"Dating should be less about matching outward circumstances than meeting your inner necessity."
― Mark Amend
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The first thing they do is go to the showing of Princess Gale, which surprises Ren—the movie has only just premiered, and the showings are very limited, so getting the tickets would've taken way more time and effort than the day that he'd had to plan. On top of that, their seats are really damn good. He must've gotten the tickets weeks, if not a month, in advance.
"I was going to invite my ex," he explains with a shrug. "She had the audacity to ask me to give her the tickets when we broke up, so I held onto them, if only to be petty. You're a lucky coincidence but at least they won't go to waste."
"Thanks," Ren chuckles. "I don't mind. I'm actually quite interested in the movie."
"But not enough to bother to get tickets shortly after premiere?"
"Yep."
The movie is—fine, actually. A lot like a Chinese wuxia she sometimes read, but in actual, digestible, concise form, instead of ten thousand chapters, with a female lead, and no romance. The plot is very basic and predictable, but the characters are decently written and acted. If Ren were to judge it through the prism of Chinese storytelling, which it resembles the most, the movie is actually very good. If she were to judge it by the standards of the rest of the world—it isn't that bad, she supposed. Okay-ish. Not worth its price, that's for sure, but she doesn't want to claw her eyes out and tug at her hair, unlike the many Chinese novels and TV shows she used to inhale out of boredom.
It's almost ten by the time they're done, and Ren has to remind herself that it's okay for pioneer movies to be this long, because people usually have no idea what they're doing when they begin something that wasn't really ever done before.
But the movie is over, and it's time to eat a late dinner. And there is one place Ren has been aware of for years now, but never had a chance to try.
"Hasegawa's Hibachi?" Hibiki questions, and Ren nods.
"I've been craving teppanyaki for a while, and it's a steakhouse, too. I want meat."
"I've heard about it. It's very expensive and high-end," Hibiki says with a sour look, and Ren chuckles, putting her arm around his shoulders.
"That's why I'll be paying."
"But I'm the one who asked you out!"
Ren rolls her eyes. He obviously wants to go, judging by the way he is fidgeting, so she brings out the big guns.
"They serve wagyu. Have you ever had it? I haven't, and I want to try. Besides, it's not like I'm low on money."
She can see Hibiki's thought process plain on his face. Hesitation, consideration, a bit of anger, and then acceptance. He hangs his head down.
"Okay," he says, giving up, but presses himself closer to Ren's side instead.
While the movie had been subpar at best—it's okay, they're still learning how to make them, they can fuck up a bit—the food is out of this world. All of it is so damn good, from the stir-fry to seafood. Even the rice proved quite palatable to Ren. Even Ren, however, despite having eaten many, many things in her life, has to admit that, when she took that first bite of A5 Kobe beef steak, she cried a little.
Well, at least now she knows what paradise tastes like.
Hibiki cried, too. He even forgets to pretend to be irritated at her for dragging him to the restaurant.
Ren had no idea that Konoha had honest-to-Jashin, actual Love Hotels, but she was a bit too busy throwing a giggling Hibiki onto the bed to question it too much.
Predictably, neither of them get much sleep that night.
"You smell," Kurama informs her when he waltzes into the kitchen at maybe seven, pawing the sleep out of his red eyes. Ren has a change of clothes on, the ones she had brought with her as a spare—she had put them on after a shower, but Hibiki had been quite insistent on sending her off properly, and so, her shirt is still a bit rumpled here and there. But she knows exactly what he means, even after a long shower.
"So?" she asks, unbothered by the centuries-old chakra construct sitting on her counter like a goddamn pet. Awai is sitting on top of the fridge, glaring at him as much as a spider can glare. Ren is keeping a much closer eye on Danzō now, with her spiders, and with Awai and Ōjo being her main information brokers between the colonies, she will be seeing them less for now. At least until this mess is resolved.
She's considering just calling them all back now since Shibi-sensei said they'd take care of it, but—well, some Aburame should be able to communicate with them, no?
"Just pointing it out," Kurama shrugs, and eyes Minerva warily as the cat pounces under the table followed by the other two cats, as Ren sets down their food. "You smell like—"
"Like I just spent past five hours doing nothing but having sex?" she asks the construct, looking him in the eye. Kurama blinks and cocks his head to the side. Ren just snorts, and points her ladle at him. "Look, if you're looking to embarrass me, try finding some nonexistent baby photos, because I'm not gonna blush or splutter at the mention of doing one of the most basic things humans do. Okay?"
"You're weird," the fox huffs. "You took the brat in when everybody else shunned him, you told him to seek me out like you knew he would be able to, you didn't even bat an eye at me when you first saw me. Just what are you up to, Uchiha?"
Ah. Kurama and his legendary hatred towards all things Uchiha. Thanks, Madara. Ren will remember to punch him in the face for this.
"What do you mean what's my deal?" Ren asks, but moves about making breakfast anyway.
"Why are you doing all this?"
