Chapter Text
April 30th – Night
Chouji goes to bed on the night before his sixteenth birthday without setting out the usual offerings.
His father tsks as he gets to his feet and his mother presses a plate of cookies on him and scolds him, saying, "You can't have nothing set out for them! It's disrespectful!"
"They're not going to come for me," he says, again. "They come for the people who need them. I don't."
He doesn't. He knows what he wants to do for a living, his grades aren't great but they aren't too terrible, and he's overweight but it only bothers him when people make fun of him. He has a good family life and everything anyone could want, within reason. They're not poor, though they're not upper class either.
Chouji can't see why the Little Guardians would want anything to do with him but, to appease his mother, as it's not worth an argument, he takes the cookies with him anyway and sets them out on his desk. They look kind of lonely, without everything else that's supposed to be out for the wee ones.
He carefully rearranges them to look a little more inviting and then shakes his head at his own folly.
Ridiculous.
The cookies will probably be stale in the morning. He sighs and gets ready for bed.
It's not like anyone is going to eat them.
… right?
May 1st – Very Early Morning
Thwack!
Something hits him in the eye, which wakes him. He blinks blearily at the ceiling and gropes for whatever it is that hit him. It's… he squints at it, feeling it crumble around the edges. Part of a cookie.
What?
"You've woken him up!" hisses a boy's voice.
"I meant to!" a girl says, her voice shrilly with indignation. "Look at this! Where's the flowers? The scented candles? The blankets? Where are we supposed to sleep? He had better wake up and answer all of the above! Or I'll throw another cookie at him!"
The boy snorts. "Some angel you are."
"I make a better angel than you make a demon," the girl snaps. "This is just rude."
"The proper term is 'devil' these days," the boy says, sounding tired. There's the sound of a scuffle and then the boy yelps, "Don't throw that at me! I'm just saying the truth!"
Despite his rising horror, Chouji cannot help but laugh. He rolls over, giving into the inevitable, and turns on his bedside lamp. Brushing cookie crumbs off of him—and noticing the other cookie pieces; apparently more than one had been thrown at him—Chouji sits up and casts a glance over at his (his?!) Little Guardians.
They're both roughly about the size of the palm of his hand, though the boy is taller than the girl by maybe an inch, and the girl is much more fragile in appearance, which is an effect heightened, he thinks, by the utter masses of blonde hair she has spilling down around her. Her eyes are very blue, her wings are soft, white, and feathery. It's hard to tell with the lamp on but he thinks she's glowing slightly.
The fist she is shaking at the devil is anything but delicate.
He cannot help but notice her halo is a little crooked. From the way she was flinging around cookies, and her sharp tongue, he sees why.
The boy is harder to make out—more impressions than anything else—shadows piled upon shadows, hiding his bat-like wings, though Chouji knows they must be there, a ponytail sticking up, hands shoved in pockets.
"Why are you always such a pain?" the devil grumbles. "Look, we've got company. You deal with him."
The angel spins on him, her white dress pristine and her little gold sandals throwing up tiny sparks with the movement. She puts her hands on her hips and fixes him with a Look.
Chouji tries not to laugh. She's clearly doing her best to be intimidating.
"What is this? she demands, gesturing at the plate of cookies and his otherwise normal desk. "What were you thinking?! Fix this immediately!"
He sighs, amusement fleeing as quickly as it had come. "What are you two even doing here?" he says. "I don't need—"
The angel bristles and the devil shakes his head. The shadows clear enough for Chouji to see dark eyes and a face that suggests a permanent state of exasperation.
"Oh," the devil says, like he's being punished for something. "One of those."
Chouji is… honestly not sure how to take that. He thinks he ought to be offended.
The devil stares at him. "Look," he says, "we go where the Powers-That-Be say we go. If they say we're here to be your guardians, that's what we're going to be. How you feel about it doesn't actually matter. So… congratulations, I guess. You're stuck with us."
With a glance at the angel, who has crossed her arms over her chest and has been nodding along, the devil adds, "And, yeah, you're going to need to get this set up properly."
"I should say so," mutters the angel. "Of all the indignities…"
Chouji checks the time. It's almost one in the morning. Rubbing one hand through his hair, he tries to decide what to do. On reflection, he supposes he does feel a bit bad. Neither of the Little Guardians has anything with them but what they're wearing and they're far too small to offer use of a spare bed or a corner of his. What if he rolled over and crushed them? Or accidentally knocked them off the edge?
He has the sense enough to not suggest he make them a bed out of an old shoebox.
