QOTC

"The wolf is in love with the moon. You know what the sad part is? It cries for a love it never touches."

- Usui to Hanabi

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Ino had just checked the list of her dullest life goals: helping children with their genin missions. Chasing cats was funny and contemptible, but it precipitated the little memories she cherished when she was a little girl.

Before continuing her shift at the Yamanaka store, she wandered around the Leaf cemetery and placed white lillies on a silver stone that said: Sarutobi Asuma: A Friend, A Teacher, A Jonin Shinobi, A Father and A Pride Smoker

Smoke doesn't kill people, it turns them into fighters. Well, when the entire world would be polluted with soon-to-be built vehicles and tobaccos maybe that's when Shikamaru would stop. But the Nara boy never stopped; he just lit his lighter on that cigarette butt the same way Asuma did, thinking it was an unescapable manner. Ino was not against smoking, but if she were to see a person lighting one she'd be considerate and ask them to go away and come back once they were done.

The other red lillies were more; a plethora of ruby-colored blooms that reminded Ino of Kurenai's non-dojutsu eyes. Ino placed them carefully on Tayuya's grave. It was built some month ago, despite empty-handed, Ino only saw Temari visit her daughter once and her teal eyes spoke of a dark paradise. She left her small fan in it, shrouded among a pile of stones so time wouldn't let it diminish, the way human flesh would leave their bodies to decay.

Ino sighed. She was barren and she felt herself as the most futile thing on earth. She always adored babies and could not picture herself taking care of others'. A few years from now, when the Hokage Stone Henge multiplied she wouldn't be different from the same girl who loved going to parties simply to cover her shame. She couldn't offer her future husband a child, so eventually she'd be left alone and plutonian, fragile and miserable as human.

Ino closed her eyes and let the strong breeze of wind dazzle her. One day in a decade or so, she would leave town. She would have to go elsewhere and see the oceans again in Yume, or the high towers in the Hidden Rain, the crystal office of the Hidden Stone. Her motto was to never settle. She was given the opportunity to run to wherever road was in her desire, the eyes that saw it all, a smart mind that told her: these graves will someday be your friends, and you'll see their generation looking exactly as the previous ones that you have to get away.

If watching children catching cats had already made her day forlorn, what of the years later?

Well, she had to stop herself from thinking these negative thoughts. She grabbed her phone, leaving and shaking the guilt off her. She scrolled down her list of silly adorable contacts (Kiba was named Mutt Playboy, Naruto was Blonde Foxy, Hinata was Byakugan Princess, TenTen was Weapon Girl), frowned at the sight of a pink-head's picture, her name that said, Forehead/Billboard Brow/Best Friend.

Whenever she and Sakura got into a fight, she would erase the Best Friend and convince herself she would not utter a single word to her anymore. Now that she was gone, she didn't know what to input.

She wondered who was up for dinner. Ino felt her stomach growl, craving for an instant ramen (she cursed Naruto for transferring his virus to her). Walking around the streets of the Leaf village with her violet cropped top, she dialed TenTen and Hinata. It had been long since they had a girls' night and that was the exact thing Ino needed.

"I'm tired of fvckboys. They're anywhere and sometimes they're invisible." Ino said, soothing her Ramen hungrily. It surprised TenTen she didn't even mind the soup sprinkling on her clothes. "I've dedicated myself on A-rank missions and arranging flowers. I'm married to my hobbies!"

TenTen did not know what her supposed expression was. "Geez, Ino, that is so not like you."

"Why can't you be happy for me? I am developing on my prettier stage! I will model for this era's modern clothes, and trust me, I'll seduce Madara until I sass the thing out of him!" Said Ino. "Stop thinking what I'm thinking!"

TenTen sighed. Hinata was just eating her food, indisposed to speak.

"This is so unfair. I'm supposed to be marrying Neji but now I have a feeling it will never happen. I'm not in a rush, I just need proof that somehow this thing still exists." TenTen raised her finger, showed a crystal diamond pinned on a round ring. "No offense, Hinata."

