#Naruhina book report

[peppercornpress]

Kimi no Tonari — by Butterfly Cafe (Mamu)… is a freakin’ Masterpiece.

This is my NaruHina book report that NOBODY asked for. But... I can't help myself. Link to BOOK. I just can’t keep quiet about this one!!

Summary:

The story takes place almost a decade after the fourth shinobi war where Naruto is in his late twenties and bemoaning single life. Naruto started to hang out around Team 8 several years before the start of the story… just coincidentally mingling with peers who are still single, and finds himself particularly drawn toward Hinata’s company. Except—This is an AU where Naruto flat-out dumps Hinata after the Pein-attack, and Hinata is haunted by his blunt words of rejection. To complicate matters, Naruto doesn’t remember ever rejecting her and is confused and frustrated whenever Hinata LOUDLY and REPEATEDLY friend-zones him.

Why I think this is a masterpiece:

A super simple premise that's executed perfectly. Best Friends to Lovers Trope (Idiots to lovers, more like). Mutual Pining.

Witty, snappy, and FUN dialogue. So many laugh-out-loud moments.

Artful use of flash-forwards gives the reader a peek into an upcoming scene that sets the tone for the chapter.

A slow-burn romance with WONDERFUL pacing!!!!

A really good fight!!!!! A well-earned, and well-overdue couples-fight!!! Naruto and Hinata spend way too much time together, so the big fight they have that changes their relationship in the middle of this story is EPIC. BRUTAL. INSANE. They both call each other out and say things that cut DEEP. And more importantly, the way they make up and talk things out felt really realistic. There are holes in their arguments, and they brush things under the rug a bit, highlighting how hard it is for friends to become lovers. It also sets them up for their last and final misunderstanding that ultimately leads to them finally talking things out and confessing toward each other. It makes their final scenes together so satisfying.

Hilarious OC characters that test the couple’s patience/relationship. (Hinata's goofy admirer? Naruto's bothersome fangirls? The flamboyant shopkeeper that sells sexy dresses? They're a riot! I loved them!!)

CHARACTER GROWTH!!! Rewarding character growth!!

TEAM 8 being FED UP with both Naruto and Hinata. Kiba was the real MVP of this story. Honestly, HE should be Hokage. HUMPH!!!

Throughout the story, Naruto keeps saying 'My place is by your side' to Hinata (Title of this book). In the beginning, it sounds platonic... especially since he says it to highlight what great friends they are. But the more Naruto says it, the more impactful and romantic it gets as their relationship changes over the course of the story.

The ending is beautiful. I know it must be really hard to end a slow-burn love story, but this one just sticks the landing.

Mamu's known for her other slow-burn BFFs-to-Lovers fic you can read on her Pixiv account for free, but this one is like... a more refined version of that story. The ending especially is what makes this fic shine~!!

Here’s Mamu’s PIXIV-available story that is similar to ‘Kimi no Tonari’… but it’s set right after Naruto get’s his prosthetic arm, so blank-period NaruHina. Bff to lovers.

[dayseternal-blog]

A NaruHina fanfic based off of shamy’s doujinshi posted May 31, 2019.  Please check out her 5-panel illustration!

Summary:  Naruto, a skilled theater technician, and Hinata, a breakout pianist and composer, smile at each other.

Rated: G

Read Chapter 1 here.

Chapter 2: Resting Face

Note: This chapter has been edited from its original Tumblr posting.

Hinata used to think she was just like everyone else.  When she was barely three, she was already taking piano lessons, much like all of her preschool friends.  Everyone took piano classes.  It was just as normal as taking a nap after lunch.  (Later she would come to learn that it’s only normal for rich kids to all take piano lessons).

She didn’t love it.  She didn’t hate it.  It was frustrating at times, but quitting never crossed her mind.  