The angel might actually fling the whole thing at him.
Which, while impressive, he doesn't actually want that to happen either.
"Look," he says, then stops. He sighs. "I'm sorry. I didn't bother to put anything out because I didn't think I'd be… honoured... this way."
That's the traditional wording, anyway, though he's not sure it's an honour right now.
"My mom made me put the cookies out," Chouji continues, getting out of bed with another deeply heartfelt sigh. He does thank the Powers-That-Be that he'd worn boxers and a t-shirt to sleep. Small, small mercies. "I thought it was silly. I know some people get guardians but I… didn't think I would."
"Surprise?" the angel offers. It's the most pleasant thing she's said so far.
"We do have everything you'll need," he says, standing and looking down at the two of them. The angel is definitely glowing. The shadows around the devil are also deeper than they should be.
Chouji feels very tired.
"I'll get the two of you set up. I…" He shrugs a little helplessly. "Did you two want to come along?"
They do.
The angel perches herself on his right shoulder while the devil takes the left. Weirdly enough, the extra darkness of the devil seems to make way for the angel to illuminate the area around them, giving Chouji light enough to see by, enough to navigate his room and the rest of the house, though he's not sure it would be bright enough if he were somewhere he wasn't so… used to.
"What are your names?" he asks, wondering if there's a polite way to ask if they're going to fall if he uses his shoulders. Their weight is slight, but noticeable. He leaves his bedroom as quietly as he can, not wanting to wake his parents.
He doesn't need to deal with their 'I told you so's at this time of night too.
"I'm Chouji," he adds, and then marvels that he can feel them swap glances even though they can't possibly see each other through his neck.
"Shikamaru," the devil says. "She's Ino."
"And you're lucky to have me," Ino adds imperiously. "I was top of my class in the Academy, you know."
"Not that it matters down here," Shikamaru notes.
"Don't make me come over there," Ino warns.
"There's an Academy?" Chouji asks, fascinated. "And you're graded on… being angels and devils?"
"Something like that," Shikamaru says. "We're not really supposed to talk about it with the mortals."
Ino sniffs. "You can't tell me what to do."
Since Shikamaru allows that to pass, Chouji suspects that she's telling the truth and that she does exactly what she wants, when she wants.
Chouji is still not sure how she's an angel, since the stories always talk about how kind and friendly and, well, angelic angels are. Ino certainly looks the part but—
He also notices that, despite her proclamation, she doesn't tell him anything further about the Academy.
She turns her attention to the pictures on the walls in the hallway instead. "Oh, is that you? Look how tiny you were! How old were you?"
Chouji has to stop and squint at the picture. Ino's light winds up coming in handy for that, letting him see his dad smiling, his mother laughing, heavily pregnant, and Chouji himself beaming at the camera.
"I was four there," he says. "I think?"
It looks about right but he doesn't think about that time too often for a lot of reasons.
"Come on," he says, slipping into the basement, and once the door is shut behind him, turning on the lights. He breathes a little easier after that.
Ino hates the basement. It's dark and damp and ugly.
Chouji can't even argue with her on any of those points and doesn't try.
She sits on his shoulder and only shuts up about it when Shikamaru starts snapping at her. After that, she crosses her arms and sulks. Now and then she grumbles something to herself in a voice too low for Chouji to make out, like the world's angriest firefly.
Shikamaru isn't of any help in the basement, either, aside from having gotten her to be quiet.
Chouji really, really, hopes that this doesn't encapsulate what his life is going to be like from now on.
It takes him longer than he would have liked to find the stuff for the Little Guardians, carefully and neatly sealed away in a long scroll with navy and gold trim. The scroll is two feet long and, wound as it is, three inches in diameter.
At least things put in scrolls stay fresh and clean, he thinks. I don't have to worry about washing any of this stuff before they can use it. I'm not sure where they should sleep. My desk works for now, but I'm going to need that.
He's going to have to find another table and, somehow, get it into his bedroom.
But that's a problem for me to figure out later.
Cradling the scroll, acutely aware of the fact his shoulders are occupied, Chouji takes the three of them and his prize upstairs. The hardest part is series of shifts he has to do while carrying it so he can turn the light off and open the door without dislodging his passengers, crashing into anything, or making noise enough to wake his parents.
Somehow, though he's never been particularly agile, he manages.
Once back in his bedroom, feeling like he's accomplished a lot more than fetching a scroll, Chouji bites his thumb until it bleeds and opens the scroll. With a soft pop and a puff of smoke, everything he should have set out for the Little Guardians appears on his desk.
