The Academy's hallway is long and windy, as if it had been specially designed to make escape for students impossible. It twists and bends and behind each corner there might be a teacher waiting, an evil grin on his face, and his hands ready to grab you by your collar and drag you back to the class you are supposed to be in.

Sneaking out of class, Hane Hatake has decided for herself, she learns way more than staying in class.

For example: There is an air shaft next to the boy's bathroom, and if you are very small (and Hane is very small), you can easily use it to sneak past the staffroom and avoid the wide windows that would expose you to the class currently at work on the Academy's training ground.

It's a bit of a maze up here though, and after three or four junctions Hane feels lost. For a second she is scared – what if she will never find her way out of here ever again? She'd dehydrate and starve and die, and no one would find her until the smell of rotting flesh would seep into the class-rooms. She imagines how they'll have to send one of her father's smaller dogs into the air shaft and the shock on her parents' faces when it is her, little Hane, who'll be dragged out of here.

And then the solution to the problem hits her. Of course – if the ninken can use their noses to find her in this maze, she should be able to use her own nose to find her way outside.

Fifteen minutes later, she pushes back a metal grit and breaths in the open summer-air. The metal grit falls down to the ground with a loud "clonk" and Hane freezes. Someone must have heard it, she thinks and crawls backwards until she thinks she must be concealed in shadows.

She waits, ears and nose on alert, but no one comes to see what that noise was, so eventually she climbs out of the air shaft and down the Academy wall. She wonders if she should replace the grit and decides that yes – it would be way more professional, if she didn't leave any traces. But the metal is quite heavy, and after a few (painfully) unsuccessful attempts of walking up the wall with it in her hands she gives up. (She usually is very good at walking up walls, but carrying something like this is a completely different matter!)

"Do you need help with that?"

Hane spins around. They did hear the noise, she thinks, but they were clever enough not to let her notice them.

She cannot see anyone. However, she soon sees something. One thin and dark tentacle slithers in her direction, wraps its end around the metal grid and easily lifts it up and pushes it back in its place.

Hane grins, but her grin quickly drops (just like the rest of her body), as the shadowy tentacle suddenly twists around her ankle, and in one swift movement pulls her away from the Academy's building.

Dangling by her feet, Hane looks down at Shikamaru, who's lying in the grass, half closed eyes squinting up at his catch and an amused smile playing around his lips.

"Shouldn't you be in class?", he asks.

"It's boring", Hane replies dryly.

"I'm sure it is. But you might learn something useful."

"We never learn anything useful in kunoichi-classes", she pouts, then wiggles a little. She can feel the blood pulsing in her head.

Shikamaru doesn't seem to notice. He considers her words carefully, then lets her down to the ground.

Hane understands his invitation.

"What are you doing here, Shikamaru-sensei?", she asks, while she lies down, mimicking his posture.

"Training with Nozomi", he tells her.

This confuses Hane.

Nozomi is Hane's best friend but – unlike Hane – doesn't skip kunoichi-classes. She thinks about it for a little while, but still can't make any sense of it. So eventually she says:

"But Nozomi is still in school."

Shikamaru turns his head.

"I know", he says with a sly grin "but Tsunade-sama doesn't."

Now that Hane understands her eyes widen.

"You're skipping classes, too?", she asks, amazed by the possibility that an adult would do so.

"In a way", Shikamaru yawns.

"But", he adds, "we aregoing to train later. Wanna join us?"

This isn't a question he has to ask. Both of them know.

Hane beams as she nods eagerly.

By now she could easily take it for granted that she is allowed to part-take in Nozomi's training with Shikamaru. Yet she'd never ask, but always waits for one of those two to invite her. Luckily they usually do.

Training with Shikamaru is very different from the training they get in the Academy, or even from training with her father. Hane likes Shikamaru's kind of training, even though Nozomi tells her that he is just too lazy to do anything else with them.

Half of the time he simply presents them with problems, as they might occur on a real mission, and lets the girls solve them in theory.

Today it is different, though. Maybe Nozomi nagged him enough for them to get some "real" training, or maybe Shikamaru thought it time for the girls to get some action. Either way, today – when Nozomi has finished her kunoichi-class – he leads the way down to the training ground.

Hours later Hane makes her way home. She's covered in mud and her clothes are partly torn, and in her left hand she clutches one of her front teeth (it had been loose for some days, but she hadn't expected it to fall out so soon). She feels like she just lived through a war. Which she did, in a way.