"Because I died once already and I know the future," she shrugs. "And I don't like that future, so I'm gonna do whatever the fuck I want instead, and tackle the consequences as they come. YOLO and all that, you know? Except I'm living twice, so does it even hold?"
The fox just looks at her for a moment, incredulous.
"Did you—" he tries. "Did you just, in a very flippant manner, tell me that you're reincarnated or something?"
"Pretty much," Ren shrugs. "Why?"
"Exactly, why!"
"You're a thousand-year-old, fox-shaped ball of power and rage," Ren says. "We're both weird, so let's just be weird together. Also I haven't slept in more than 30 hours so my brain-to-mouth filter is a bit wonky."
In truth, she has no clue why she'd told him. It just came out, on its own. There's something about early mornings, before Ren's had her first coffee, especially if she hadn't sleep the night before, that just tones down what remains of her brain-to-mouth filter and makes her more honest than she'd usually like to be. Or, more willing to share information. Would she have ever thought the second person she'd tell about her situation would be Kurama the fucking Kyuubi no Kitsune? No. But here she is, and she doesn't regret it.
"And what do you know of the future?" he scoffs.
"Well, for example that you currently only have half your chakra, that you're sealed only because my good ole' grandpa Madara is a fucking moron and deserves to die, and that your grandmother is sealed in the moon and one of her creations is attempting to unseal it by manipulating shit from the shadows."
Kurama stiffens.
"My what?"
"Kaguya? Sage's mother? That crazy bitch who ate the chakra fruit and, well, went crazy? Ring a bell?"
Kurama looks at her with unbridled horror, and then pounces at her chest, pawing at her shoulders.
"When?!" he hisses. "How do we—You—I—"
"Relax," Ren huffs, patting his triangle head. "We still have a good decade. Besides, it's Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura who eventually beat her back into submission, and that's in the future where I died in the massacre and didn't actively push them to get stronger and more creative. It'll be fine."
He glares at her.
"You cannot just drop a bombshell like that and not elaborate!" he snarls. "I need—we need—my siblings! Ugh!"
He deflates, and moves to stand back on the counter, tail swishing furiously from side to side.
"The Akatsuki are the threat," Ren tells him. "I will bring them to the village's attention, when—when someone other than Hiruzen is in power. When they're actually big enough to be considered a threat. Okay?"
"You really don't trust the old ape, do you?" Kurama snarks.
"No, I don't," Ren sighs. "It's not like he's given me much reason to, either way. Some god he is," she scoffs. Kurama barks out a short, mean-spirited laugh. Ren throws him a piece of bacon.
"But you'll do something?" he asks, almost hopefully, once he's done scarfing down the meat. Ren nods.
It's cute, she decides, that he worries about his siblings, even if he won't actually say it out loud. A thousand years and counting, and the fox is still a stupid tsundere unable to honestly admit his feelings. Ren has never had any siblings, so she can't relate to that 'I'd die for you but if you breathe in my direction it's your corpse I'll be hiding' mindset, but it's fine. She doesn't have to. She understands familial love well enough.
At least nowadays, when she actually has people to love.
She pats Kurama on the head again, and he huffs at her in annoyance, but she sees the tail wag well enough. With that, she returns to the breakfast. She's hungry, and the kids will wake up soon.
"You still smell," Kurama complains anyway, like the little shit he is.
"Maybe you should get laid yourself, huh?"
Ren is pretty damn sure she's the first person in a very long time to make the old fox demon splutter.
Hana had decided to take a little random day off, Ren learns at around eight when she drops the brats off at school and is promptly hauled off by her best friend to do some long-overdue, mandatory bonding. But first, they both drink a lot of coffee strong enough to drive a lesser person into cardiac arrest.
But Hana is a sleep-deprived med-nin, and Ren's coffee habits had carried over from her past life and she's been slowly but surely rebuilding her resistance. They only vibrate a little.
"Mom wants to talk to you, later today," Hana tells her a little later. "Something about the pet project you've been working on with Shibi-sensei? Knowing you, it's probably dangerous."
"Well, yeah. If we fuck it up, I'll die," Ren says in the same tone she uses to talk about weather. Hana looks at her weird, like she had expected something like that but she's still disappointed.
"Should I even ask?"
"Maybe when we meet up with your mom. I'm not sure, you know, it's between clan heads—oh don't look at me like that, did you seriously forget I'm one too?"
Hana's silence says enough. Somehow it manages to sound like 'it's not like you act like one'.
"Fair enough. But then, you are the clan heir so maybe you're allowed to know? Huh. We're going to have to ask your mom, but trust me, it's an absolute clusterfuck."
"When isn't it with you?" Hana rolls her eyes. "But wait, aren't you leaving in like three days or something?"
"Yes. Are you proud of me? I'm removing myself from the greatest danger!"
"Yes, I'm so proud of you. What will you be doing?"
"Learning sage mode. And if I fuck up I'll either turn into stone, or lose my mind. Fun, isn't it?"
Hana cuffs her in the back of the head.
"HOW IS THAT LESS DANGEROUS YOU MORON?!"
Ren just cackles and runs off, a furious Inuzuka hot on her heels.
