My name is Haruno Sakura, and I'm one of the last people in the world who should be recorded right now. You all want sensationalism and a story to make your readers gape, so you've come to me. It seems a decent enough story, right? After all, there are so many loopholes into what the public knows and what they don't know, and they want answers. I can understand that, having been looking for answers a good portion of my life, even to questions that don't concern me.
When I first heard you were going to interview me, I decided almost immediately to reject it. It's my private information, and if I chose, I could keep it hidden from all of you vultures forever. But then I realized that it wasn't my own choice to make. Everything that happened to me on that island may be important. Not now, perhaps, but later. And so I've rewritten my vows of silence to include this one crack, this one opening. Don't be so quick to thank me. You might regret you ever asked for my story once I've finished.
I'll speak, but only if you listen and believe me. It would be very annoying to have come this far and not have been believed, instead shanghaied off to the sidelines of insanity and traumatic stress victims.
So listen. And listen well.
The boat totters unsteadily in the waves, reminding her of a child's bath toy, bobbing and ducking over and over again. The repetition of the constant waves pounding against it would be enough to make any other person sick, but she holds steady, fists balling into her skirt, rippling the shimmering blue fabric and the moonlight falling onto it.
She isn't sure of why she's here, exactly. Only that her intentions were completely the opposite of this…..Thinking back, she regrets having even met with him tonight, even if her intentions were to end this chapter. Far better, she now knows, to give him cold turkey, the way he's always behaved with her, even after all this time. She's a slow learner in the emotional maintenance department, but after all, hindsight is twenty-twenty.
He stands in the front, rowing mechanically forward, his jet; stone-cold eyes set ever forward, away from her and towards the horizon, towards a future path only he is able to see. The wind pounding the hull of the boat's bare wooden bones stirs his hair, the hair that she's heard some call raven-colored, but she thinks magpie is more suitable. He reminds her more of a magpie than a raven in all aspects, a hoarder of precious things who cannot begin to understand their value. It's not even his fault. He's been born into the elite, raised for privilege and status until it too became meaningless. How is anything ever worth anything unless you have the chance to fight for it?
"Sasuke."
"What?"A harsh sound, exasperation ringing. That's right. She at first was wary of the boat, of its stability on water, of Sasuke's overall skills at piloting anything in general (God knows he's always had a chauffeur or something to cater to his transportation needs even now), until he began steadily becoming so irritated she was afraid he'd leave. That was how she'd ended up here. He can't leave her. She has to be the one to do the leaving tonight.
"I was just thinking…." She trails off, her words lost to the memories of last night, reliving and regurgitating the barely-digested remnants of the recent past.
The statement.
"Sakura, you're too good for that rich brat." Tenten, Sakura's university roommate, arranging her hair into two side buns, taking extreme care to make sure they match each other's volume through meticulous clumping and unclumping as she sees fit. She's a naturalist at heart, an undecided major who teaches martial arts to anyone who'll pay the low price of twenty yen a session, with a hatred of makeup, overall girlyness, and rom-coms especially. And yet, even careworn and huffing from her own workout regime and class, her cheeks high with color and her eyes glassy and shining like tigers-eye gems, she is beautiful. She is beautiful in the way a hurricane, a storm or a sunset is beautiful, not the way a girl or a woman would be pretty. A veritable force of nature on her own, which is why Sakura both envies and admires her.
" What?" Sakura looked up at her from between the pages of her pre-med textbook, margins dotted with scribblings and rude cartoons of body bits added in by some particularly perverted classmate in fading black ink. They bleed into the portraits of famed medics of the past on the next pages, give them flowering genitals on odd parts of their faces, places breasts on men.
"You heard me. He's a total rhymes-with-stick and all his feelings come from the crotch."
Sakura wants to burst out in defense. After all, this is the boy she's chased all through middle and high school, sent thousands of anonymous Valentines and blatantly obvious signals towards, his face stony and irate. Until that one day in her senior year, where he'd finally turned around and said "Yes." At least that was how she'd always remembered it. But now that Tenten's bringing it up, she can only remember "Why not?" Not "Yes". Not "You're pretty." Not even "You're cool." Just "Why not?"
"Oh, I see a girl over there. Why not screw with her for a bit? Might be fun for like, three weeks."
She winces inwardly at the sound of Sasuke in her imagination but calmly turns to Tenten, green eyes facing the golden brown with an equal determination.
"Why don't I help you get ready? After all, Neji'll be here in like, five minutes." She turns towards the white closet doors, the color of dried bones, a slight off-white that looms, tall and menacing, against the bare, red-painted walls of the dorm. Opening the door of bones, she rummages, fingers sorting through the left side, commandeered by Tenten's menagerie of athletic-wear and a few lonely-looking school-marmish blouses and skirts lurking the in far corner of the bone closet. They were sent by relatives Tenten has already rejected, never speaks of, who all have a last name Sakura's never heard.
