Bamboo Hearts Firefly

The Beetle and the Bee

Rather than recall in these flowers the fragrance of the past,

I would like to hear this nightengale's voice 

To know if his song is as sweet.

--From The Ink Dark Moon

It wasn't like Shino Aburame to start trouble.

But if he didn't stand up for the bugs, who would?

Shino's experiment was finished.

His bug jars clink-clanking in his ninja pack, as he walked the lonely path to the outskirts of his village. A bug cage of restless ladybugs strapped against his back, ready to finish his self-proclaimed battle against Farmer Fukushima of the Leaf.

'They might think I'm strange for not letting something like this go,' Shino mused to himself. 'But I think they're the ones who are strange for living in this world, without ever honoring all the tiniest-'

"Bee-stinging details!"

The word was stolen right out of Shino's thoughts.

But that wasn't much of a surprise, because he was used to being interrupted anyway.

What did surprise him was that he wasn't alone anymore.

No one ever ventured this far out into the Aburame side of the forest.

Especially girls.

He had carefully and painstakingly chosen this quiet and exclusively-exclusive spot for his private entomological studies.

Girls were enough to deal with at Academy, and now he had to worry about how awkward they made him feel here too?

"What am I doing wrong now? Why am I always missing all the important details?" the girl groaned in frustration. "Until Naobachi proves that he can do this jutsu without cheating first, he can eat this lesson! It's one thing to carry his own hive in a bug jar. But It's totally different trying to tame a wild bee with only chakra and no extra help." 

Blowing out a puff of air so fierce that her feathery white bangs fluttered out of her face, she fell back against a tree in the Sakura grove, sinking down to the ground with her arms hugging her knees.

Watching the only bee she'd managed to summon since breakfast, as it buzzed its merry little bee-way from clover to clover without so much as a by her leave.

"Hey, get back here!" she ordered her summon. "I didn't say you could go! We haven't finished training yet!"

But the taunting bee's buzz was a little too sassy for her tastes, shaking his stinger defiantly at her as he buzzed off to greener pastures.

"Make you?" the bee mistress challenged his dare, shooting up to chase after him again. But the stiff pain in her aching muscles flattened her back against the tree trunk. Wincing, she lamented, "You better believe I would...if it didn't hurt so much."

And sighing, she massaged her throbbing swollen bee-stung hands. Flinching as she pinched one last stinger out of her tender palm, and rubbed on a soothing witch hazel balm from her ninja pack.