Her name has to mean something, he decides watching as she dances in a field of sunflowers. It’s too pretty to mean something superficial – it has to be something serene or beautiful. Hinata. It’s gorgeous, rolling off the tongue in a way that leaves a smile on your face. Hee – naah – taa.

“J-Juugo-san,” she stutters, hold up a large yellow flower. “I-I found this for you.”

He smiles at her with hesitance. He doesn’t deserve a flower – especially not one from her. “No,” he says, and her face falls into a cute little pout that leaves him wanting to usher her into his arms and take away all her pain, or to laugh and ruffle her hair. “You keep it.”

Her obsidian eyes grow impossibly wide. “A-ah, thank you Juugo-san,” she drops her gaze to her purple ninja sandals, scuffing them up in the sand. “But I want you to have it.”

He’s blinking now, eye wide. “Why is that?”

Hinata clears her throat, a pretty red flush spreading over her cheeks. “T-the sunf-flower is bright and cheery, bold yet c-comfortably; the sunflower is a w-warm and caring g-gift,” she recites, and he remembers it from the book on flowers he gave her a while back. “And you n-need to smile more, so that’s why I gave it t-to you!”

Juugo doesn’t tell her what he really thinks: that he doesn’t deserve this gift from her, that there isn’t anything worth smiling over (aside from her beautiful young woman in front of him), and that she shouldn’t be near him – shouldn’t be feeding his obsession like this.

Instead, he smiles conviction faux, gently taking the wide open flower, with it’s brownish black center that’s rough to the touch, and the long, finger length yellow petals that, contrasting to the roughness of the circle of seeds, was soft and downy.

Suddenly it came to him. “Thank you, *sunflower.”