Author's Note: So here it is, my fourth fanfic on the Sasuke/Sakura pairing. When I first thought of this plot, I imagined a rather dramatic story. Hopefully, I can capture that feeling as I progress with this fanfic. Anyway, your support will be highly appreciated and I really hope you'll enjoy reading this!

P.S. This fanfic is based on modern Japan. Sasuke and Sakura are sixteen years old and are first year high school students.

Chapter 1: Hidden Feelings

Sakura's POV

My life was far from perfect and it had never been smooth sailing. But seriously, it was impossible for a person to not meet any setbacks in life. Just that, some people experienced worse than others. And whether you would be happy or not, it depended on how you chose to live your life.

As for me, I chose to stay positive and not dwell on the past. When I was just six years old, I lose both of my parents in a car accident. They were on their way to fetch me from school when they collided with another car. Apparently, the driver was tipsy and ended up taking away the lives of my beloved family.

Even though that was ten years ago, I could still remember it as if it was just yesterday. It was raining heavily that day when I waited for my parents to arrive.

Needless to say, they never did.

My world fell apart in an instant and my heart was in so much pain that I was starting to lose the ability to feel again. I didn't even feel sad when I found out that none of my relatives were willing to take care of me. I never liked them anyway.

Without me noticing it, I was beginning to forget what it was like to be happy.

However, that was until a married couple visited the orphanage I was in and decided to take me in. I could still remember the warm smiles they gave me on that faithful day. The woman took my hands into hers and her gentle voice was comforting.

"Everything's going to be alright."

They took me back to their home, which was more like a mansion in my eyes. Not only was it huge, it was beautiful. But there was something more mesmerizing than my splendid new home.

And that was the couple's youngest son.

When his parents' introduced me to him, he didn't say anything. He didn't even smile. But I just couldn't help but to be captivated by his mysterious dark eyes.

It was just a childish crush.

At least, that was what I thought.

Ten years had passed since then and I found myself falling in love with him for real. The feelings just continued growing stronger when I was assigned to become his personal maid. And the fact that we were together almost all the time wasn't helping me either. But what could I do. Not only was I living with him, we attended the same school.

I was never so sure how, but the two of us became really close friends. He was still as expressionless as ever and it wasn't easy to read his mind. But I was slowly getting to understand how to get along with that person.

But I wasn't so naïve to think that he would one day love me back. I was just a maid and he was the son of one of the most successful man in Japan.

And my life could never end as beautifully as a fairytale. I wasn't even a princess to begin with.

Despite my unrequited love, I was grateful for what I had and felt blessed. And that was why I had decided to work hard as a way to thank Fugaku and Mikoto Uchiha for taking me in and gave me the hope I had once lost.

And maybe, one day, I could move on and live a life without him in it.

Maybe, just maybe, I could one day stop loving Sasuke Uchiha.

"Sakura, if you continue daydreaming like an idiot, we'll both be late for school."

I rolled my eyes at the rudeness I had grown so used to, which had effortlessly snapped me out of my thoughts. I often wondered why I was in love with such an emotionless man. It was still way too early for a fight so I followed Sasuke to the car without a word.

It was Friday and I was looking forward to the plans I made with my friends for the weekends. I was glad that Fugaku and Mikoto were rather easy going and I was free to go out as long as I was done with my work.

I glanced over to my side to sneak a peek at Sasuke, who looked as good looking as always in his school uniform. Both the male and female students wore short sleeved white blouse with a sleeveless beige sweater over it and completed with a black tie. The guys wore long black pants while girls wore black short skirt.

I almost yelped when Sasuke caught me staring at him. He raised an eyebrow at me and was giving me an odd look.

"I know I'm good looking, Sakura. But you don't have to stare."

"Your arrogance is disturbing me, Sasuke."

I looked away and closed my eyes, not trusting them to not wander back to Sasuke. Sometimes I wondered if Sasuke had found out about my feelings for him. I had tried my best to hide them, not wanting him to know.

I would continue to suppress these feelings until they would one day disappear for good.

"Why can't that day just come faster?"

Sasuke's POV

"Why don't you want to help me, Sasuke?!"

"Because I don't want to."

"But why?"

"Go away, Naruto."

"Sasuke-teme!"

Naruto, being as annoying as he always was, had been begging me to help him get together with Sakura. And contrary to what Neji and Shikamaru believed, it wasn't because I was jealous.

It was simply because I didn't think Naruto suits Sakura.

Sakura was independent, intelligent and beautiful while Naruto was just a loud dope. I just couldn't bring myself to imagine those two getting together.

"You're such a heartless bastard."

I ignored Naruto's rambling and continued eating my lunch. As for Neji and Shikamaru's snickers, I pretended I didn't see them.

