Hinata spent the next few weeks tiptoeing around the mansion, wary about which rooms she was found in, and about which rooms he could be found in.
After their last encounter she had with him, things had been incredibly uncomfortable and awkward. At dinner times she would sit as far away as she could from everybody and close herself up into her shell, wishing she could've reached back and gobbled up the words she had said to him before. Maybe he wouldn't be so angry with her anymore then.
It was especially awkward whenever they met in the hallways with the cameramen trailing and observing every screw up they did. It felt exactly like being smothered with a thick blanket. Suffocating. Each time they exchanged that faked politeness made it feel like another layer of blanket was added, making it harder and harder to breathe.
Sighing, she took another harsh stab at the food in front of her and shoved it into her mouth with an unladylike snort. Try as she might, she couldn't help but want to stay here, and to her absolute shock and horror, it wasn't just because of Sakura.
"Where's Sasuke? Didn't he promise he'd be here for dinner?" Sakura stage whispered across the table to where Ino was poking at her plate of spaghetti with her fork, mentally calculating how many calories there would be in a single bite.
"Why should you care? It's not like he's going to pay any attention to you anyways, fat forehead." Ino didn't even bother looking up from her spaghetti as she scoffed at Sakura.
"Wh-what? It's not fat! It's just…on the larger side, pig." Sakura haughtily tossed her hair behind her shoulder.
"I am not a pig!" Ino shrieked and guiltily pushed the plate of spaghetti away from her.
"Pig!"
"Fat forehead!"
"Whore!"
"Slut!"
"Er…what's up them?" Hinata braved asking Temari this seemingly innocent question, her real motive was to see if Temari would answer or ignore her.
"They've been rivals ever since they've started modeling, before they were models, they were best friends. It seems the reasons they became rivals was over Sasuke, Sakura forsake their friendship and Ino's been terribly offended by that, thusly creating rivals over a man." Temari gave a bored yawn and lazily twirled the spaghetti around her fork, not even giving Hinata the satisfaction of facing her.
"Bitch!"
"Hello, ladies." Sasuke had finally entered the dining room wearing a very casual black turtleneck and jeans.
"Mother fu-"
"Ino, Sakura!" Sasuke bellowed across the room to the two bickering girls who immediately backed away from each other with a indignant "hmph".
Sasuke ran his fingers through his hair, Hinata noticed he tended to do this whenever he was nervous or frustrated, she guessed that he was frustrated this time. He frowned momentarily at the two girls before proceeding, "Two girls have already left this contest so quickly, because of that, I'd like to have some more time to spend with you…elsewhere." He drew out his sentence, Hinata noticed again that he did this whenever he felt like he didn't have enough attention on him.
"Which is why we'll be flying up to snowy and cold, Whistler, Vancouver." Cheers erupted from Sakura, Ino and Temari. Hinata sank lower into her seat with a fearful glance at Sasuke, she hated snow, and she couldn't ski or snowboard to save her life.
She prayed there would be emergency ambulances anywhere within fifty feet away from her in Whistler.
She lugged her bag off of the carousel with a grunt, she didn't know how Tenten had managed to sneak all this junk into there without her noticing it at all. The three-and-a-half hour plane trip to here had been unbelievably awkward, she had been seated right between Sasuke and Sakura.
