The Joy After

1. when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much(not really)...

A woman walks into her new home inside the walls of Konoha. It's small, but it's hers. The house is an old minka structure that has probably been here since the village was first built. She'll need to do some heavy repairs later, which explains the cheap price, which is nothing she can't handle herself. She remembers the days where her and her father would work on their tree house together at home.

There is a lot of space surrounding the small house with trees and different plants.

'Maybe I should get into gardening.' she thinks to herself as she carries the thin, four foot tall, pathetic looking tree into the back. She had picked up from a suspicious looking merchant man selling all sorts of weird plants. She swears one of them on display could eat a man whole. With her habit of buying suspicious items from suspicious sellers, she couldn't resist buying this twig of a tree when the merchant told her of its sentients.

Tenzen Emiko left her home, Iwagakure, to become Hira Hatsue and spy on Konohagakure. The Third Hokage and everyone else in the village she has met know her as an immigrant from some poor village to escape poverty, having saved up her whole life to live her dream here as a beautician. A kind lady had given 'Hatsue' a job at her salon after hearing about her harsh past.

Emiko isn't from any noteworthy Shinobi clan. Instead, her mother was a civilian and her father was a Jonin from a mostly civilian family. Despite this, her intelligence is one of the best in Iwa. Her strength is slightly above Jonin level but not impressive enough to become ANBU.

After a year of living in Konoha, Namikaze Minato steps up as Hokage. The people who know Hatsue have nothing but good things to say while Emiko secretly reports all the new information she has gathered to her partner who works as the transportation of the information collected. And most importantly, her tree has surprisingly grown fast, already with a thick trunk and branches full of leaves and white flowers reaching forty-five feet tall in her backyard, but no fruit. With how fast the tree has grown, it's a good thing the minka is isolated from other houses so no one can be suspicious of the sus tree.

The Tsuchikage has recently requested for Emiko to become closer to one Nara Shikaichi, the younger brother of Nara Shikaku. He wants as much information as possible so that he could send a team to kidnap the youngest of the Nara brothers. By doing so, Iwa can forcefully make him spill the secrets of their clans jutsus. One of the Tsuchikages plans that Emiko doesn't really agree with is forcing the Nara to produce children with select women of Iwagakure. But she complies with her leader anyway.

...

"-it was cute at first, but this has been going on for months! Shikaku and I are beginning to worry for his sanity," Yoshino sighs as the younger woman paints her nails. "He likes you, honey, and you like him back, don't you?"

Hatsue blushes faintly, "Of course I like him, but I'm just a civilian girl..." She places the polish brush back in its glass container as she checks for any imperfections. "Shikaichi deserves better than that, he's a greatly respected Shinobi and his brother is head of the Nara clan. He can do better than me."

The brunette huffs, "Don't talk nonsense! I've known you almost eight months and I think it's the other way around. Your way out of my brother-in-law's league!" The pregnant woman takes the lighter brunette's hand in hers.

"Ah- careful Yoshino-san! The paint hasn't dried fully!" Hatsue warns softly.

"Bahh! Getting my nails done was just an excuse to talk to you about Shikaichi's sad dating life."

"But my hard work... And I'm still getting paid, right?" The younger woman asks as she holds her hands under her chin with her fingers folded.