Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Pieces of My Heart ❯ Chapter One ( Chapter 1 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

“What do you mean I have to get married?!” Claire’s anger began to flare.

“Well, the economy is getting pretty bad and …” Her younger counterpart began to explain.

“Like hell! Konoha is one of the most flourishing nations in the world!”

“What I’m trying to say is …” Zoey said, trying to calm her down. “You can’t hold a job for very long because you don’t understand the language.”

“Darn right I don’t understand the language!”

“And if you keep losing jobs we won’t be able to make any money for a tutor. It’d be best if you hooked up with somebody who knows both Japanese and English.”

“Hook up with somebody? Someone I’ve never met -- someone I don’t even know?” Claire snorted, her nostrils flaring. “What if I marry someone who doesn’t have the same religion that I do? What do I do if they’re Muslim? What do I do then? Just obey every command and just take every bit of abuse?”

“There aren’t any Muslims here in Konoha, Claire.” Zoey poked her friend in the forehead before sitting down with her. “In fact, I don’t think any of our world religions exist here. Sure, there might be some that are similar but I don’t think they’re to the detriment of women or individuals. I mean, you’ve watched a lot of anime. You’re a Japanophile, you should know all this stuff.”

“I’m not the Otaku. Derrek is.” Claire sighed, her shoulders sinking. She bobbed her head for a bit then just let it rest.

“Then you should ask Derrek what he thinks. I bet you a hundred dollars that he would think arranged marriage would be good, too.”

“But why me?”

“Don’t be so selfish. I mean, if you marry a really rich guy then we would all have it made. Not just you.” Zoey smiled lazily. “Come on, you don’t have to love him. You could at least accept all the gifts he gives you.”

“I’m going to have to think about this. I’ll have to weigh the pros and cons. I’ll let you to know tomorrow what my decision is. How much are arranged marriages, anyway?”

“We’ll have to call somebody tomorrow and ask. There isn’t a lot of money to spare, though. We could probably get a waiver since we’re low income. How does that sound?”

“If this is such a good idea then why aren’t you getting married, Zoey?” Claire frowned, pouting her lips quite a bit.

“Because you have to be over the age of eighteen to do it. I’m only sixteen. If I could then I would but you know I wouldn’t make a good wife simply because I’m ostentatious, rebellious, and loud. Most men seeking arranged marriage would want their wives to be quiet and obedient and that fits you perfectly! You’re as docile as a duck.”

“And you as docile as a gander.” Claire said sarcastically.

“Okay. Then it’s set. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.” Zoey nodded her head, getting up from her seat. “I have to go out and train for the next lesson tomorrow. You keep your head on straight and I’ll see you at dinner.”

“Have a good time, Zoey.”

“I’ll see you later,” The young girl kissed Claire’s cheek. “Love you.”

“I love you too,” She kissed the other’s cheek in return.

*~*~*~*

Claire stood there in front of the sink, scrubbing away at pan they’d used for the noon meal. It swished around bubbles in the water as she washed it. The radio was on in the background. It wasn’t that loud, though. It was just as she’d liked it. Soft jazz music permeated the room.

While her hands were dipped in the water, cleaning the pan, she thought back to her adolescence. It’d been seven years since she’d moved out of Derrek’s house. She was out of that house as soon as she turned eighteen. She’d gotten a stable job working at the library. She was able to pay her own bills. Buy her own food. Drive her own car. Things were much simpler then, weren’t they?

Sure, she had her own independence but what was life like without her best friends? She thought back to high school. Before senior year Derrek had dropped out and enrolled in an alternative school. It wasn’t because his grades were failing; no, it wasn’t that. It was because he couldn’t get along with his peers. There were one too many assholes attending that school. They’d often pick on her but Derrek was always there to defend her. But since then they dropped out and never returned. It seemed almost coincidental how all these things happened at the same time.

Soon enough, she’d graduated from high school. Even though she was offered many scholarships, she didn’t take them right away. The first thing she wanted to do after graduation was move out into an apartment of her own. And with working long hours on the job, she managed to do just that.

For a short while she waited tables at the local Meat N’ Malt with Derrek’s mother, Sonya. When she finally got enough money to move out, she took a risk and applied for a job at the public library. She believed God must have had destined for her to have that job because she loved it and it paid really well.

She took a long break after high school. She didn’t apply for college until she was about twenty-three-years-old. Of course, by then all the scholarships would have expired but she didn’t care. She applied for financial aid and got help paying for books and tuition with that. However, with the extra money she made at her place of employment, she managed to pay most of the costs.

