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Iruka’s fourteenth birthday party is loud and spirited. Her house is usually where she and her friends gather, and this year is no exception: they sit sprawled out all over the living room, tossing bags of chips at each other and generally having a good time.
A few hours in, someone dares Kotetsu to walk around the ceiling three times - he makes it to two and a half before he falls when someone lobs a biscuit at him.
“Penalty!” Yugao crows, “now you have to answer a question instead!” Just like that, the evening devolves into a game of Truth or Dare, and before long, they’re sitting in a rough circle, going in something like an orderly fashion.
“I dare you to kiss a girl!” Kotetsu declares, leaning back and grinning as Izumo flushes bright red - his revenge for throwing the biscuit that made Kotetsu fall off the ceiling earlier.
“Wh- what?”
“Ohhh. Are you too chicken?” Kotetsu looks like he’s just delighted at this prospect. “’Cause if you are, we get to pick something even worse!” The circle of kids breaks into laughter at the look on Izumo’s face.
“Wh- No! Of course I’m not.” Izumo looks around the room, then grins in relief, hops up and walks over to Iruka. Yurika and Yugao, sitting neatly with their feet tucked under them make little noises of relief; Inaho throws Iruka a sort of “oh well” grin. When he sees where Izumo’s headed Kotetsu’s face goes bright red.
“What-” he sputters, “you can’t kiss Iruka! That’s stupid! She totally doesn’t count!” One of the girls snickers; someone else agrees. (Iruka can’t see who they are, not with Izumo leaning close and blocking her vision.)
“Hey!” she says in protest, “what’s that supposed to mea- mmph!” Izumo darts in and presses his lips to hers, before darting back to his place and sitting down fast. Iruka pulls an exaggerated face and mock-scrubs her face; someone makes fun of Izumo for that, and the evening carries on. Iruka doesn’t think much of it until later.
* * *
A few months after her fourteenth birthday, after both of her teammates have passed the chuunin exam, Iruka starts eavesdropping on the mission room out of boredom. The two of them and her sensei are called away to other missions more and more often, and there are only so many D-rank missions she can do alone, so Iruka’s got time to spare. Training alone doesn’t fill all her time, and she’s hardly going to hang out in the mission room, an almost-fifteen-year-old genin? But Iruka can fold herself under the windows and damp her chakra down so that no one notices her at all.
Sometimes it makes her feel accomplished and stealthy, but mostly she leaves bitterly disappointed that no one bothered to find her.
Iruka is sitting under the window with her legs stretched out, thinking about nothing in particular when she hears a particularly familiar voice: the daimyo’s wife has lost her cat again. Iruka really hopes someone else gets to go after it this time: she’s still got scratches up one arm from last week. She sinks down a little, pulls her legs in close, and listens.
She freezes when she hears the daimyo’s wife ask for her specifically — “that girl Tora-chan likes — you know, the one with that awful scar, poor thing?” The nin at the desk says something non-committal, and the woman continues, “you know, it’s such a shame — she’d almost be pretty without it, don’t you think?”
Iruka can’t hear the words of the response, but the tones of voice are clear: pity, and a little bit of self-satisfaction for having noticed her at all from the daimyo’s wife. The two inside continue to talk for a few moments, but Iruka isn’t listening anymore. She is unsurprised when she’s assigned the same D-rank mission she gets about every two weeks: catch Tora, the daimyo’s wife’s cat.
Iruka thinks about drowning the cat when she finds it, but decides it doesn’t deserve it, no matter how many times it’s tried to take her eyes out – being sent back to that old bat is punishment enough. Iruka tries her best to smile at the woman when she hands the creature back for the second time that month, pretending she hasn’t been turning those overheard words over and over again all day long. Then she goes home and stares in the mirror until her eyes nearly cross.
Iruka was never interested in makeup when her mother was alive. She climbed trees and chased the Inuzuka’s puppies with her friends and nobody ever suggested to her that having a scar across the bridge of her nose was anything other than kind of cool, like having loose teeth, or being able to spit watermelon seeds really far.
Now she looks at her reflection and sees nothing but that wide stripe across her face, and has no idea what to do about it.
Finally, she swallows her pride and asks Mizuki for help.
* * *
Iruka supposes she could ask someone who was in her class, but admitting to a classmate that she wishes she’d paid more attention in the kunoichi lessons makes Iruka’s stomach clench. She and Mizuki haven’t seen each other quite so much since Mizuki made chuunin, a couple of years ago, but Iruka still knows where her house is. And though they hadn’t been the very best of friends, Mizuki was one of the few people there for her after Iruka’s parents died.