"Sasuke, I need a favor from you!"

I almost chocked on my food upon hearing an awfully familiar voice I dreaded a lot. I groaned in annoyance before turning my head to meet the equally dreadful owner of the voice calling out to me at a louder volume than necessary.

"What do you want, Lee?" My tone was dangerous and my eyes narrowed into a threatening glare. But Lee wasn't fazed at all and continued being the over enthusiastic man he was.

It was either he didn't care about the fact that he was pissing me off or he was too dumb to notice my anger.

It was most likely the latter.

"I want to ask Sakura out on a date tonight but I'm not sure where I should take her to. And since you're her closest friend, I assume you will know what I should do. Where do you think Sakura will like to go to for a dinner date?"

"Nowhere." I didn't give my answer a second thought. My respond was purely based on instincts alone. Neji and Shikamaru's smirks made me realized that I sounded jealous, which was exactly what they said about me. I quickly gave Lee an explanation I made up to sound more rational. "She is busy tonight."

Lee slumped onto the chair beside Naruto and both of them looked equally rejected. Lee recovered rather fast and was still trying to salvage his plans to take Sakura out.

"Is she free tomorrow?"

"No."

"How about on Sunday?"

"No."

By then, Neji could no longer keep his mouth shut and just had to speak up his mind.

"Come on, Sasuke. You've been keeping Sakura all to yourself for all these years. If you're not interested in dating her, stop trying to keep other guys away from her."

And of course, Shikamaru just had to make things worse.

"Neji is right. It's either that or you should stop being the troublesome coward you are and ask her out."

"I don't like her that way." I hated how those two shrugged off my answer as if it was some sorry excuse. I sent deadly glared over to them, showing that I wanted the conversation to end.

Naruto and Lee seemed like they wanted to confirm whether Neji and Shikamaru were speaking the truth. But one last glare from me made them change their mind about opening those mouths of theirs.

Both Naruto and Lee were just not the right people for Sakura. And as her closest friend, I couldn't allow her to end up with any of those two.

It was as simple as that.

Or maybe it wasn't as simple as that but at that moment; I didn't wish to think further about it.

Matters of the heart weren't exactly my expertise.

Sakura's POV

"You know, Sakura, I think Sasuke likes you. It might not be as hopeless as you think!"

"It's not as simple as that, Ino."

"I think you're just over thinking the issue."

"And I think you're taking things too lightly."

Besides Sasuke himself, Ino Yamanaka was my closest friend. I had been friends with her since primary school, when I first enrolled into Konoha Academy together with Sasuke. She might be annoying at times and still needed to control that blabbermouth of hers, but she was a loyal friend whom I could depend on.

And that was why she was the only one who knew about my feelings for Sasuke.

"Why are you so pessimistic about this?" Ino sighed in defeat and shook her head dejectedly.

"It's called being realistic, Ino."

"Fine, if you want to move on from Sasuke that much, go and get yourself a boyfriend."

"It's not that easy to fall for someone else."

"You're driving me crazy, Sakura. What in the world do you want?! Plus, if you never try to get to know another guy, how are you supposed to forget your feelings for Sasuke?"

Ino did make sense. It's not possible for me to love someone else overnight, but if I didn't try to meet new people, I could never forget my feelings for Sasuke.

But in all honestly, I really wasn't interested in doing that.

Ino was about to talk more sense into my messed up mind when three timid looking girls suddenly approached us. They seemed hesitant as they took tiny steps towards our way.

"Do you need something from us?"

The three girls tensed up once I spoke. They almost looked terrified for some unknown reason. Did I look that scary?

After what felt like an eternity, they finally built up enough courage to hand me what seemed to be letters and one of the girls spoke in a trembling voice.

"S-Sakura, can you help us give these letters to Sasuke?"

"Not them again."

For as long as I could remember, Sasuke had always attracted a whole bunch of fan girls without him even trying. That stayed the same even when we entered high school.

However, I had concluded that there were two types of fan girls. The three girls who approached me was the first type, the innocent little lambs who would come to me to help them with their letters, gifts and all that. The second type was those who would hate me to the guts because not only were I a close friend of their 'Sasuke-sama', I lived with him.

I took the letters from the girls and they fled without waiting for me to say a word. I nonchalantly gave the letters a look before heading back to the classroom. I lost count of the number of times I helped girls pass their love letters to Sasuke. The content of the letters were always cheesy and they never failed to make me laugh.

And I could never get sick of seeing Sasuke grimacing as he read the letters.

Sasuke's POV

Later that night after I had dinner, I went back to my room and saw that Sakura was almost done cleaning up my room. She was in her usual black and white maid uniform, which I must admit looked good on her.