Eventually, she graduated from the community college and transferred to a four year university. By the time she was transported into Konoha, she would’ve been a Junior at the university.

See, Claire isn’t from Konoha. She isn’t a ninja and she clearly can’t speak Japanese that well. Claire, Derrek, and Zoey are from the United States. They can’t exactly explain how they got from there to Konoha. All the know is that they bought some graphic novels from the bookstore and somehow got zapped into this strange world.

It was easy for Derrek to get along in this place because he was already taking Japanese classes at the community college. Zoey, however, played everything by ear so she learned the language very quickly. Claire -- not so much luck. She couldn’t understand anything about it. It was strange for her because she knew both Spanish and English. Not from taking classes for it either.

Her parents were Mexican and had to learn English to live in America. Her mother died when Claire was at the tender age of sixteen of cervical cancer. There wasn’t a funeral because all of her relatives were poor and lived in Mexico and that Claire’s father had squandered all of the insurance money.

So she buried her mother in a wooden box that she had put together herself. There wasn’t a visitation and there wasn’t a funeral. Nobody showed up except Claire. She remembered sitting on her grave for hours just crying and cursing her greedy alcoholic father.

She’d made up her mind and called Derrek.

That night she’d packed what little belongings she’d had and a few momentos of her mother and ran away to live with Derrek and his family, leaving her drunken father behind. She still hasn’t talked to him to this day.

The biggest reason she’d turned to Derrek instead of the State was because she did not want to end up in foster care. That was the last place she wanted to be. She felt much safer with people she’d known.

Even though she lived with Zoey and her family, she still went to the Catholic church she grew up in.

After she’d turned seventeen she was excommunicated from the Church because she openly stated that she did not believe in worshipping the saints, going to confession, and that she believed in prophesying and speaking in tongues.

Since this happened, she’d traveled around looking for a church that would embrace her and her beliefs. She wanted to meet people who believed that Jesus Christ was the way into heaven and not worshipping Mary or the saints.

The first time Claire had met Derrek was on a school bus. They were Sophmores in high school at the time. It was before he’d dropped out. She wasn’t very popular or considered pretty by her peers so whenever she’d ask for a place to sit down everyone would reject her. That was, until she met Derrek.

“May I please sit with you?” She asked nicely. Shyly, he turned to her and nodded.

“Yes -- Yes you can.”

From there on out they became best friends.

It was he that introduced to her to anime and Japanese culture. At first she was a little leery about it but when she watched her very first anime movie she was hooked. Being an artist, she adapted her style to that of manga which greatly impressed Derrek.

While Clare dished out dojinshi after dojinshi, Derrek was busy writing fan fiction. Zoey had attempted to get involved but she wasn’t ever able to keep up. She constantly misquoted anime, made out-of-date references and always managed to make her brother, and anime in general, look bad.

They had been in Konoha for two years, making their arrival a year after Naruto left with Jiraiya. For a long while there, they were living in a shelter they’d had there. It took them a year before they saved up enough money to move. Since they didn’t have bad credit they were eligible for loan to put on a mortgage. However, they needed a co-signer to get it.
Leave it to Zoey to bump into Ebisu in a rather humorous fashion and get him to co-sign. She never did tell the entire story of what really happened.

Ever since then they’ve seen a lot of him and his team. Since the house they leased was a dump anyway, Ebisu and his squad had made frequent visits to repair it. In the mean time, Derek was working, Claire made several attempts to keep jobs, and Zoey was in the ninja academy.

Derek enjoyed his job very much. He worked at the bookstore always selling manga to Udon or kicking Konohamaru out for looking through the ‘sexy’ magazines.

For a short time, Claire worked at the bookstore. She also worked at Ichiraku Ramen, in the market place, on a farm, housekeeping, babysitting, and running errands. What was the most challenging was not only her inexperience but lack in language skills. When it came to English she had superior intellect. When it came to Japanese she had the comprehension level of a four-year-old. So, the only person she ever talked to outside of the family was Ebisu because he spoke both Japanese and English.

Claire thought it would be easy learning Japanese because she knew both Spanish and English. Boy, was she ever wrong.

There was an incident at one of her jobs that she’d messed up so badly. Later, she learned, she wasn’t humiliated at what she’d done wrong. It was actually the children of the house that had caused such a ruckus. But at the time, she didn’t know this. She thought that the chaos that had been brought outside was her fault.

