Yeah... you guys are going to hate me for writing this.
Okay, so this one is written a little bit strangely. I just typed down the first thing that entered my head when I created this, so all grammatical "mistakes" are really intentional. I packed some (but not all) of the weirdest shit I could think of in here. There are a truckload of sentence fragments and run-on sentences, so if you are a grammar god who does not tolerate the transgressions of mere mortals such as myself, please do not read this. Oh yeah, if you also hate reading stories written in the present tense, also leave (though it does revert to past tense a little later in the story).
Here and There
In the sunlight, they dance, are dancing.
But in the city, they walk, and keep walking. Eyes down to their feet, scanning the cracks in the sidewalk, ignoring any and all spots of dried up chewing gum.
It is a large mass of gray and black business suits. About five hundred thousand people walk down this busy street daily. Each person must meet at least a thousand others in one single length, and each of those one thousand meet one thousand others, but they never know even one person out a million people they may chance to encounter during their lives.
Look at him! Standing by himself, next to the street vendors' carts. He just bought a small snack and unobtrusively consumes it in the shade of a withered oak tree. Actually, he is sitting now.
Anyone walking by can just overlook him, add him to the countless thousands of the same new faces in their memory. There will be no negative repercussions in doing that.
But what if… what if there was an exception made? To add this one man into the special, limited storage of intimacy that human brains are capable of making? There is nothing special about him, he looks, walks, and talks just like every other person.
Every other person….
…this one's name was Sasuke.
His days were all the same. Look down one end of the street, look down the other end of the street, watch out for cars, watch out for birds, watch out for something to eat.
Then get on the subway, take it all the way downtown, get off, and make a right at the first street he sees. To his left there will be a large building, where he sits down and works all day, answering the phone, talking to people he may never meet in a lifetime.
He feels so expanded.
Like his hands can cover one half of the entire earth if he ever spread his fingers. His index finger would land on Paris, his pinky on Los Angeles.
They are his only friends, his clients are. Those he gets to rub shoulders with every day simply have no time to interrupt their very important work.
But he has all the time in the world to talk to strangers. The housewife from Italy, the businessman from China; they are all able to spend a while to talk to Sasuke.
Can Sasuke say that he is dissatisfied with his lot in life?
No, not particularly. He believes that he is relatively content. All day, he tells himself that he does not wish for much.
All day, he tells himself that until he gets on the subway home.
The usual mob is at the station platform, ready to bloat the trains that will take them where they want to go. Every day, ever since that one Friday a year ago, he times his placement in line so that he will get on that train.
In that train, he sees it. Above the forest of hats and hair, plumes and plums.
Pink.
Pink Hair.
It just fascinates him. How can anyone's hair be like that? Be so pink?
He remembered when he first saw that hair, on that one Friday a year ago. He had gotten on the train as he usually did, but next to him was a woman. That woman, with pink hair, head lolling wearily on the back of her seat, leaving her uniform disheveled.
It was her hair. Her hair, her hair, that hair! What is it doing atop her head?
A hissing sound, the doors are opening, and he snaps out of his reflection. The pink-haired lady is getting up to walk out.
He sees her going, but he doesn't want her to leave. Not now, not yet. He just wants to see a little more of that hair….
His hand closes around her wrist.
"Stay here," he murmurs as he is jostled by the tide of people getting off of the train.
She looks around. There is no surprise in her eyes or face; there is no fear.
Just...
"It's you."
She doesn't listen to him and gets off anyways.
"Come with me," she says.
They do not walk, they do not run, but they glide up the escalators and down the sidewalks; they glide slowly, for she is tired from working all day. Not very tired, but just tired enough.
Down the street.
Across the alley, taking a right, then a left, scattering its scrawny feline inhabitants in a medley of screeching and trash can hullabaloo.
One gleaming white door stands mournfully guarding the threshold to a stack of faded, fading tenements. In goes a key, and out it swings with a shuddering sigh.
A tawdry curtain, a moth-eaten rug, rickety tables and chairs, and a wooden bed. He doesn't see any of that once he enters the room.
He can only see her, her pink hair. The pink hair that frames her green eyes. Her green eyes set delicately above her pale cheeks. Her pale cheeks that surround her small nose. Her small nose that sits above her soft mouth.
"I've been waiting for you," she says, and he says nothing.
She takes a kettle off of the stove and pours a little of its contents into a cup.
"Have some tea," she offers, and he takes nothing.
She goes into her room and changes into her comfortable clothes. When she comes back out, she rests on her large, overstuffed couch and pats a space next to her.
"Sit next to me," she says, and he sits next to her. In such close quarters, he can feel the smoothness of her skin through the fabric of her shirt.
On and on, they sat next to each other; on and on into the night, and into next morning.
When they both awoke, they were no longer on her bed. They awoke and saw nothing around them except white, glowing space. There was no floor. There were no walls, and there were no ceilings. It was just the two of them, floating in empty space that went on and on forever.
She was already standing, ready and dressed.
Five minutes later, he put on his own clothes and joined her.
"Let's go," she said.
