In Sickness And Health ~Shikamaru~

Ino leaned on her hand, falling asleep as the wind lulled her to sleep. Next to me, Choji ate the snack his girl had prepared for us. We had been caught in a rut, no missions for almost two weeks, training holding no real meaning for us... The only thing we found even remotely worth our time was giving Alsono a reason to cook. Although... with Choji for a boyfriend I guess she always has a reason to cook. Man is she good at it.

I hung my head and sighed. "What a drag..."

"For once, I agree." Ino laid her head down in her arms. Every day has been like this. I'm someone who loves doing nothing, I admit I'm very lazy. But even I think this is just sad. "Hey! I have an idea!" Ino yelled.

"Is it NOT screaming in my ear?" I asked.

"No. Since we have nothing to do, why don't we get jobs or volunteer somewhere?"

"Technically, Ino, we already have jobs."

"We're sure aren't making anything." Choji munched down on the kinkara and I admitted he had a point. A job that doesn't get you any money is a waist of time. And even I need something to do in a day. So we agreed to volunteer at the hospital.

Sakura was on staff in the front room when we walked in and she smiled.

"Hey guys. What's up?" She asked.

"We're bord and need something to do." Choji said.

"Ah. Volunteer work. Lucky for you guys we're a little short handed and could use some help in the long term wing." She handed us volunteer forms to fill out and walked us down to the area we would be working. It was a short hallway on the third floor of the hospital, theamed in light powdery blue and cream colored wallpaper with only about six or eight rooms. I remember it being really quiet. There was a sound or two every once in awhile from one of the rooms as a nurse came and went, but other wise it was increadibly peacful.

Sakura faced us and smiled. "All we need you to do is talk to the people in this wing. Read some books to the younger ones and play board games with them. The people over here get pretty board in a day." Yeah, I know the feeling. Once she was gone, I looked to my teammates who had started dividing the rooms amongst us. Ino took the back two and gave Choji the two rooms in the middle. I was left with the first two, 301 and 302.

With my mentality, I started with 301. The patron inside was an older man who, to my liking, was into shogi. He told me several stories about his days in the great ninja war, many of them very funny. His reasoning for telling me the out of battle stories was that I've been i school and learned al the facts and history, but what I haven't heard were the good times. "My best friend got so stinking drunk one night that he thought the tree was a horse! We spent a whole hour trying to get him down!" The old man laughed as he clicked down a tile. "It was a long night, but I never once have called it a bad night. Never once been angry at him for keeping me up late into the wee hours of the morning. Because if it wasn't for that night, I would never have met my beautiful wife, Denako. She had been in my plattoon the entire time but we had never met until then."

He looked over at a picture on the night stand, a picture of himself and an old woman sitting side-by-side and grinning. "Gods how I miss her..." His eyes and voice were soft, light and filled with a longing I had no idea of. Once we had finnished the game, I moved across the hall to room 302. There was no sound inside and I kind of hoped whoever was inside was asleep so I wouldn't have to do anything. One visit was enough for one day in my book.

But regardless of my utter lazyness, I opened the door. I opened the door to a world I never knew existed outside of sappy movies, a world I never once dreamed I would find myself in.