In Ino's room, atop a shelf that spanned an entire wall, sat her CD collection.
Dust covered it in a thick layer. She didn't listen to them often. There were a hundred albums on the shelf, up at the very top where the gap between the ceiling and shelf was too small for books or big nicknacks. It was organized according to the colour on the spine, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, black, white. When she got into bed to sleep, she had a perfect view of it. Instead of counting sheep, she shut her eyes tight and recounted every band name she could. She only ever got to about seven. Always the same seven. She couldn't bring herself to inspect the CD's very closely anyway.
"You know, Shikamaru's mom knows a civilian that can make custom shelves for your room," her mother had suggested during their annual spring cleaning.
Absently, she cocked her head. "Does she?"
"Yes, she just got Shikamaru's dad's study re-shelved and it sure looks sharp. It'll get rid of that ugly little gap." Her mother dusted her shelves with a snap of her wrist.
"...Okay." She shrugged and went back to sorting through her closet.
They met with the civilian as soon as the next day. The carpenter's name was Baicho. Baicho was distantly related to a civilian that married into the Nara clan in some fashion, which is how Shikamaru's mom came to know her, but Ino didn't care to remember their exact connection. They agreed on birchwood shelves, pale enough to match the light blue of her walls, but not too pale so as to be washed out.
She was shook by the reality of the situation as the civilian lady took measurements with a yellow tongued tape measure. She stared emptily at the lady's face when she complimented her on how neat she kept her room. Her mother rushed in quick to accept the praise gracefully in her stead. Ino wordlessly stared at the CD collection on the bastard pseudo shelf. Where would she put them when their shelf was gone? They would waste space on a normal shelf because they were so small, but two rows of them would hide the band names.
That meant... she'd have to give them back to their original owner. The starry eyed girl who could gush about Kannibal Kunnoichi's entire discography for an hour straight. Ew, stupid forehead girl would love to see those dumb CDs again... She twisted her lip into a sneer at the thought.
"Ino, what's the matter? You were so quiet, quiet to the point of rudeness with Baicho-san. Is something wrong?"
Her vision came back into focus, the glazed quality faded with a couple blinks. Her mother's face, which loomed down on her even though she'd grown an entire inch in the past six months, had a new wrinkle. Right between her thin blonde brows, a new line formed.
"Oh, I... I'm fine mom! I just didn't get much sleep last night," she brushed off her concerns.
The line between her brows receded. "Oh honey, that explain those dark circles. You really should be sleeping a whole eight hours a night, a lady needs her beauty sleep. How come you couldn't sleep? Were you bothered about that preliminary round again?" she rambled.
Ino nodded. "Maybe a little..."
"That's perfectly okay honey, it was your first exam. You have a whole year to train hard for the next exam. Next time you won't be beat by that civilian girl, alright?" She grinned wide for Ino, and all she saw were the lines that bracketed her thin lips.
"Right, mom." She nodded reluctantly.
"Baicho-san said your shelves should be ready by next Monday, at noon." Her mother placed a hand on her shoulder and gave her a little squeeze. "Would you like to come with me?"
"Um, I think my team's still gonna be-"
"Going to, honey. Going to," she corrected.
"Sorry—going to be training until three that day." Her mother's hand dropped back to her side. Her shoulder felt cold where she had touched her.
"That's fine honey, I'll wait until you're home to install them."
She left soon after. Without her mom's warm presence to fill the room, the black shelves seemed to tower over her. Her books and plushies and souvenirs seemed to have multiplied when she looked at the shelves. There was an impossible number to transfer to her new shelves. She felt like she'd never organize them the way she wanted, she'd never be able to display all the items properly.
She ignored the shelf and crawled into bed, day-clothes and all. There was traces of mascara on her lashes and a recently applied layer of lipgloss on her lips, but she didn't bother washing it off. She turned to face away from the shelves and took a nap.
Outside of her bedroom window, through the screen and water stains, stood a cherry tree.
Every year, it bloomed and shed its petals. Nonstop, her dad waxed poetic about her namesake and beauty because of the tree. Her mother rolled her eyes and gave a reluctant laugh like she'd done their whole marriage. Privately, in her locked room when she was scribbling away in a secret coded journal, Sakura smiled about it.
There was a rip in the window screen. Right on the left side along the seam. It had been caused by an accident involving one of Naruto's early morning date invitations, and a kunai thrown out of fright. She hadn't told her parents. What if they made her pay to replace it? Or get mad? Or worse, disappointed? She'd kept mum about it, and they hadn't noticed. Yet.
However, that little rip still exposed her room to the elements.
One night, when the shadows of her room went from blue to black, with the pages of a novel only illuminated by her secret under the mattress flashlight, a lone petal fluttered into her room.
The movement startled her, and she whipped her flashlight up to catch any possible predators or enemies out of instinct. Only the soft white-pink petal was brought to light with the artificial LED light. She let out a relieved sigh, and clambered out of bed.
