Chapter Text
Uchiha Sasuke felt that his teacher had finally lost his mind.
Standing in front of the Azone display counter, this 181cm-tall man was observing the wide variety of doll clothes with the meticulous caution of an investigator examining experimental samples. The shopping basket resting on his arm was already filled with all sorts of adorable accessories.
In an instant, Sasuke felt trapped—if he turned back, Kakashi was standing right in front of Konoha’s only counter selling the special edition orange Gundam, and he didn't want to take an hour-long subway ride just to come back for a toy. But if he walked forward, no matter how blind Kakashi was, he wouldn't miss his own student...
Fortunately, Kakashi solved his dilemma for him.
"Well now, isn't that Sasuke? Shopping?"
This man, who was always absurdly sharp in places he shouldn't be, looked up and greeted Sasuke with his usual lazy and cheerful tone. He scanned Sasuke up and down before pointing toward the diagonal rear: "The animal bodies are over there. They just released the snake body recently, and the white-skinned cat paws are back in stock too."
"I'm not..."
"Ah, then you're looking for accessories," Kakashi nodded as if it were a grand discovery. "I think these plush paw gloves are nice. After all, the resin cat paws are hard, but these soft paw pads are pink and squishy—the feel is amazing. Want to give it a try, Sasuke?"
Sasuke kept a straight face and poked the pink paw pad of the white cat-glove through the packaging. It really did feel great, but his mental state was not doing great at all.
"What's on your mind, Sasuke-kun?"
"……Is it an undeniable truth that if you hang around in fanfic communities long enough, you'll eventually slip straight into the doll-collecting rabbit hole?"
"Who knows," Kakashi shrugged. "Though I'm not buying clothes for dolls... well, strictly speaking, I suppose it's roughly the same thing."
Sasuke glanced at Kakashi's shopping basket full of various tiny clothes and accessories. His inherited keen eyesight was pushed to its limit—despite buying a mountain of cute outfits and headwear, there wasn't a single wig, eyeball, or replacement joint part anywhere in Kakashi's basket.
"I'm buying clothes for these two kid—whoa, Obito, take it easy."
Kakashi suddenly bent over and clutched his chest. As he moved, Sasuke finally caught sight of what that strangely out-of-place patch of brown was in Kakashi's naturally wild, silver-gray spiky hair—
It was a brown squirrel with two tiny patches of purple fur on its cheeks, currently gripping Kakashi's hair with its tiny paws and looking down with concern.
Just then, Kakashi pulled out the culprit responsible for delivering what looked like a sudden, severe physical blow. Sasuke watched as Kakashi held up a black Lop bunny with messy fur whose legs were still kicking vigorously, and silently removed the word "looked like" from his mental thought.
"Alright, alright, not kids..."
The bunny's twisting hips and kicking legs nearly caught Kakashi right in the side of the face, so he hurriedly added the final touch: "You're older than me, you're the biggest here, you're the Boss—bro, you're my big bro—"
The bunny stopped moving.
Perhaps it was just his imagination, but Sasuke felt like the squirrel sitting on top of Kakashi's head was secretly snickering.
...It was definitely his imagination.
No, that wasn't the main point—
"Setting the squirrel aside," Sasuke pointed at the Lop bunny in Kakashi's hands. "Even if it's a dwarf Lop, you can't possibly fit it into 1/12 scale doll clothes—and did your rabbit just roll its eyes at me?"
Kakashi looked at his completely bewildered student, then down at the little guy he was holding by the scruff of its clothes, who was staring back at him with one red and one purple eye, practically writing "Kakashi, you're dead" all over its face.
Kakashi blinked:
"That is an adult secret, Sasuke."
—tbc—