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__ A magical combination of fate and genes had granted Rock Lee with an amazingly beautiful, talented, charming, and above all else, forgiving daughter. Why, he’d barely finished repairing the living room, baking a new birthday cake entirely from scratch, writing apology letters to all her friends and their parents (some as many as three pages long), and was only half way through hand-delivering them when little Tokimi came running up to tell him it was alright; she didn’t blame him for ruining her birthday party. After crying with unfettered joy in the middle of the street, he allowed her to take him back home where he treated her and her older brother and sister to a special training session. (Neji would later say that Tokimi, being the only one of the three Rock children to get her mother’s brains and sense, had only forgiven Lee to get him to stop embarrassing her like that. Lee, however, refused to believe a word of this.) His wife on the other hand, as incomparably generous, caring, and skilled as she may be, was not about to let him get off that easy. “Sakura-san, I swear that I will never..." The bedroom door opened to gift him with a pillow to the face. “You drank sake, Lee! At your own daughter’s birthday party!” Lee pulled the pillow aside to grant him a full view of his wife. She stood in the doorway with short pink hair wild about her furious face and silk nightgown pulled taut across her bosom from the way her fist was drawn back in a threatening punch that could easily break his head open. Lee clutched at the pillow and fell in love all over again. “You know what sake does to you!” she continued, seeming to think better of hitting him and striking the wall instead. Thankfully gently enough not to break anything; once, shortly after they married, she’d lost her temper and spilt the wall all the way down to the foundation. She slammed the door closed again while he launched into another speech of heartfelt appeal. “I know and I cannot express my everlasting sorrow that I was so careless as to thoughtlessly ingest that drink that Naruto handed to me! To make up for it, I will climb to the highest building and beg forgiveness one-hundred – “ “Stop apologizing!” The portal into Lee and Sakura’s bedroom and the nest of comfort and delight found therein opened once more to emit an armful of blankets. When it closed, no more pleading, promises of amazing acts, or vows of devotion, would get it to open again. At least until tomorrow morning. //end.file
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