Hinata didn't say anything. Ino chuckled. "TenTen, Neji is freaking obsessed with you."

Hinata stood from the ramen shop stool, as if she were a little mouse trying to get away from two life-eating cats. She was obviously in a state of urgency.

"Hinata, where are you going?" TenTen asked.

Hinata stopped and turned around. "I'm g-going to the bathroom."

"You haven't finished your food yet."

"I'll be back, TenTen-onee." Hinata smiled. TenTen had been with Neji ever since, waiting while leaning against the Hyuga walls whenever a conference was held. Neji despised the Hyuga back in the day, attended their rendezvous with a disgruntled look. He wore the clan's seal curse in chauvinism, considering himself a bird wrapped and stuck on his own family's fate eternally.

TenTen's patience for the Hyuga made Hinata look up to her as a sister she never had.

Hinata took a powder off into the streets. Did she even know where she was going?

"She's not going to be okay, is she?"

"She's Hinata. She's like the rippled version of Neji." Ino complemented as she finished her bowl, wiped her lips with a tissue. "What?"

"I'm going to get her." TenTen said, that look on her face she wore whenever she was feeling the detective on chinese buns, her weapons hidden somewhere in her baggy clothes that sparked in the dark. "Stay where you are."

Hinata was cleansing her face in the sink.

When TenTen opened the door, there was astoundment in her. It wasn't peculiar-TenTen watched Hinata faint her whole life over a blonde knucklehead. Rest assured, she was not Naruto.

"Hey, it's just me."

Something was not right. Something was not cliche. The sins laid on Hinata's face, and she could read her like an open book.

"Is that a hickie?" TenTen asked, and went to her before she could abscond. "It's nothing." Hinata shrugged. TenTen didn't think so. By the look in her eye it seemed as if Hinata was resisting the urge to lunge at her with the Gentle Fist for an unkept secret--those were the same pearl eyes same as Neji's: always predictable. Feeling persuasive, TenTen had ran to her diligently and threatened her with a shuriken.

"I'm sorry, Hinata. This is for the best."

Hinata cried. She sobbed. "I told y-you, there's nothing w-wrong."

Wrong. There was a band aid in her neck, an odd and hazardous sign for someone so gentle and kind. Hinata barely sparred these days. "Are those claw marks?" TenTen blurted out angrily, exploring the parts she was able to obscure from earlier. A long scar in her elbow. Another scratch in her jaw. "Did someone hurt you?"

"TenTen, please understand. I'm f-fine."

"I'm calling Neji."

"No, No! Please d-don't!" Said Hinata. "You d-don't want to tell Neji-nii about this."

A sudden memory came back to TenTen. A sudden tremor. TenTen realized telling Neji would be as admitting she actually pinned a weapon against her. TenTen took her by the shoulders as she took her home. By the time she went back to the Ramen shop, Ino was texting. She looked like a girl who's actually waiting for her date at seven P.M in the evening. A princess in damsel.

"Where were you??"

"There are bruises and claws all over Hinata's skin." TenTen said, catching her breath. She did not know what to say at all, she just saw those scars in red and purple, meaning they were new.

"What??" Ino said. "Did she say what kind of marks they were? Was it a vampire?"

"No, but it was pretty much an animal."

TenTen and Ino shared a look that spoke louder than words. At the terrible moment, they could only picture a witty brunette boy, good kisser, werewolf breed.

⍨⍨⍨⍨⍨ ɐɥıɥɔu pɹıɥʇ ǝɥʇ ⍨⍨⍨⍨⍨

DEMONS FROM HELL

*P L A Y S O N G*

Pen tapping. Chalks were on point. Children laying their eyes on the porking tick of the clock.

