Chapter 1

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Naruto, nopity nope nope.

Note(also on Ch. 2: Author's Note: It Is Me): I AM the original Emma (20hagenc) and I have edited a bit and will continue to edit each chapter, which may take a bit to get to the latest one, but that one is actually already done!! Dear GOD it's been way too long.. Seriously, guys, how do you did this?? You are literal angels.

"Mother, I'm home.." Sarada called into the house, walking up to the wooden kitchen table and setting down her backpack neatly. Her mother came in soon afterwards and smiled at her daughter, eyes wrinkling in affection. Sarada would never have any idea how precious she was to Sakura. Her and Sasuke both.

"How was school today?"

"It was fine. Normal, like always...Boruto being an idiot again..."

Here we go again, Sakura thought. "What happened this time?"

It took a few seconds to notice, but Sarada had gone silent. After a few moments of unusual stillness, Sakura turned to find that her daughter had turned bright red. "Whoa, now I really need to know, what happened?"

"Nothing important," Sarada mumbled, shaking her head furiously before letting out a huge sigh and getting out her homework from her beige book bag. "I have to go get my mind off..things, so uh..ugh, shannaro!.. I'll be back." With that, she disappeared into thin air. All Sakura had done was blink.

"Weird," she hummed aloud, sighing and putting her hands on her hips, a dirty towel in one hand, "I'll have to find out what's up later."

Meanwhile, Sarada was setting off determinedly to her favorite place in the village: the forest by her house. For some reason, she had always felt free to do whatever she wanted in the forest, covered by the shady trees that immersed her in familiarity from the pool of childhood memories. If it did anything, it made Sarada feel comforted, that was for sure.

Which, right now, she happened to need the most.

Sarada wasn't exactly sure if she would be able to face her parents ever again.

Bolt hadn't exactly been an idiot (he just put it in such an idiotic way that it was impossible to brush off). In fact, he had actually been telling the truth for once. It was just really, really, inappropriate. Yeah. Bolt told her how babies were made (allegedly). Except in a lot of detail and smug looks and red cheeks and awkward glancing at each other only to snap their heads the other way when they were caught. And it was nothing how Sarada had originally thought it would be.

She sighed, slumping against a rather large and shady oak tree and staring up at the cloudy sky. Sarada had always been an observer. Personally, she had labeled her inquisitive personality as a gift. But that was her. It was apparent that not everyone thought so, which, to be fair, was to be expected. However, lately, it had been slowly starting to make her doubt herself as well.

Obviously, her observations of Boruto could not be spoken of, to anyone, ever. He'd never speak to her again if he found out. The thought alone made her feel a bit sick. She rubbed her knees in comfort, humming softly before stiffening at the sound of footsteps. Someone was here.

"Funny to see you here," a feminine voice sneered. Sarada's head snapped up to see a brunette from her class. She groaned internally. The brunette had recently been nagging her about helping her understand the current subject, the Tailed Animals, right before the finals came and they all graduated. Not like she'd ever bothered trying to talk to her beforehand, so of course Sarada deemed it as a waste of her time.

Instead of simply leaving due to the lack of response, the figure only came closer, and, boy did she look pissed.

Dammit.

Well, the way that Sarada had been avoiding and ignoring the girl would definitely leave a bitter impression, but, to her credit, she didn't usually do this kind of thing in the first place.

Not since lately, it seemed.

Yes, she admitted to herself that she was feeling.. off lately, but she had already gone through every possible issue that could possibly be troubling her and couldn't find anything big enough to justify such sudden feelings of..of sadness. Hell, she might be stubborn, but she knew herself never to be the crybaby in a fight.

And yes, then she had considered: Wait! Maybe it was gradual!

Truth was, Sarada didn't know. So she brushed it off. It wasn't even a big deal in the first place, that certainly had been proven.

Just as the girl had taken another step forward, Sarada's head pulsed painfully, right behind her eyes. God, with that kind of pain, she couldn't deal with anything right now, so she gave herself no choice but to have to give the poor (manipulative) girl a wake-up call. She'd have to apologize to her later..

"Look," Sarada groaned slightly, fingers crinkling into her temples, "I'm busy right now—"

"Doing what? Cloud watching?" The girl was mocking her. Sarada's eyes narrowed as she took off her glasses and started rubbing her eyes soothingly as the pain increased in intensity. It didn't help.

"..I have my own problems. You have yours. Now buzz off." Okay, so maybe she was being a little cold. But all Sarada wanted was just to be left alone. Her mood began to sour even more as Sarada gnashed her teeth against each other in an attempt to distract herself from the pain.

Whatever. It's not like she needed friends anyway. Like this girl was even a friend in the first place, using her for a one-time occasion in order to satisfy her own material gain.

"Y-You'll pay for this!" She fumed, her desperate, mortified eyes glaring angrily at Sarada before flicking sharply to the side as she stormed off. Sarada looked back to the sky.

When the sun had begun to set, she had already finished her homework and had gone over every possibility that could trigger something akin to..whatever she was feeling. Again. It really didn't help that she couldn't even really describe what the feeling was. Sarada huffed, repeating to herself "If you can't identify the problem, there is no solution. If you can't identify the problem, maybe there isn't even a problem in the first place."

Yeah. Exactly.

Just like an error of judgement or something like that. Finals were definitely stressful, the only person they weren't stressful for was Boruto, but she scowled at the thought of thinking about him for about the millionth time that day.

