Hey hey hey! Hi, everyone! Alright, so, welcome to my newest Sakura pairing story! Yay!
This is gonna be a ShinoxSakura story. Uh-huh. I've been reading lots and lots of those, and I wanted to make mine own, because there seemed to be a considerable market for it. And the ShinoSaku pairing needs more love anyways. :) Enjoy the story!
DISCLAIMER:I do not happen to own any sexy Naruto characters, no. Why? Are you selling one?
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There was nothing like waking up four seconds before her alarm went off. Yeah. And then the alarm went off. Gods, she hated that sound. Scrambling for the stupid, green-numbered digital clock on her bedside stand, she wrapped her fingers around it and didn't pause to reflect on what she was doing before she threw the cold metal box straight into the wall. If she had been more awake, the alarm clock would have passed the wall, entered the hallway, and probably slammed into the bathroom where it definitely would have messed up the peeling wallpaper. Not that she would have been angry about that. That wallpaper… she needed to replace it one of these days.
Sakura laid her head back against her pillow and blearily rubbed her eyes. It was a medic-training day, meaning she would have to hop a few roofs over to the hospital before Tsunade went berserk and started throwing things (or much worse, people) around. There was nothing to do now but slowly rouse herself from the strong pull of more sleep, get dressed fast, and eat a quick breakfast along the way.
For a second, Sakura almost wished she was back at her parents' house and being yelled at to get up. Her own will-power was slightly less motivated to spring her out of bed and make her do a cartwheel, which Lee said he did every morning. But when she insisted she could now live on her own at age 15, her parents had reluctantly agreed to leave their only child in Konoha and return to their original home in a small town near the Gold Forest of Fire Country. Her father had retired from ninja duty in his early forties, and her mother had never been involved with the shinobi line of work. They sent her letters every week, to which she responded regularly. It had been a few months since she last saw them, and Sakura felt that it would be time soon to visit them again, or have them visit her. She missed them, but she wanted to live a more independent life. Most of the ninja in her year, excluding those who came from large clans, such as Shikamaru, Hinata and Shino, had already separated from their parents' households anyway. Who was she but to follow the trend?
It was getting late. She could sense that the sun's rays were going to seep through the thin curtains covering the windows any minute now. There was no more time for snuggling into her futon and wishing that time would stop so that she could get some more shut-eye. She'd just have to remember to go to sleep at a reasonable hour tonight, and not stay up until three in the morning reading that surprisingly very interesting report on the Aburame clan's kikaichu and how the bugs live inside the host body in intricate but unobtrusive tunnels. The text had been so fascinating to her that she contemplated asking the Aburame in her year, Shino, if she could perform simple surgery on him just so she could see the channels in a host body for herself. Unfortunately, or so she thought, the report had provided no pictures showing the kikaichu or how they lived in the host body.
Hugging the blankets swathing her and the small futon she lay on, Sakura rose from her bed and crossed to the dingy closet about three feet away. Really, for all the money she was paying to rent the apartment, she thought she should be entitled to more space! Maybe if she saved up a bit more she could buy a townhouse or something. Unlike Naruto, who had been living in his tiny apartment for years, she could actually manage money. That, however, didn't mean that she wouldn't refuse to pay for the ramen when they went out to eat together.
Quickly slipping out of her night clothes and into the trainee medic uniform, she turned to the full-length mirror and looked herself over. Oh gods, she hated this outfit. Other doctors and nurses and whoever else who knew what the clothes denoted could be so condescending. That, and they didn't trust her with a patient for a minute. Ugh.
"Just a few more months," Sakura quietly said aloud to the mirror, watching her lips shape the words as she spoke them. "Then we'll see who'll be fetching whose coffee."
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Getting to the hospital was never difficult. There were very few non-ninja citizens who complained about the shinobi using the rooftops of their apartments or houses for quick trips. The ones who did complain had their roofs painted a bright red color, courtesy of the council; people who Sakura had believed didn't have an ounce of humor before they ordered ninja to splash blood-red paint on the roofs of the homes of the citizens. The red color was supposed to warn shinobi away from jumping over those roofs, but Sakura believed there was an ulterior motive behind the shiny paint. If Konoha ever had another air strike, those mockingly bright roofs would be the first to go.
Running along the familiar rooftop path to the hospital, Sakura spied another nin a couple hundred yards away from her taking the same way. This was curious, as Sakura had never seen a fellow ninja going to the hospital at six o'clock in the morning in the same direction she took. The mysterious shinobi didn't seem to be carrying anyone or anything, and if he was injured or had an urgent message to deliver to the Godaime, he would not be running at the pace he was running.
Squinting at him didn't help her efforts to make out who he was. Mentally shrugging, Sakura decided that if he was heading towards the hospital she would find out soon enough, as her destination was coming up fast.
A few minutes later, she skirted to a stop on top of a squat tea shop and jumped smoothly to the ground. At about the same time as she was picking a fluff of cotton out of her hair, she heard a soft thump beside her and pivoted reflexively to see the ninja who had been following a similar rooftop path stand up from his dismount. Her eyebrows raised a little bit as she took in his appearance and found she recognized him. He turned to her, gave a small nod, then started walking to the entrance of the hospital.
Sakura hesitated for a second, then followed after Aburame Shino.
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Short enough for you? This is just the beginning! Review if you think the pairing ShinoSaku needs a little more TLC!