A/N: I don't know if I want to continue this as a story or leave it as is; meh, we'll see.
nevermind then.
by: kirei na yukki
'The envelope Sakura had between her fingers burned her skin as she approached her school. 'Today's the day' she thought both nervously and excitedly. As the flags waving a top the flag pole came into sight, Sakura began to feel her heartbeat progressively thump harder and louder against her heaving chest. Different groups of boys and girls, all donning the same uniform she branded, passed her whilst chatting among themselves. It was already the first day back from fall break and Sakura was more than ready to potentially make a fool out of herself.
"Sakura-chan!" the addressed girl stopped at the entrance and turned; sprinting at her with amazing speed was none other than Uzumaki Naruto, a childhood friend of hers. He waved enthusiastically and continued to run towards his pink-haired friend, shoving past the groups of approaching students. Sakura mentally sighed. It was just like Naruto to cause so much commotion in the morning. Luckily, the whole school was already used to his callow behavior, and so many of those standing in his path of destruction were able to tactfully dodge his approach. The boy stopped in front of Sakura, couching over with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. He smiled when he stood up straight again.
"Ne, ne, Sakura-chan, it's been a while; what's up?" he asked. Sakura placed a finger under her chin thoughtfully, making sure to hide the envelope lodged in her other hand. With a small scoff, she threw her arm behind her head and smiled rather sheepishly.
"Nothing really. Otou-san's restaurant was busy the entire break, so I had to waitress the entire time," she answered honestly, "I didn't have time to study or do anything."
Naruto nodded sympathetically with the girl, "Yeah, I know what you mean. My old man's been dragging me and Okaa-san all over the place so he can attend his political meetings and stuff," he stopped and wondered out loud. "I wonder who in their right mind would want to be Hokage? It's nothing but paperwork!"
Sakura shrugged and glanced at her wristwatch. Naruto tightened the strings on his bookbag and then took a deep breath of air. He let it out with a loud and satisfying sigh and then reached over to grip Sakura's wrist, "Yosh, Sakura-chan! Let's go get our education!"
The pinkette didn't even have time to respond to her hyperactive friend, as he was already dragging her through the doors of the academy building. The pair were immediately greeted by the entrance hall where all their shoe boxes were. Sakura, not wanting Naruto to attract any more attention, quickly changed into her uwabaki and dashed into the main hall. The first warning bell rang and she inwardly cursed.
'I guess I can do it during lunch...' she thought rather dejectedly. Tucking the envelope away into her suitcase, Sakura trudged onto her classroom, located at the end of the hall. As she approached one particular classroom, a wide smile broke out onto her face. Grateful that she had an excuse to even pass by, Sakura slowed her pace down and surreptitiously peaked inside the room as she passed. In those brief, but totally worthy, five seconds, the girl had seen who she was initially looking for.
"Oi teme, did we have any homework?" Naruto, who had somehow gotten to his class before Sakura, stood in the back corner by the window. His back was facing Sakura, but as Sakura peered into the room, she blushed deeply when she found that her search was over. Uchiha Sasuke, grumpy and quiet as always, sat at the desk Naruto was standing in front of. Sakura couldn't help but inwardly squeal at how cool she thought he looked; elbows propped on the desk's surface, hands folded and held in front of his mouth - no one else but Uchiha Sasuke could pull off a look that simple.
The envelope, housing a letter oozing with her deepest feelings, suddenly felt as if it were made of lead rather than paper and Sakura, regretfully, found herself getting farther away from Sasuke and Naruto's classroom. When she entered the room, still flustered and flushed, she immediately rushed to her seat in the back corner near the window and yanked out her textbooks; she buried her embarrassed face in its contents shortly after yanking the material out.
Only Uchiha Sasuke could get a reaction like that from a student as excellent as Haruno Sakura. The poor girl had been head over heels in love with the stoic Uchiha since their first year together; Sakura remembered that year vividly, as they were placed in the same class. That spring, after the arrival of the entrance examination results, Sakura was absolutely furious to have discovered that she was bested by someone. That someone, Uchiha Sasuke, was given the great honor of delivering the entrance ceremony speech, as he was number one in their class.
