Chapter 5: Woes of Being Unsubtly Stalked
Stalking is when two people go on a long romantic walk but only one of them knows about it.
Komushi looked quite pleased with himself as he saw interest light up in Sasori's eyes. He had yet to identify the look of predatory evaluation for what it was, but that was perfectly alright—he wouldn't have been able to do anything about it even if he tried.
You couldn't tell from how she looked, thought Komushi, but Yori-chan was actually pretty brave for being so nonchalant about the whole situation.
Little did he know that Yori had actually been distracting herself with murder fantasies, and how best to cook Komushi's brains when she harvested his organs. It's a good thing Komushi didn't know that, or he would have been frightened at how feasible her plans were.
Or he might have approved. Who knows really with that guy? He was Sasori's closest friend after all, and so he just had to be messed up.
The food arrived after half an hour of ordering it (Sasori must have had something to do with the uncharacteristically speedy service, but you didn't hear that from the terrified catering staff, oh no.) and the three people who had absolutely nothing in common began digging into what the menu had called 'Mustard Mushmush Magic Spicy Roaster Salad Cream Sauce-filled Turkey'.
Yori preferred to think of it as, perhaps its more accurate and descriptive moniker, 'Unidentifiable Platter Number Thirty Six, with a side helping of Kill Me Now Because That Looks Distinctly Poisonous, for a Gravy That's Supposed to "Taste Like Heaven".'
Maybe it's supposed to transport you to heaven instead, by killing you. thought Yori with a frown, lifting a forkful from the plate and sniffing it nervously.
Nope. Still unidentifiable.
She was just about to declare that she couldn't eat the bizarre food Komushi had picked out (and by declare she means stutter and stammer out before eating it anyway and crying herself to sleep at night because she just knewinteracting with shinobi would be the death of her—) when Sasori took a spoon and, with a dignity previously unseen and unheard of, ate half the beach ball sized serving in one bite.
Yori gaped at him, her small mouth forming a tiny 'O' and her eyes widening to a dramatic extent.
Sasori chewed thoughtfully before swallowing, and then got up abruptly.
He reached into his kunai holster and took out a—Yori choked back a hysterical laugh—red chibi scorpion change purse and unceremoniously dumped the required sum of money onto the table, before saying, "The food was nice."
He then walked away with a cheerful Komushi waving away at his back, screaming for every other customer to hear, "See ya Sasori-kun! I hope you liked your date!"
Yori blushed so brightly that she was sure she would have blended in with the lobster eyeing her from the table next to theirs perfectly.
Can I go home now?
Komushi then got up and sidled into the chair Sasori had previously occupied and gave Yori a cheery grin. "Looks like it's just you and me Yori-chan! Don' worry! Sasori-kun looked interested!"
Yori gave him a tight smile, and a glare that looked about as threatening as a baby bunny, before looking at the food Sasori had declared "nice".
What could it hurt, right?
She tentatively, with her eyes closed, brought the fork to her mouth, the yellow-green-red-orange mush with white meat pieces inching closer and closer into her mouth.
Unfortunately, hand-eye coordination was something she never learned, and was in terrible need of brushing up on, because she jabbed herself with the delicacy in the chin, and the piping hot mush splattered all across her only pretty clothing (and by pretty she means, not having been worn to work this week).
Yori glared at the fork as Komushi laughed at her unabashedly.
Kill me now.
Yori hung her wet towel to dry on the balcony railing before making her way to the kitchen.
Taking a bath was a luxury during the war, even though she lived in the Kazekage's household and therefore had nearly first priority on such things.
The Iwa shinobi had attacked their waterlines, or so Yori had heard from Nae, and since Nae was the biggest gossip in Wind Country, Yori wasn't going to pretend that she had more information. Yori wondered when the war would be over.
Then she wondered pessimistically if that would actually make a difference.
Yori searched through one of the lower cabinets for a wok, but she couldn't seem to figure out where she'd last kept it. Using her eyes was a very new concept, even after fourteen years of having such things as vision and actual depth perception, so she navigated her way around the kitchen based on memory.
…moron.
She went deeper into the cabinet, her head disappearing into the dark depths, scrounging around for the wok's handle.
After a few moments of searching, her hand latched onto the right handle, and she grinned in triumph. Small moments of victory must be celebrated enthusiastically.
