Uncertainty

Anger

Patience wasn't really his thing, never had been. Meaning, he knew how to wait when the occasion called for it but he tended to be somewhat insistent in order to get answers soon. So standing around just waiting for Tenten to show some sign of life or reappear from wherever she had gotten herself into didn't seem easy to him.

He had gone to the company's archive and thanks to his position it hadn't cost him anything to get Tenten's file, whenever an employee was hired he was asked for several documents in addition to the curriculum to be able to do the health insurance, bank account details and so on. All that rested in the folder and he read page by page in search of something that could give him that last name that was the only clue to follow that Kiba had given him. The bank account had been opened the day she was hired as an intern, that corroborated what the Inuzuka had said about it being her first job.

He looked at each and every one of the forms, on all of them it said she was married but in the space for her maiden name there was nothing, on any of them. The first thing that crossed his mind was that it was incompetence not to have checked that the documents were correctly filled out, but Human Resources told him that it was an optional field. So he couldn't even complain about the incompetence.

He went all the way to her high school, they were graduates of the same institution, and she got married the year after her graduation, which gave him the year of her degree. It took a couple of flirtations and a dinner invitation to the academic secretary to let him see those records. There was only one Tenten listed for the last two years and her last name was Inuzuka, which made no sense and was absurd, she wasn't Hana's sister, who was also on the same lists nor had she married at that time to already appear with that last name.

The secretary checked, the registration software had been updated 10 years ago, from what she could see in the past that name had been edited before that update. Someone had tried to disappear Tenten's maiden name, and that only raised more questions, but only one name came to his mind: Tsume. The brunette told him that it was the woman who forced them to get married and organized everything related to the wedding, so it wouldn't be entirely strange if she had had that record changed, even if he didn't understand why she wanted to hide that information.

He couldn't think of any other place to look, his adventure as an amateur detective went only so far and even though the idea of paying a professional one he had already worked with was going through his head, he didn't even know what to tell him to look for or where. Nor did he have a valid reason for wanting to stalk her like that, and get to where she was, beyond his need to see her and want to know how she was doing. She had cut him out of her life, and he should probably take her at her word when she told him that leaving meant the answer he had asked for about defining her feelings.

He arrived at his apartment that night and felt empty, he wouldn't accept that answer, he had been absolutely sure she was going to answer yes, she loved him, he had seen it in her eyes even before he made his statement. Crying the day she resigned was almost a confirmation of the same, but the words spoken were contrary to her gaze. He went to the kitchen for a glass of water as he took in his surroundings, inhaling deeply and exhaling heavily when he saw that no one else was around.

In a completely incomprehensible impulse while looking for an apartment to buy, and stop living in the one he had been renting on the run, he had felt the need to buy that one specifically. He hadn't been able to explain it, just walking in he had had that vision of him growing old next to Tenten right in that place, for some reason he could see her there installed next to him. He had bought it at the beginning of August, just before he had asked her to think things over, and so now that she was gone from his life there was something painful about coming to that place. The place had 4 rooms, just enough to be able to have a home office, the guest room and Ryuu's bedroom, because he knew she would always have her son by her side.