"Where to?" he looked around him, there was no place visible to go to.
"Down there, there's always something around the corner," she pointed away, towards a large black square.
They went through the square, and found themselves in a large, empty forest.
The trees were unlike any trees ever seen before. They were all completely transparent. The only way anyone could know that they were even there was by seeing the dappled shadows fall on their invisible branches. They bore no fruit either, but clusters of everything.
A crib, a rocking horse, a book, a cake, a key; those were the kinds of things that could be found in the forest.
As soon as Sasuke and the woman entered, the cribs, the rocking horses, and the books all fell from their perches and into the dirt, where they immediately exploded into dust.
The cakes and the keys still let themselves hang, however. Reaching out, she plucked the cake from its branch…
Church bells were ringing, and applause was emanating from unknown sources. Cheers and whistles floated through the air, expelled out of nonexistent mouths and throats. Sasuke looked down at himself, he was in a nice suit. A very nice suit; the kind of suit that was only meant to be worn once in a lifetime. He looked around again. They were someplace else this time, but instead of staring again at empty space, they were instead in a large, white room, marked by only one long, red carpet running across the floor and a small, white table bearing the cake Sakura had plucked from the tree. Again, he could hear cheering.
"Attaboy Sasuke!"
"I'm so proud of you, Sakura!"
"Have a great rest of your lives, you two!"
"Toss the boquet!"
To his left, the woman was standing. Sakura, was it?
She was wearing something special too, just as special as his special suit. It was a white, white gown. So white, she nearly blended in with the walls.
They said nothing, but they leaned into each other. Their arms ran all over the other's back.
The invisible crowd sighed.
"Aww…."
"How sweet."
"I just knew those two were meant to be!"
"They'll go like this forever!"
A pair of large wooden doors materialized in each of the walls. Four pairs of doors, each leading to a different place.
Sakura, the pink-haired woman, sat down at the table instead.
"Will you eat with me, Sasuke?" she asked.
"Yes, of course, Sakura," he answered.
The cake was large, or it looked large. Large enough to feed an entire crowd.
Still, once Sakura ate her slice, it seemed as if half of the cake had disappeared. When Sasuke had finished his, there was nothing edible left on the plate.
Instead, two small rings stared at them, glinting dully. She took one and he took one.
Instantly, the four pairs of doors swung open at the same time, releasing a burst of air into their room. The gust didn't touch them, however, for their clothes stayed on their persons as neatly as ever and their hair lay flat on their heads.
On their rings were these four small words:
"Go With Each Other."
She went left, so he went left. Through the leftmost door, they both took a few steps.
The sound of water falling from the ceiling was everywhere. All around them, steady plinks and plunks echoed throughout the dark chamber, but they couldn't feel the damp or see anything at all.
They took some more steps.
It wasn't the sound of falling water at all. It was someone crying. A lamp flared up.
There was water after all. It was a river, or a stream. Floating in it was a long, glossily painted boat moored to a rickety wooden dock. There was a sign on the dock that read "Look for the World's Happiest Man." Under the sign stood a crying man. Tears came out of his eyes so fast and so hard that they nearly formed streams of water running off of his cheeks.
They approached the man.
"Are you the world's happiest man?" Sakura asked.
"Yes, lady, I am happier than all other men in the world, even in the universe," he said through his tears.
"Why must you cry, then?"
"I cry because I know so many things that are wonderful and beautiful, but also many things that are horrible and ugly. Other people who think that they are happier than I am insist that I forget those horrible and ugly things, but they don't understand that it is because of all of the terrible things in this world that I am able to appreciate all that is wonderful and beautiful that I see and find. It is how I am, how I live now, and I cry whenever I see how truly wonderfully it all works out. These days, I tend to see that all the time, and so that is why you see me shedding my tears now."
"How can we be as happy as you are?" Sasuke asked.
The Happiest Man in the World pointed to the boat that was moored at the dock.
"Ride the boat down this stream, and take it all the way down to the end. It is an easy enough ride, but there is only one special condition: You may never look only forward, and you may never look only backward. To each side is where you must face, so that you may see a little ways in front of you and a little ways behind you."
They stepped into the boat together, Sasuke and Sakura, and left off, sitting back-to-back with each other. Sasuke stared towards the left side of the boat, Sakura stared towards the right, both never looking entirely forwards or entirely backwards.
First, the ducks passed, and then the ducklings. It was a whole family of them swimming down the opposite direction the boat was traveling.
Then there were the walls. The walls covered with long strips of blank, white paper. Whenever they passed, a breeze would lift up these strips, revealing a picture underneath.
And all kinds of pictures too:
Two blankets, they looked just like the blankets from Sakura's bed, fluttered in the wind. Once they both looked at them, however, they burst into flames. The ashes fell into the water, where the lay sizzling and sputtering.
Then, right after that was a table filled with all sorts of sumptuous fare. Steaming fish, crisp vegetables, anything that could stir the gut into excitement.
