ephemeral echos
minasaku
002.
she loved playing volleyball, she realised when she was ten. hitting the ball, tossing it, making sure to catch it before it hit the floor, going out of her way to get to the ball even if it seemed impossible, seeing the bright light that only one could see when they're above the net, a breaths second away from thwacking the ball and scoring.
winning. winning, scoring, participating, enjoying, laughing, loving.
they were all emotions she felt from playing volleyball. they filled her whenever she was on the court, heart thrumming in anticipation, exhilaration and anxiety. sure, it was never easy to go to every game feeling the same emotions or getting discouraged when they fell, but when they fell they fell together, and when they rose they rose together.
blowing a stray hair out of her face, Sakura took a quick breath in.
compared to the other girls on her team (she rolled her eyes at Ino's blown kiss), she was relatively small. of course being 5'3 was small, but not compared to Kushina who stood at the stands, cheering and yelling in all her 5'0 glory. but being 5'3 compared to the rest of her teams' 5'6 and aboves, she was tiny.
tiny, but with a powerful strike.
her grin widened.
girls were catty. it was a well known fact, they were bitches. and being bitches, bitches cant help but bitch to other bitches about the bitches they encountered. whether they'd do it in front of their faces was another story entirely.
story being, Sakura was small and a middle striker. she was mostly the cause of conversation when they were getting into position, because "how is short-fry over there a middle? she looks like she could be pushed and crumble!" and "yeah of course i'm short do i look like i'm as tall as a fucking weed," she'd grumble, eye twitching. causing them to all laugh, which in turn caused her to pout an grumble some more.
which then caused the crowd to talk about how she was much too cute and small to be playing with the big kids which would then trigger everything to be put into a motion again.
it was a cycle that the pink-haired striker would rather leave dead, but alas, it was never for her.
eyes snapping to the front, her orbs took in the hand signs Tenten was quickly forming behind her back, her own eyes following the ball with an intensity Sakura could relate to.
a smirk beginning to grow, she licked her lips in anticipation and then stopped suddenly.
"MY LIPS ARE FUCKING DRY!" she screamed internally, smiling nervously at Hinata who cocked her head at her, hands already curling in a familiar position she was so used to seeing.
darting forward, she ducked underneath the ball, running faster she could hear her PE shoes slapping against the floor, Karin's yelling sounding faint above her own blood roaring, Temari's laboured breathing as she stood on standby, Hinata's almost lax form making her head nearly burst in anticipation.
it was her time to shine, to seize the day, steal the game and make the momentum turn.
she could be their break.
she didn't care about their odds, that maybe it was the second half and the other team was at match point while they were five points behind, nothing mattered except for the excitement flowing through her bloodstream and the laugh she could hear from Ino on the other side of the court.
"get back guys, #N8 is their decoy! block #6, they're more likely to hit!"
faintly, Sakura could see the little upturn of her blue-haired setters lips. being underestimated was normally shit, but right now, when they could change the pace for something as little as underestimating, she didn't mind it at all.
in moments like this, being underestimated was nothing short of a beautiful sin.
"CHA!"
.
.
"did you really have to hit the ball that hard Pinky? couldn't you've gone a little gentler? now your hands all red and sore and i'll hearing about this for weeks, which is something i'd rather not do."
hair pulled back into a bun, standing and stretching her legs, Sakura blew at the stray hair for a third time and glared. why was it always in her face?
"Minato, sweetie, if you don't want to hear about it maybe you should close your ears. better yet," she turned and smiled, ignoring the way his blue eyes followed her lips. "go away."
"but i'll be bored if i do," he sighed, and immediately she was watching his bright bright bright blue eyes and wow why were they so captivating she should stop.
but she didn't.
"i don't care," lips forming into a pout, she decided to be petty and turned around again, huffing. why were they in the female locker room again?
oh yes, that's right: because she had called him in here just to complain about how sore her hands are, which then in turn caused him to start complaining to her about her complaining and wow her head's spinning maybe she should stop thinking too hard.
