Tenten watched Neji secretly as she sipped her punch and snorted when she saw him avoiding her gaze purposely.

It was Naruto's birthday and here she was, standing in the corner, in an uncomfortable pink dress, alone, because Lee had just left her for whatever antics he wanted to display with Gai as usual.

She wasn't a loner or an outsider. She could easily join her other friends and under normal circumstances she would have done that. But Neji was there along with their old comrades and she just couldn't; she wanted to maintain distance with him.

"You could burn something with that glare."

Tenten almost jumped, brown eyes turning to Sakura who had just appeared out of nowhere. The pink haired kunoichi was smirking at her knowingly. "Am I right, Tenten?"

"More like someone." She corrected flatly, sending the pompous man across the rooma bitter look.

Sakura raised an eyebrow. "Your old teammate? That Hyuuga ANBU?"

"That Hyuuga ANBU," Tenten mumbled under her breath. Apparently people couldn't talk about him without bringing up the ANBU title. Neji who? Of course Neji the ANBU, not Neji the Hyuuga prodigy or Neji the ice cube man anymore. "Who else?"

"He glances at you when you aren't looking."

Tenten turned to Sakura in mild exasperation. "Don't be delusional," she said dryly, "he doesn't even care that I'm here."

The medic-nin shrugged casually. "I just caught him looking at you."

The Weapon Mistress exhaled in exhaustion. "It's impossible, Sakura. We—we haven't talked for five years."

"I know. It's the fifteenth time I'm asking you this, what actually happened between you two?"

Tenten knew her face turned more pathetic by each second. "I cannot tell you."

"Too bad," Sakura commented. "I thought I could help."

The brunette smiled weakly, looking into her half-empty glass. "I don't think you can even help me."

If Lee couldn't do anything about this, of course no one else could.

None of her friends knew the truth behind Team Gai's breakup. Tenten had never wanted to tell them anything. They must've had asked Neji too, but as far as she was concerned, he could be far more stubborn than her and it wasn't his nature to share his personal problems with anyone, friends or not.

About one month ago, after his failed attempt at arranging a dinner for them, Lee had apologized to her and admitted that he just wanted his two best friends to talk again. It was killing him, he had said. Tenten had said nothing, but at least she had cancelled her plan to destroy all his green clothes in front of his eyes.

Certainly Neji had been annoyed at him too, but Lee didn't say anything about that.

Sakura smiled sympathetically. "Well, I'll leave you here. That idiot Naruto, he must be looking for me."

Tenten only grunted as a reply.

From the corner of her eyes she saw Neji chatting with Inuzuka Kiba. Unlike that time during the dinner, there weren't any awkward moments between them—her and Neji. Neji was having too much fun with their friends to even remember her existence. And she, she was standing alone like a miserable loner who had no friends. Tenten almost growled at how unfair it was—this wasn't her at all, it was Neji who she remembered was an unsociable, aloof, emotionally detached man!

"Hey."

She was about to snap at whoever it was when a tall man with bored expression appeared before her. Tenten recognized the pineapple head and lazy eyes he owned. She had been assigned to the same mission as Nara Shikamaru a few times during their Genin and Chuunin years. However after he had joined ANBU along with Neji five years ago, they had only met each other a couple of times. At least, though, they would smile and nod politely when running across each other, not avoiding each other's eyes like she and Neji would do.

"Your former teammate asked me to inform you that he needed to take your drunk ex-teacher home."

"What?" Tenten asked in disbelief, wondering how on earth she hadn't seen them leaving—had she been too busy with her thoughts? "They left without telling me first?"

Shikamaru only shrugged as a reply.

Inhaling deeply and making a mental note to beat Lee up again tomorrow, Tenten couldn't help but think it had been a wrong decision to attend the party in the first place. "I think I should go home then."

"I'm going to leave, too," the Nara heir said, glancing at the crowd who was laughing and cheering at something Tenten didn't even bother to find out. "This is troublesome enough."

Tenten smiled and shrugged. "It's Naruto's party, what do you expect?" she said. "See you later, Shikamaru."

Shikamaru's thin eyebrow lifted. "We could walk home together, you know."

The brunette laughed. "Sure. Come on, I really need some fresh air."

