Chapter 2: Life in Upper Konoha
Sakura's POV
I stir my ice water with my straw and watch the beads of dew on the side of the glass roll down to the napkin below my cup as I listen to the peaceful clinking sounds of the ice connecting with the glass. I would usually find this a boring activity, but at the moment it was a nice alternative to my other, less attractive option: listening to Naruto yap about something or other. I took a nice long sip of my drink and sighed.
"Look, Naruto, we don't really care about Shino's bug collection. Stop sounding so enthusiastic about it," Sasuke said, exasperated. I shot him a Thank you for shutting him up! look, and in response he shook his head with a smile.
"Fine, whatever. Oh hey, here comes our food!" Naruto said excitedly. The three of us were having dinner at our favorite restaurant along The Strip, called Setsuna's. We dined here together almost twice every week, having grown up to their delicious steaks and specialty fish entrees. I dipped my spoon in my asparagus soup, grateful for the arrival of our food.
After our meal was finished and the plates were taken away, as sort of an afterthought, Naruto ordered two glasses of wine, one for him and one for Sasuke.
"Sorry, Sakura-chan, but you're not old enough to drink yet." Naruto smiles at me.
"You know I can drink. Just not legally," I countered with a wink. Both Naruto and Sasuke are 21 and I'm 19. I don't mind being younger than them. They know that I might as well be 21 too, for all we know the only major deterrent from my age is that I can't legally drink.
"Speaking of drinking, I'm going to throw another party at my place two nights from today," Naruto said while stretching his arms over his head. "You two are invited, naturally."
"Hm," Sasuke hummed consent while taking a sip from his wine glass.
"Alright. Who else is going? Do you actually have a guest list this time? The whole 'guests invite more guests' thing is a little overdone now. It's not classy anymore." I said.
"Of course I have a guest list, Sakura!"
"Let's see it then."
Naruto scratched his head. "I don't have it with me… Actually I won't get to see it until my party manager's done writing it up!"
"That defeats the purpose of writing up a guest list, dobe, if you still don't know half the people on there," Sasuke shook his head.
"Ahhh, whatever. I gave her some guidelines, at least. I told her to send invitations to all the people our age who live around here. At least then we won't have complete strangers this time! Plus, keeping the guest list huge and mysterious gives us more opportunities to meet more people, don't you agree, Sasuke?" Naruto playfully punched the other boy's arm.
"Hn." Sasuke finished off his wine.
"Naruto, how can you be so careless?" I laughed.
With a huge grin Naruto said, "Because you and this guy are such party poopers, I have to be the one doing all the fun stuff!"
I feigned shock. "Huh! Sasuke, did you hear that? Naruto called us party poopers!"
"Dobe, you know we are far from that," Sasuke chuckled.
"Prove it teme. Sakura. Two nights from now. Show me that you guys don't kill the party!"
I laughed and waved my hand in a dismissive motion, "Are you kidding? We'll be the freaking life of the party, Naruto!"