When her friends started to quit piano lessons and take up other, more fashionable activities, like ballet and soccer, her family unexpectedly up and moved to a new country for her father’s job as a news reporter.  For life to go on as cohesively as possible, her father bought them a new piano, she was enrolled in private lessons again, and she diligently continued to play as she had before.

But life was far from familiar.  She didn’t understand what people were saying, she hardly understood what the school teacher wanted her to do, and everything--the food, the trees, the water, the tv shows--was different.

She clammed up.  She could go a whole day without hearing her own voice.

For awhile, the only thing she felt she could do successfully was play the piano.

So that’s all she did.  

She practiced a lot.  As soon as she came home from school, wrote random lettering on her reading homework, and carefully completed her math homework, she jumped on the piano bench to practice her lesson.  

But when she had done her scales and songs over and over and over and over and over...she had nothing else to do.  

Then one day, she got an old song from home stuck in her head.  It had been the popular tune that all of her friends used to sing at recess.  

She spent hours trying to figure out the correct notes on the piano.  And slowly but surely, she created a simple melody for it.

It became a hobby of hers.  Simple melodies on her right hand quickly developed into two-handed pieces.  A year later, around the time she turned nine, she started trying to add chords to her songs.

Her skill didn’t go unnoticed.  She advanced through her exercise books on her own, showing up to lessons over-prepared.  Her long hours of practice and play helped her to quickly learn several bars of music within one lesson, forcing her teacher to supply her with more difficult songs.

Then her piano teacher recommended her for a competition.  “She has such a good ear,” the teacher told her father.

Hinata didn’t really know what that meant, but she did know that she was so extremely nervous, she thought she was going to faint.  

Until she heard everyone else play.

She won easily in her age category.

Her father said he wasn’t surprised at all, with all the hours she practiced.  

That recognition alone from her busy, busy father encouraged her more than the trophy.  And at school, she was finally starting to understand what everyone was saying.  She began listening to the radio to learn local songs to play on the piano.  It developed her vocabulary and gave her a way to relate to her classmates.

By the time she entered Intermediate School, she could make friends, even if she was still shy.  Music became her key to social and personal success.  She would figure out how to play songs her friends requested.  Then she started trying to compose her own short pieces as gifts for her friends.

She was growing in confidence and identity.

Then they moved back to Fire Country.

It wasn’t nearly as difficult a move as the first time.  She at least knew the language, and they had gone on several trips over the years to visit relatives, so nothing was really unfamiliar.  Adjusting to the school culture took a little time, but she quickly figured things out.  Friends came much more easily since people were interested in her experience living abroad.

What she wasn’t expecting was...piano drama.  

She entered competitions, just as she had been before, and that’s when it started.  

The sudden appearance of a new “prodigy” amongst a group of piano students who had been competing against each other for years was startling, to say the least.  Her win was such an upset, she got interviewed for the newspaper.  Taking advantage of the attention, her school featured her with the symphonic orchestra as an accompanist at school concerts.  She was invited to play with the school’s choir, too.

Students at her school who were in the competition gave her ugly looks and talked bad about her behind her back.  They criticized her playing style, spread rumors that she wins due to her money, background, or her father’s name recognition, or said she was stuck-up.

She tried to talk less, dress plainly, speak politely, or ignore it.  They just called her socially awkward, weird.

She did competitions for another year, until she just...couldn’t.  

She didn’t want to do it anymore.  She was tired of the attention, the good and the bad.  

In her last year of high school, she asked her piano teacher to let her focus on composition, where her real passion lies.  Thankfully, her piano teacher was receptive.  Kurenai helped her record her songs and release them online for public download.  Her teacher used her connections to get Hinata’s profile some attention, and she became known as an artistic youth to keep an eye on.

Through college, she developed her composing skill.  She studied the other instruments, their key changes, and their unique qualities, and began composing chamber music, which opened up an entirely new range of sound she hadn’t had the chance to explore before.  With friends in her music major, they collaborated on and played original songs at student-run concerts.

