The Other Side of Impossibility 1: Hatake Kakashi

He has a friend.

It's…. somehow a nice feeling. A friend, that is.

He doesn't really go out that much, he spends a lot of time in his house or his backyard. Training, playing with his dogs, reading, the usual things. He doesn't need to go out often, really. Being in the compound is fine, it's nice, it's safe, it's familiar.

He used to hate going out to parks. Since what is he supposed to do at parks? The children there plays sand and he's not exactly that interested to be shoved into the sand. Still, his dad made him go there.

He guesses he doesn't really hate parks now, since he meets his friend there.

Rin is…. Annoying. She's a loudmouth, and Kakashi wonders if she even has a filter for that mouth of hers, not that he has any, he's a very blunt person when he wants to talk. She talks whatever is in her mind, and while she can keep her silence when it matters, there are times when she speaks simply just to fill the stretching silence between them.

They often times shoot words at each other and… it's kind of fun. He is smart, he knows that. Rin is smart, as well, since she follows what he says and nods along with whatever information he may tells. She even knows some stuffs that he doesn't, she uses big words to explain things and at the rare rare times when Kakashi can't comprehend, she explains everything clearly.

In the Academy, people don't seem to like him simply because he scores higher than them and isn't that just idiotic? They're simply not trying as hard as he is, clearly, or they're just plain stupid and untalented, that's all. He doesn't see Rin complaining whenever she loses against Kakashi. She just… laughs it off. And she tries again, fixing her mistakes. It's kind of admirable.

Then again, Rin is hated, too. Not as much, but the girls don't seem to like that she is in the highest rank between the girls. But she never reacts to their apparent hatred and treats them fairly, not bothering them unless she needs to, shrugging off their mean comments or ignoring them altogether…

…Actually…

He thinks she's actually too lazy to handle them, so she ignores them instead. That is so very likely.

What? So he doesn't always have the best opinion about his friend, so what. She thinks he's a brat, it's fair for him to think of her as slightly lazy and idiotic. She does tend to have stupid hopes and high opinions for other people. Like that dead last for example.

They spar a lot, too, and while she starts out messy and weak, she's climbing up the ladder every single time they spar and he knows she learns much from their spars. She's a quick learner.

Somehow, he thinks he's trying to catch up to her while she is trying to catch up to him and isn't that just confusing? But everything is kind of confusing when it concerns her. She's strange.

She has strange stories, literally a whole new world created in her notebook with so many histories and cultures, she makes strange foods, she makes a whole new language altogether, and she's the very epitome of a ninja who will probably die smiling.

Come on, she smiles a lot. At everything. Everytime. It's strange. It's creepy. Probably a close one to Gai's strangeness. She even understands and encourages his "youthfulness" or whatever that is.

He tells his dad that, actually.

"Rin is strange. She smiles too much."

His dad blinks, "What kind of smile?"

It's his turn to blink. "What do you mean?"

"There are lots of kinds of smiles, Kakashi. Sometimes it's true, sometimes it's not," His dad ruffles his hair and leaves it at that.

…What?

He doesn't understand.

…Now that he thinks about it, his dad smiles too much either.

They're both strange people, Kakashi concludes.

Though that doesn't make his dad less cooler. No way. Nuh-uh.

He thinks he gets it.

Rin smiles a lot, and there are different kinds of smiles. Dad really knows everything, he thinks, brimming with pride. Of course his dad knows what is going on. They both smile a lot, and he wonders if dad's smiles are different each time, as well.

Rin's smile is carefree and honest, when she smiles at him, at Gai, at Obito. Her eyes are like the window to her heart and it's always so easy to read whatever she's feeling when she smiles at him: she's happy, she's content, she's amused, she's feeling playful. Kakashi thinks it's kind of stupid that she lets her feelings show that easily.

Her smile thins sometimes and it simply screams the word "polite" when she speaks with her elders, with her sensei, with strangers. It gets even duller when she smiles at the classmates who insults her. And it gets cold when she smiles at those who insults her friends.

She doesn't get angry when people insult her—but that doesn't mean that she doesn't feel hurt by it, is it? Kakashi doesn't know—and yet when people insult her friends, she becomes this cold, protective mama bear.

He remembers when she used some kind of powder to burn some kid's bag, who had ripped Obito's notebook while laughing that day, and because it started to burn while she wasn't nearby ("it will lit on fire with enough friction," she explained to him, when he asked about it after school), nobody can pin the blame on her or Obito. He doesn't think Obito even knows that it was her who burned that kid's bag. He knows Yukimura-sensei knows, though. And she does, as well.

"I think sensei knows," she said, back then, a thin, amused smile on her lips. It was a different one again, Kakashi doesn't know what this smile entails. She smiles a lot and it seems different each and every single time when it's not directed at him or her friends.

It doesn't even change when he insults her and he insults her a lot. They're mostly automatic by now, and he doesn't really have any reason to stop. She doesn't complain about it, anyway.

In fact, she laughs at him and says that his words hurt her. And yet she laughs and Kakashi just stares at her. If she's hurt then why is she laughing? That is so creepy.

She's really, really strange.

Omake? Or is it an AU? Will this really happen in the EI fic? I don't know. lmao:

Kakashi used to think that Rin will be the kind of person that dies smiling, thanks to how much she smiles a year.

Then Obito died smiling and it suddenly hurts him to even think about Rin dying while smiling, because that way he won't be able to ever forget that smile and in fact, how about no? How about not dying at all? That's totally fine by him. Rin is not allowed to die until he's, like, fifty or something, or maybe when he's dead, only then she's allowed to follow.

He won't allow her to die, not anytime soon, he says at much.

She smiles at him, then. A sad, broken smile as if she knows something he doesn't, as if she's pitying him for thinking about that. But it's going to come true, he reasons, he's going to protect her, and so she won't have to die before him.

That train of thought remains in his mind until his hand finds itself embedded deep in her flesh.

Her flesh.

Kakashi's mind goes numb.

All he can think is on how she's not smiling, this time around.