“What happens next?
Why didn’t he keep writing?
This is killing me!” Anko Mitarashi, right in the thick of it, had reached the end with nothing after it, and she was ready to tear her hair out.
The autumn sun was still harsh.
Anko leaned her whole weight against the tree, light coming through the thin maple leaves and falling across her slightly round face, which made her look especially pretty.
In the end she let out a heavy sigh and accepted that the author had only written as far as the party, though something in her still refused to let it go.
After all these years, she had fallen for Konoha Love Story.
She shut the notebook, braced her left hand on the trunk, and dropped lightly to the ground.
A leaf came down just then, drifting past her eyes before it landed.
“I’ve got to give this back to those three girls…” Anko tossed the notebook up, caught it, and muttered under her breath.
A school festival with more than 600 people was a sizable operation.
Stalls of every kind, selling pastries, selling handicrafts, running little tea shops.
Even the new students, six or so years old, were running their own stalls with real enthusiasm.
Anko headed over to the stalls run by the older students’ regular classes, looking around for the three girls she had run into in the woods.
It took a while before she spotted three familiar figures near the A Class stall.
The A Class had gone with mochi dumplings.
Nothing imaginative, safe and standard, but there was still a decent crowd in front of the stall.
Yumiko, Senhime and Reiko sat in one corner of the stall, handing out tasty mochi dumplings to the “customers” as they came, faint smiles on their faces, not a trace of the panic and the streaming tears from earlier.
Oh ho, three fine actresses.
Having noted that to herself, Anko walked up to the A Class stall, waved amiably at the three girls, and greeted them.
“Hello there, you three red-eyed rabbits.”
“Uh…”
Steady as Senhime was, even she felt her composure slip with Anko standing in front of them, to say nothing of Yumiko, who had received Anko’s special attention.
Yumiko went stiff and took a step back, and when she met those narrowed, smiling eyes she said shakily, “Anko-senpai…
what, what do you want?”
Anko paid no mind to three girls who were terrified of her.
Too many people in this village were terrified of her.
As Orochimaru’s only student, her habits were a lot like that man’s, especially…
Out of habit she touched the Cursed Seal on the back of her neck.
The burning that came and went there never stopped reminding her that a snake had once driven its fangs through her body.
Seeing Anko’s thoughts drift off somewhere, Senhime spoke up.
“Um, Anko-senpai, if there’s nothing else…”
Pulled back out of the memory, Anko blurted, “How could there be nothing?
I came to ask whose notebook this is.”
She held up the blue notebook and waved it at the three of them, her face full of excitement.
Yumiko shook her head.
“It’s not mine.”
Senhime shook her head too, quick and clean.
Anko’s eyes lit up and she reached for Reiko, but before her hand touched her Reiko was already shaking her head like mad.
“It’s not mine!
It’s not mine, senpai!”
Anko said nothing.
Now it was her turn to be exasperated.
All she had done was tease that short-haired girl a little.
And these three treated her like a monster?
She glanced at the three girls and at the blue notebook in her hand, disappointed, and asked without much interest, “Then do you know whose it is?”
All three shook their heads at the same time and said they didn’t know.
They did know it was probably Yuuga’s, since he had been the only one carrying a bag, but that was one thing they absolutely could not say.
Anko put the blue notebook away and left, disappointed.
Elsewhere, Yuuga had run the whole way pulling Ino and Sakura along, finally stopping beside the ninja tool room.
He let go and patted Sakura and Ino lightly on the back while they gasped for air.
Sakura was fine.
Her red ninja outfit made running easy.
Ino had a rougher time of it, her small feet rubbed raw and sore by her wooden sandals, and she had picked up a few scrapes besides.
She crouched down and rubbed at her heel.
“Ino, are you all right?” Yuuga asked.
Ino rubbed her red heel and shook her head.
“Oh please, I’m not some delicate young lady, bumps and scrapes happen all the time.
It’s my careful outfit today that’s the shame.
Yuuga, thanks for today.
If it weren’t for you, me and Billboard Brow would probably have gotten beaten up.”
Yuuga shrugged, unbothered.
“Call it thanks for the bento you brought me today.
Besides, it’s my job for the day.”
Listening to the two of them, something moved in Sakura, but the girl crouched on the ground was her rival in love.
She thought about it for a long time before she spoke.
“Nobody asked you to butt in, Ino-pig!
Next time just stay far away!”
Ino gave a contemptuous snort and said nothing.
How could she stand by and watch someone else pick on the person she had always protected?
Yuuga looked at the two girls still being awkward with each other, amused.
Turning on each other over one blockhead.
Once they’re grown up, that’ll make a pretty good memory, won’t it?
But Yuuga didn’t have time to sit here consoling a pair of “best friends” in a sulk.
He still had his great novel enterprise to get on with.
“All right, I have to get back on duty.
You two hurry home.”
Having said that, he turned to go.
“Ah, Yuuga-kun, wait!” Sakura called out to him and bowed in thanks.
“Thank you for today.”
Yuuga smiled.
“The one you should be thanking is Ino.”
Without waiting to see how she reacted, he hurried off.
He didn’t want to go back to his old spot, so he found a new one.
As long as there was a bench and it was away from the crowd.
But when he did find a place to sit down and set his bag down, his mind went blank.
The mouth of his bag was open.
And his notebook was long gone.
“Damn, what happened?” Yuuga’s face froze and he jumped up, then ran back toward the spot where the confrontation had happened.
He had worked so hard writing that book.
He couldn’t just lose it like this.