On her green shag carpet, the petal stood out like a sore thumb. She picked it up and crushed it between her forefinger and thumb. She brought it up to her nose to smell the sweet perfume released from the petal. The smell was familiar and overly nostalgic.
She tossed it outside again and shut her window abruptly. The room had gotten chilly anyway.
The cherry tree had grown a lot since she'd first got it as a gift. Daily, she'd tended to it back then. She watered it, fertilized it, and tugged out the ugly weeds that sprouted around it. Now it didn't need as much of her attention. A sense of pride surged through her chest and a little grin touched her face. She'd grown that tree. It was almost as old as she was. The branches fanned out in a splendid manner. The pale pink colour of the blossoms suited her tastes much better than vibrant pink like her hair. Maybe the tree would even grow cherries for the first time.
"Sakura! I can see your flashlight on, go to bed honey!" her mother shouted from across the hall.
"Sorry!" she shouted back and flicked it off. Inner cursed loudly. She must have seen it under the door. Her plot was foiled, the existence of her contraband flashlight was now known. As soon as she left the house for the library tomorrow, her mother would root through her room and confiscate it.
With a dejected sigh, she shut her book with a snap and stacked it on top of the other books on her nightstand. She tucked her flashlight away between her mattress and boxspring. Between the sheets and her thick blanket, a pocket of her body warmth had remained. She snuggled into it as much as she could and rubbed her cold feet against one another to warm them up too.
Sleep didn't come easily, her mind was still whirring with thoughts of the book she had been reading and the possibilities of homegrown cherries that year. But slowly, her eyes grew heavy, her heartbeat slowed, and her mind grew sluggish before she fell into the abyss of sleep.
"Sakura, it's eight o'clock, if I go up there and you're not awake, so help me!" her mother shouted from the kitchen.
Dryly, Sakura thought that her mother and Naruto could compete for loudest voice to exist. With a groan that she hoped her mother heard, she slumped out of bed and trudged downstairs. The kitchen smelled like eggs and bacon and a little bit of smoke. Her stomach growled and she came up to her mother's elbow to take a peek at the pan she tended to.
"Hungry, kiddo?" she asked.
Sakura nodded and took a piece of bacon from the plate. She noticed the edges were blackened and it was so crispy as too fall apart in her hands slightly, but she ate it anyway. Painfully, she swallowed, and immediately went to get a glass of orange juice to chase down the soot in her throat.
"My cherry tree looks good this year," she commented after she took a sip of juice.
"It sure does! Just the other day, Tenmaru, you know, with the blue house? She told me it was the nicest one in our neighbourhood. I told her more like the entire village!" Her mother laughed uproariously at her own story.
"Mom," she groaned. "You're so braggy..."
"Mothers are supposed to brag about their daughter's hard work." She flipped her hair over a shoulder with a grin and fiddled with the eggs. The yolk popped on one of them and she made a noise of discontent. "I guess we're having scrambled eggs now," she said cheerily. A beat passed and Sakura stared through the living room window that had the same view of her cherry tree from a lower angle.
"Do you think the tree will grow fruit this year? It's never had so many good looking blossoms," Sakura said distantly.
"Fruit? What?"
"...You know? Like, grow real cherries?"
Her mother looks completely floored before a big, unruly grin stretched across her craggy face. "Sakura, that's a flowering cherry tree. It, oh my gosh, it doesn't grow cherries!" She outright laughed—cackled, even—at her daughter.
"What? Are you serious?!" she shouted.
"Haha! Yes! Oh my, honey, did you really believe it would all these years?"
"Uh, yeah? It's a cherry tree, it should be able to make cherries! I was gonna give Ino some of the cherries if they grew this year..."
"Oh honey, she probably knew it didn't grow fruit when she gave it to you. Why don't you give her some of the blossoms?"
Sakura rolled her eyes. "She works in a flower shop, mom, she doesn't care about the flowers."
She shrugged, and hastily chucked the eggs out of the pan and into a bowl. The edges had started to darken undesirably like the bacon had. "Whatever, Sakura. Maybe you shouldn't give her anything at all?"
"Of course I should, she's my rival!"
"Well she's so-oh I don't know, cruel, about your little rivalry. Don't you think?" Her mother's earnest expression made her nauseas. Her expression morphed into one of disgust.
"No, mom, I don't think so. Ugh... I'm not hungry anymore."
She turned on her heel and marched up stairs. She closed the door just as the fire alarm went off, just like it did every morning. It drowned out her mother yelling at her.
She came to her window sill again. The tree didn't look any different than it had the night before.
She pursed her lips and her brow lowered. Yeah, Inner thought, she'll bring Ino some flowers and rub it in her face that her cherry tree was doing great, even if she didn't work in a flower shop like she did! A little smirk graced her lips Tomorrow, when she visited Lee and Sasuke, Ino was sure to follow her to the hospital from the flower shop like the lost little pig that she was.