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.