Their training's objective had been to steal an egg (an actual egg) from Shikamaru (which they managed) and then bring it home (that is, to their corner of the training-ground) without allowing it to get damaged on the way (which they didn't manage – it was then that they learned that the egg was not only real, but also raw). But, Shikamaru told them, they were on a good way, so it wasn't all bad).

Hane can smell the bad news before she's entered her parent's house. The perfume of her kunoichi instructor, Suzume-sensei, lingers on the door-step.

She braces herself, stands on her tiptoes to reach the door-handle, and carefully steps inside.

She peals off her dirt-clot sandals and listens.

"If your daughter's attitude doesn't change any time soon, I assure you, this will have consequences", Suzume says.

Hane waits for her mother to answer, but instead hears a chair being pushed back, and shortly after that Hane's mother appears in the hallway. She looks down at her daughter with lips as thin as a line and eyes like poison.

For a second Hane's blood freezes. Then she understands that her mother' anger isn't directed at her.

"Upstairs", she whispers, "get yourself cleaned up, and then go to your room."

Hane nods. She wonders if this is her punishment, but suspects that it isn't, as her mother raises her index-finger to her lips, motioning Hane to be very quiet.

Hane sits in her room and waits. She stares at the alarm clock on her desk.

Seventeen minutes and thirty-nine seconds later her mother knocks at her door (she always does), but doesn't wait for her daughter's answer (she never does).

"This", she says, resting her hands on her hips "was the last time I made up excuses for you skipping school."

"Yes, mum", Hane mumbles. It's the fourth last timeand by now Hane doesn't feel very threatened any more. Of course she would never tell her mother.

"It was just kunoichi-class", she tries to explain herself – because she knows that her mother shares her dislike of this particular class.

"It's always just kunoichi-class", her mother retorts.

"I know it's boring, but you might need to pose as some boring civilian woman on a mission one day, and what will you do then?"

Hane thinks about this for a moment. She has heard the argument before, from both her parents as well as her teachers.

"I'll simply refuse the mission", she then says. It's obvious really.

Her mother's right eye twitches a little.

"That's not how it works", she tells Hane, her voice accelerating in volume.

"You don't get to refuse a mission."

"And how would you know?", Hane shouts back.

"You don't go on missions. You work at the hospital!"

With a loud crash, her mothers fist slams into Hane's bedroom wall. It leaves a small dent, and some plaster crumbles down to the ground and into the fur of Mister Beagle. (A plush-dog. Hane would love to have a real one, but her father tells her that she's still to young for that.)

"That's it", Hane's mother says. She's no longer shouting. Her voice is very quiet and very sharp. Like cutting-wire.

"You're grounded", she says.

"And don't even think about climbing out the window", she then adds, while her fingers run through a number of seals.

Hane blinks. She has no idea what she did to make her mother this angry, but she suddenly feels sure that the fourth last time really was the last.

Some weeks pass, and Hane does her very best not to irritate her mother again, which isn't easy because lately her mother gets irritated much quicker than usual. (And she's not that hard to provoke to begin with.)

Hane sits at the kitchen-table and watches her placing some take-away food in the microwave. This is the only thing she ever does in the kitchen.

There's something Hane wants to ask, but she's afraid that she might not like the answer she'll get. She closes her eyes and tries to pluck up the courage to speak.

"Mum", she eventually says and then waits, to make sure that she has got her mother's full attention.

"Do you think dad will let me take the final exam this year?"

She holds her breath and waits, but her mother doesn't say anything for a very long time. She just stares at the two pairs of chopsticks in her hand.

"I'm not sure", she finally brings out. She walks around the table and wraps her arms around Hane from behind (which is odd, Hane thinks, because her mother rarely hugs her without a reason).

"I don't know if he...", Hane can feel her mother's lips against the back of her head, and her breath in her hair, and for a second she is scared (though she does not know of what), but then her mother squeezes her and tells her they'd just have to ask him, once he's back.

"He's been away long, hasn't he?", Hane says as her mother returns to preparing dinner (that is, placing the warmed up take-away on two plates).

"It must be a very troublesome mission he's on", Hane concludes. She watches her mother's back, watches her shoulders move.

Hane wonder's how it can take so long to fill two plates.

When her mother finally turns to sit down she smiles, although it is a different smile than her usual one.

"You", she tells Hane "spend too much time with Shikamaru-sensei."

Hane tries to ignore her mother's remark, but she can feel her ears grow hot and for once is very grateful for the colour of her hair, which makes the pink glow almost invisible.

"He'll be back next week, though", she says instead and with a full mouth.

Her mother says nothing. She picks around on her plate like one isn't supposed to do.

"Why?", she eventually asks.

Hane cannot believe that her mother forgot.

