"Sakura!" Yelled an agitated voice from behind me.
I turned around and saw my boss and mother figure, Tsunade. She was a tall and relatively intimidating blond woman, but after spending most of your life with her as an adopted daughter you kind of get used to it.
"Sakura! I thought I told you an hour ago, to go home! This time I want you to follow through! Or else I'll send Shizune to follow you home, again!"
"But, Tsunade-"
"No buts!"
"I-"
"No interruptions! You cannot be working in this hospital 24/7! I can't have you denying yourself needs just so you can keep busy to avoid socializing or not having to go home to your single apartment. You know you can always live with Shizune and I, but you need to get out more!"
"But Tsunade, people need me here! Anyway it isn't that I don't want to live with you guys, it's more so Ino's insistency on making sure I have a boyfriend. I don't like the idea that she keeps on trying to set me up on dates with men who are absolute strangers! I also think it's a priority to get accustomed to my new promotion, I mean I should get used to the feel of the new responsibilities that I have now."
"Sakura… I know that, but unlike a few days ago, when we needed all the nurses we could have because of that massive accident, now most of the patients have stabilized or have been released, and so you can afford to take a break from your new position."
I knew Tsunade was right, all the patients had stabilized and I probably needed a nap- strike that, a good night's rest which would easily compare to a comatose state, but I felt the urgent need to be with the patients who I knew needed me. Anyway I wanted to get used to the new responsibilities that came with me recent promotion.
"But Tsunade-"
"Sakura I already know what you're going to insist on, you want to get used to your new position, well that worked yesterday, but not today. All your papers are complete, all your patients are stabilized, and you were just checking up on them for the fifth time today. You have nothing keeping you here, and all the right reasons to head home and take a vacation for the next few days; it's only your worries. So Sakura don't worry, we have more than enough nurses to take care of your patients while you are gone and Shizune and I will be there in an instant if you need anything." She finished, knowing she had won the argument.
"Fine…" I sighed in defeat. "I'll be going now." I probably did need a break from all the constant work, but it wasn't as if I hated my job, in fact it was blatantly obvious that I loved it. (Others prefer to use the term obsessed, but I don't see where they got that from.)
I headed off through the hallways of the hospital, checked out, and headed down to the first floor and across the street to where the parking garage was located. I walked up several sets of stairs to the third floor and looking for my humble little silver car. As I pulled out of the parking lot, I checked my cell phone before I got onto the main road. I saw I had missed 3 calls, two from Ino, which I immediately deleted, seeing that they where probably more proposals that I get a boyfriend or go on a blind date she would love to set up.
The last one though, was an unfamiliar number I had never seen before, so I called my voice mail to listen to it, since it had been forwarded from my home phone (I never spend much time around my apartment seeing how I'm an aspiring workaholic.)
"Hello Ms. Haruno, I am sorry to say that I have called to make you aware your great-grandfather has recently died. Seeing as you couldn't be notified to attend the funeral for the reading of the will, I, as his appointed assistant, have been assigned the task of reading his will and last testament to you. I will be visiting your home at 1:30 p.m. tomorrow, please call back if you will be unable to be contacted at that time to arrange a time at which you can. Sincerely, Mrs. Kurenai Sarutobi."
"…I didn't know I had a grandfather…or that he was dead…"
I drove home in silence pondering over what other family members I might have had and didn't know about.
Eventually at about 10:30 p.m. I got to my apartment, after picking up my mail from the small mailboxes the tenants were given, unlocked the door and collapsed on the couch not even bothering to change my clothes from work today.
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Knock-Knock-Knock
…Mph…I don't want to get up…what sort of person knocks at my door this early in the morning? I thought to myself. I had a tiring day yesterday and so whoever didn't know that is insistent on knocking at my door at…what time is it, now?
I opened my eyes, trying to blink away the built up salty crud from not sleeping for three days…the living room swung from being in focus to being out of focus repeatedly until it finally settled. I immediately focused on the clock, trying to read it… 1:37 p.m.
…meh…
Wait…1:37? …"…I will be visiting your home at 1:30 tomorrow…"
Holy crud I slept in!
I ran around the room in a frenzied attempt trying to quickly tidy up and look presentable.
Knock-Knock-Knock
I finally ran over to the door to answer it frantically.
"Good Morning, I'm sorry I didn't answer immediately I just didn't get a very good sleep last night since I've been working for 72 hours straight!" I said quickly, without breathing as I tried to explain myself, I was worried I had upset her in some way for making her wait and she sounded like one of those people who had sticks up their butts on the phone and-
"Good morning to you too, though some people might consider it the afternoon at this point." The tall, brunette woman happily answered me, quite easily interrupting my inner ranting.
I could easily imagine my face as it slipped from a stressed look to 'WTF…' complete with a limply hanging jaw.