It's always reminded him of doll furniture, only dolls don't usually have things made out of priceless fabrics, heavily embroidered with precious metals spun into fine threads, or extravagant, rare woods that not even the ruler of Hi no Kuni has for their own furniture—at least, that's how the story goes.
Ino floats off his shoulder with a muttered, "Finally", and, after rearranging a few things to her own satisfaction, crawls into one of the beds and ignores them both.
"Don't mind her," the devil, Shikamaru says. "She's never at her best when sleep-deprived."
Chouji nods like he understands even though he doesn't really. "And you?"
"Tch. It's too much of a pain to get riled up over every single thing," he says.
There's not much that Chouji can think of to say to that, so he bids Shikamaru good night and, after a moment, turns out the lamp. This doesn't seem to impede Shikamaru's ability to get into bed and Chouji realizes why, with a faint smile.
Ino's angelic aura, her glow, serves as a perfectly functional nightlight.
I'm going to have to get used to that, Chouji realizes. I haven't had a nightlight since…
Well.
Since.
As he gets into bed and stares up at the ceiling, he realizes that the light shifts, pulses really, in time with her breathing. In sleep, this is slow and even. It's almost kind of relaxing.
Chouji forces himself to focus on that and not on anything else. Eventually, he sleeps.
May 1st – Day
True to Shikamaru's words, Ino is in a much better mood in the morning. Shikamaru himself grumbles and mutters under his breath, too low for Chouji to hear, but Ino, it seems, is used to this as she flirts around, straightening the furniture he'd fetched for them and then, to his bemusement, dragging open the curtains and spilling sunlight over everything.
"You're stronger than you look," Chouji says, squinting a little in the sunlight, but in a better mood himself, thanks to the morning.
"Sure am!" Ino says, doing a bit of a twirl that sends her dress spinning about her, then fetching his hairbrush for him. She drops it on his lap pointedly, then hovers in front of him. This close, in the daylight, he can see that her blue eyes are pupil-less. It's a little unsettling. "How else would I be a guardian if I wasn't?"
Since there's good logic to that, he doesn't argue.
"I'm impressed," he tells her, which makes her beam.
She beams more when he picks up the hairbrush and then floats off to finish tying the curtain back properly.
"What are we doing today?" Ino asks as he brushes his hair.
It's going to take some time, he realizes, getting used to the 'we' that the little angel uses so casually. Chouji considers her question.
"Nothing really exciting," he says, feeling the ridiculous urge to apologize for being boring. He doesn't. "I've got school?"
"Not the most exciting," Ino agrees with him, though she doesn't sound bothered. "But it's good for us to get an idea of what your usual routine is all the same! After all, where you go, we go!"
"Everywhere?" he asks, suddenly concerned about the pressure in his bladder and, well, she might be tiny and celestial and a guardian but—she's also a girl and he doesn't want to—
I can't use the bathroom if she's with me!
The very idea is horrifying.
If she's noticed the way his thoughts have gone, she doesn't give any sign of it. "That's the idea," she says, surveying her work on the curtains speculatively. "Though here at your home, we've got more leeway. We can't be too far from you, though. If you leave, we have to follow you. You're our anchor on this plane. Our link to this reality. Besides, how are we supposed to be your guardians if we're not around you?"
Chouji breathes in, relieved. That's not so bad. He can handle that.
"Alright," he says. "That sounds okay. I'm going to go have a shower then and after that we'll see about getting breakfast for all of us—you guys do eat, right?"
Another thought occurs to him—
"Do you two need showers too?" He hopes this question also covers the one about toilets.
"We've got that covered," she says, with more understanding in her voice than he'd really like. "But yes, we do eat, and we'd like to share meals with you."
When he glances at Shikamaru, who is sitting on the edge of the desk and looking exhausted, he just gets a vague wave in his direction, which Chouji decides to take as agreement.
He gathers his things, deciding that he'll start getting dressed in the bathroom from now on, and heads for the showers. As he leaves his room, he glances behind him to see that Ino has taken a seat next to Shikamaru and they seem to be talking in low voices.
I have an angel who is bad at night and a devil that is bad in the morning. That's… that's rather fitting, actually.
Chouji still shakes his head all the way to the bathroom.
By the time he's showered, dressed, and made his way back to the room, Shikamaru is more awake and is floating over by his bookshelves, studying the titles.
Someone has made his bed.
