Away.
When Ino was 12, one of her teammates and altogether best friends died. It was on a mission. Chouji had gone with Naruto, Neji, Kiba and Shikamaru.
According to Shikamaru, he had taken out a man named Jirobou, an underling of Orochimaru, who was jonnin level.
The mission failed though.
And since then, Ino's crush on Sasuke had ebbed away.
It was a rainy day that one.
Ino was on the counter of the flower shop, leafing through a magazine her mom had left there. It was then when Sakura, The top medicnin after both Tsunade sama and Shizune sama entered the Shop.
Ino had been bored before Sakura entered the Shop, But as soon as the pink haired kunoichi came in, an Earsplitting grin adorned her face.
"Sakura!"
"hi Ino."
Ino looked at Sakura, her reply had been half hearted, and off handed. Ino frowned. She looked just a tad bit hesitant.
"Hm? Sakura, is something wrong?"
"look Ino..." Started Sakura. She walked over to the flower girl and looked her in the eyes.
"I'm getting tired of this. You see, I'm the hokage's aprentice, top chunnin medi cand I'm going to go after Sasuke kun and bring him back as soon as Naruto returns...So I don't have time to be playing 'rival' with you anymore."
Ino looked surprised and she opened her mouth to say something.
"sure Sakura, I mean it's kinda lame to be rivals and stuff, but we could still be friends-"
"no Ino. you don't get it. It was fun and all when we were twelve, but...I'm a full fledged ninja and you're not...so. Sorry, but that's it."
Ino stared wide eyed as Sakura left the shop.
It is what Ino remembers most of when she was 15.
It was awful to months later, after she had talked with Sakura, that she convinced Shikamaru to become a jonnin and take up a gennin team. He was happy, because as a jonnin surveying kids, he barely had to work.
She went to visit him one day, she wanted to tell him that, after the years, he had become her closest friend, and...she wanted it to be more.
Those illusions died when she got to the hill in wich he normally watched clouds,
there was Shikamaru, with Temari on top and kissing.
Ino ran away without them seeing her, and was awkward with Shikamaru for some more time, until he finally decided to just...keep away.
Ino remembers that at 17,two days after her birthday, when the sound invaded again. Ino wasn't home.
but when she got there, to see the Yamanaka flower shop destroyed, her mom dead, a kunai ebbed in her chest, and, a, couple of meters away, her father, just as dead as Ino's mother, his hands positioned it the nezumi seal, and immediately she knew what had happened. In the Yamanaka clan, there was a technique that had a radius of 5 feet, in which, the mind of everyone inside that radius died,but it cost the user his or her life.
Obviously, in an attempt to protect his wife, Inoshi had used the forbidden technique.
On the day of the funeral, Ino took 3 flowers, one for her mother, one for herfather,the last she told nobody for who it was.
Ino was a chunnin, but she worked part-time in the anbu torture and interrogation head quarters. Ibiki said she had talent, and whenever she wanted to, she could move into the interrogation headquarters fulltime.
She had moved out of her old home, gotten a smaller one person apartment in the east of Konohagakure.
Ino was 19.
And, despite all, she still smiled.