lost

really, there was no other way to put it—she was just simply, completely, utterly lost. in the middle of the biggest theme park in their country.

wherein ino finds herself saved from the hands of the most subtle prince not so charming of them all.

She was lost.

Really, there was no other way to put it—she was just simply, completely, utterly lost.

In the middle of the biggest theme park in their country.

Seriously, Ino, how much more stupid can you get?

Let us backtrack. Yamanaka Ino, a college student, was visiting her cousin, Haruno Sakura, who was studying medicine in the big city. As part of her visit itinerary, she and a bunch of Sakura's city friends went to the theme park (Ino had a feeling that the brooding guy who always hovered at her cousin's back was her boyfriend, but she didn't say anything. Yet.).

They were standing around the arcades when she was overtaken by a bout of hunger, and had traipsed over to a booth selling Mexican food. She was happily carrying the box of tacos and burritos about when she found out that all of them were gone.

Gone.

Gone.

GONE.

The worst of it was that Ino didn't have her phone with her. She didn't bring a bag, and during the rapids ride she had given it to Sakura for safekeeping against the blasted waters (that had soaked half of her wet—she looked like she peed on her shorts, and thank Kami for black shirts), for she was the only one who brought a handbag. And she still hadn't taken it back from her cousin.

So how was she going to convert her status from lost to un-lost now? Her phone was not here, she didn't have a map (it was too not cool and tourist like), she didn't know where the pager system was, didn't know where in this vast friggin' park she was.

Oh, well.

So, a half-wet Ino plopped down into the nearest bench, opened her box, and began to feel truly, utterly Mehicana with her burrito.

She was in seventh heaven. Or well, somewhere in the highest heaven, that is.

Until she heard a snort. It was the quietest snort, and if it weren't for the fact that she was sitting in a removed part of the park and she was perfectly silent while wolfing down tacos and burrito, she wouldn't have heard it.

Mid-bite, she turned to glare at the offending sound and found a…guy. Hmm. There was no other way to put it. He is a guy.

The Guy was sitting cross-legged on the other side of the bench she was sitting at, leaning back and balancing a laptop on his lap. And that was not the weirdest thing: he had long hair tied at the very top of his head—I thought girls only tied their hair that way?

She saw him raise an eyebrow and thought—maybe she had thought it out loud?

Another snort, "Yes you did, and my hair is none of your business."

Ino was speechless.

"It's unsightly to see sauce drip down your chin."

She closed her mouth and set out to do what she was supposed to do: glare at him. He snorted again and went back to typing on his laptop, as if he hadn't just insulted her.

Oh, this was rich.

From where she came from, Ino was one of the most beautiful girls, and she was not being conceited, but as far as she could see, she was prettier than most of the girls here. Hell, while she was staying with Sakura, her cousin's male neighbors kept on asking who the pretty blonde was. Nobody dared to insult her.

Slowly, she set down her box on the space between them on the bench, dusted any wayward bits of food from her lap, and stood up to face him, her arms akimbo. The insulting ass didn't even bother to look up at her, even if their knees were mere inches away from touching.

And that was when she launched into the famous Ino tirade.

"You dumbass! Where do you get off insulting other people like that? How dare you talk like that? Doesn't common courtesy at least permit you to ignore me even if I am eating like that? So what if I am eating like that? So what if my cousin Sakura calls me Pig? I am hungry! Doesn't that at least give me license to eat as I want! This is a free country! Don't go insulting me and adding to my problems! I am hungry and I am lost,"—that was when his head shot up and his forehead crinkled at her curiously for a moment and faced his laptop again—"Yes I am lost! What is it to you if I am a healthy adult female from the country with no phone, no map and no sense of direction? I am hungry!" Ino finished, and took a deep breath, and was surprised to see tears forming on the outer edges of her eyes. She couldn't help the sniffle that had threatened to escape.

That was when he shut down his laptop and inserted it in the sling bag he was carrying. He stood up and placed his hands in his pockets. She distinctly heard him mutter to himself, "Women are troublesome. What I would give for a cigarette right now."

