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"Well... So much for doing regular girl things," Ino lamented around a pile of shinobi textbooks.
They were from her years at the academy and still had all her annotations, highlights, and old bookmarks. Adohira glued her nose to each page, books ranging from taijutsu, ninjutsu, and genjutsu. She had her feet up in the air, kicking them in delight as the material saturated her interest.
Every so often, the raven-haired girl let out a gasp of wonder. This always happened in the ninjutsu chapters as the images showed examples of various techniques. They were amazing.
She pointed at the clone jutsu. "Naruto showed me this before he left."
Leaning her cheek on her hand, Ino's eyes reluctantly fell on the clone technique. A drawing of a shinobi portrayed the hand seals - ram, snake, tiger.
"No, what he does are shadow clones. What you're looking at is a regular clone jutsu that can't harm any opponents but is still a good distraction. If you want to be a genin, you'll have to master that."
"..Ram... snake.. tiger..." Her village friend tried to copy the hand symbols. Ino let out a little laugh at how crooked and painful her fingers looked trying to get them right.
"Here, let me help you," She kneeled before Adohira and carefully moved her stiff fingers in formation. "Ram is definitely the harder one out of the three, so why don't we start with snake? You basically clutch your fingers together."
"Like this?"
"You got it! And now tiger, which is really similar to snake. You just lift your last fingers like this. See how much easier it is when you order it like that?"
"Mhhm!"
"Great! Now that you have the others down, let's go back to ram and give it another go..."
This was how their week together had been. Adohira was with Ino day in and out studying her secondhand ninja books. When Ino had enough, as she usually did, she slumped forward and sighed, letting her mind slip away in daydreams. The material was so elementary, it bored her.
They were at the Yamanaka Flower Shop. Adohira sat behind the counter beside Ino in a sea of her old books. As Ino helped the customers, Adohira studied away. Today was the day of the sakura blossoming, and the shop was packed. Adohira's banner was out and proud outside the storefront, attracting people to come in and buy flowers in droves. There were refreshments, food, and live music. More than anything, it was a get-together the village deeply needed - especially considering the painful memories of Orochimaru's attack and Lord Third's death.
At noon, everyone would leave the shop together to witness the beautiful sakuras in the forest. Ino and Adohira wore the matching kimonos that they'd bought nearly a week before. The light pink gowns were perfect for the occasion.