Iruka rounded his eyes to the mood of his class. The children apparently weren't hyped; it was their last subject and all of them had been looking forward to dismissal, their favorite time of the day. Iruka even played catch with his own stick of chalk to think what kind of phrase or a line should he begin with.

"The Leaf village is known for having sheltered most of the famous prominent clans. Hyuga. Uchiha. Uzumaki. Yamanaka. Akamichi. Nara. Aburame. Inuzuka. Each of these families possesses a unique kind of power that strengthens our village. Until today." He said, and could not believe for once that the kids he just mentioned were recently in his class a couple of years ago. He felt old. He felt like a sage. "Can any of you describe these personalities? One by one, class."

Iruka jumped inwardly as he spotted a cloud of attentively long stretching hands. He pointed to the first boy who raised his.

"Hyugas have a special dojutsu called Byakugan. It can see through barriers and even thick walls. They can also detect a person's chakra." Iruka smiled as he pictured a stern Neji, always free from sound or noise. He, Lee and TenTen weren't rookies but he had heard a very strong boy from the Hyuga Clan who clung onto his family's solidity more than anyone. And who would forget Hinata, the shy good-natured Byakugan inheritor?

"I see you've been reading." Iruka thought, though his mind spoke differently. In today's years of reckoned series, clans were respected and admired by particularly anyone in Konoha, Shinobi or a resider. It made him proud knowing he was one of those people he knew that inspired those children hit by a humongously large epidemia called puberty.

A child wearing a pair of blue glasses seemed determined. There was an Uchiha drawing Iruka spotted in her wrist, a message that this girl was not simply intelligent-she was an enthusiastic devotee.

She stood up, smiled in pride towards the boy who answered first. "The Uchihas have the Sharingan that might result to death or paranoia if the user refuses to let go of you." At the sound of this, the students gasped in fear, others stared in sacred sublime. "Fire nature also runs in their blood. They have this thing called Mangekyo Sharingan; when someone they love dies, it gets awakened. The Nations even fear it."

Are you really all just a bunch of kids?? Iruka laughed fakely, scratched his head. "Let's not talk about that. Moving on?" Iruka implemented, and gave way to a boy who looked silent a little less competitive. To be frank, Iruka couldn't remember another day of his life he actually had this level of fun. Children got crazed over their research and they truly found their fellow villagers amazing. Someone to look up to, someone they'd turn as a role model. Probably no one would believe him if he'd tell them how awfully ineffectual the others were.

Iruka wrote the wondrously signature words on the chalk board, and would later ask someone to take a picture of it for keeps. Nana, the youngest child on class said that the Uzumakis have a lengitivity over the generations. A boy wearing striped shirt boasted of the Yamanaka's intellectual perseverance when it comes to the human mind. Another boy with thick square glasses bragged of the Akamichi's capability of rolling into the ground, Erza, twelve, fought for the Nara clan's advantage of Shadow Jutsus. A girl answered for the Aburame's school of trained insects. They even debated which was mightier: Uchihas' dominant strength or the Hyugas' Gentle Fist.

There was one boy, though, the last piece of the puzzle. Iruka never get tired of writing important notes on the board but this one seemed so irrelevant, so out of the blue, yet all of it were fascinating.

"My grandparents told me a legend of how Inuzukas can easily turn into shape-shifting twin wolves." The orange-heade boy said. Iruka knew that this boy had been the child who was usually seen libraries, glancing over thick pages of old dusty biography books. "They're not activated by a jutsu. It's in their blood. It's born in them."

Silence. Before this boy could express his information further, Iruka said, "Usui, Inuzukas aren't wolves. They are Ninja Hounds. They pose no threat to the village, and their service to the village is very helpful and friendly."

The boy was not impressed nor pressed. He was just staring, his opinions still projected on that clueless brain of his if Iruka were to be honest with himself. "They're the same thing, sensei. They keep dogs to hide their true identity. They're bound by a curse they cannot escape." Another silence. "I've read it on a book once. It's true. Inuzukas have red marks on their faces as a tool to fight the Moon Curse. Wolves prey on meat, but they're scared of blood."