It was fun and new, but she didn’t experience the same success as when she won competitions.  She knew focusing on technical composition wouldn’t be the same, but she had no way of rating herself against others.  Working beside so many other musical talents who excelled in their instruments, who planned on entering professional orchestras and had a straightforward path after college, gave her anxiety about her future as a pianist and composer.

So she decided to take a break.  To find her passion again.  To not associate piano with winning or losing.  

She studied abroad.  She traveled.  She saw new landscapes, heard new languages, ate new foods, and surrounded herself with new people, just as she had been when she first found sanctuary in music.  

She didn’t touch a piano unless she had a stroke of inspiration.  Sometimes it was a particularly gnarled tree she happened to pass on a bus ride, the sound of a person’s laughter in an outdoor market, or vibrant wall art on a building’s surface.  At other times, she felt the sounds develop over weeks, through repeated interactions with a classmate or watching the movement of customers in her favorite cafe.  Those were her favorites.  She would record it, upload it to her profile, and force herself to be too busy to check the number of hits.

When she finally returned home after her year abroad, she still didn’t want to check her profile’s notifications.  She was too busy anyway with her senior portfolio, which she decided to dedicate around her literal and figurative journey as an artist through her formative years.  She was proud of her work, albeit still nervous about her next steps.

Then Kurenai asked her to come over.  

She informed Hinata that she had been contacted about an opportunity to have her ex-student compose tracks for a dramatization of a popular teen romance novel.  According to the producer of the drama, Hinata’s music ‘carries a nostalgia for beauty, a youthful eye at the fragility of time and age.’

Well, it sounded a little pretentious for what Hinata had actually been trying to get at with her music.  But, she agreed just on the relief alone, understanding that she may never get a chance like this again, and that it would at least delay her worries for a while.

When the drama was released last year, it became the hit show of the season.  It garnered her profile attention, and requests began to come in for her sheet music.  Before she could really realize it, she found herself experiencing a type of success she hadn’t felt before.  

Other pianists were playing her songs!

Now she has young learners of the piano who write to her, calling themselves her “fans” who love her style, who eagerly await her new compositions, who would actually pay to see her perform.

And that’s how she’s found herself in this uncomfortable position.  

Holding her own concert.  

And despite the many times she’s been on stage, she’s never once had to interact with the tech crew.  They were just these mysterious entities who walked around the theatre looking all official and intimidating with their headsets, microphone pieces, and control panels.  

Well, she’s easily intimidated by strangers.  She knows that it’s likely due to her high school experience.  It doesn’t make being naturally anxious any easier.

“You must be Hinata Hyuga?”  A blond man who looks just about her age notices her standing awkwardly to the side.

She nods.  “Hello.”  Why does everything she say sound uncertain?

He closes his laptop and walks up to her.  “I’m Naruto.”  He holds out his hand, which she shakes, hoping her grip was firm enough to not feel wimpy.  “I’m going to be the point person for your concert.”

She nods again.

He grins at her then, for reasons quite unknown to her.  It’s a really nice smile, though, and she smiles a little in return.  “I’ll take you over to meet the rest of the crew?”

“Okay.  Thank you.”

“Yeah, of course!”

He and everyone else are a lot friendlier than she would have expected.  Less business-y.  Certainly a team.

She learns that it’s Naruto’s first time leading, apparently an effort by his seniors to build capacity within the crew.  The thought is somewhat comforting that she’s not the only one doing something new.

“Why you gotta tell her that!” he complains comically.  

His senior just laughs.  “There’s no need to worry.  Naruto’s good at his job, and we’ll all be there to support you.”

The camaraderie among the crew is palpable.  “Thank you..” she replies simply.

Naruto smiles brightly.

She decides that he really has a nice smile, and she can’t help thinking about it throughout their meeting.

After all, he smiles often.  He smiles so widely, his cheeks bunch up to his cerulean eyes.  She doesn’t know if she’s ever seen anyone smile as much as he does, which is saying a lot because she’s met many people.  She wonders if he does it on purpose.  He seems confident enough to know that he has a great smile, but he also seems just genuinely that cheerful.

