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oneshot

Friendship was a lie, she thought morbidly one humid afternoon as the sun blazed firey light down upon Konohagakure. It was a lie, and a scam, and false hope that was entirely misplaced in the idealism of holding a close relationship with another human.

Friendship was a lie and Sakura wanted to be ignorant of that fact as Ino glared at her with all the ferocity a seven year-old could muster.

It was all because Sakura decided she liked Sasuke.

However, now, as she stared, teary-eyed and red-faced, at her new-old-not-anymore best friend, she decided she did not. She decided she suddenly didn't like - love? - Sasuke and she desperately wanted to tell Ino that. But she couldn't. The words got clogged up under the skin below her lungs and coiled within her throat and once the large bundle of words found its way to the tip of her tongue, she was already bawling her eyes out behind a tree, far away from Ino.

'I-I-I'm sorry!' Sakura burst out, her words jumbled and slurred. She continued with her incoherent pleads, 'I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it!'

Then, with a great gust of certainty, Sakura decided she hated him. She despised him for ruining her friendship (lies, lies, lies) with Ino, the girl who befriended her when no one else did. She despised the actuality that she didn't truly hate him, but she still wanted to. She dispised that, as she spat mumbled words into her mud-covered dress and tried to ignore the dirt gathering beneath her nails, she still liked Uchiha Sasuke.

So she hated him.

At least, she tried.

But it didn't work, thus she tried again. And again, and again, and again.

Friendship was a lie, and Sakura was completely fine with that, in her own strange way.