Red Is A Pretty Colour

131

Hiko's pov

It took a while for Toka to get well enough to leave the hospital and when she did finally get out she was acting off. She wasn't quite as loud or attention seeking as she usually was, it wasn't necessarily a bad thing but I was definitely going to keep an eye on her.

Kurenai and I had been training the two boys nonstop and I decided it was time for a bit of a break. I had Naruto and Hinata's wedding to think of after all. I felt bad for the others, their gifts were being judged to decide if they could go or not, I just had to come up with something as sister of the groom.

"Hiko~Sensei, how come there's no training today?" Toka asked.

"My brother is getting married soon and I still haven't gotten stuff together for his gift. I need to get it sorted soon or I won't have any time to make it." I explained.

"Make it?" Toka asked.

"I'm putting together a photo album, one side will be photos from my brother's childhood and the other will be pictures from his future wife's childhood. I'm leaving the middle empty for photos of the family they start together. The thing is, I need to round up the photos from people that knew them growing up." I explained.

"We can help." Akira offered.

"Yeah, give us a list and we can go around collecting them." Toka agreed.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"Yeah." Itona replied. "We don't mind helping."

"Alright then I'll make you a list." I said.

I wrote out a list of people I thought would be easy for them to find and get stuff from. The list was people like Kakashi~Sensei, Kurenai, Shikamaru, Sakura and Ino, people who were always going to be in specific places.

"Find these people and just ask if they have any photos of Naruto or Hinata growing up that they're willing to give me." I said.

"Got it." Akira said.

"We won't let you down sensei." Toka said.

"Let's go to Kurenai~Sensei first." Akira said excitedly as he began leading the way.

Time skip

While team 7 was off dealing with my list I went to deal with some of the harder to find photos. I wanted to put pictures of Jiraiya and our parents in Naruto's side as they were people important to him. The only person I could think of that might have pictures of Jiraiya was lady Tsunade and so I ended up at a bar trying to find her.

"Hiko? What are you doing here? Don't tell me you've turned to drinking! Don't go down Lady Tsunade's path!" Shizune said, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me, making me laugh.

"I'm not here to drink shizune, don't worry. I'm here to find lady Tsunade." I said.

"Oh! She's that predictable huh?" Shizune said, pulling away from me and slouching in defeat.

"Yeah." I replied.

"What do you want?" Lady Tsunade asked.

"I was wondering if you had any pictures of Jiraiya I could have." I replied.

"Jiraiya? Why?" Lady Tsunade asked.

"I'm making a photo album as a wedding gift for Naruto and Hinata. Jiraiya was very important Naruto so I wanted to include him in it." I explained.

"I have all of Jiraiya's old things in a box somewhere in my house. I don't know if there are any pictures in there but you're free to look." Lady Tsunade said as she tossed me her keys. "Just bring them back when you're done."

"Lady Tsunade! You shouldn't just give someone your keys!" Shizune scolded.

"What's Hiko going to do? Nothing. I know she'll bring the keys back." Lady Tsunade said.

"She's right, I'll bring them back. I'm only looking for photos." I said.

Time skip

It took me a while to find Jiraiya's things in all of Lady Tsunade's stuff. There were 5 boxes with his name scribbled on them. It was kind of sad, his entire life was boiled down to 5 small boxes.

Looking through the boxes I found a small handful of photographs tied together with a hair tie. The only one I could see with the band on was a photograph of Naruto and Jiraiya together when Naruto was 12. I already knew I'd be taking that one, they looked so happy.

I pulled the band off and began sifting through the photos. Most of them were of naked women or women in bikinis, it wasn't surprising, it was Jiraiya after all. Other photos were just of Naruto on his own, training, eating an ice lolly or at a ramen place. There was a nice picture of the two of them at Jiraiya's book launch, it was for the last book he ever wrote. I put it aside to take with me and then smiled as I spotted the last photo.

The photograph was of my mum and dad. Mum was very clearly pregnant in the photo, stood behind dad with a hand on his shoulder. I had never seen a photo of my parents before, I was under the impression that there weren't any. I'd have to get the picture copied so that I could have one too, it'd mean a lot to both of us to have this photo.