She started to stifle laughter and then burst out into a fully blown laugh. "Hahahaha…I'm sorry… it's just that you went from a stressed look to a look of surprise so quickly…sometimes Sarutobi could be like that, seriously stressed one minute and shocked another. I'm sorry if I sounded like someone with a stick up their butt on the phone, I was just depressed from his death…His son, my husband had only died 6 months earlier and so its sort of like a one-two punch, since we were really close." She said and I could tell she was trying her hardest to inject some humor into the situation no matter how depressing it was for her.
"So you're my aunt?" I questioned uneasily, I had just woken up and I really don't start functioning properly after sleeping in a comatose state for who knows how long.
"Great aunt actually." She light-heartedly corrected.
"You really don't look that old."
"Well Sarutobi had children really late in life, except for your grandparents who came with his first wife, 20 years later he had a few more kids with his second, after getting over the grief of losing his first. So in reality Asuma and I are relatively young compared to a stereotypical great uncle and aunt."
"Sorry, I should have invited you in by now." I had suddenly noticed how we were still standing outside.
"It's okay…I can understand the shock…" She answered calmly as I ushered her into my untidy and rather disorganized apartment.
"So, should I call you Aunt? Or something?" I asked as I led her into the small plain kitchen.
"It's fine…I haven't been there to watch you grow up, though I wish I could've been there for you, you don't have to give me a title I might not deserve."
"Well, what do you mean by that?" I asked wondering why she had said that. It was as if she was saying she wished she could have been there to protect me from my parent's wrath.
"Well Sakura, your parents…"
I shivered while remembering the rather harsh treatment I had suffered under my supposedly "loving" parents, not Tsunade and her now dead boyfriend Dan, they were adoptive, but my original parents, the ones I suffered under and repeatedly tried to escape from, until finally succeeding by what I'd like to call a miracle.
"Yes?" I asked preparing myself for any sort of shock.
"…Weren't your real parents…"
"…" I couldn't really say anything. I had just suddenly for no real reason (or so I thought) relaxed, as if a heavy weight had suddenly come off my shoulders. I also felt relatively guilty for directing some of my anger towards her earlier, for not saving me from my "parents."
"…And I'm not sure what you may have suffered under your adoptive parents, and I believe I'm right in choosing the usage of suffered, but your real parents hadn't chosen to leave you up to adoption, they were killed…in a rather suspicious case of homicide. I believe that you should know that soon after they had died, when you were probably too young to remember much, you were stolen from the adoption services where you were going to go to us and well it's a long story…"
"So in short, my parents were killed, I was kidnapped, sold off to child abusers, survived, escaped to Tsunade, and now just finding out about my family just now? How did you find me?"
"Our family has a rather questionable history…"
"So what do I do now? And what kind of "questionable" history?"
"Oh I'm sorry!" Kurenai said, idly waving her hand as if to fan air. "I mean not as in shady dealings with crime lords or anything," She added to correct my confusion towards her earlier statement, "but more in the sense many people respected Sarutobi, even though he was a bit mad/crazy at times, and it was questionable in how everyone looked up to him. As for the will, you, as the only mentioned were left everything." She finished rather calmly.
"Everything?!?! Aren't you upset that you weren't mentioned?" I said, in an attempt to make sure she hadn't been swindled or anything.
"Sarutobi was a strange, but generous old man, your parents were dead, Asuma was dead, his wives were dead, he asked me but I refused, you are the only one left."
"…"
"To define "everything" you are now in possession of a small fortune left to you, and a house in a secluded area where you are welcome to live out your days in or sell. You can do anything you want with any items that are remaining in the house, though the moving men might have gotten it into storage by now…but the stuff in storage you can have too, we just thought it was unnecessary to keep his old knick-knacks around if they were just going to collect dust."
I just stood there still gaping like a fish.
"Then there is also the inheritance left to you by your parents. Since we now know who to give it to…"
I do believe my jaw has just dislocated itself…
"So what about my parents?" I said as I gathered myself again. "What did they leave me?" I asked, and then quickly covered my mouth after I realized how rude and greedy I had sounded in my eagerness to have my question answered.
"They left you a note, they said for you to only open it once you got to the house." Kurenai noticed my sleeve across my mouth, and gave a short laugh. "Don't worry about whether you came across as rude or not, I can understand you were eager and curious to what your parents may have left for you after all these years, too."
"So do you have it with you? The letter?"
"Yes."
"So where's the house?"
"Here are the directions."
"Thank you, Auntie Kurenai."
"You're welcome kiddo." Aunt Kurenai waved as she walked out the door leaving the letter, which I had only just noticed she had handed to me, and I was left to just stand there.
"So I guess I have something to do during this vacation." I muttered to myself as I stared at the note.
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So as my first fan-fiction post, I say I've done pretty well for myself. I do not encourage flaming just yet, I do realize there are possibly a few plot holes, but I have to say there aren't as many as there were in ruff-draft.
Please enjoy this and any future stories. Sakura's past will be explained soon, though it may seem a bit cliché.