"Dodging the subject!" Tenten continues burrowing through her hair for tangles, clumping and unclumping her side buns again and again, almost to the point where it becomes obsessive, a sort of hair-induced madness, tendrils flying all directions. "He's never treated you right, Sakura. He never calls, he's always busy…"She snorts. "Busy with that cheap slut Karin, that is."
Sakura stops rummaging there, her fingers lingering on the synthetic material of a red tank top, paused there as if frozen. She knows it's true. How many times has she smelled the rank scent of sandalwood on Sasuke, almost as if it secreted in his pores, pouring out through all the orifices on his skin, mocking her, mocking her, mocking her with the scent of Karin?
"Why do you care? She's a friend." His murmured excuses as he pushes her back , pushing just hard enough to force a gasp of pain from her lips as she catches herself. Why? Why had she ever…..
The resounding tolling of the doorbell.
Tenten, jerking away from the armoire, hair loose and falling round her shoulders, a brown splash of color, runs to the door. Her bare feet clumping at the last second into a pair of leather sandals, her towel tossed onto the bed in a swift abandonment , she yanks the door open to reveal the two figures, on cue, for the next act in tonight's play.
Neji, looking at Tenten with a sort of bemused adoration that Sakura wants to remember Sasuke ever looking at her with. And by his side, in another predictable ploy of Tenten's, a goofy-looking, googly-eyed man with a black bowl cut. Rock Lee, Tenten's childhood friend, and, if Tenten continues to try and force him and Sakura together, Sakura's least favorite person on this Earth.
"Hello, youthful Tenten!" Rock Lee, in his childlike manner, lunges forward and barrels into Tenten with a bear hug. If she were any other woman, Sakura would be worried, as a pre-med student and best friend, for her health, but Tenten's the one being who may be almost as hardy as Sakura, who rarely ever gets sick and whose bones never break, so Sakura merely stands by, waiting for her cue to exit, which, in these situations, never comes.
"And hello, Sakura!" Rock Lee turns those large eyes towards her in a sort of puppy-like devotion, practically wagging a nonexistent tail. Why, oh why she thinks again, does Tenten encourage his fantasies about me? I have a boyfriend! Then she realizes that they all must know, if Tenten knows, that Sasuke has never been even vaguely interested at all. Perhaps the curse of Lee exacerbated when he found out. He seems like the type, the type who can still believe in ruined fairy-tales, boy saves girl and they live happily ever after. It's adorable, and something in her heart wrenches just a little, and for an instant, she wonders, could I? No. She wouldn't subject someone else to only half-having. It's not fair, and she knows it.
"Oh, look at the time, Sakura! Maybe you should go with us! After all we cleaned out the fridge a couple days ago!" Tenten takes on the most obvious babbling tone, practically pushing Sakura towards the door next to her with that bubbly-champagne voice. Rock Lee's head is one step away from bobbing up and down yes, while Neji stands in the doorway, looking at her with a sympathetic glance, which only makes her shoot him a glare. Not a good time, Neji. Not a good time.
Sakura sighs and grabs the olive-colored shoulder bag hanging forlornly on the door. It's pointless to argue, because then Lee will begin his mumbling about youth and silently pleading for her to go. And that's just, frankly said, irritating.
One pointlessly long car ride in Neji's spotless, gleaming jeep (which Tenten constantly teases him about and attempts to dent in several new ways, quoting "Nothing can be perfect,Neji-chan!") through several tollbooths and they arrived at the familiar intersection on Konoha Highway. One sharp left executed with Rock-Lee-nearly-whooping-in-joy, they arrived at the diner.
Sakura has already been on all of these occasions, and therefore is bored sick of the diner's meager menu and poor service. Still, as her fork swims in the bowl in front of her, her eyes idly dart by Neji and Tenten, sitting in the booth in front of her and Lee.
Neji whispers something under his breath and is rewarded with a punch from Tenten, who comically sneers at Neji's pretense of gripping his arm and faux moaning. But their eyes betray them as much more than two friends as they lean in towards each other, Neji wrapping a stray arm around Tenten casually, as if it had simply draped round of its own accord. Tenten, unfaltering in what almost seemed a perfectly rehearsed scene, turned her face, blanketed by loose hair, tawny eyes looking straight into Neji's empty gray eyes.
Even as their lips meet, Sakura looks away, just before she remembers, she's done that before, with Sasuke. She shouldn't be embarrassed by it.
But somehow, she is.
"It's nothing! All the time! IT'S ALWAYS NOTHING!"
"Shut up, your voice will scare off the birds."
"OH, SO YOU PICK THE BIRDS TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT? WHAT ABOUT YOUR SIDE-WHORE?"
"That is none of your concern!"
Hush.
"She's better in bed anyway."
"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU JUST SAY?"
"Nothing."
"WELL, YOU CAN MOVE YOUR LITTLE SIDE-WHORE CENTER NOW! BECAUSE I'M DONE! I'M DONE UCHIHA, I'M DONE…."