Sakura remembered how ferociously she was seething in her seat when he was called to the stage; the sudden hush that fell upon the crowds told Sakura that everyone - the students she sat around - were pleasantly surprised at this Uchiha Sasuke standing on the stage. When she followed everyone's surprised gazes, she too found herself mesmerized by the freshman class representative. Calm, collected, an attractively superior aura about him...Sakura hated to admit it, but this Uchiha Sasuke was rather attractive. Unfortunately for Sakura, two years had passed, and she had yet to actually exchange a word with him.
She sighed and laid her book flat on the surface and rubbed her face against its pages. She highly doubted that she would be able to tell him that she had liked him for two years. From what she gathered from other admirers (and Naruto), Uchiha Sasuke was a boy who was very difficult to approach and you had to be near dying to even have the hope to acquire his undivided attention for two seconds. This boy, Sakura found, was on a new level of 'hard to get'. The more she thought about it, the more sighs she would emit into the noisy classroom.
Could she even get a letter to Uchiha Sasuke? How would she approach him? Her poor letter might not even be delivered to the person it was intended for. Sakura sadly realized this and folded her arms over her head.
"Sakura? Oi, Sakura. It's too early to be troublesome, really."
Judging by the lazy drawl this person had and the fact that they used the word 'troublesome', Sakura knew that Shikamaru - her best friend - had arrived. However, she did not respond until she heard the metal scraping of his chair. Shikamaru sat down with a relaxed sigh and he too joined Sakura in lounging about over the desktops.
"What's with you Sakura? Aren't you supposed to be, like, sunshine and rainbows and all that other prissy, troublesome nonsense?" he asked, earning him self a positively terrifying and murderous sharp glare. Sakura told Shikamaru to 'shut up', but she remained sitting erect. She saw that their classroom had nearly reached it's maximum capacity and that classes would start in two more minutes. Thoughts of the lunch period flooded her mind and Sakura couldn't help but to slump into a mild depression.
Shikamaru noticed Sakura's extreme mood changed and recoiled from her thunderous expression, "Oi, what's with you? C'mon Sakura..."
Without wasting anytime, Sakura, still sulking, mumbled, "I'm going to tell Sasuke-kun today."
Ah, that moody Uchiha kid...Shikamaru was actually slightly disappointed in himself that he didn't guess himself. What was so great about Uchiha Sasuke anyway? Sure, his dad was head of the Uchiha clan and the ANBU police force and yes, he was attractive to the point where girls wanted to gauge their eyes out...maybe he was the best thing since sliced bread, but Shikamaru couldn't help but wonder what was it with girls and, out of all the boys in the school, Uchiha Sasuke?
Shikamaru just couldn't understand it!
Shikamaru himself had had a few conversations with the guy and he knew up front that Sasuke was not the best company to keep, especially if you wanted an invigorating discussion. Luckily, Shikamaru was too lazy to fully converse and so he did get along with the Uchiha swimingly...but he wasn't going to tell Sakura that. A sound similar to a cross between a frustrated and huff fell upon his ears and he looked at Sakura.
"Mou, Shikamaru! What am I supposed to do? Like, Karin told me not to waste my time because I'd have to be dying to even say hi to him and Naruto said that he's a jerk even thought that's his best friend and, and Ino said that he's a mute -"
"Then why don't you go see for yourself?" Shikamaru interrupted.
Sakura paused to breathe and consider what Shikamaru had just suggested. Go and see what Uchiha Sasuke was like? As in, walk into class 3-A without any excuse at all just so she can talk to him? The idea was much more simpler than she had thought; however, in the very likely event that something were to go terribly wrong, Sakura would be confined to her bedroom for the next three months, desperately trying to avoid serving as the school's laughing stock. Sakura dreaded the possibilities; however, Shikamaru's mocking glances were beginning to annoy her.
She stopped worrying immediately and looked her best friend dead in the eye, accepting his challenge. "Fine."
The first three classes passed by at a near torturous rate. Sakura had to grit her teeth to refrain herself from banging her face against her desk (the poor piece of furniture had endured so much abuse that morning). The pinkette couldn't concentrate on the quadratic formula, Darwin's Law of Natural Selection, or even the sloppy kanji characters Kakashi-sensei had scribbled on the board.
Lunch was coming soon and she had to really mentally prepare herself for mail delivery. She was so deeply submerged in her thoughts that Sakura barely heard the half-way bell, signaling that it was noon; lunch time.
"Ah, would you look at that? It's lunch time," Kakashi said to the class, feigning disappointment; he reached into his desk and withdrew a small orange book he always seemed to have his nose buried in, "We'll stop here for now."