Iruka had no communications with the Inuzuka Clan, nor he had been interested at their arrogance. He might have questioned those far-out marks on their faces, yet, but wasn't that just a sign of one's disdain for their tribe? Hyugas carried the Side's curse hidden on their foreheads. Uchihas used a fan to signify wind and fire. With the village's streak of differences made them no ordinary. To them, life was a competition and everyday was a game of sparring.

Iruka asked the boy to sit down. That had been a very personal information. There were things to be learned and other things that should be left unknown. "Anyone else?" He asked, suddenly they ran out of voices. It was as if Usui had been the voice of Konohagakure. The loudest, tiniest voice in all the Nations.

When he sat back in his chair, Hanabi was staring at him attentively. He looked really cute, she thought in her own silly little mind. "So, was it all true?" She asked.

Usui said: "The wolf is in love with the moon. You know what the sad part is? It cries for a love it never touches."

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When Naruto was a boy, he loved stars so much he would have become an austronut. They said the stars would guide you home. They said the stars represent the dead.

He didn't know where the world is. Sometimes when he was alone he would say 'hello' or ask if anyone was out there. He was just a little boy--a wanderer. He watched the twilight night shift to dawn until he had fallen asleep.

A sixteen-year-old Naruto woke up today, upset, lonely and untidy. He was wearing his white pajamas with swirls on it, a figment of the Uzumaki. Sake bottles laid empty next table. The disposable ramen bowls turned into beer and alcohol. They sat on the sink as if magical elves would fly them into the overflowing trash.

He decided to write today.

Since Jiraiya died, he had depended on writing to press his feelings elsewhere. It wasn't enough relying on your teachers. Naruto saw how people read and realized how books were cherished these days. They remained with us, the chapters and stories we held onto. They weren't prodgial. They weren't a waste. They proliferate.

It's not how you stretch the length of your story. The imporrant is you still write. Jiraiya said, holding a pen and a Japanese paper he'd bought, when they had dropped on a book store across the bookstore. Naruto had not been interested in reading--he found them quite dull and it bored him. Heck, Jiraiya's books were raining with erotica! Why do you write? He asked in his formal, heavy voice. A voice of a sleepy person. I want to write about my adventures! All the places I've been to, where I've traveled. You can't actually stick your memories into your brain. You've gotta put them elsewhere.

Naruto clenched the crumpled paper. He was burning with so much fury; so much pain. How do you fight it? How can you just curl away all your sorrow with a lie? This world is a mess. It's full of illusion, tricks, magic. Do people only go to you because they need someone? Or people are adjusted to the state of who they really are: animals?

Dusk of dawn and he still hadn't eaten anything yet. Naruto felt his stomach grumble. Usually he would go to Ichiraku's and invite someone else at this time of the hour, but Naruto had long been keeping himself at the company of his home. To his own apartment, where no memory of him and Sakura would appear.

Naruto still had not filed for divorce, though Tsunade said he was free to do it any time he would. Sakura disbanded herself as a Leaf and cooperated with the enemy(with her own free will). That made her no different from Sasuke, or any of the unaffiliated rogue-nins.

Their grand house was shut down, sold to two middle-aged couple. The man was barren. Naruto didn't think living on that house was practical. Maybe he woukd visit it on a walk around the village, get a look of where he and Sakura lived together. When the woman asked where did his wife go, Naruto answered--she's where she's always wanted to be.

If only, Naruto thought, If only there was no Doppelganger Triangle. If Toad Sages never had the ability to envision for the future so destiny would not be forced. If only people were allowed to be people and if love was never convulated.

Would you have chosen me? Would you have given up the opportunity to catch up with the birds outside--the sunset, the liberty, the enticement--for me?

