Mend my Mind {Kakashi Hatake}

27 | honeymoon

⚡️

"A honeymoon?" I repeated, looking down at the tickets in my wife's hand.

"Yeah! Just the two of us in the hot spring village for a whole week." Miyoshi's eyes shone. "No missions, no students, no distractions..."

"What about your Genin?" I asked.

"I'll get someone to take care of them for a week. I'm thinking some one-on-one training... Shizuka with Kurenai, of course, Iko with Lee and Guy to work on Taijutsu, and Damaru can practice with Shikamaru," Miyoshi said. "I've already asked them, and they've all said yes. Although Shikamaru said it would be a drag."

"Shikamaru says everything requiring him to wake up in the morning is a drag," I said dismissively. "You really want to do this?"

"You don't want to?" Miyoshi raised an eyebrow.

"I do," I assured her. "I think it's a good idea. I just... don't really know what you do on a honeymoon."

"It's basically a holiday, Kashi. We don't have to do anything special," Miyoshi said.

"Yeah, exactly... I don't really do holidays," I confessed.

Miyoshi gaped at me for a moment. "You spent years just... working? Kakashi..."

"I did have days off." I rubbed the back of my neck. "I just never really... went away. I always thought I'd relax best walking around the village with a book or something."

Miyoshi shook her head despairingly. "In your thirty years of life, you've never had a real holiday?"

"...no?" I said carefully, starting to fear for what she was about to say and/or do.

"Pack your bags, Kashi, we're leaving."

::

One day later, I found myself in a private hot spring with Miyoshi beside me.

"Now this, Kashi, is a holiday." She sighed contentedly, sinking lower into the water. "Did you never just get out for a couple of days and take a break? I get that you were uptight, but this is a little extreme."

"Nope," I replied. "I didn't really see the point. Why go so far away to a coastal hot spring when there's perfectly good bath houses in Konoha?"

Miyoshi sighed again. "You're impossible."

"It wouldn't be worth it if I wasn't, love." I smiled, closing my eyes. "And anyway, I did sometimes go to hot springs if everyone else was going. I remember a couple of occasions where my Genin would take me out to try and see under my mask."

"And did they?"

"Nope. Whenever they're around, I have to be careful. Their last strategy involved banding all the rookie Genin together and trying to pin me down and force it off. It probably would have worked as well, if I hadn't asked Guy's team to help me out."

Miyoshi laughed. "Why don't you ever let anyone see?"

"Because then it wouldn't be as special anymore," I replied.

"What wouldn't be as special?" Miyoshi frowned.

"This." I leaned down and placed my lips on hers in a tender kiss. "Love you."

Miyoshi smiled against my lips. "I love you too."

::

The second day of our honeymoon was spent in the village. There was some sort of autumn festival going on or something, so Miyoshi dragged me out to join the festivities.

"Aww, look at that!" She pointed at a stall where a few teenagers were trying to throw kunai at targets to win a stuffed toy.

"Clearly not trained," I noted. The way they held the kunai showed unfamiliarity, and their throwing technique was all wrong.

"Why don't you try, then?" Miyoshi teased, nudging me towards the stall. I sighed, but took the three kunai offered to me while Miyoshi payed the stall owner. They weren't very good quality weapons, almost toys, but after a few moments of weighing them out in my hands, I threw them - all three at once - and they hit dead centre. The teens beside us stared at me as the stall owner handed over a stuffed badger the size of my arm with multicoloured fur.

"You're carrying that thing around," I said to my wife.

"Lazy-ass," she teased, taking the stuffed animal. "I think it's cute."

"You would," I mumbled under my breath. I don't know if Miyoshi heard, but if she did, she didn't say anything.

Miyoshi suddenly squealed. "Kashi! Look! There's a firework show tonight! We should go!"

"We don't have kimonos-" I began, but predictably, I was cut off before I could complain properly.

"We can buy some! My bank account was reactivated, remember? We can be rich now."

"I wouldn't say rich exactly," I said, but she wasn't listening again.

"I can see you in blue. Actually no, green. Ooh, black! Or... hm..." Miyoshi frowned. "Nope, I suck at this. I can see you in just about every nice colour known to man."

"You know what, why don't we go get kimonos now?" I suggested. "We can try them on in a store or something." And get professional advice rather than have Miyoshi argue with herself all day.

"Okay." Miyoshi took my hand with the arm that wasn't holding the badger toy. "You didn't happen to see one while we were walking around, did you? I totally wasn't paying attention."

Of course not. "There's one just down here," I said, leading her back down the street to a row of clothing shops. One had kimonos in the window, and seemed to specialise in formal wear like that.

A bell tinkled somewhere as I pushed the door open. I was right; there were rows and rows of kimonos and accessories in every colour and pattern imaginable.

"Hi! Can I help?" asked a pretty young woman - early twenties, I'd guess - wearing a shirt with the store's name embroidered on it.

"I'm useless at clothes but we want to go to the festival and we have no idea what to wear," Miyoshi summarised. There were other ways of putting it, but that got the message across, I suppose.

"Of course!" The woman brightened. "Do you have any colours or styles in mind?"

"Nope," Miyoshi said. "Just whatever works."

"I'll do my best," the young woman promised. "Let's do ladies first, shall we? The women's section is this way."

She led us to the corner of the shop, where a couple of mannequins displayed kimonos with matching accessories. She considered Miyoshi for a moment, then selected a few kimonos in varying shades of green.

"I think green is definitely your colour," she said.

Miyoshi picked one out of the woman's hand and held it up against herself. "What do you think?"

"I like that one," I said.

"You have to get one too!" Miyoshi said.

"Yes, I was going to-"

"What do you think his colour is?"

"I'm thinking dark blue, maybe black..."

"Ha! Kashi, you're an emo."