It was a relief when they were finally outside. Tenten immediately felt much better as they started to walk along the empty street.

"What happened to your team?"

The weapon specialist blinked, not expecting him to start a conversation, let alone about that topic. If she remembered correctly, Shikamaru wasn't so different with Neji in the way they had never given a damn about other people's business. "Why do you ask?"

"Hyuuga Neji and I are on the same ANBU team," he said, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

Tenten had forgotten everything about Neji entirely since they had left the party. Shikamaru practically ruined her good mood just by mentioning his name. "Why don't you ask him then? You've spent the last five years with him."

"Do you really think he would tell me?"

She sighed and shook her head. "No."

Shikamaru was silent for a long time. "Well… I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked you. Troublesome, but that's not my business at all. Forget it."

"How does it feel?"

"What?"

"How does it feel," Tenten repeated, "to be an ANBU?"

Shikamaru looked taken aback by her question. Tenten herself had to admit she was surprised; the question kind of had slipped out of her mouth. But he was waiting for an explanation, and she might as well continue it.

"Your job isn't easy. Your job is to kill more enemies than an ordinary Jounin is required to. It would be much safer and easier for you to be like me, or a teacher like Lee. Why do you—"

"I have people who will always be there for me. My parents, my teachers, my close friends, and Temari," he said. Tenten was vaguely amused that he didn't include Temari as his friend but didn't want to mention her as his girlfriend either. "I don't have to ask for their support."

"But you don't have much time for them, do you?"

Shikamaru shrugged again. "Whenever given a week off, I would spend time with them as efficiently as I could."

Tenten still didn't get it. "Is that what… makes you strong enough to stay in ANBU until now?"

"Their support matters so much to me. That's all an ANBU would ever need. Our harsh job isn't something everyone will accept, Tenten, but once we have people who believe in us, that will be enough."

ANBU needed support. ANBU needed people who trusted them.

The kunoichi shut her eyes, trying to not hear the voices in her head.

"Well?"

"Well," she echoed, "I guess—"

"Nara."

Both Tenten and Shikamaru turned around to find Neji, standing a few feet away with an expression Tenten failed to read. What was he doing here?

"Hyuuga," Shikamaru greeted back with very poor enthusiasm that would have disappointed Lee. Tenten's jaw almost dropped at what she heard. They still addressed each other by family's name even after five years being on the same team? They must've had a serious problem in themselves. "Are you going home?"

Neji didn't answer his friend's question. "Hokage-sama is looking for you," he said. "Important."

From the corner of her eyes, Tenten could see the younger man almost groan before he asked. "Now?"

"Now."

Shikamaru mumbled something about troublesomeness along the lines and ran a hand over his face. "Very well." Glancing between her and Neji with a secretive smile, he waved at her briefly. "It was nice to talk to you. See you later."

Tenten could only blink when he was finally out of sight.

It took her only a second to silently curse at Shikamaru for leaving her alone with Neji. Thankfully, though, she managed to not look startled as Neji broke the silence.

"What were you two talking about?"

"Excuse me?" Tenten asked back, trying to hide her surprise.

Pale eyes looked at her piercingly as he repeated—and Tenten knew very well that Neji hated repeating himself. "What were you two talking about?"

"What…" she trailed off, irritation slowly building up. They hadn't talked in ages—in ages, because their conversation after the damned dinner with Lee that time didn't count—and he asked what she and Shikamaru had talked about? "That's none of your business!"

"He is my friend," he said, voice still calm as ever compared to her own.

"Your friend?" Tenten snapped. "In case you didn't know, Neji-san, he is my friend as well. He still thinks of me as his friend even though I clearly am not on his ANBU team!"

"I didn't even bring up ANBU in this conversation," Neji raised his tone, anger slowly flashed across his features. "Will you please stop relating ANBU to everything?"

"What do you expect? ANBU has separated us and I hate them!"

His face turned expressionless by this. Tenten thinned her lips.

"Is that what you think?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Are you denying it? ANBU took you away from…" Tenten paused for a while and swallowed hard. From me. "Team Gai. They took you away from Team Gai."

"It's just because you let that happen."

"Of course I let that happen, I needed to give up on you!" Dark eyes stared at him furiously. "There was nothing else to do. Once you join ANBU, you'll change permanently. But do you really think I would be that selfish to try to change your mind so you could stay with me and Lee instead?"