Ino could feel her anger flaring again, despite the fact that the sniffles were multiplying and coming faster than ever. She opened her mouth again, and he shot her a quelling look, which was…commanding, to say the least. She shut up.

"Come on, let's go to the games, I'm good at that," He started to walk, and what else could Ino do but follow him to the place where he said the games where?

Where he won game after game after game. And where her hands were filled with stuffed toy after stuffed toy after stuffed toy. The exasperated booth operators were a hair's breadth of screaming at him, but he had just silenced them with an amused look, and motioned to her, saying, "She's lost." They then looked at her curiously, and then nodded understandingly at the Guy. And there was one fat guy who had grinned knowingly at the Guy, raising an eyebrow at the both of them while munching on chips that he dug around from what Ino swore was the biggest bag ever.

She had wanted to kill the both of them after that.

"I am not your grocery basket whose arms you are free to fill with you stuffed toys! You are such a girl, what do you need these toys for?" She snapped at him.

"Why, they're for you. You need to stop crying, you're becoming a disgrace to feminism." He told her, and executed the perfect ring toss, winning her another gigantic stuffed toy.

Needless to say, she was surprised. And she realized that she was enjoying, despite herself and the chauvinist comment. In fact, the almost-tears were now gone.

She chuckled at him, "So you were trying to cheer me up, in your own awkward way?"

He grunted at her.

She smiled at him.

He deposited the gigantic stuffed barney in her arms, and she grunted at him, her voice muffled by the ugly toy's back, "He's horrendous. And gay. Who'd believe there's a purple dinosaur?"

"Gullible kids, apparently," was his droll reply.

She snorted back at him. "True."

"Come on, let's go."

"Urrrr. I can't carry any more additional stuffed toys." Ino's voice was still muffled, "and I can't see anything in front of me."

"Here, let me carry some," he took all of her stuffed toys, except for the gigantic barney.

"Really, of all the things you left me with, the gigantic barney?"

"You seem to really like it."

"Oh how I love it, I can't help myself from sinking my teeth into his atrocious purple fur."

Her tinkling giggle was accompanied by a low chuckle.

Frankly, Ino couldn't believe herself. Thirty minutes ago she was screaming her tonsils at him, and now, were they…flirting with each other?

She smiled at him, and he cocked another amused eyebrow at him. It was a comfortable silence. She was about to degrade barney again when she heard a voice call, "PIIIIG! YAMANAKA INO! WHERE ARE YOU?" Her head whipped around to the source and found her cousin's distinctive hair (and shadow).

"FOREHEAD!" She screamed excitedly, gripping barney.

She felt a tap on her shoulder, and found the Guy smiling slightly at her, "There's your cousin. I'm leaving you to her now. 'Bye, Barney girl." He walked away.

"B-B-But,"—I don't know your name yet, Ino thought in dismay, as she was swept into her cousin's hug. All she could see was his back, and his right arm raising a stuffed tadpole in goodbye.

"Who was he?" Sakura asked, her arms still around Ino.

"I have no idea."

"Did he win you Barney?" Sakura asked, gesturing to the stuffed toy still in Ino's arms.

"Yes," the blonde girl was still looking at the place where the Guy was last seen.

"Weird," Sakura said, "the paging system told us that if we had lost"—Sakura held up her fingers to make quotation marks on the word lost—"an adult blonde girl whose name was Pig, we just go to the games and look for one holding a gigantic barney. Right Sasuke-kun?"

Sakura's presumptive boyfriend grunted his assent.

"Huh." Ino said, and agreed, bypassing the insult. "Weird. Perhaps—?"

"He was the one who reported you as lost and set it up so that you could easily be found without having the embarrassment of being herded into the lost and found like some little kid?" Sakura finished for her.

Ino was dumbfounded.

"That's really nice of him you know."

"But how—But why—" Ino took a deep breath, "He was with me all the time, how could he have reported that when he was with me all the time? And how could he help me after all of the things I said to him—?"