I never said that to her though. Based on what I knew about her, she might send a punch flying to my face while calling me a pervert.

A small smile appeared on my face at that very thought. When I first met Sakura, she was a quiet little girl who was deprived of energy. I definitely wasn't the type of person to care about someone else. But back then, when I saw how miserable Sakura was, all I wanted to do was to make her smile.

After all, she was too adorable to wear a frown all the time.

Naturally, I wasn't an expert in making people happy. I barely smiled myself. It wasn't because I was upset or anything, it was just how I was.

So all I managed to do was asking Sakura to play with me or bring her snacks I assumed she would like. Back then, I wasn't so sure if it would work but I did it anyway. And before long, the once despaired Sakura became an energetic girl who was full of smiles.

She also became even more beautiful than the first time I saw her.

When Sakura noticed that I had entered the room, she was suddenly smiling in a rather amused way. It was one of those looks she would give me whenever she was teasing me or making fun of me for some stupid mistake I did.

Right after she was done tidying up my bookshelf, she went to my desk and took three envelopes with me.

It was obvious what those letters were.

"How many times must I tell you before you will start rejecting to help those girls with their disgusting love letters?"

Sakura faked a pained look and gasped at the horrible words I said. I rolled my eyes at her and went to sit on my bed.

Sakura sat beside me and punched me on the arm. She completely ignored the fact that I was wincing in pain and continued her little act.

"That's such an awful thing to say, Sasuke! And I can never bring myself to reject girls who are helplessly in love. Unlike you, I have feelings."

I rolled my eyes once again at how fake Sakura sounded. I knew how much she disliked those fan girls, it was either they hate Sakura to no end or they would bother her to help them with things like gifts and love letters.

"If you refuse to read these letters, then I'm going to read them for you."

I grunted in disapproval but that went unnoticed by Sakura, who was too preoccupied with opening one of the envelopes to help me read out the content.

She had yet to read through the whole thing and I could already see how entertained she was.

"Dear Sasuke-sama, you are no doubt the most handsome person I had ever laid eyes on. Your dark eyes and raven hair are nothing but beautiful. Not to mention how captivating your body is. I still remember that day when I went to watch you play basketball after school and you took off your shirt after the game was over. Seeing your body for the first time had made my nose bleed and countless indecent thoughts came flooding into my mind from then onwards. I can't push the image of your naked torso from my mind and it will always make me feel hot a-"

When I could no longer stand listening to the disturbing things inside that letter, I placed a hand over Sakura's mouth to stop her from continuing. I grew even more irritated when Sakura started laughing at my reaction.

I removed my hand from Sakura's mouth and crossed my arms in front of my chest. I sighed as Sakura started an uproar as if she didn't have any worry in the world. When she had laughed longer than she should, I sent a glare at her way, hoping that it would shut her up.

It ended up making her laugh even more.

"This is too funny." Sakura managed to speak after she had calmed down a little. "She's practically offering herself to you by saying those things."

"Whatever."

My respond earned a questioning look from Sakura and I urged her to speak up her mind.

"Do you happen to lack the necessary hormones to feel sexual desires?"

"What?" I hissed dangerously at Sakura who was openly questioning my sexual capabilities. Who in their right mind would do that?

"Well, this girl is obviously indirectly telling you that she wants to hang out in a sexual way and yet you don't seem interested at all. How is that even normal?"

I wasn't sure why I felt a strong need to show Sakura that I was a perfectly normal and healthy sixteen year old teenager. But what I did to prove myself was even more questionable.

I leaned towards Sakura, closing the gap between our faces. When our noses almost touched, I smirked before saying something I would later regret.

"If I will kiss you right here and then, will it convince you that I'm normal?"

Sakura's face turned bright red immediately. She was completely stunned and it made me realized how messed up my words were. But before I could say anything, Sakura hastily replied before dashing out of the room.

"You're an idiot, Sasuke."

I watched Sakura leave the room in a hurry and closed the door behind her. I stayed still for a few moments, reflecting on what I had done.

"I shouldn't have said that, should I?"

Sakura's POV

"Stupid Sasuke and his stupid jokes."

When Sasuke suddenly got so close, my heart felt like it was on the verge of bursting. Feeling his breath touching my skin made my face heat up in an instant.

And I just had to make myself look pathetic by running away like that.

I needed to calm my racing heart so I called Ino to tell her that I wanted to meet up. After the two of us decided to go to a café we often frequent, I went to change my clothes before asking permission from Mikoto, who was at the living room with her oldest son, Itachi.

"Mikoto-san, is it alright for me to go out to meet a friend?"

"Of course, Sakura." Mikoto was as heartwarming as usual. But her next words had definitely shocked me. "Are you going on a date with your boyfriend?"

