Summoner Nin

Page 19: Silly Competition

Part Three: Team Kage

Chapter Two

As steady-handed and deft-fingered as Hinata was, the pair of scissors still shook as she painstakingly drove the shears across her bangs, shaping them into an almost-straight line just above her eyebrows. She wasn't the only one who let out a sigh of relief when she drew the blades from her face, but for a different reason than the small Tiger cub lying at the corner of her room. She had sighed out of a job well done, but Tora had sighed because she hadn't nicked herself, however unintentionally. Needless to say, Hinata tried to ignore the way his predator-limbs stiffened when she brought the scissors up again, this time to trim the stray strands at the back of her head, close to her nape. Finally, done, she placed the tool onto her vanity and stared at her reflection in the mirror, touching the two longer strands at the sides before running her palm over the short back, almost as short as having been shaved.

She looked alright, she thought, and then turned to the summon. "What do you think, Tora?"

The Tiger, with his chin resting on his paws on the floor, opened his eyes as if he hadn't been stealing looks at her for the past hour, and harrumphed. "It's alright."

Hinata beamed, even if she knew he had said it out of guilt. He was still unsettled by her outburst from the day before, restless from the tears he had caused, but Hinata wasn't going to disregard his compliment. It was alright. Her hair was alright. Everything was alright.

But she was still jittery, still nervous, still fantastically shaky that she didn't want to get up from her vanity and wanted, instead, to sit there all day. And it could have been achieved if not for the antique clock at her bedside table sounding the hour, the horrifying hour, the deathly hour.

"You have to get to school," Tora said, sitting up, as if she hadn't known that.

Hinata whined at the back of her throat, her expression in a heartbreaking grimace, and hid her face in her arms on top of her vanity. She didn't want to go to the Ninja Academy. She didn't want to see her classmates. She didn't want to go through another day awkwardly avoiding eye contact with her peers and stutter hopelessly in front of her teacher. She didn't want to.

Tora snipped unhappily, chiding her, "Don't be a sissy! Are you a ninja, or not?"

Hinata cringed and finally lifted her head to see the Tiger's whiskers shudder with suppressed rage. He cared for her, she realized, and had to stop herself from smiling. It would only enrage him further.

"A-Alright," she conceded at last, reluctantly, and then made for her closet for her customary jacket.

She pulled open the closet doors and unwound one of her white jackets from the innards. She paused, briefly, to glance at the floorboards before rearranging her clothes to make the floor less suspicious, a move Tora rolled his eyes at. They had spent hours last night prying open the floors to hide the Summoning Scrolls in, breaking sweat and garnering splinters, but it was better than going outside, in the middle of winter, to dig a hole for them instead. At least with the scrolls in her room, Tora'd be able to watch over them, his included.

A knock sounded at the door and Hinata nervously closed the closet, almost pushing them from their hinges from her strength.

"Hinata-sama," a maid called. "Your guards have arrived."

"H-Hai!" Hinata answered, anxiously picking up her bag and then drinking the last dregs of milk from breakfast on her desk. She turned to Tora with a tentative smile. "B-Bye."