Sakura gave her a look. "Did you unleash the Ino Tirade on him?"

Ino cringed.

"Anyway, let's go. And this time, I'm not taking my eyes off you. No more going off on your own. Okay?"

Ino nodded sheepishly and followed her cousin.

But not before sending another glance to the spot where she last saw him. She could see the Chips guy look at her curiously, and she bowed slightly to him before she ran to catch up with her cousin.

Ring! Ring!

"Hello?" Ino was back home, back to school, back to the country life after the weekend with Sakura at the city.

"Pig!"

"Forehead. Why'd you call? We saw each other three days ago." Ino spun her pencil on the table, watching it as it made a circle and fell.

"I miss you. Won't you come back?"

She laughed and picked up her pencil, and then propped both of her legs on the table. "Forehead. If it weren't so difficult to travel those six hours every week, I'd be spending the weekends with you. And you miss me that much?"

"Yes, and Sasuke-kun is such a constipated ass. But that's not the reason why I'm calling."

"Realllllly." Ino started rocking her chair, using her legs and the table to propel herself.

"Nope. And I can hear you leering over there. I know that you know that he is my boyfriend even if the whole world doesn't know. Yet."

Ino leered again.

"Anyway," Sakura continued in a louder voice, "Guess who called."

Ino rolled her eyes, "How would I know if I'm not there, Forehead?"

"Pig. He said he was from the amusement park and was looking for someone named Pig. You, I suppose?"

Ino's heart skipped a beat, and with a horrendously violent swing, her chair toppled over and she landed on her head. "Owwww."

"Pig? Pig? Are you okay?"

"Of course not, Forehead. Owww. It hurts. I fell from my chair."

Sakura snorted, "Way to go, you. Anyway, I just called to say he called and that he wants you, Pig, he wants youuuu. And he's probably on his way to your house right now. Tata, Pig!"

"Wait, what—how could you give my address to—who?" Ino spluttered into the phone.

But Sakura was no longer listening. Ino could hear her speak to someone, on another phone, perhaps? "It's okay now, Nara-san, you can ring the doorbell."

Nara-san who?—

Ding dong!

Shit that was the door.

Clutching her head, Ino went to the door and opened it.

To see a mountain of stuffed toys—crocodiles, bears, tadpoles—all held in place by two arms.

"Thought you might want them back." A muffled voice said, and Ino would recognize the lazy drawl anywhere. Rigidly, she stepped aside, and the mountain of fluff stepped forward and dumped itself on the foyer, to reveal the Guy. The Guy whom she hadn't seen for over a week already, but hasn't been able to forget ever since. Her savior, no matter how insulting and awkward and lazy and funny and considerate and handsome he was.

He matched her dumbfounded look with a sheepish one and commented, "Nice flat you got here. So I'm going to be working as an engineer for the proposed amusement park in the next city, about a ten-minute ride away, and just happened to be here, I guess."

Ino nodded slowly, blinking at him, who was looking at everywhere except her, and—did she detect that slightest hit of pink on the tips of his ears?

A grin of her own lazily spread out on her face. "Welcome. I'm Yamanaka Ino. It's nice to finally meet you."

He clutched the hand she extended and shook it, "I'm Nara Shikmaru. It's nice to finally hear your name from you. Took me a week."

They smiled at each other.

"So you called my cousin to know where I lived?"

"About that, I thought you lived at that big city somewhere."

"And once you found out where I really lived, asked for a job transfer so that you can see me?"

"…it was just a coincidence, really."

"I don't believe you."

"…"

"Stalker."

"…hey! Not really!"

"…"

"…"

"…stalker."

Sigh. "…or yeah, whatever."

"So, Pig? Have you seen him yet? Is he your boyfriend yet? Are you pregnant yet? I will be godmother, of course. But I'll be the maid of honor for the wedding first! And—"

Three voices chorus, "Shut up, Sakura."

Pout. "But Sasuke-kun, why are you joining them, too?"

Sigh.

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an: it's so obvious that i still couldn't veer off my flagship that is sasusaku. someone save me!