Chouji, having been about to drop his towel on the floor, hangs it up on the hook that's meant for it, on the back of his bedroom door instead.
"Thank you, Ino," he says, taking a guess.
"You're welcome," she says happily, from where she's…
Chouji pauses and looks around his room. It's the glow she gives off that tips him off. He peers under his desk.
"What are you doing under there?"
"Just looking," she says, eyes huge and innocent as she comes over and settles on his shoulder. The right one, again, and already he's suspecting that she has claimed this one as hers.
"That's a strange place to look," he tells her, carefully straightening up. He doesn't want to dislodge her. What if she got hurt? "You're worse than a cat."
Shikamaru lands on his left shoulder as Chouji turns from the desk.
"She is," the little devil agrees. "Morning."
But not a good one, Chouji notes, rather amused.
Ino laughs at both of them and it's to the sound of that Chouji makes his way downstairs for breakfast with his family.
His parents can see the Little Guardians.
Chouji hadn't expected that—he really needs to review the teachings, but he really hadn't thought it would be necessary for him—but it makes things easier, he realizes, as Ino bobs an elegant curtsy and Shikamaru a perfunctory bow as his father beams in delight and his mother claps her hands.
"Oh, how adorable!" she says. "Welcome to the family! We're ever so honoured by your presence."
They get through introductions (and the 'I told you so's') and it's only because Chouji is paying attention to how his Little Guardians are managing to eat their breakfast that he sees the moment that Ino realizes that his mother here and now and the one from the picture last night aren't the same woman.
Please, he thinks, a little desperately, please don't say anything.
She gives him a bit of a startled look but, thankfully, just shakes her head and asks for a smidgen more of powdered sugar for the tiny pancakes his father had made.
They even have dishes and cutlery for them, all in their size, and Chouji hadn't known that.
Ino carries most of the conversation, fielding his parents' questions, as Shikamaru focuses on eating. Chouji, after realizing that Ino really does have impeccable manners when she feels like using them, does the same.
By the time they manage to get away from his parents, Chouji already feels exhausted all over again.
Ino lingers in the kitchen, chattering gaily with his mother. Shikamaru comes with him.
"Is everyone going to be able to see you two?" he asks suddenly. He doesn't think he could stand it, being the focal point of everyone's attention at school, and yet ignored at the same time.
Shikamaru shifts a little, making himself more comfortable on Chouji's left shoulder. "No," he says. "Some people are naturally more sensitive to spiritual forces and they'll be able to see and converse with us. Generally, the families of those we come to can see us. It usually makes things easier, though there's exceptions to that. Those who have Little Guardians of their own will also be able to see us."
"You don't sound too excited," Chouji observes.
"It's a lot of bother," Shikamaru says. "We never know who we're going to be spending the next however long—you're sixteen, so that's what, two? Three years? Of school left. So whoever we wind up meeting today, we're going to be stuck with for a good while."
The devil yawns.
"Ino's better at that sort of thing anyway," Shikamaru says. "I don't suppose you play Shougi?"
Chouji's first thought is: that's an old man's game.
"I don't," he says, which makes the little devil heave a huge sigh. "But I guess you could teach me? Is that allowed?"
Shikamaru laughs. "We're allowed to teach you things, just not about how—all of that works."
Chouji sees, from the corner of his eye, Shikamaru point up sardonically.
"Besides," the devil says, "if you don't think Ino's going to insist on your grades being impeccable, you've badly underestimated her. She's already begun with your room."
"She's not my mother," Chouji says, appalled, though yes, yes he had noticed that already.
"She's not," Shikamaru says, and he sounds both satisfied and… something else, that Chouji can't identify. "But she's a force of nature so—if you want to fight her, have fun with that, I'm staying out of it."
Chouji pauses in packing up his backpack, homework half done from the night before. Luckily, nothing is due.
"I'll keep that in mind," he says, making note of both the fact that Ino is likely to steamroll him and that Shikamaru is also disinclined to stop her, generally speaking. It's interesting. He's not quite sure what to make of it or of them when put together. Instead, he asks another question: "She's the social one of you two, huh?"
This doesn't surprise Chouji, not really.
"She's, um, not what I expected an angel to be like," he admits. "Though I'm glad she's in a better mood this morning."
Shikamaru floats over to stand on the back of Chouji's chair, watching as Chouji gathers his books and binders and shoves them into his backpack.
"Usually, when we're assigned, we arrive and then go to sleep," Shikamaru says. "It's not standard practice to wake our charges... but obviously, we couldn't do what was standard last night. Angels are... erratic at night, especially as late as it was. You're lucky she didn't get to the point of throwing the plate at you."