As she was carefully retracting her head from inside the cabinet, a knock suddenly came from the door, and she slammed her head against the roof of the cabinet painfully.
Her eyes watering and her nose scrunched up in pain, Yori went towards the door, a wok still clutched in her weathered hands.
She then paused and tensed just as she was about to open said door.
Who'd be knocking on my door at this late hour? she thought worriedly, her thoughts going all the way from rabid baby carrots to cyborg spiders.
Shaking away the idiotic thoughts (technology in this world hadn't progressed far enough to create cyborgs anyway, let alone of the spider variety), her hands trembling, she slowly cracked the door open and glanced outside.
And then promptly slammed it in Sasori's face.
Her heart was beating a mile a minute, the fear was choking her, her damp mousy brown hair stuck to her face, and she looked like she'd just survived an impromptu drowning.
I'm…what's he doing here? I'm going to die! Komushi-san, if I get my hands on your sorry excuse of a miserable cowherding milkman—
A thing one should note about Yori is that when she's angry, even her thoughts don't make sense.
Another knock on the door, this time a lot more impatiently.
Yori's eyes widened comically, and the tears in her eyes from the bump on her head now became tears of utter fear.
This is it. I'm going to die. If he wasn't going to kill me before, he's definitely going to kill me now! I just slammed a door in Akasuna no Sasori's face!
"Female, open this door." Sasori's monotone voice called from behind the door, with a tinge of impatience underlining his words.
Yori gulped before quickly opening the door—Sasori, from the bare minimum she knew about him, hatedbeing made to wait.
There he stood in her doorway, and there she cowered away from him, damp hair framing her child-like face and worried wide blue eyes, one hand on the door knob and the other tightly clutching the wok handle unconsciously.
He eyed her, a dead stare that made Yori unaccountably flustered for some bizarre reason.
A few minutes passed of this—him staring at her, studying her like one would a painting, and her slowly but surely flushing under the scrutiny.
He then, without acknowledging her as a human being, turned around and left, just as suddenly as he'd arrived.
Yori stood in her doorway for a good five minutes, wondering if that entire encounter had been a dream.
Because surreal didn't even begin to describe how she was feeling.
Akasuna no Sasori, Yori mused with a cute frown, is a very odd person.
A few days after her bizarre encounter with the infamous puppeteer, Yori had come to the startling realisation that Sasori was…stalking her.
Well, perhaps stalking was the wrong word, she mused. Because stalking would imply that he actually wanted to know more about her than naturally possible, and she was fairly certain he didn't know her name.
He referred to her as 'female', and that was about all.
But, as she went about her daily tasks, she began to notice that Sasori cropped up fairly frequently, but never once approached to talk to her.
He stared at her when she was grocery shopping (the contents of said shopping were still as shoddy as ever), he popped up when Ikanago-san stopped her in the middle of the street (with a bunch of red flowers that she was fairly certain he couldn't afford) just to watch her…he'd even appeared in Rasa-sama's window once while she was dusting!
And all he did was stare for a few minutes and then leave.
No, not stare…study.
Yori looked around at Rasa-sama's spotless room and realised she'd been thinking about Sasori's mad behaviour for the better part of five hours, and she still hadn't figured out what was going on in that head of his.
She looked up to the ceiling, and folded her hands together in a pseudo-prayer.
Why me?
"Rasa-sama's getting married!" exclaimed a far too excited Nae as she bound into the corridor Yori was mopping.
"Don't slip Nae-chan!" squeaked Yori, worried that the spastic eight year old would trip and crack her head open, and then all the blood would splatter across the corridor, and then she'd have to mop it up again.
Yes, her priorities were straight.
And by priorities, she meant her life.
And by her life, she meant her feeble existence.
And by feeble existence, she meant that she was having a mid-life crisis at fourteen.
And by that, she meant that she was already supposedly twenty seven and she stilldidn't know how to function like a normal human being.
"I won't Nee-chan, but did you hear me? Rasa-sama's getting married!" Nae exclaimed once more.
Yori smiled at this news, pleasant as it was. Rasa-sama was a really gruff man with rust red hair and a permanent condescending scowl, but his heart was in the right place.
Or so Yori thought at any rate. But since he's the Yondaime Kazekage, we know better.
"That's wonderful news!" she chirped, her light voice filled with happiness for her…master? Employer? The person whose room she cleaned?
