"He loves me, he loves me not…he loves me, he loves me not," Everyday Sakura would faithfully repeat that ritual, seeing if her crush liked her. She was only eight when she started, ever since that day when Sasuke Uchiha rescued her from the group of bullies.
Flashback:
"Hey, mutt, why do you hide behind that hair?" Ami had asked her. "Same reason you hide behind all your makeup," Sakura replied, and picked up the books that had fallen when they tripped her.
"Well, look at who's talking! Your forehead is as big as a billboard!" another girl laughed. "Learn your place," Ami said as she was about to kick Sakura very hard in the back of her neck. Suddenly, her foot was stopped by somebody's hand.
"Eh? Why you--oh! It's you, Sasuke-kun! You look really handsome today!" Ami gushed. Sakura just looked at her rescuer while he glared at them. "Go pick on someone your own level. That shows that you are all whores," he said, and helped Sakura up. "Next time, don't let someone that low get to you," he said, and saw a teenage boy turning around the corner.
"Oh, I have to go…that's nii-san waiting for me," the boy said, and rushed away. "Sasuke…and from the crest on his shirt, he's an Uchiha…Sasuke Uchiha…that's a cool name…" she mused quietly to herself while she too got up and left.
Sakura looked at what used to be a daffodil and sighed. It always ended up as he loves me not.
Every day, after she met Sasuke, she would go to the Yamanaka Flower Shop and buy herself a daffodil. Instead of training first, she would sit on her windowsill, slowly taking away the petals one by one to always get the same depressing answer.
Her jutsu went from slightly above average to just average, and her social life suffered as well. Sasuke, on the other hand, had frozen up and shut everyone he knew out of his life. The adults keep saying that he was the only Uchiha left and that his parents were killed, but she saw that the boy didn't want to be reminded over and over again.
As time passed, Sakura had to hide her true feelings underneath a fake, plastic mask of her being a Sasuke fangirl. However, she still faithfully plucked a daffodil up and did the little ritual.
Sasuke, though, was oblivious and never noticed the poor girl and her quiet, shy talk of he loves me, he loves me not. This continued for as long as anyone could remember. Ino took notice as well, and Daffodil Girl was a secret name the Sasuke Fanclub called her when she was around.
"Hey, look! It's Daffodil Girl!" One anonymous girl chimed. "Come on, girls, let's get her! No Sasuke to save her now, huh?" Ino replied, and every time, it ended in Sakura getting hurt and limping home in tears with that single daffodil.
Team 7 was formed, but Sakura still kept on that mask of hers. On missions, she would bring enough daffodils to last, and Sasuke couldn't help but notice that. However, both of them kept their distance since they knew it was better not to ask.
Occasionally, Sakura's poorly constructed plastic mask would slip, and her true emotions would show, as with her daffodil ritual, which was changed to every two days.
After all the chaos of the Chunin Exams, she had started to only do the daffodil ritual every week. The words, he loves me, he loves me not were becoming rarer and rarer, and Sakura, predicting the future, knew that once the words had disappeared altogether her mask would crack and fall.
She would be vulnerable once more. The Chunin Exams kept all of them busy, though, so no one noticed the slowly weakening Sakura.
That faithful day…Sasuke had left Konoha. Before he left, Sakura tried everything that she could to stop him from doing so, but he insisted and had even knocked her out.
After he went into his pocket for an extra kunai, though, he found this single, wilted daffodil. Its petals were already crumbled and the stem was dry and brittle, but it was still hanging in there. No one questioned him when he put it into a vase filled with medical fertilizer and water, since there was nothing to ask. His actions answered it all.
Sakura, back in Konoha, was so bent on training that she had forgotten about the whole daffodil issue. He loves me, he loves me not were a thing of the past, and the present just wasn't that innocent and simple.
The phrase had collected dust, was burnt to ashes, and finally the ashes were blown away after Sakura realized that Sasuke was truly never coming back until his goals are fulfilled. The emptiness was filled in with all the missions and near-death experiences that kept Sakura busy. Besides, that huge, gaping hole in her heart where Sasuke had taken a piece of it was still bleeding, and the only way to stop it was to pretend it wasn't there.