And that smile of his makes her feel a little less worried about her concert.  If he’s not worried, then she needn’t worry, either, right?

So she focuses as best she can on her task.  Earlier, Kurenai explained that a solo concert is different from a school performance.  She has to keep the audience entertained on her own, that she’ll have the entire theatre all to herself.

It’s really the knowledge of Naruto’s cheer and encouraging smile that keep her from crumpling inward like an origami fan when she gets up on the stage.  She ends up standing there for too long, mentally hyping herself up, then calming herself down, then refocusing on the lighting situation.

Without fail, his smile greets her when she returns to him as the song finishes.  

When they’re halfway through designing the lighting for her setlist, he turns another shining grin at her.  “See?  This isn’t so confusing, is it?”

She nods in agreement.

“You seemed so worried earlier,” he chuckles.

“Oh, it’s just that it’s the first time I’m doing something like this, so…”  She turns away, tucking her hair behind her ear.  She didn’t realize her nervousness was so obvious to him.

“Hm, yeah, but you’ve won a ton of competitions before.  Concerts aren’t like competitions, right?  I don’t like working competitions.  I can literally feel everyone’s tension in the air.”  He holds his hands up in stress as if he’s holding something heavy.

She stares at him, realizing that this cute guy must have looked her up online beyond just her songs.  Her basic profile doesn’t talk about her past.  The thought automatically triggers her blush.

He goes on, “If you can handle that, then you’ll be fine this Saturday.  Concerts are fun!”

She nods through her embarrassment, understanding that he only did it for his work as her point person.  “Yes, I think it will be fun.”

“Yup!” he replies cheerfully.  “So don’t worry.  Me and the crew will all be there for you, too.  You’re not alone,” he repeats, an echo of his senior’s sentiments, but his words somehow sound even more sincere.

It dawns on her that he’s been trying to help her relax this whole time.  She bites her lips and turns a small smile at him.

Of course, he smiles back brightly.  “Alright, let’s talk about ‘Too Fast to Hide.’  You said it’s a very technical piece, so we could go a couple of different ways with this…”

A steady warmth of assurance wraps her up, and she relaxes more, happy to go along with his mood.  He definitely seems to have fun in his job, and she wants to enjoy this process as much as he is.

His enthusiasm makes it easy for her to forget her nervousness.  His charm makes it even easier.  She can’t help admiring his good nature, his happy demeanor, and by the end of their meeting, she somehow finds herself feeling incredibly prepared for her concert.  She can imagine the entire event, a miracle that’s all thanks to him.

She’s already wondering what little gifts would be acceptable for her to give to the tech crew members, especially for Naruto, to show her appreciation.  Saturday will come quickly, and it will likely be over just as quickly, which was something she was counting on...

But now she thinks she wouldn’t mind getting the chance to have another concert if she gets to meet and work with people like Naruto.  

She peeks at him beside her as she picks up her purse, to see him watching her...with his ‘resting smiling face.’  

What would he think if I told him he has a nice smile?

She imagines he’d just smile wider, and the thought makes her want to laugh.  She doesn’t, of course, since that would be rude, and he definitely doesn’t deserve that.  Not with how thoughtful he is, like inviting her to eat lunch with his team.

To which she maybe too easily agrees, but she thinks she wouldn’t mind spending more time with his team (and him).  

She can practically hear it, the way his expression brightens upon interrupting the other members’ work, how warm it is when he informs them that she’s coming, too.  The downtown foot traffic a lively accompaniment as they make their way past other historic buildings, finally arriving at a nearby food truck.  His sigh of absolute, dramatic relief when he opens his take-out.

And she knows what token of appreciation to give him when she gets home, sits down at her piano, and lets her inspiration run free through her fingers, the memory of him brightly filling the air around her.