"It's my birthday next week", she explains.

"Dad promised he'd be home for my birthday"

There's this weird smile on Hane's mother's face again as she puts her chopsticks aside.

"Hane-chan", she says very slowly.

"You mustn't be angry with your father, when – if he won't manage to be there next week. Promise me?"

Hane doesn't understand why her mother would say something like that. She knows her father, and she knows that he'd never (never!) break a promise he made to her. So, Hane just shrugs.

"But he will be there", she tells her mother. Because she knows that he will, and if her mother doesn't understand this she's really not as clever as everyone seems to think she is.

It is a Saturday when Hane has her birthday – which is very exciting. She can't remember if she has ever had her birthday on a Saturday before. Her mother took the day off, too, and after breakfast they spent some time playing together before they set up the coffee-table.

Hane's father hasn't come home yet. But he will, Hane is sure of that. She lays the table for four. Herself, her mother, her father and her grandmother, who regrettably had to get invited as well.

At three o'clock aunt Ino drops by. She brings a small package with a lavender-coloured ribbon, which remains closed because Hane won't unpack any presents until her father has come home. She also brings flowers for Hane's mother (she knows that Hane doesn't care about flowers very much), and then the two grown ups vanish in the kitchen where they talk quietly.

Hane doesn't mind (though she insists that they put up a fifth plate). She climbs into the cherry-tree that grows in their front-yard and from up there watches and waits for her father to come home. But he doesn't come and when Hane's grandmother has arrived they all have to sit down at the kitchen-table and Ino and Hane's mother praise the cake that her grandmother brought (with seven little candles of the same colour as Hane's and her mother's hair), while Hane stares solemnly at the door.

"Well then, shall we light the candles?", her grandmother says and lightly pinches Hane's shoulder.

Hane shakes her head. She crosses her arms very tightly and bites her lip. There's no way she's going to cry here and now.

"Not until dad is home", she says. She ignores the looks that the grown-ups exchange. It's obvious that theydon't believe her father will come home today. But Hane knows better.

Her grandmother doesn't seem to care though (she never does) and reaches to light the candles anyway. Before either her mother or Ino can stop her, Hane is up on the table and snatches the cake away from under her grandmother's lighter.

"I told you to wait!", she screams in a high-pitched voice that might even be able to break glass, and then tosses the cake in the general direction of her grandmother's head.

It misses and instead hits the floor, but Hane doesn't wait for her grandmother (who had covered her face with her hands) to realise this. She jumps off the table, ducks away under her mother's and Ino's hands and hurries upstairs.

There she stops, unsure what to do. She hesitantly slips into her parents bedroom and crawls into their bed, where she curls up under her father's blanket and buries her nose in his pillow, but it smells of nothing but laundry detergent. And then she starts to cry.

She doesn't hear her mother and grandmother scream at each other, downstairs, nor the front door banging as her grandmother leaves. She claws at her father's pillow, as if that might bring back some of his scent.

When she feels her mother's hands in her hair and on her back, Hane crawls deeper under her father's blanket, but this time mother's quicker and she soon pulls Hane out of there and onto her lap.

"He promised!", Hane sobs into her mother's dress.

"I know", she says. Her fingers push back some of Hane's hair, which has fallen in her face.

"Sometimes", she says. She doesn't sound as if she knows what to say next.

"Sometimes your father makes promises, even though he doesn't know if he can keep them."

"But that's bad", Hane replies. She finds it hard to believe that her father would do something like that.

"I'm sure really, really wants to be here", her mother assures her.

And finally Hane understands. Something must have happened. Something that keeps him away. She says so, but her mother doesn't answer.

"Tsunade-sama must send a search-party after him!", Hane tells her, because she knows that her mother and Tsunade-sama are very close.

Her mother gives Hane a half-smile.

"She already has, darling", she whispers. Her carefully composed expression melts away, and she too starts to cry.

Hane doesn't know what to do – she's never seen her mother cry before, not like this – and she's more than glad when Ino comes upstairs and asks if she should stay or leave and Hane quickly answers that yes, please, Ino has to stay.

So Ino stays and Ino prepares dinner and Ino scolds Hane's mother for not eating. (There's no need to scold Hane. Hane knows that she's very small – even for a six, seven-year-old – and if she doesn't eat she won't grow, and if she won't grow her mother will have no choice but to conduct medical experiments on her one day. So she forces herself to eat, even though she's not really hungry.)

After dinner Ino insists that they play some games and they play long into the evening – Hane cannot remember if she has ever stayed up this late – and eventually she falls asleep at the kitchen table.