"Sasuke…..kun…." Sakura was speechless the day Team 7 had finally tracked down where he was. Naruto had also arrived, and Sasuke leapt to the ground with one hand on his waist while the other was holding a sword.
While he was talking to Naruto, Sasuke quickly tossed something to Sakura. Without a word, he left, with no explanation on why or what the package was. She opened it up, and a hand flew to cover her mouth. It was a single daffodil, one that strangely resembled the one that she had quietly slipped into his pocket all those years ago. However, it was still fresh and new, looking just as when she had plucked it from the flowerbed.
"Augh….why did he have to do this?! Why did he not only keep the flower but actually kept it alive for all this time?!" Sakura's wound in her heart was unknowingly ripped open again, and this was the only wound that Sakura had not yet learned how to heal.
After all, that was the only wound that can only be healed by others. Musing silently to herself, Sakura put the daffodil inside a vase and inserted a nutrition and medical fertilizer tube into the stem.
"Clearly she can't go on this mission, dattebayo!" Naruto had tried to help her, and wanted her to stay back when they were going on another Sasuke expedition. She herself refused, and even knowing that she would be in excruciating pain when he tears open that heart wound again, she gritted her teeth and agreed to go.
The mission was a plotz, though, and Sakura came home with a bleeding and heavy heart. Bored and depressed out of her mind, she went outside and plucked a daffodil out of the flowerbed. \
He loves me, he loves me not. He loves me, he loves me not…
After killing off the whole flowerbed, the same, disappointing answer came to her like all those times before: He loves you not. "He loves me not…big surprise," she mumbled, but inwardly she still cringed slightly after the answer.
Sasuke was just about ready to go attack Konoha when he heard these footsteps outside of the headquarters.
"Teme! We've come to take you home, tebayo!" Naruto's loud voice burst into his hallway. Sasuke smirked and took out his sword silently. "Perfect…the future Rokudaime himself. I couldn't have been more on time myself." However, the next voice he heard made him nearly lose his balance on the rock he was perched on.
"Sasuke…I have your daffodil…I think you might want it back." He slid the sword away slowly, and he hopped off that rock. As the rescue team approached, something about that daffodil made him stay put and let them bind him to chains and suppress his tenketsu.
"Sasuke-kun, I think you might want this," Sakura handed him the daffodil. The words that led her to this still rang in her head like a million bells, and it repeated the same message over and over again:
He loves me, he loves me not. He loves me, he loves me not.
A few months after they had taken Sasuke back to Konoha and he was outside alone in his old residence after his trial, he was still clutching that flower. When he thought he was safe, he sat down on that old pier next to the lake and started to peel the years-old petals away from the center.
"She loves me, she loves me not. She loves me, she loves me not," he quietly repeated, while Sakura, who was standing in the background, stepped out to ask him who that 'she' was. He spun around, stunned.
"Well, who is she?" Sakura asked, and sat down next to him on the pier. Sasuke mumbled some incoherent name under his breath and looked away, slightly blushing. "Come on, tell me. We've been on the same team for years and it's just been renewed. So, who is this girl?" Sakura pressed on, still eager to know and slightly sad since she herself still secretly loved him.
Sasuke refused to reply, so Sakura sighed and stood up. "Well, whatever floats your boat. See you around." She walked slowly off the Uchiha property and plucked a random flower from the ground, which happened to be a daffodil, and sat down, heartbroken and disappointed. Her little ritual that survived through the years since that very first encounter started up again.
He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not—
All of a sudden, another voice joins in with her.
"He loves you."
Sakura gasped and spun around, stupefied, for Sasuke had noiselessly followed her and had saw her. Sakura pouted, and retorted, "Hmph. You don't even know who 'he' is. He might even be Naruto, for Kami-sama's sakes! How can you be so sure he loves me?"
Sasuke smirked, and Sakura noticed that his eyes were spinning red and had neutron-like markings in them. "You can read minds now, too, huh?" Sakura's eyes softened and she sat back down, but wondered aloud, "If 'he' loves me so much, why does the flower always say he loves you not?"
Sasuke just smirked wider and held up the fallen petals in his hand. "As an answer to that question, all daffodils have the same number of petals. Of course the result would be the same."