Shikamaru smiles faintly. "Because she would've, you know."
"And you wouldn't have stopped her?"
That gets him a shrug. "Probably not," Shikamaru admits. "It's one thing to make a token protest her way but I wasn't exactly pleased nothing was out either. Besides, being awake like that at night hurts her. I--"
Shikamaru cuts himself off there, giving another shrug.
Chouji pauses. "She was in pain?"
That puts her bad mood in an entirely different light. Chouji feels terrible. And guilty that he hadn't put everything out so that this could have been avoided even though he hadn't known.
"Yes," Shikamaru says, in a carefully level voice. "She was."
Chouji swallows--something about that had sounded...
Honestly, he deserves to be blamed.
"I'll talk with her," he promises, thinking of her chattering brightly this morning, like last night hadn't happened. She'd made his bed. Had that meant something more than her silent commentary on the state of his bedroom? More importantly, though, his heart sinks as he asks, "Does that mean... are you in pain now?"
Shikamaru stares up at him for a moment, then sighs. "No," he says. "It's different for devils."
But he doesn't elaborate on the differences, just glances towards the door.
Ino peers in, then beams at the both of them. "Chouji, your mom says if we don't leave soon, we'll all be late!"
Chouji smiles. It feels like he's got lead in his stomach, but Ino doesn't mention his smile looking weird. He swings his backpack into his shoulders.
"We're coming now," he says, as Shikamaru resumes his position on Chouji's left shoulder.
Ino flies next to him, the motion of her wings making her bob up and down slightly as they trundle down the stairs, wish his parents goodbye, and head out into the crisp morning air.
"Do you guys get cold?" he wonders abruptly. It's May, just barely, but the mornings are still cool. He's got a hoodie on over his school uniform.
"We do get cold," Ino admits. "But this temperature is fine. We run hotter than you do, since we're so small. We'll need winter things if it gets colder later in the year."
From the way his parents reacted to the Little Guardians he doesn't think going shopping for them will be a problem.
Chouji nods slowly. "Well, if you get cold today, feel free to hide out in my hood."
"Thanks, we will," Ino says, as they turn a corner onto a wide street. The road is quiet and the air smells like flowers. "Do you walk the whole way to school? Or will there be a bus involved?"
Somewhat to his own bemusement, Chouji winds up explaining his route and his school to Ino, who seems honestly and genuinely interested in his answers. Shikamaru listens from his shoulder and offers his opinion now and then but mostly just allows Ino free rein.
Chouji suspects that's going to be the status quo, as far as anything can be, with his Little Guardians. As they get closer to the school, and more people start dotting the streets, most of them in uniforms like his, Chouji frowns a little.
"Shikamaru said that others can see you both. Does that mean I'm going to be seeing other peoples' Little Guardians?"
Ino lands on his right shoulder, taking a seat primly. "That's right," she says. "So it should be a pretty interesting day for all of us."
"Do a lot of people have Little Guardians?" he asks, though they're close enough to the school now that he keeps his voice down, not wanting those without them to think he's gone crazy.
(He's gone absolutely crazy. Definitely.)
Ino considers that question for a moment. "It's hard to quantify what a 'lot' of people means. There are places where there tends to be more of us, simply because there's more that needs guarding from. Konohagakure no Sato is peaceful compared to some places but it's also not peaceful compared to others? So we won't know until we know."
"That's an answer that's even more useless than usual," Shikamaru snarks from his left shoulder. "A new low for you."
"Go back to sleep," Ino says, not rising to his bait. "You know I'm right."
Shikamaru grumbles something too low to make out.
"Is that your school?" Ino asks a few minutes later.
"Yes," Chouji says, feeling a little shy all of a sudden because he doesn't like this, doesn't like not knowing who he'll see has Little Guardians--and who will see that he does. It's embarrassing, in a way, because by their very presence they announce that there's something that needs to be guarded against.
New Leaf High School is a large series of buildings surrounded by high brick walls. Inside the walls, the buildings are separated by use—general classrooms, the arts, the sciences. Sports. He has the idea that the school is pretty fashionable and highly regarded and hard to transfer into but Chouji's been in the New Leaf system since he was a baby. It's all he knows. Any other day, that would be comforting, but today…
Today, he doesn't even make it past the front doors before things get weird. Er. Weirder.
"Ah, Akimichi-kun," Suzume-sensei, his Home Ec teacher, greets him. "Good morning and happy birthday!"