Sometimes Iruka thinks that Mizuki is the only reason she didn’t completely flunk out during that long year between the attack and graduation: Mizuki even volunteered to help Iruka with shuriken practice a little under three years ago, showing her a different way to hold them than the one they learned at the Academy: it took Iruka a while to get it, but she chalks that up to her own incompetence. Ami-sensei always held Mizuki up as an example to Iruka and the other girls in her class: Such a sweet young lady, and so accomplished. You should see how few tells she has, girls.
So Iruka screws up her courage and goes to Mizuki’s house one afternoon after a mission, and bangs on the door before she can talk herself out of it. When Mizuki opens the door, she blurts out, “Mizuki, can you help me with this?” and points at her face. Then she flushes, and says “I mean, good afternoon, Mizuki, how are you?”
“I’m well, thank you, and yourself?” Mizuki says absently, frowning and wrinkling her nose a bit at Iruka’s question, “And …” she pauses, “I don’t know how much I can do … it is a really bad scar, Iruka, you know?” She stares at the bridge of Iruka’s nose intently.
“Oh,” Iruka says, trying to hide how disappointed she is — she’s a little surprised at how much she’d been counting on Mizuki to help.
“Okay. Thanks, Mizuki.”
Iruka wants to go home and cry; she wants to run into the middle of the village and yell for attention. She’ll probably go find one of her friends and try to talk him into some kind of prank. She might be able to manage it, even if most of the guys have been acting kind of distant lately. She thought it was because they’d made chuunin: now she’s worried that it’s something else, something she should know, something she missed.
“No, no!” Mizuki laughs, “come on, I’ve got some ideas.” She grabs Iruka’s hand and pulls her into the house, and into Mizuki’s room, which smells like perfume and has a couple of flowers in a vase by the window. Iruka sneezes, and Mizuki goes over to a little table with a hand-mirror and cosmetics. She looks down at an array of cosmetics, then frowns and looks at Iruka.
“First,” she said, “we’re going shopping. My makeup won’t work for you.”
A ‘short’ shopping trip later, Iruka is mildly frightened by the variety of products Mizuki waved at her, and relieved that Mizuki decided she should start small.
It doesn’t make very much of a difference in the end, at least as far as disguise is concerned — the scar tissue is too thick a ridge to really be completely disguised. But at least it’s less obvious, once Iruka gets used to mixing the foundation properly.
* * *
Iruka starts spending more time with Mizuki again, after that. It’s kind of nice: Mizuki doesn’t laugh at her when she wants to see something other than the latest action flick, or if she admits that she kind of likes having flowers in the house. She does laugh at Iruka’s clothes an awful lot, though.
After the third time Mizuki bursts out laughing at the sight of her in as many days, Iruka blows up.
“What’s wrong with my clothes!?” she demands, hands fisted at her sides, “they’re the same thing everyone else wears! Why are you laughing at me so much, Mizuki?” Mizuki falls into another wave of laughter, and Iruka watches her fight to get enough air to answer.
“Iruka,” she says, “they’re the same clothes all the boys wear.” Iruka crosses her arms defensively.
“They’re what a lot of shinobi wear,” she insists, “they make sense!”
“Shinobi, Iruka. Not kunoichi.” Mizuki says, “They’ve got all the tailoring of an empty sack.”
Iruka doesn’t see why this is a problem: she can move freely, she’s got plenty of pockets for stashing explosive tags and kunai and chakra wire and pieces of string, or anything else she needs to put somewhere for a few minutes.
“So what?” Iruka demands. Mizuki sighs, and gives her a look. It’s the one she uses when Iruka is being particularly dense — Iruka sees a lot of it, recently. Iruka sort of hates it when she makes Mizuki make that face.
“Fine,” she concedes, “so what should I be wearing?” Mizuki grins, and grabs Iruka by both hands.
“Oh,” she says, “this is going to be so much fun! Consider it an early birthday present, sweetie.” She takes Iruka out shopping for clothes. Then they go to another shop for new underwear (“you can’t wear those! Are you kidding? You really need something with support, you can’t just keep mashing them flat, Iruka!”) and a new belt and belt-pouches, and Mizuki is ready to pull her into a shoe store when Iruka draws the line. Her sandals are perfectly fine, she insists. Besides, Iruka is sure she’ll just fall over if she tries to walk in heels.
