"OH MY GOSH, KONATA-BAA, SHE WON'T STOP."

"Calm down, and—"

"SHE'S OUT OF CONTROL."

"Kankuro, listen, you need to—"

"SHE JUST WON'T STOP..." There was a roar of a vacuum. "...CLEANING!"

"Yes, I know." Konata let out a sigh, smiling. "I've had some experience with her quirks."

"It's like she's waging war on the house!" Kankuro yelled through the receiver.

"You can either join her or flee," said Konata. "Take your family and get out of the there. It's going to go on for a while."

"Oh, no. She's recruited Temari. Gaara— don't run away, you coward! Come back here!" Kankuro harrumphed then remembered he was on the phone. "W-we'll call you back, Konata-baa. Talk to you later."

He shoved the phone back in its place and scurried to the heat of the battle. Temari and Suzume had cornered Gaara in the living room and threw the curtains over him so he looked like a very confused ghost.

"We need to wash these then hang them outside to dry and air." Suzume was on top of everything, like a drill sergeant. "Kankuro, please strip the beds of their sheets and bring them downstairs."

"Uh, Suzume. Perhaps you shouldn't preoccupy your mind with chores to escape your crippling anxiety and stress at the pressure of winning the promotion match," Kankuro said, trying to be helpful.

"Onward, men!" Temari did a battle cry and, picking up Gaara (who was still under the curtain) with one arm, flew through the French doors.

"Kankuro, I'm trusting you with those sheets." Suzume ran after Temari and Gaara.

"I was ignored," Kankuro said despondently. After a deep breath, he set about doing the task appointed to him.

"Sheets, sheets, sheets~" he sang under his breath. After collecting his own and Suzume's bed covers, he went up the steps to Temari's room. "Sheets. Sheets. Shit." He'd knocked over Temari's trash bin, letting loose an avalanche of papers.

Setting aside the laundry basket, he bent down to scoop the trash back into the can. His good mood was stolen away as soon as he realized what he was seeing. These weren't papers, they were wrappers.

He grabbed a fistful and examined them. Sleeping pills. And so many of them.

He clenched his hand around the wrappers. "Dammit, Temari."

_

"Huh?" Temari arched an eyebrow. "You want me to do what now?"

"You study botany, jan," Kankuro said. "Gaara's told me how some of his cacti have been flowering recently. You should help him out in the greenhouse from now on."

Temari laughed. "That was a hobby I had ages ago! I haven't studied botany in years!"

"That's why you should take it up again," Kankuro said. "Gaara said he'd be happy to have you."

"What's this about, Kankuro?" Temari was beginning to get suspicious.

"Nothing!" Kankuro said, looking frustrated. "Can't I give my sister suggestions about what to do with her free time?"

"I don't have free time."

"Sure you do." Kankuro stood from the dining table. "Gaara's waiting in the greenhouse right now. Go after you finish your coffee."

At first, Temari was going to ignore Kankuro's instructions but she didn't want to leave Gaara hanging like that. She took her time with her coffee however.

She opened the French door and slipped into her shoes outside. The snap of the sheets they washed earlier that day were thunderous. Most of them were white and fluttered together like wisps of clouds.

The Japanese maple stood tall and merrily next to Hisoka's grave. (Saya was keeping Hisoka company as she napped.) The tree never seemed to lose any leaves, despite the piles that gather at its roots and the coming and passing of winter. The ground at its foot was beginning to turn rich and moist.

And to the left of the tree was the greenhouse. She can see Gaara's head bobbing around amongst the plants. She shuffled over to it.

She carefully opened and closed the door behind her.

Lean, squat, and chunky, many armed or limbless, some in hanging pots cascading their arms over their clay basins, and all proudly adorned by a delicate flower. She's never seen so many flowering together at once.

Gaara was crouched down to examine the pot of a cactus and he looked over at her at her entrance.

"Hey," Temari said, approaching him.

"Kankuro really insisted on this," Gaara told her. "He was very... smothering."

"I can imagine..." Temari bent down next to him. "I'm impressed. You've been working hard."

"I don't really have to do anything. It's the desert, they flourish on their own."

"But you grew them from seeds, right?" she contended. "Takes a lot of patience."

Gaara accepted the praise and stood. "I'll show you around."

Temari spent the rest of the day with Gaara, who gave her trivia on each of the cacti and introduced them to her like they were close friends of his. Seeing his enthusiastic passion made her feel guilty that she never thought to visit before.

"This one won't bloom no matter what I do," Gaara said about a jumble of cactus and softly cupped on of the buds in his palm. If the flower were to open, it would've swallowed his entire hand.

"Some need time," Temari said. "They'll blossom when they want to."

Next, she met a cactus whose pads were tear shaped and covered in barbs and crowned with a bright red fruit. Gaara retrieved a pair of tonsils and plucked a prickly pear from one of the cactuses. The fruit twisted off easily and he lifted it up so Temari could see.

"These can make a great juice," he said, placing the fruit in a basket with a few others. "But, it's an excruciating process."

"I'll help you out," Temari offered. "We'll surprise the others with it."

It took the rest of the afternoon to get those little devils to cooperate. First, they had to get past the needle defended skin, then the insides were infested with seeds. Gaara was being so dismissive about it. She guessed that's how you get if you're protected by sand armor 24/7, but the seeds really stumped him, so Temari took it upon herself to get food mill from the kitchen and grinded those little shits.