There was a long silence before his quiet reply came. "I could've joined ANBU without really leaving you. But you let me go." A strange feeling engulfed her when he said this. "You shouldn't have let me go."

"You should have come back," she whispered back. "But you've never even tried to contact me after you left that day. Of course, since there are far better girls out there."

His eyes narrowed only slightly, but she saw it. "What are you talking about?"

"I don't know what you've been doing all these years," she continued. "I don't even know how many women you've been with all this time."

Lee had never told her anything about Neji's love life after he'd left, and she had never tried to find out either.

"Why do you—"

"ANBU or not, you are still human, Neji," she cut him off. "You wander from place to place, meet new people every time, and who knows what you do when you don't have to hunt down enemies or be involved in a massacre?"

"I don't understand why you feel the need to talk about this," he said harshly.

Tenten herself had gone out with at least two shinobi after Neji had left. Still, she had never wanted to try a deeper relationship with any of them. First, she didn't think there was a man who would be okay with her decision to focus on her career rather than spending time with him. Between training, doing missions, and running her weapon business, she honestly didn't have much time.

Second, being with them just didn't feel right to her. When they went out to dinner, when they laughed and smiled at each other, when they kissed… There was always a voice in her head, whispering that this wasn't what she wanted, that the person wasn't who she wanted.

Whether Neji knew about her brief relationships with them or not, Tenten wasn't completely sure.

Unless if he couldn't forget their kiss long ago and decided to ask Lee about her. That could only happen if their kiss meant something to him…. perhaps, just perhaps, like it did to her.

"Why did you kiss me that time, Neji?"

His pearlescent eyes widened. His expression told her he wanted to say something, and Tenten waited, in hope he would give her any explanation—anything, as long as he said something. She wouldn't mind if he in fact had dated a lot of women prettier than her, as long as he said something, something about their kiss.

He said nothing.

Tenten tried hard to swallow her obvious disappointment. "See? You can't even say anything about that. I can imagine you're doing the same to other girls you've met all this time."

He still stood there, unmoving, until she concluded that he didn't even try to deny her words. His refusal to say anything only proved that he had really done that: being with any girl he met during the time he was away from the village, only to leave and forget her when he had to run to another place.

She probably was just one of them. She should've known better.

"I will forget it, too," she said. "Let's pretend that we've never done anything, alright? Goodbye."

Tenten decided to leave first again.

Some time had passed since that night.

It was already dark when Tenten almost reached the Konoha gates, having just come back from a one-day mission. After yawning a few times, she tried to quicken her pace, struggling to keep her eyes open while promising herself to go to her warm bed as soon as she reached home.

It wasn't long until she had to become alert all of a sudden, sensing a presence not far behind her. Her hand had reached into her pocket to flick out a kunai when someone shouted from behind.

"Help!"

Tenten squinted as a figure appeared from darkness. Her grip on the kunai tightened in case there was an attack coming.

The sight of the mysterious person became clear as he came nearer. Tenten was relieved to see that he was a Konoha ANBU. She could faintly see that blood stained his uniform, but her attention shifted to the form he was holding. Her eyes widened when she noted that the unconscious man was also an ANBU.

"Help me," the man with fox mask said as he lowered his friend's body to the ground. "Please find medical nin for him. I don't have time."

"But—"

"And report this to Hokage-sama," he added hastily. "Quick. He's losing too much blood."

Tenten had only nodded when the ANBU vanished in a puff of smoke.

Panicked, Tenten crouched down to check the man's condition, wondering how on earth she was going to bring the man whose body was almost twice as hers to hospital. To her surprise, he wasn't unconscious; his trembling hand rose to touch her arm.

"I'll help you," she said reassuringly, noticing that the man had his chest wounded badly and his uniform soaked in red. "Don't wo—"

Her hand froze when she caught the sight of his hair.

It was almost familiar—and everything else about him suddenly became familiar. She knew too well that no one possessed that long, silky dark hair but him. Tenten's heart thumped loudly in her chest as she took his bird mask off. Please, anyone but him, anyone but—

—Neji.

It was Neji.

(A/N): Let me hear something!