He was about to continue with his transcript when two knocks hammered to his door. "Naruto, it's me, Ino. I'm alone. Can I come in?" The moment she said those, Naruto closed his eyes and balled his bandaged hand to Jiraiya's pen (yes, it was one of the properties he'd obtained when they found his local quarter). Never disturb a writer when writing, especially when it's handwritten.

Naruto threw his pen into his table, same to his paper that flew away as he majestically stumbled from his bed. He didn't mind the broken glass that spiked his bare feet, sharp and pointy, now bloody. His laziness was at its peak.

He jammed the door open, slightly. He did not dare want to invite anyone in, especially Ino, who liked things to be tidy and neat as if the world needed a good impression throughout everything.

Ino was staring at him nervously. Not that Naruto was surprise--villagers and his friends sometimes stared at him in awe and amazement. He was starting to wonder why.

Ino was not speaking. She was still finding her way to talk something out of him. Scold him for his eyebags, which would never go away since he's a boy, and boys do not apply make-up. She would probably reprimand him of his absence, the days he spent screaming and breaking his stuffs inside his apartment that looked more of a dungeon.

"Hi,"

"What do you want?"

"If I tell you the reason, promise me you won't shut the door at me?" Ino politely asked. Amazing. This woman used to cheer for Sasuke over him, make fun of his wife. Ex wife. She had been one of those people who looked at him as if he were a demon, a very tormenting demon. Stop acting like an ass. This is the Nine-tails' doing. Ugh. Naruto was feeling temperamental today.

Naruto didn't say anything, resulting to Ino's sigh. She was wearing a blue violet cropped top, a black skater skirt that the wind would often lift an inch, those high knee-length boots he would never see any kunoichi wear. Naruto was not against Ino's prettiness, but something about her would just leave anyone in nosiness. No wonder Shikamaru found her troublesome.

"Hinata's in trouble." She said. Partly from relief, partly from anxiety.

Naruto slammed the door.

Ino's foot got in the way. He forgot how impures were so fast. "Promises aren't meant to be broken!" Ino said, something that made Naruto break the door free. Her eyes made their way to his trashed apartment, those curious judgy eyes. For a moment he was grateful she never said a word about it, just stared back at him. Faithfully. "You have to listen to me. There are scratches and claw marks all over her. She's hurt!"

Naruto could not understand a single word. "Why are you telling me this?" He asked, as if Ino were a mail girl who got the adress wrong.

"Naruto," Ino said, sighing again. "It's Kiba."

Kiba. Kiba, Kiba, Kiba. Naruto trusted the mutt boy to take good care of his girl, even gave them his rare blessing. It was hard letting go, but moving on turned his heart into steel and iron. Hinata would not probably understand that--she just easily moved on and shoved all the guilt to him, as if Sakura's pregnancy and him becoming a father were means of cheating. No one deserved a cheating person on a relationship, but Hinata was still his when she irrevocably and tenderly slept with Kiba.

"He's turning into somewhat a werewolf. Remember the history lesson Iruka-sensei taught us? Something about the Inuzuka blood?"

Naruto was still staring.

"Never mind. The important thing is we protect her. Protect the village and everyone in it." The way she said it was convincing, almost.

But Naruto was not compassionate. He thought of Hinata and all he could come up was that inhuman hell he had gone out with when she had given up on them when he still hadn't. The kisses, the s*x(though they still haven't had one), Tsunade's necklace.

He didn't care. He didn't care whether that crystal necklace might still be hanging around her neck(the last time he saw her she wore no jewelry, which means she must have disposed of it). For once, he would not put anyone in front of him and learn how to be selfish.

"You came all the way here to tell me that." Naruto said. Paused. Waited for a couple more seconds. Ino had her hopes in her, an angel asking a favor from a fellow angel. Ino was wrong. Angels choked upon their halos. Demons laughed.

Naruto shut the door.

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6.9.15

Happy Birthday, Itachi!!

Happy 1 year anniversary to TTU<3 I promise by next year Naruto Tales' third book should be published!