"Then, if you would excuse me…" Sakura closed the door of the director's office at the Ninja Academy. The momentary silence was instantly broken by a raucous boy running down the corridor, shouting, "See you tomorrow!"

"I bet Naruto was just like that in the past," she muttered to herself under her breath, and shook her head. After realizing how automatically she had made that association, she chuckled to herself. Speaking of Naruto, how much longer was his training going to take? It's already been a year since he left and yet, completely no news at all.

But he should be okay. Jiraiya-sama is with him after all. And there is no time to worry about him, I need all the time I can get too!

Right, no time for distractions! She needed to hurry back to practice the new healing technique she had just learnt from Tsunade-sama the day before. Whilst walking out of the door, she was distracted by a quiet sobbing. Curious, she traced the source of the crying.

It was a little boy, leaning against the wall at the back of the Academy. His head was down, so it was hard to see his face from where she was standing. His bright red hair drew the attention away from the fact that he was of a smaller build than those his age, assuming that he was indeed enrolled in the Academy. Notably, he cried in a more dignified way than most his age. Instead of the usual bawling and wailing, tears slowly made their way down his face, accompanied by the occasional sniffling, and dripped onto the grass at his feet,. Somehow, though his actions made him seem adept at controlling his emotions, to Sakura, it actually emphasized the profoundness of the sadness he must have been feeling.

She went up to him slowly and asked, "What's wrong?"

He shook his head, while drying his eyes with his hands. Sakura took a look around and realized that it was not hard to deduce the reason for his crying; he was here alone when there were sounds of merrymaking children coming from quite a distance away. Unsure of what to do, she stood next to him, waiting for him to voice his worries or even whine – both unlikely going by her first impression of him. His tears had stopped, but he had shut his eyes and remained motionless and silent. With her near to non-existent experience with children, Sakura did not know what to do, but felt that it was only right for her to wait.

After a while, he abruptly faced her, with a discreet smile on his tear-stained face, and said, "Thank you! I'm fine now!" He shoved something into her hand, and it fell through her fingertips. Before she could recover from the shock of the sudden change in him, he had already disappeared down the streets.

"What was with that quick rebound? Nice to be young," Sakura bent down in the grass to look for what the boy had given her. A spot of bright red poked out conspicuously from the grass near the bottom of the wall. She parted the grass and picked up the sweet. At the same time, a series of strange scratches on the very bottom of the wall caught her attention. These would usually have gone unnoticed, shielded away from curious eyes by the grass.

Interested, she bent forward for a closer examination. Rather than scratches, they were actually words eked into the wall, albeit very badly etched and untidy ones.

"Happy birthday to me! I wish for daddy and mummy to be back soon!"

She ran her fingers over the etchings. Judging from the handwriting and the message, it should have been some student in the Ninja Academy. Was it that boy just now? But it felt like the etchings had been around for quite some time, exactly how long have they been here? Who was the culprit? Could it be somebody she knew? How very puzzling… it was a mystery yearning to be solved. However, there were too few clues, and though she was really curious, she really had to attend to other more pressing issues. Prompted by the reality check, she took a last look at the mysterious message and left.