"What?" My voice trailed off, not understanding why Mikoto would think that way.

"Is it Naruto Uzumaki?" I snapped towards Itachi, who appeared to be equally amused by the situation. Even though I wasn't as close to him as I was with Sasuke, we were considered as rather good friends I guessed.

As for his awfully wrong guess of who my non-existent boyfriend was, I assumed it was due to the well-known fact that Naruto had a crush on me for quite a long time. And since Itachi was a third year student in our school, it wasn't a surprise he had heard about it.

"No." I glared at Itachi briefly before giving a nervous smile to Mikoto. I swore I caught a glimpse of Itachi's smirk but I pretended to have not noticed it. Paying any more attention to it would most probably boil my blood. "I'm meeting Ino, Mikoto-san. And I don't have a boyfriend."

Mikoto appeared to be disappointed and it only served to make me feel even more uncomfortable. Mikoto and I often had casual chats, when she would ask me about my day at school or she would ask me to tell her more about my friends. That was why she was familiar with who my closest friends were. She was also very interested in knowing who I liked. Of course, I couldn't tell her the truth.

She said she had always seen me as her own daughter and I could feel her motherly love for me. When she first told me that, I remembered tears falling down from my eyes because I was very touched by her words.

"But you're such a great girl, Sakura. I'm sure you can easily get yourself a boyfriend." Mikoto was pouting slightly as she grabbed onto my arm. All I could manage was a soft giggle and a rather a rather forced smile.

"What's the point of being so great if I can never be with the one I love?"

"He did that?!"

I had to remind Ino to keep her voice down when I told her what happened between Sasuke and I. She was attracting unnecessary attention towards our table in the café.

"Sakura, he definitely has feelings for you. You should stop caring about useless stuffs like backgrounds and just confess to him!"

"Ino, for the hundredth time, it is not as easy as that."

"I think you're just making things complicated for yourself. If two people like each other, then they should get together. It's as simple as that."

I was too tired to argue with Ino and sighed instead. Annoyed with my lack of responds, Ino continued talking in a more agitated tone.

"I think you're looking down on yourself, Sakura. You are definitely at the top in the looks department despite your weird pink hair. And you're one of the smartest in our batch and will one day become a successful doctor like what you always wanted. Even though you're not a genius like Shikamaru, but at least you're still one of the top scorers. Also, although you could be rather violent and fierce, if you put in some effort, you can easily become a rather graceful woman."

"I'm not sure if you're complimenting me or insulting me, Ino."

"To be honest, I'm not so sure myself."

There were a few moments of silence between us before we broke into heartfelt laughter. Ino always knew how to cheer me up and she rarely failed to do so. I felt much better already just being around her.

"It's getting late so let's go home, Ino."

"You didn't forget the plans we made with Hinata and Tenten for tomorrow, right?"

"Of course I didn't. I've been looking forward for it."

Just when we were about to leave the café, it suddenly began to rain heavily. Ino grumbled something incoherent under her breath while I just stared at the pouring rain.

"Great, now we're going to be soaked." Ino's mumbling became clear for once and I nodded weakly in agreement.

Ino and I needed to walk back to the train station, which meant that we must go through the rain without umbrellas. It definitely didn't sound like a good way to end the night but we didn't have much of a choice.

But when we left the café, I was in for a greater surprise than the sudden downpour.

Sasuke was outside the café, leaning against that expensive black car he adored with an umbrella in his hand.

"Sasuke, what are you doing here?"

The heavy rain was deafening and my words were overpowered by it. I stared blankly at Sasuke, who walked over to me and placed part of the umbrella over my head.

"What are you doing here?" I repeated my question when Sasuke was close enough to hear me.

"I'm here to take you home, obviously."

"Why?"

Sasuke was beginning to be fed up with my questions and a small frown appeared on his face.

"Because I saw the weather forecast and assumed you didn't bring an umbrella along. So I asked my mother where you are and came to fetch you. Satisfied?"

I yelped when Sasuke pulled my arm towards the car without warning me. I turned towards Ino, who was grinning way too widely and she was obviously suppressing a roaring laughter.

She casually waved at me and ran off towards the direction of the train station. Before she was out of sight, she gave me the 'I-won't-disturb-the-two-of-you' look.

My eyes went back to Sasuke, who was slightly soaked on the side because he made sure the rain wouldn't touch me. A much too familiar ache clenched my heart at the very sight of that.

The smallest things Sasuke did always made me love him even more.

But at the same time, it made me realize how painful this one-sided love was.

Author's Note: Hopefully that was a decent start. Please send a review on your way out to share with me your opinions regarding this fanfic. Of course, follows and favorites are highly appreciated! Thank you for reading and hope to see you in the next chapter.