Water springing, faster and faster, through cracks and crevices, slamming into her face and suddenly overturning her feet, turning and twisting them faster and faster upwards. The rising and falling shakes her stomach and the queasiness expands. Her head pounds and her fingers shake as she grabs onto the side, please, please please let this not be happening, not now. The boat overturns and salt water fills her lungs and nostrils, choking her as white froth is all she sees, spinning whiteness, overturning her body roughly, tearing off bits of her dress and slamming against her bare skin, but there is no air to jolt out and the froth fades….
Roughness, but a new sort, a still roughness underneath her, congealing in her hair, scratching at her skin. Experimentally, she moves a finger to find she still can, reaches out to feel the texture of the roughness. A grainy silt that she can feel come off onto her fingers, clinging there even as she attempts to shake it off, flinging her hands around in the blackness.
Eventually, she decides to open her eyes.
Sand has infiltrated her skin and clothes, turning a blue dress into a tawny coat, gathering in her skin in little brown clumps. Digging at it, she gradually pushes the sand coating off, freeing herself to what feels now like weightlessness, her tattered, sand-stained blue dress now only just short enough to cover everything important.
She takes a moment to survey the area around her. She's on the strip of wet sand near the water, feet swimming in a tiny, naturally-dug pool of water that slowly flows back into the now-calm sea. In the breaking dawn, she can make out a tiny shape of landmass floating on the horizon, close enough to see, but, Nature mocks her, too far away to get to without a boat.
The remnants of the one that brought her here are scattered as driftwood and bits of rope in different places in the sand, disassembled by the tide and pummeled into the sand, splintering apart, useless. The sea's little warning. She grunts with displeasure and then memory races back, forcing a gasp out of her as she looks around at the wrecked beach and strip of forest farther ahead.
She's alone.
"Sasuke?" It's almost a whisper, and then begins to grow louder as she scans the trees ahead for signs of movement.
"SASUKE!" She doesn't want to be alone, even if that means she has to find him. And there's no way she can go back without him, not when his friends knew she was with him, out on the boat….. She'd be the first suspect in their eyes, his friends in powerful places, no matter what argument she gives. It would destroy her career, everything she's worked so hard for. No more scholarship, no more sponsored research, no more, no more no more! Her hands shaking, she calls out for him again and again, dawn's light radiating harshly onto her sensitive skin as she screams over and over again.
Exhausted, her voice drops into hoarse whispers after the fiftieth yell or so, drifting and fading into dust in the air. She realizes the ache of her stomach's cravings for food and slumps over, knees coating themselves in sand once more, her head slumping downwards. It hurts. It hurts so much. Food. Where's food? When faced with her own pain, she temporarily forgets Sasuke.
A long-dead crab, rot penetrating into her nostrils, lays sun-dried in the sand. She makes a face at herself even as she grabs it, then, when she finally remembers herself, she flings the nasty thing away, watching the pink-grey flesh and exoskeleton soar in the air with satisfaction. Later, she wonders if she should have just done the deed when her belly again begins to reprimand.
When the ache stops, a sort of drowsiness remains as her eyelids long to meet in an embrace. She fights off the urge, staring into the sun until her eyes burn, is it noon now? She wonders, briefly, head slowly plunging downwards into her chest, eyelids finally meeting, body swaying backwards into the sand again….
She has no dreams.
Instead she relives the turning of the waves and struggles in the clutches of sand, twisting and rolling herself, hair turning brown, silt coating her lips.
And then, out of nothingness, a new force, competing with the imaginary sea, lifting her upper body and shaking , causing her head to bob forwards and backwards, up and down up and down on on on…..
Her eyes burst open and she gasps for breath as the force ceases, her head suddenly thrown back into her own control, shaky and unready. As she forcibly jerks it upward, she glances and sees the force.
A pair of weather-beaten hands, rising out of a dust-stained shirt that seems to echo some other time with its grim formality. They connect farther upwards to tan skin as her eyes travel upwards…
And meet with a pair of ink eyes that she remembers.
"Sasuke?" She wheezes silently, still not entirely sure if she's woken yet, drowsiness slowly creaking back into her consciousness.
The eyes widen and take on a sort of frenzied appearance. Her eyes finally focusing, the face that she sees outside those familiar eyes is unfamiliar. Too sun-darkened , too older-looking, with two stress lines too much to ever be Sasuke, with an open mouth and wide eyes that suggest a sort of fear. She's never seen Sasuke afraid.
"You're not Sasuke." She accuses, pointing her finger in an almost drunken half-awakeness at the not-Sasuke, wheezing through her own sleepiness.
"Get off." A harshness, an urgency.
"Wha…"
"Leave." The harshness expands and she can almost feel it pulsating in her own veins, driving a sort of dead fear into her bloodstream, pounding, pounding, pounding, fast, fast, faster….
"Leave this island. Leave now." A hand, waving towards the frothy whiteness of the sea, and a dot of land suddenly eons away in another time.
"LEAVE." And it echoes in the dullness of her mind, silencing her thoughts until all that's left is fear and dread, and a face smiling over a white ocean, the face of Sasuke and the not-Sasuke, superimposed in her brain.
My god, she whispers. Where am I?