They go back to Iruka’s house, and Mizuki insists on a miniature fashion show. Privately, Iruka thinks the new skirts are a little impractical, though the slits up the side of the longer ones mean she can move almost as freely as in pants. They do look like the ones other girls wear, but isn’t she supposed to be able to move without worrying about what might happen if she flips upside down? Iruka insists on keeping her same mesh shirt and pants, instead of leggings: they’re the same cut her mother used to wear, and they’re comfortable and useful at the same time.
Mizuki threatens to take her old clothes out to the dump, but Iruka grabs them and shoves them in the back of her closet. Her mom embroidered one or two of the things in that pile, and she’s not going through them with anyone else around, not even Mizuki.
“What you need to do,” Mizuki tells her, pulling a new shirt from the pile on Iruka’s bed, “is dress to misdirect. It’ll help with your face: give people something else to focus on.” Iruka nods – she’s familiar with misdirection techniques in theory, though the ones she’s familiar with usually involve exploding tags or substitution jutsus, not clothing.
“So,” Mizuki says, walking up to her, and cupping Iruka’s breasts in her hands, lifting them a bit, “it’s a good thing you’ve got these.” Iruka squeaks, and stumbles backwards, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Mizuki!”
“What?” Mizuki says, looking at her like she’s crazy, “Iruka, you’re such a prude.” She picks up a bra and walks over. “Here,” she says, “try this on – you’ll see what I mean.”
Iruka grabs it, and waits for a moment, but Mizuki makes no move to leave the room – instead, she sits down on Iruka’s bed and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “Well?” she says, gesturing at Iruka, “come on, don’t tell me you’re shy?”
Iruka flushes, and turns her back to pull her shirts off, and the new clothes on.
“Really, Iruka,” Mizuki says, a bit of a laugh in her voice, “it’s not like you’ve got anything I haven’t seen before. Now put that red skirt on, and that white shirt.” Iruka still keeps her back turned while she changes, though she feels a little embarrassed about it, about overreacting like this.
When Iruka turns around, tugging down at the hem of the skirt, and then up at the neckline, which is much lower than she’s used to, Mizuki hops up, and cocks her head to one side.
“Not bad,” she says, “it definitely helps distract from –“ she pauses, “well, just look at you. I bet nobody could tell you were hiding that under those baggy clothes.”
Iruka looks down, and she has cleavage, actual, like-a-grown-up-cleavage. She’s only ever bought sports bras before, and been content to just keep things in place, so they didn’t hurt during practice. This is a big difference. She's not quite certain how she feels about it.
No one ever really gave Iruka the Talk, or instructions on clothing other than the ones they got in classes, which she pretty much completely ignored. Iruka feels a little stupid for not realizing she was dressing so wrong, but she doesn’t say anything. Iruka doesn’t want Mizuki to think she’s an idiot, after all.
* * *
Hayate is the first of her friends Iruka runs into the next day. She promised Mizuki she’d wear something they’d bought together, and she’s actually almost comfortable in it by the time she gets downtown. The shirt is cropped a little higher than she’d prefer, and she has to remind herself not to tug it down because when she does, the neckline dives alarmingly. Iruka doesn’t know that much about clothes, but she does know that your bra is not supposed to be visible above the neckline of your shirt, not unless you’re a kind of person Iruka definitely is not. The skirt is one of the longer ones Mizuki picked out, with slits up the sides, and Iruka’s not quite used to it yet, but she figures she’ll get the hang of it eventually: Mizuki wears them all the time, and looks really elegant.
“Hayate!” she calls, bouncing up on her toes and waving at him. He looks at her, looks confused, and then looks back, completely astonished.
“Iruka?” he asks, and crosses the street to stand in front of her, looking her up and down with a really funny look on his face. “Whoah,” he says, “Iruka, you’re really pretty!” A look of horror crosses over his face a moment after eh speaks, and he hurries to say, “I mean, you look like a girl, and … that is …” There’s a moment while he stumbles over his tongue trying to qualify that -- she’s always been a girl, but she didn't -- well …
Iruka grins, hiding her confusion and almost-disappointment — is it really such a shock that she looks nice? — and lets him dig himself in a little further before letting him off the hook.
“Okay, okay, come on, already” she says, “I was just going to get lunch. You wanna come with?”
He stares at her for a moment, and she waves a hand in front of his face to snap him out of it.
“Hayate,” she says, “I’m hungry. You coming, or what?”
That (unbeknownst to Iruka) is her first date.