She was technically his personal maid, what with Nae being too young and the other person assigned to him, Michiko (whose name meant 'beautiful wise child', and who was neither beautiful nor wise), being far too incompetent to really count.
Nae then got the gossip look in her eyes, and Yori's smile dimmed, because of course there was a nasty reason behind their marriage that an eight year old was apparently old enough to know.
She whispered excitedly, "Apparently, it's to the Kaze no Oni herself, Karura-han! And rumour is that she's as pregnant as a blue whale!"
Yori froze.
Rose had never been an anime enthusiast like her stepsister, what with the fact that she was blind and everything. But being blind didn't stop her stepsister from eating her ear off with what she'd then thought to be useless facts.
When Rose had become Yori, and Yori had realised this world was supposed to be fiction and she was in Sunagakure no Sato, she'd focussed so completely on what her stepsister had told her about Suna and its people that she remembered obscure names with great clarity.
Things like Naruto liking ramen, Sasuke liking revenge, Sakura having pink hair, Kakashi being a prodigy, Itachi being innocent and Jiraiya being a pervert were all lost, having faded too much to still be remembered.
The Akatsuki—well, a bit about it anyway—had stayed with her, and the awed fear in her stepsister's voice when she talked about Gai and Lee remained very vivid, but a lot of the plot was in total darkness.
But then, Suna and its canonical people were, as previously mentioned, engraved in her head.
Karura as in Gaara's mother Karura?! Ajerblurghafudgelumpadoodeetralalalalala—
Her mind thus turned to mush, Yori became catatonic.
Nae just blinked at her Nee-chan before prising the mop out of her paralysed fingers and continuing the mopping, waiting until she came out of her funk to give her the rest of the details, like how Karura had been pregnant for roughly two months and already she was showing, which meant that it was going to be a big baby (and Nae's mother had always said that a bigger belly meant that it was going to be a girl), that the wedding was probably happening so the child wasn't illegitimate, that no one knew how it happened because Karura the Kaze no Oni (Wind Demon) and Rasa-sama absolutely did not get along, that some speculated it was a one night stand gone horribly wrong, or that the pressure of war had 'gotten to the younguns', and that some thought Karura-han had coerced Rasa-sama into marrying him for his position as next in line for the Kazekage seat.
Nae was calm about Yori's catatonia with good reason.
After all, it happened every other day or so.
Sasori was carving something that was distinctly not a puppet, of that Chiyo was sure.
This was also the first time since he'd finished making his parent's puppets that he looked so peacefully engrossed in something.
Chiyo patted herself on the back.
Putting Komushi on the job had been an inspired choice. She couldn't wait to meet the girl that had given her Sasori his passion back.
Sasori was so focussed on his work that he didn't notice that he'd been smiling slightly for the last half hour.
But when he shifted his position slightly, he realised that he'd been doing so and immediately put an end to it.
But he was…happy wasn't the right word at all.
Maybe content?
No, too positive. Hmmm…
Well, it didn't really matter. What mattered was that this project was the most fun he'd had in years, and to think, the subject of his latest creation had so many different facets to her!
Sasori had a brilliant eyes for detail, and he'd been so certain that he'd studied the Female Komushi had set him up with well enough to create an exact replica of her, but the minute he'd started drawing up the plans for his project, he'd drawn a blank.
Oh, he remembered the whole, of that he was fairly certain, and the general shape.
But it was the details he was interested in, and he just didn't have enough.
He'd toyed with the idea of getting her to strip so he could properly study her, but he'd discarded it immediately—Female had been wearing three layers in the desert heat. He doubted he could persuade her to take off one, even if he'd had the patience for it.
So, every time he needed to clarify a feature, he went out in search of her, and found her doing ridiculously mundane things with equally as ridiculous mundane people.
And yet…
Sasori unconsciously smiled again, and this time, he had absolutely no idea why.
Thoughts? Come on people! Is the development unrealistic? Is the information too abrupt? Is this a feasible thought pattern for Sasori to have? When I say he smiled, I mean like a little twitch of his lips in the upward direction, a light smirk if you will, just more naturally happy…if something like that is possible with Akasuna no Sasori…Temari incoming! And about the date...what do you think? I mean, can you imagine Sasori sitting there for the appropriate amount of time when he finds something that sparks his creativity, simply because of societal convention? Nah!