand and went to work on the dough, the mixer set a little too high that it probably should have been. “I told him to just turn right back around and not let the door hit him on the way out, when he stopped by, but then he left the damn parfait behind and it wasn’t like I could just throw it out...”
”Parfait..? Parfait?! Wait, was it from the café?”
“well, yeah, but-“ The look on Kumi’s face turned sour, and her arm dropped enough for the mixer to fling tiny globs of dough on the cream-colored walls. “...Sometimes, I hate you,” was all she could say to Kouri’s self-satisfied grin.
”So, these are for Goh, hm?”
”Kouri...” The word came out as a near-growl. Kouri had to scuttle out of her friend’s range of movement, all to aware of how dangerously accurate Kumi could be when it came to using kitchen utensils as weapons. It did nothing, however, to keep her from snickering and grinning even wider.
”Awww! You’re trying to bake cookies! For Goh!”
”...”
”It’s so sweet! So, Kumi, are you going to give them to him before or after the date?”
”...”
”I think I saw some heart-shaped cookie cutters in the back of the cabinets~”
”That’s it,” Kumi seethed, setting the mixer down in favor of grabbing the spatula from the dish rack as Kouri skipped out of the kitchen, pilfering one of the couch pillows for use as a shield. “Get back here so I can beat you!”
”But you wouldn’t hurt me, Kumi! I’m one of your best friends; you love me!”
”Yes, yes I do. Which is why my beatings are full of love.”
The spatula bounced off of the pillow, and Kouri chanced another smirk at her friend’s chain of reactions. “Are they as full of love as the beatings you give Goh?”
”AARGH!”