The Shadow on The Sand [Naruto Fanfic]

Chapter 5 - Lessons

Chapter 5 - Lessons

"...WHAT?!"

"You heard me. I'm going to teach you everything I know about romance." Naruto retorted, with his chest still puffed out.

Hitori stopped to put on a blank expression and stare at him until he frowned and walked over to his bookshelf. She continued to watch him, still dead panned and he came back over with several books in his arms and a few pieces of paper that were probably used as make shift bookmarks. He took the one she was reading from her, and handed her another one.

"This book, is full of romance and all that mushy stuff. Read it." he said and waved his hand in the air as if trying to push away the 'mushy stuff'.

"I don't want to read it. I was actually enjoying the other book." the pale-skinned woman replied only breaking her blank expression to glare at him.

"You can read it later. There's not much romance in that one, so you'll just have to live with it." he put a bookmark in the page that she was reading and closed the book.

He started browsing through one of the other books he brought and grabbed a bit of paper when he found a lovey-dovey chapter for his friend to read. The blond marked every part in the book he thought would help and smirked when he heard Hitori groan or sigh several times.

"Naruto, this is ridiculous. How can this book help if it's not even real?" she said after a while, her tone bored and slightly irritated.

"Just because it's not real, it doesn't mean that it can't portray true emotion through it." he replied with a bit of a wistful expression, but his voice was unwavering. "What about you singing? You show emotion through it, don't it?"

She glowered off to the side, recalling when he had busted her sitting on her roof singing a little after she had drunk a fair bit at the bar. It was a while after she had gone on an ANBU mission and one of her team-mates was killed in combat. As much as she would never admit it, losing someone on the field always reminded her of 'that' mission. Absently, she brushed her hand over the large scar on her back, and Naruto noticed. Hitori always did it when the mission came to mind.

"You could sing about something happy, but your true emotions would still show through if they were strong enough." Naruto continued quietly, not wanting to upset her, but just make his point. "Just keep reading, okay? I just want to help." he smiled at her, and she knew that he was right. She could definitely use some help with this stuff.

The woman didn't bother replying, just kept reading instead about a guy who was in the hospital and had fallen in love with his nurse and it went through the motions of him telling her, and he found out that she felt the same. She was currently up to the part where they were having their 'touching moment' and since the male was finally well enough to get out of bed and stand, he had gotten up and pulled the woman close to him in a loving embrace before kissing her passionately.

Hitori rolled her eyes, but kept reading as Naruto continued to flick through pages of books. Most of them were just random stories that he had bought to keep himself amused, and he only read the ones with lots of action and fighting in it, but as always, there was usually some element of romance. He had selected some of the ones that he had found somewhere, or had decided to read just for the sake of it, since most of those were all the romance types.

Hitori finished the small book that probably only had 30,000 words, if that. The blue-eyed jinchuriki had also finished finding all the things he thought would help in his books and and it was definitely time for some breakfast - more like lunch now - to be made. She picked up another book, and started reading the marked chapters and pages and Naruto went to make something for them to eat.