"oi, oi, oi, oi, oi,"
"what." she hissed, back still turned.
he smiled. "you did great out there," he whispered. Sakura wished there was noise in the locker room.
"thanks," she whispered back, all too aware of how her heart was unwillingly racing, how her veins were beginning to fill with something so familiar it nearly ached and how she just knew he had his eyes firmly placed on her body, as if she was the last person on the world.
he's done it enough times, out of the corner of her eyes she had noticed.
of course, she didn't want to acknowledge her own feelings. his? she could take that in, no pressure or hate, positive or negative emotion present. her own feelings? a whole different fucking story she had nearly snarled at Ino on a Saturday night, glaring at her phone with a furiosity that made the other line go silent.
and that was all there was to it. his feelings, or hers for that matter, were never brought up again. Ino, too conscious of the way her best friend was distressed at even the mention of the word, and Sakura for how she didn't quite know what she was feeling.
"your welcome."
she breathed in, eyes suddenly squeezed shut with the sudden urge to spill her heart with eyes wide and hopeful but her mind confused, waiting, something, something
"if i told you i loved you, would you give me your heart in return?"
her heart, in turn, dropped to her knees.
she whirled around, eyes wide and hopeful (oh so hopeful), that one stupid stupid piece of hair slapping her left eye but she couldn't find it within herself to care.
"what?"
and his eyes found hers, eyes so doe and the sky really couldn't compare to how utterly captivating they were.
"if i give you a confession, would you take it and cherish it?" a faint smirk fluttered across his lips.
she regarded him for a moment, simply taking in his form and his words. her mind sailed smoothly as if he hadn't just said something they'd been dancing around for months, her hands as composed as she had been an hour before and yet, her heart wouldn't stop jumping into her throat.
"if i gave you a confession back, would you simply stand there and do nothing to confront it?" she shot back instead, watching the way his eyes flashed dark blue and his surprised expression filtering across his face, a blank mask slipping back in place before she even had a second to wonder if she had seen correctly.
hands by his side, Minato threw his head back and laughed.
"let me be honest here Pinky, you're infuriating and i hate hearing you whine about your volleyball games," he took a step back, a smile crossing his face when she refused to take a step back in response, "but, i cant deny your whining is... tolerable."
wearily, she watched him take each step with a gaze that was unreadable.
she gazed up at him, neck nearly having to crane at the height difference. only one thought crawled across her mind, he's so tall...
and suddenly he was leaning down and she was sitting down, one hand grabbing the bench and the other holding her heart, shock spreading throughout her body like a wildfire.
silence. silence and nothing.
her laughed again, her heart clenched.
"i love you," he whispered, and Sakura took in his appearance, the way his hair was ruffled and his eyes were intense, his muscles tensing underneath his plain black shirt, a smile etched across his face with a certain amount of confidence that no one else could, nearly swallowing her tongue whole as she shakily murmured it back.
"i love you."
notes: i'm suffering withdrawal symptoms from haikyuu as can be seen clearly here. i stole way too many plot points or scenes or things that happened in that anime to use here, haruichi furudate forgive me lmfao
for the real fluff i had to jump on the ariana grande shit , yall been knew the deal around here butt i may or may not have been listening to im a believer by SPYAIR and amalee's english version of the same song on repeat while writing, but i think the result is quite cute. it has absolutely no correlation but fuck me if i dont somehow make it work ssksjd, which i did
wig!
honestly, i was so into writing the volleyball match that i 100% forgot i was writing minasaku whOOPS , so this had to be another 700 hundred-ish words long just to get the fluff in that we all love, want and need in our drearily short lives
minasaku ;( they're so cute get out, i can imagine minato with so many different personalities and he's so adorable in all of them smh imagine being a whole heartthrob, i cant relate. ngl, i think i have an obsession with calling minas eyes bright blue but .. i imagine them to be bright, bright and blue with so many different layers of the shade blue encased in them yk