Hello, hello! The following fanfiction is an attempt at a multi-chap, because I've never actually completed (or seriously attempted to complete) one and I'd really like to. This is a slow-building SasuSaku, and the chapters will be short but frequent. Not every chapter will feature romance; I want to be able to focus on Sakura's character development in relation to those besides her True Love as well.

With that said, I sincerely hope you and I both enjoy this story!

Disclaimer: Not mine


My hands reek like the inside of a Happy Meal, all beefy and chock-full of vague chemicals you know are capable of giving you a heart attack some time before you're fifty. I'm worried working at this dingy burger joint will make me smell like this forever; the stench of frying oil already lingers in my clothes and hair even after I get off work and go home and shower and do a load of laundry. Now, huddled in the back room during my measly fifteen minutes of break, I lift my hands to my face and inhale, really sniff at them – air rushes up my nostrils and tickles the back of my brain and I'm pretty sure I just swallowed the snot that's been bothering me for the last hour of work.

Yep, and yep. I literally washed my hands five minutes ago, soaped my arms up to the elbows and scrubbed through two renditions of the Happy Birthday Song (I go above and beyond the call of duty, baby) but they still smell stubbornly of burger and I swear, by now the essence of sizzling beef patty has soaked into my pores and, well, let's just say that if I were camping up in the mountains right now, I'd never be heard from again.

Because I'd be dead.

From being eaten.

Yes.

I'm still sniffing at myself when I clock back in and I'm rather sure I'll give myself a heart attack from all the cholesterol-stench oozing from my…everything.

And that's when I stop letting such matters clutter my mind, because my manager marches up to me at the register and frowns disapprovingly at me. I'm clutching at one of my sleeves and pulling it to my face, in the middle of checking for before-mentioned lingering stench, but I stop this quick-like when I notice him.

He scratches at his receding hairline and clears his throat thoroughly before jumping right into ruining my weekend.

"Sakura, I'm going out of town unexpectedly this weekend. I'm going to need you to cover two of my shifts – all day Saturday and closing on Sunday. Are you available then?"

I tap the toe of one work shoe worriedly against the tiled floor. "Well, yes, but -"

"Good. I'll add them to your schedule in the back." He nods sharply down at me, turns, and marches away.

My heart's sharing the same breathing space as my kidneys and guts, is how I feel right now.

I hate it when old stony-face Michaelson pulls rank on me and pretends I don't have other, more important things to do than serve up burgers all day, like studying for the MCATs, or starting on that Comp. Lit. paper I've due in two weeks (okay, so that's all work anyway. But I want to be a doctor – I'm going to publish in some journals and treat some patients, and if I come across the cure to cancer along the way, well, that's fine too. I have no plans to work here any longer than necessary – I've just gotta earn enough money for rent); besides all that, it really seems like I'm literally the only employee Michaelson does this to.

The checkered red and white tiles lining the joint, the neon green of the EXIT sign – everything looks grey and dull and dead now.

One of the cooks, Tenten (a sweet gal, really, in her early twenties like me, and I know I'd be fast friends with her if I ever had the energy to socialize here) catches my eye and winces sympathetically at me. In response, I bury my face in my hands and sigh in frustration.

I smell like cow and everything sucks.