She supposed that was what a diary was for? Her mother kept telling her that keeping a diary was good, but Sarada didn't dare. She had a pretty strong suspicion that it was a cover to snoop into her private life and see how she was (truly) feeling.

Nice try, mom.

Evidently, she didn't like invasions of privacy. Sarada stood up and brushed all the dust and dirt off of her red skirt. Her glasses had begun to get blurry, and she knew that once she got home, she would have to wash them. She still managed to marvel at the creation of such a simple, yet conducive invention. She honestly didn't know what she would do without them. Her vision was..worse than the worst. Especially for an Uchiha.

Sarada was surprised to see that her mother had been waiting for her to return right by the door, pacing bath and forth, sometimes in circles, and continuously biting her bottom lip. A second after she had shut the door, Sarada found herself face to face with an extremely concerned Sakura Uchiha.

"Honey!" Sarada exclaimed, immediately kneeling and resting her hands firmly on her daughter's shoulders, "Are you alright? What happened? Why didn't you come home earlier? When you missed dinner, I began to get really worried—"

Sarada's eyebrows furrowed as she took a quick glance at the clock barely hanging stably on the wall opposite the doorway.

Had she really been out that long?

"Oh, uh, I didn't thin—I mean—I'm sorry, mom. I was just working on my finals, it was particularly hard this time. Had to make sure I was through with everything." Sarada waved her arms anxiously with a sheepish smile on her face, cutting off her mother's rambling, not wanting to withstand another lecture for an hour. Technically, she wasn't lying, she had spent some of her time doing that (just not all of it). "I have to wash my glasses," she added quickly to avoid further questioning.

As Sarada busied herself with cleaning the ridiculous amount of smudges (that somehow kept reappearing?) off of her glasses, Sakura couldn't help but feel that her daughter was hiding something from her. To her confusion, she also felt a strange sort of..foreboding type of feeling. Annoyingly, all Sakura could really do about it was wish for it to go away and ignore it. She decided to (maybe) confront her daughter later. After all, it wasn't like she hadn't taken to herself sometimes as well.

A girl like Sarada was bound to go through a few tough patches.

That's all they were.

Sarada woke up sweating. She had forgotten what her dream had been about, but, on second thought, she didn't really want to know. It took a lot to get her scared, and when she finally did get scared, it was something that picked at and spooked her for at least the rest of the day, leaving her prone to doubt everything. It was even scarier sometimes how easy it was to convince herself of something, as long as she had the circumstantial evidence. She rolled her shoulders, yawning and stretching herself out of bed.

Downstairs, she could hear her mother calling her name, reminding her that breakfast was ready. Sarada groaned and cracked her neck before tiptoeing down the stairs of the two-story apartment. It had become an unnecessary habit, starting deep in her years as a toddler. After all, she was training to be a ninja.

"Sarada, there you are! You scared me with that stealth of yours... Come now, while breakfast's still hot. I have your bento right here," Sakura handed her daughter a pink and white polka-dotted lunch bin which she swiftly put into her bag before racing back to her plate. Sarada gladly began to pepper her eggs, her stomach rumbling at the knowledge of food in her hands.

She sat down and ate the eggs quickly, noticing between bursts of air that her mother was chuckling, amused at the display. She rolled her eyes outwardly but couldn't help the small smile inching its way onto her face, despite her annoyance.

After she was done, which didn't take long at all, she strode out of the kitchen and to the walkway placed right before the door leading to the outside world. There stood her backpack in all its glory. She grabbed it quickly as she took hold of the doorknob. Sudden, crushing guilt stopped her from taking another step forward.

"Mom?"

"Yes, honey?" Sakura's distant voice melodically floated around the corner to the walkway, where Sarada stood nervously. She took a deep breath.

One.

Two—

"Bolt told me about sex."

Three.

She slammed the door open and close before she could hear Sakura's response. She was so getting it later!-her mother had to be be so mad at her for using such a inappropriate word at the age of twelve, despite the fact that, really, Sakura had mentioned it a couple times herself when she thought she and Sasuke had been alone.

She forgot the last time her father had been home...

Ironically, unbeknownst to Sarada, Sakura was laughing her ass off, her hands covering her red face as she leaned over the counter in an attempt to hold herself up.

Oh, Sarada, she giggled inwardly, When I was your age, I only knew about kissing. How the world changes in such little time...it really is a different age..

Sarada walked faster than she ever had in her entire life. Her face was beet red, her lips were sputtering in breaths of air, and her glasses kept slipping down her nose. To any outsider, she would seem pretty stressed, but god, was she relieved. It hurt her physically to keep a secret from her mom of all people.

Her mother was the best mother anyone could ever have, and even though sometimes she didn't act so grateful, she always believed it deep down.

They went out on the weekends, had their own celebratory shopping days for ninja materials and books, and most importantly, Sarada could talk about anything to the pink-haired kunoichi. Even her weird observations of Boruto and her replay of what he had done during class today, and hell if she was about to stop now.

As the raven haired girl approached the Ninja Academy, she felt like.. something was off, but she just couldn't wrap her head around it. Her eyes throbbed sharply for a single moment, a dull reminder of the limited amount of strain she could take, so she have a chance to pay attention to the uncanny hush of the usually rowdy crowd of hormones and immaturity.

She looked up just in time to see snickering faces, one in particular sitting so high up—what was she doing on the roof?

--before she passed out, hearing rather than feeling the sickening crack as something completely solid dropped down onto her own head.