At his dismissal, the students of class 3-F all made a mad dash for the door; some of them fighting to get out of the doorway and some students - most notably Inuzuka Kiba - jumping through the inside windows that faced the main hallway. Only Sakura and Shikamaru, with a small handful of their classmates, remained in their class; they all withdrew their bento boxes and opened the lids simultaneously. Muttering 'itadakimasu', Sakura and Shikamaru began to eat their lunches.
"Oi," Shikamaru said, his mouth full of rice, "Weren't you gonna go see Sasuke?"
Sakura could see the smug expression forming on her best friend's face and she slapped his arm, "Shut up; don't rush me! I still need to mentally prepare myself!" she hissed out. She looked down at her wrist watch and began to inwardly panic; break was exactly an hour long, so she had exactly one hour to find Sasuke and give him her letter.
"Sakura, if you aren't going to do it now, then you're never going to do it," Shikamaru commented casually, plucking a piece of pickled plum from his lunch box, "Trust me, it's a psychological thing, even if it is troublesome."
"Troublesome my ass," Sakura grumbled, stabbing her chopsticks through a piece of sausage. She was going to tell Sasuke! She really was...Sakura realized that she had been telling herself that fact since last night and the fact that she still had yet to make a move told her that Shikamaru was right. And for a moment, Sakura hated how well Shikamaru was able to read her character; was she really that predictable?
'It's now or never...' she thought to herself, standing abruptly from their desks. Shikamaru scooted back as Sakura passed him, a look of questionable curiosity present on his normally sleepy face. "Where are you going?"
"To Sasuke-kun's classroom." she stubbornly responded.
Shikamaru, for a moment, debated on whether or not he should follow; after very little deliberation, he concluded that it would be much too troublesome to go and see Sakura bail, so he remained rooted in his seat, shoveling pieces of his lunch.
Sakura quickly left the classroom and headed back up the hallway in a very rushed pace; an embarrassed flush was beginning to spread on her face and she clutched the letter closer to her chest. The school store, which Sakura passed half-way to her destination, was swarming with hungry students, all demanding various breads and sandwiches. Sakura noticed that the special for today was melon bread.
With each nearing step, the classroom of 3-A seemed to move farther and farther away from her. Her heart thumped loudly as she was finally able to reach its door and take a good look inside. Most of the students had returned already and the classroom was in disarray; desks were moved out of place and teenagers were hanging all over the place. Some even ate lunch sitting on the inside window sill!
She looked through the classroom and stopped abruptly when she found who she was looking for. Uchiha Sasuke was a bit strange; he was still in the same seat as this morning, but he was engrossed in the tomato that he was currently consuming. A tomato. He chewed the debatable fruit as if it were an apple. Sakura took on look at Sasuke and who was surrounding him - being mainly Naruto and their group of stupid friends - and then made a mad dash back to her classroom, forgetting her envelope completely.
She entered the room, panting and huffing.
Shikamaru was there waiting, smirking with his arms crossed. Sakura glared at her best friend and sat down at her desk, mumbling for Shikamaru to 'shut up'.
"I told you so."
"Nara Shikamaru, I will destroy you were you stand."
Shikamaru leaned forward, his arms crossed tightly and he shook his head amusingly at Sakura; he stopped when he realized something different about Sakura. In a hushed whisper, he asked her. "Hey, where's the envelope?"
Sakura looked at her hands, both empty and internally began to panic as she dug through her pockets and backpack. When both searches turned up unsuccessfully Sakura allowed herself to assume the worst.
She dropped her love letter to Uchiha Sasuke in the classroom.
And what's worse than that was that she couldn't go a retrieve it because the lunch bell had ended as soon as she realized. The rest of her classmates all filed into the room loudly and Kakashi looked up from his novel uninterested in the chaos the room had broken into. Sakura literally felt like her stomach had dropped through her body and oozed onto the floor beneath her trembling feet.
Her one chance to convey her feelings, lost in a moment of carelessness. Sakura really wanted to punch herself in the face. Had she not been such a coward beforehand, none of this would have happened.
"How am I supposed to get it back?" she asked Shikamaru, dreading the chances that it could end up in the wrong hands. Shikamaru shrugged and let his eyes wonder out the window; the sky was a faultless blue and he followed the clusters of clouds that passed his line of view. Sakura growled; some best friend he was, that Shikamaru.