From the table burst forth two birds. Two small, noisy birds that dove down on the boat and plucked the rings from both Sakura's and Sasuke's fingers. Screeching and twittering, they flew circles around their heads while the owners of the rings tried vainly to grasp them back. Whenever he or she felt as if those rings were back in their grasp, the birds just flitted away, too quick for a human hand to follow.
The longer they chased those birds, the more tired they became. The more tired they became, the more numb their backs felt, until they could hardly detect each others' presence at all. They were sitting back-to-back, but they couldn't feel the other's back anymore.
The birds kept growing, and their voices grew with their bodies. Soon, the entire river was ringing with the cacophony of screaming birds as they flew ever-tighter circles around Sakura and Sasuke.
Then they passed a buoy. It wasn't like any other buoy. It was painted white and black, and on a small pole, a large black flag wove languidly.
As soon as they passed it, the birds vanished. The rings they were carrying, with a few musical tinkles, fell back into the boat. They put them back on.
There was a slight bump; the boat had made landfall on some unknown shore. All around them was a strange, misty light.
On the bank, the invisible crowd had gathered, but instead of their enthusiastic cheers from earlier, a mass of hushed sympathies fell upon their ears this time.
"Oh… how sad. I know that everyone grows older, but it's always so bad to know that she has to grow older as well."
"I agree. No one today will look at him or her and ever imagine what they were like as younger people."
Sakura and Sasuke looked at each other. At once, the invisible crowd was silenced. There was nothing different about Sakura, there was nothing different about Sasuke. They both looked exactly the same as they did when they first got on the boat.
"You were always by my side, weren't you?" they asked each other.
"Yes," they both answered. Then they added,
"though it was hard to feel you for a while there, I always was with you."
A bright, intense beam of light shot out of nowhere and alighted on a small stone bench.
Sasuke turned to Sakura.
"Come with me," he said.
She went with him.
He sat down on the bench and patted an empty spot next to him.
"Sit with me," he said.
She sat with him.
They smiled at each other. They smiled because they saw each other, and because they were sitting on the bench together. They smiled because they were so happy.
And so they cried.
On and on, they smiled and cried, and on and on, into eternity.
Fukushima Junzo was angry.
"Where the hell is Sasuke?!" he roared. It wasn't like him to miss three days of work in a row without calling in with an excuse. He loved his job, Junzo could tell that.
Things had gone on long enough. The company just couldn't function properly without one of their higher-ranking employees. Sasuke would have to get the sack.
Of course, the first thing to do would be to call the former employee and notify him of his permanent demotion.
The phone rang for a few minutes before Sasuke's polite voice came over the receiver.
"Hello, you have reached Uchiha Sasuke's number. I am sorry, but I am not in right now. If you leave your name and number, I will be sure to call you back right away. Thank you, and have a nice day."
"Sasuke!" Junzo raged, "where the hell have you been? Profits are down by an unforgivable five percent, and you're not here to sort out the mess in Distributions. As of today, you are Fired! Get your lazy ass down here, collect your crap, and high-tail it out of my building, before I lose another shipment to your inefficiency."
The employment manager, who happened to be nearby as Junzo was shouting, poked his head through the office door.
"Excuse me, Junzo-sama, but were you just yelling for Uchiha Sasuke?"
"Yeah. Damn son-of-a-bitch won't answer any of my calls or my emails."
"That's because he's dead, sir."
Junzo spluttered a little.
"W-what!?"
The manager nodded gravely.
"Yes sir, he's dead. Didn't anyone in the labor management department tell you?"
"No! I didn't hear a single thing about Sasuke's death. If you guys knew he was dead, then how come you haven't replaced him yet?"
"Well, we're getting onto that, it's just that not many people have the motivation or the skills to fill that post now."
"How did he die, anyways? He was as young as young could be!"
The employment manager scratched his head.
"That's a curious thing to say, Junzo-sama."
"Why?"
"Sasuke was found dead three days ago, in some other woman's apartment. According to the landlord, her name was Haruno Sakura."
"So? What's this got to do about what we're talking about?"
"Well, when the police found them, they were both in her bed, but you wouldn't believe that that was Sasuke lying with her. He looked as if he had died at the age of eighty, or even older than that."
"Huh?"
"I don't know, Junzo-sama, it's hard to explain. Sasuke was found dead, not as a dead twenty-three-year-old man, but more like an eighty or eighty-five-year-old man."
"How…?!"
"Exactly, sir, that is the question that is stumping everyone right now. How did they grow so old so quickly? Right now, as neither of them have immediate or any family at all, the Konoha University is taking their bodies in for examination, to see if this process can be replicated in any way or even reversed."
Junzo's eyebrows arched.
"Hmm, a sort of Fountain-of-Youth elixir?"
"Yes sir, exactly."
He grabbed his pen and a pad of paper. A fire burned in his eyes; a bright, ambitious fire.
"Well, what are you waiting for!? Get my secretary to call the Konoha University right away. I can smell a fresh new business deal just around the corner. Go, go! We can't afford to waste any more time!"
With a swift bow, the employment manager left the room.
And outside, a small breeze started shaking the petals off of the Sakura blossoms that bloomed outside of Junzo's window. They were a few weeks early.