In the end, they got a liter of juice and the moon was already rising.

"I don't really want to share this with them anymore," Temari wheezed on the floor. "They can make it on their own. We worked hard for this. We're drinking it all."

Gaara was exhausted. Temari went ahead and poured two glasses for them and Gaara sat up when the cup appeared in his vision.

He stared into it then looked up at Temari. She grinned and raised her plastic cup. He tapped it with his own and they gulped it down.

"Whoa!" Temari was up on her feet, energized. "This tastes amazing!"

"Now I know why people go through so much to drink it." Gaara licked his lips for any stray drops.

"We definitely have to share this with Kankuro and Suzume," Temari said. "But maybe we'll charge them for it."

"Let's forget the profit and just share."

Kankuro came to the greenhouse to sample the drink and as soon as he did, he achieved true euphoria. "I can now die without any regrets," he said in a dreamy voice.

"Where's Suzume?" Temari asked.

"She was taking a shower so I just told her to come down once she was finished," Kankuro said. "She seemed upset about something after she went out."

Temari's eyebrows knitted. "She went out? Where?"

"Don't know."

The click of the door.

"I'm here." Suzume had arrived. Temari noticed the dark cloud hovering above her sister and the dullness in her eyes. She looked defeated. "Why are we drinking juice in the greenhouse?"

"These two made it from cactus pears." Kankuro poured her a cup. "It's like ambrosia, jan."

"Really?"

Suzume was passing by the dormant cactus. A pulse ran through the shinobi's bodies and they whipped around to see the cactus' flowers blossoming. Their thin leaves unraveled and divided, the clean white petals spread and stretched until it was round and pert. The moonlight was bouncing off of them and shimmering around, the pollen were little pieces of light.

Suzume also saw the movement from her peripheral vision and looked to the side to see the flowers. "A night-blooming cereus. We're lucky. These only bloom once a year for a single night."

She noticed them stuck in a daze and gave them a questioning blink. "Are you guys okay?"

"Yeah. The cactus just spooked us," Temari said, quickly pulling up a smile.

"Here." Kankuro passed her the drink.

Suzume sipped it. Her face brightened and she gulped down the rest. "Can I have more?"

They gave her the whole bottle.

She shared it with them anyway.

_ _ _

Suzume was restless even after cleaning the entire house top to bottom. Temari and Kankuro invited her for a cup of coffee and Gaara asked if she wanted to join him in the greenhouse, she didn't feel up to either.

She felt jittery and uncomfortable, almost as if there was something she craved but didn't know what it was.

She finally decided to leave the house and wander the village. Saya popped up her head when she noticed her leaving and after a twitch of an ear, sank her head back down again to sleep.

Suzume was listening to the sand crackle underneath her shoes and making sure she was putting one foot in front of the other in a straight line pretending she was teetering on a tightrope when the air abruptly fell.

Her ears were congested and the heat was heavy. Everything was blurry. She couldn't discern one person's chakra from another anymore, it was all mixed messily together.

A scary thought hit her and she hurriedly checked if she still had her own chakra. After confirming it hadn't vanished as unexpectedly as it came, she relaxed.

Suzume spent a moment organizing her thoughts. What happened?

She took a step backwards and, like she was coming up for air in a pool of water, she could breathe again. Hesitantly, she went forward. Disoriented. Stuffy. Tight. At least compared to before.

Weird. This was too weird. She shook her head like it would chase away the haze. This was too weird, even for her.

She looked back at the Kazekage mansion and for once it was no longer welcoming, the red sign that read 'Wind' was eyeballing her.

Suzume ran around the estate and tested the areas where she was able to sense chakra clearly. She made a whole circuit around the place and returned to where she'd been.

A borderline?

She cautiously began to trace her tracks around the place, slower and steadier this time. What was the epicenter?

When a cloud of scarlet leaves started to come into view, Suzume stopped.

The maple.

Suzume let her body lead her away from the mansion. She tried and tried to put afterimages back together, to force the world into focus.

Why was she suddenly limited to a certain area? When she woke up in Konata's place, everything was clear, she could see.

It was dizzying. Her head pounding. Soon, she blocked the chakra out altogether.

Hungry for answers, she went to the archives and studied until it closed at seven. There was nothing, nothing at all similar to her predicament.

Suzume wanted to test one more thing before she went back home. She headed to the training areas and, after finding a vacant one, confirmed the constancy of her taijutsu skills. Nothing was out of place. For that she was grateful.

She left the area unaware of how slovenly she looked; drenched in sweat, covered in mud and dust, lost in thought.

On the pathway back to the mansion, the sound of chatter and laughter on an otherwise abandoned road returned her to what was in front of her. A group of sixth years caught sight of her as she caught sight of them. She saw them realize the difference right away since she wasn't repressing her chakra as she had been doing recently while in school.

Suzume felt tiny. All previous problems were forgotten and she shifted from one foot to the other. This was her chance. She steeled herself.

"I'm going to be in your class next week." Suzume smiled shyly. "And I was hoping we could have a truce?" She lifted her hand out for a shake. "I finally caught up with you, so, can we be friends?"

If it was possible, she saw their hatred for her intensify and her smile dropped. The boy with the scarf walked by and collided with her shoulder and his gang trailed after him.

Suzume's lips lifted up again and she bowed her head. A humorless laugh slipped out of her mouth and she clenched her outstretched hand into a fist to let it fall again to her side.

So that's their answer.