The washing machine had too much soap in it so it flooded the laundry room. The vacuum was sucking up a curtain from its window. The radio from the children’s bedrooms were blasting. The kids were dancing around her, tormenting her, yelling at her. The food in the kitchen was burning and the smoke detector had went off. There was a broken window because one of the children had thrown a ball through it. She was busy trying to do all these things at once that she had literally confused and frightened herself.

When the lady of the household had come home she’d found it in utter chaos. She was so angry that she started yelling and screaming at Claire in a language she didn’t understand. The woman had pushed her out the front door, swearing at her. All Claire could do was crouch down, hold her head, begin crying, and yell:

“Nihongo ja nai! Nihongo ja nai!” Which was her best attempt at saying “I don’t know Japanese!”

She’d made such a spectacle of herself that it had gathered a crowd. Everyone in the neighbourhood, including Ebisu, witnessed this. So, now, whenever she passes people they always snicker and imitate her “Nihongo ja nai”.

Although the kids in Team Ebisu occasionally laugh or joke about it, they are swiftly scolded by their sensei.

Claire often feels bad that she can’t hold a job for long. It wasn’t just the language barrier that prevented her from keeping one -- it was just that she’s not good at much of anything. She was an intellectual. She was made for studying and teaching. Not all this other stuff.

With a sigh, she rinsed off the last of the plates and set them up to dry. Turning around, she leaned against the countertop, placing her hands in her apron pockets. Maybe having an arranged marriage would be a good idea. After all, she couldn’t exactly take good care of herself, could she? She didn’t want her entire independence taken away from her, though. After all, the marriage would probably be temporary, anyway.

Why? Because they had to find a way home, that’s why!

Of course it was her childhood dream to fall in love and get married. That’s all she’d ever wanted to do with her life. After reading all of those romances -- watching all of those romantic comedies. . . It had to be the ultimate life experience. But she knew that such things may not exist. So, she would just settle. She wouldn’t marry out of love but out of duty to her new family. That was her choice. She would have an arranged marriage.

The door bell would have rung if it weren’t broken. So, instead, she heard a knock at the door. After drying her hands off, she left the kitchen for the foyer.

She stepped up on her tippy-toes to look through the peep hole. Ugh. It was Ebisu. What could he possibly want? She thought they’d already discussed payment for all the work they’d done to the house. Okay, maybe he found out she lied about paying the tab within a week. It would be more like a month before she could pay it. But how would he know? Was that really what he was there for? With that, she opened the door and smiled, pretending to be stupid.

“Hey, there, Ebisu. What brings you here?” Her smile was very noticeably fake. He slid past the door and into the foyer.

“I need to talk to you about something,” He managed to say. Claire noticed that his voice was somewhat shaky.

“Is there something wrong?” She blinked.

“Oh -- Oh no. Nothing’s the matter, I just…”

“You just what?” She raised a brow.

“What are you doing this Friday night?” He asked, staring at her through his black spectacles. Her eyes widened a bit and she tried to keep a straight face. Was he asking her out on a date?

“Um.. I’ll have to check my schedule but I think I’m free.” Oh God, here it comes. Icky Ebisu is going to ask her on a date. Thinking about it a little, her gaze lowered and a light blush crossed her face.

“…I’ve been thinking about this for a while now,”

Her eyes rose again, “About what?”

“I think I need to teach you how to speak Japanese.”

Inside of her a mirror cracked in half -- shattered by disappointment. But over what? This was Icky Ebisu, after all.

“Ebisu, you know we don’t have enough money for tha--”

“No, no. I’ll do it for free.”

“For free?”

“Yes -- for free.”

“Wow, uh…” He stared deep into her brown eyes. She didn’t know how intensely he was looking at her because he’d worn sunglasses all the time. “Around what time on Friday?”

“Six o’clock, perhaps.”

“Well, you’re welcome to eat dinner with us before we start.”

“Right, right. I’ll be here.” He smiled, which was something he didn’t often do. “At six.”

She nodded. He nodded. Politely, he bowed and she copied. With couple other nods, he left.

Slowly, she closed the door behind him. What was she thinking!? There was no way Icky Ebisu would ask her on a date. She must’ve been crazy to think that he would even want such a thing. Ebisu was independent. A lone wolf. And sometimes she wondered if he loved anyone other than himself.

How unpredictable this afternoon has become.