He has the time to wonder how his teacher knows his birthday before he looks over at her and realizes, with a swooping feeling in his stomach, that on her shoulders are a set of Little Guardians. Both of hers are male. The devil gives him a jaunty wave while the angel looks incredibly, unspeakably bored as he gazes off into the distance.
Suzume-sensei has Little Guardians? She teaches how to cook and sew at a high school! What could she need protection from?!
Of course, he still has no idea what he needs protection from either. As far as he know both he and Suzume-sensei live normal, boring lives.
"Thanks?" he says, then internally cringes because he hadn’t meant for that to come out like a question. "And good morning, Suzume-sensei."
The first warning bell—class starts in ten minutes—rings.
"Suzume-sensei, I have to get to class--," he begins.
She claps her hands together, like he's just reminded her of something. "Come with me," she says. "I’ll show you where your new class is."
"My new class?" he splutters, even as she heads past him, back down the stairs.
"Come on, Akimichi-kun, you won’t want to be late for your first day!"
Ino tugs on his ear. "Get going!" she insists.
Torn between bemusement and horror at how this has become his life, Chouji follows Suzume-sensei, and her Little Guardians, down the stairs and then around the main building. They pass the Arts Building, the rounded roof of the auditorium gleaming like crystal under the spring sun, and follow a cobblestone path through the gardens where he recognizes the fountain and after that he recognizes nothing else, having never gone this way before. He has no idea what the buildings they’re passing now are for. They’re smaller than the main building or the culinary building but kept in absolutely pristine condition.
Feeling too diffident to ask any questions, even though Suzume-sensei has always treated him well and his grades are probably the best they’re going to get anywhere when it comes to her class, Chouji just concentrates on trying to remember the path they’ve taken.
Because if this is where I have to go for class from now on…
Then he might as well do his best to remember how to get to it. Chouji understands almost nothing about his sixteenth birthday so far but directions to his new class? He can understand that.
Both of his Little Guardians are quiet during the walk. On his right shoulder, Ino is quiet, though now and then the wind blows her hair and it winds up tickling the side of his face. When he glances down at her, she looks a little pensive, though she smiles up at him when she notices him looking. Shikamaru, when he checks, is leaning back, propped up on his elbows, and looking around speculatively. He raises an eyebrow at Chouji’s glance but says nothing.
"And here we are!" Suzume-sensei announces as they draw close to a tidy stucco building, white-washed almost painfully bright, and surrounded by lilac bushes and some other flower—all he knows about them is that they’re pink and that’s only because he’s looking at them. The door is deep-set, dark brown, and they have to go up two steps to get into it. There are no windows that he can see.
"Your classmates will be glad to meet you," Suzume-sensei says and Chouji knows that’s a lie—he’s never met a class that’s excited to meet anyone new.
Since he's pretty sure all teachers are contractually obligated to say that, however, he doesn't think too badly of Suzume-sensei for doing so.
Though I hope this class isn't weird enough to actually care.
He can't rule it out. Everything else about today has been surreal enough to make that a possibility, however small.
Absently, he follows Suzume-sensei into the building, still brooding on the idea of anyone actually being excited to meet a new classmate. It seems ridiculous, no matter how genuinely Suzume-sensei says it. He knows who is his and what he looks like and while he likes himself, pretty much, expecting other people to do so seems like it's pushing it. Maybe if they were from a different country or really cute...
He can see that. People love interesting and cute things.
But I'm no one special--
Ino tugs sharply on his earlobe and he yelps.
"What was that for?!" he demands, though quietly, as Suzume-sensei turns to look at him. Them? Whatever?
"You’re not paying attention," Shikamaru says, drawing his attention away from Ino. "Look, we’re basically there."
Somehow, that doesn’t seem fair. He had been paying attention—just not as much to which classroom they were by. The halls are pale wood, polished so they gleam, and there’s notice boards and posters up, just like there are in the main building. He rubs his ear, careful not to accidentally bump into Ino.
He looks up, noting that this is Class S-A, and then back at Suzume-sensei, who is standing by the door. Inside, he can hear the murmur of conversation.
"Sorry," he mutters.
"No worries," Suzume-sensei says, with an understanding smile. "It’s a lot to take in all at once, I know. Are you ready?"
Chouji takes a deep breath. Then nods. He’s not really ready but he’s also not going to get ready in the next couple of minutes. So—
"Yes."
Nothing to do but go ahead anyway.
Suzume-sensei slides open the door.