"My life could potentially be over and you're cloud gazing?" she screeched, "You're unbelievable!"
"An understatement," was all he said in reply.
The rest of their classes continued, much more slower than before. With each passing hour, Sakura became more and more worried about her lost letter. Where is it? Who has it? Who has read it? Thought after thought after thought until the final bell rang for the day. Both Shikamaru and Sakura packed up their belongings and exited the classroom; to Sakura's extreme horror, the letter was no where to be found in 3-A. Hanging her head in ultimate defeat, she exited the building with Shikamaru.
There must have been someone who was out to get her. A God, perhaps? Sakura didn't know, but whoever it was, she shook her fist angrily at the culprit. The nerve of them all...
"Sakura."
The girl's head nearly snapped off her body as she whirled around to face the speaker. She really wish she hadn't because Uchiha Sasuke was now standing behind her, dangling her letter in front of her face.
She really just wanted to die right then and there.
Fortunately for Sakura, his name had not been written on the envelope at all; in the corner of the envelope, Haruno Sakura was written in her nervous scrawl. Still, that did not guarantee that Sasuke had not read it at all. However, knowing the Uchiha, Sakura guessed that he didn't since it seemed like nothing ever interested him.
Shikamaru coughed awkwardly, bringing Sakura out of her reverie.
"Y-Yes, Sasuke-kun?" she squeaked. The Uchiha did not respond; he merely held out the envelope for Sakura to retrieve. Immediately, she began to think of how to reply. Should she tell him that it is actually for him? Or should she take it and walk away?
A wave of courage surged through Sakura's veins and she clenched her fist. She could do this! She could do this! Sasuke looked at her blankly, like he always did (to other people, because let's face it, Sasuke had never talked to Sakura on random occasion). She blushed deeply and twisted her fingers together tightly.
"Ah, um - " Sakura cleared her throat, "That's actually for you, Sasuke-kun." Sasuke's expression didn't change at all. He offered her the envelope once more.
"I don't want it," he said rather coldly.
Shoving the wretched piece of parchment back into her shocked hands, Uchiha Sasuke tossed his bag over his shoulder and walked past Sakura and Shikamaru. Both she and Shikamaru were shocked at his cold behavior, though Shikamaru had slightly expected such a reaction from him.
How was it possible to be jilted in that short amount of time? Especially after she had gone through the trouble to write that letter. Sakura found herself more angry than embarrassed.
"What the hell was that?" she demanded, casting a glare at Shikamaru, who flinched. "What the hell was that just now? When I decided to tell him that I liked him via love letter which is totally sweet and romantic, he wants to say he doesn't want it? Well damn. Nevermind then!"
Shikamaru, afraid to say anything that would cause Sakura to bite his head off, raised his hands in defense and mumbled that she was being troublesome. Flushed and huffing like a bull, Sakura shoved her rejected letter in her bag and stomped off to the exit.
"What a jerk!" Surely Uchiha Sasuke was not going to get another confession letter from Haruno Sakura ever again.
"Oi teme, c'mon! I wanna get Ichiraku!" Naruto called from over his shoulder. Sasuke grunted and slightly quickened up his pace, just so Naruto wouldn't grab him and drag him just like the last time. It took him nearly a month to clear the speculations that arose because it was apparently gay to have a boy drag his best friend to a noodle shop by the wrist. To hell with those bastards, the lot of them!
Very carefully, Sasuke pulled out an envelope with Uchiha Sasuke written in the corner. He smirked as he unfolded the contents of the envelope he had stuffed in there earlier.
Hello, Sasuke-kun,
I am Haruno Sakura of class 3-F. We were in the same freshman class, but we didn't really talk to each other. I know that this is all very sudden, but I just wanted to tell you that I like you very much -
He folded the letter again and tucked it away. His mouth curled into a small smirk as he repeated the rest of the letter in his head mentally. How careless that Sakura was to not even notice how the envelope had been opened. Even the paper replaced inside was a slightly different color! She didn't even notice that she had lost the darned thing until it was too late too! Sasuke snorted and shook his head; that Haruno Sakura...she was really something, but he wasn't going to say that out loud. No, Uchiha Sasuke would have to be near dying to say something like that.
After all, Sasuke liked playing impossible to get. Especially if that meant teasing Haruno Sakura.
終わり
A/N: Took me half the day to write this nonsense.
Reviews are very much appreciated (: