11 Ways

Seven: Singled out

The first time Kakashi
noticed that Sakura didn’t flirt with any of his peers he was shocked.

It was something that he’d
never truly paid attention to before, but now that he did he was baffled by the
conclusion.

She didn’t flirt with Asuma
or Gai, which wasn’t surprising at all really (considering the former was
unofficially spoken for and the other was, well, Gai), but neither did she
flirt with Kotetsu or Izumo and the two of them were hardly ancient. Actually,
it seemed she didn’t joke around with anyone who was more than a year or two
older than her – except for him.

Of course Genma was the
exception as always. It wasn’t that Sakura actually flirted with the man, it
was just that he could somehow find a way to take literally anything
said to him as innuendo. A woman could be reciting her grocery list and he
could concoct anything from assuming an invite to eat lunch to more …
imaginative ways to use the purchased items.

More than once he’d had to
shake his head as he watched Sakura sucker-punch the man into a far corner
after he’d not taken her hint, then turned to watch amusedly as she’d made her
way over to him.

Only recently had this
started to disturb him. She would sit down next to him and talk like she hadn’t
just turned a high-ranking jounin into a blob of groaning agony slumped against
the wall, pretending that the world was fine and dandy if he had to judge by
the smile on her face.

It was the smile this last
time that finally caught him up to speed. He desperately searched his memory
for any reason she’d be reacting like this to him. Was there a new bet going
on? Was she up for a promotion and needed a recommendation? Had she just burned
his entire collection of Icha Icha? Did she kill Pakkun? …What did she want?

Only he was coming to
discover, as she sat there contently twirling the ice in her drink with one
finger, she wasn’t covering for anything. There was no edginess about her, no
furtive glances or nervous gestures.

It seemed she was sitting
and talking with him just to sit and talk with him.

He was at a loss for what
this meant. For him to be so singled out amongst all the other males of his age…

Thinking back on it, he
couldn’t actually be sure that this was the first time he was given such preferential
treatment. Had she ever flirted with Asuma and the others or had he just taken
it for granted that she did? Of course he’d seen them speak, they were all
jounin level shinobi of course and comrades of a sort. But that didn’t mean…

He turned to look at her with
a suspicious glance but she was nonplussed and kept right on chattering away.

What did this mean?