Sasuke Uchiha was confused. Currently he found himself situated on the bleachers of his high school's track stadium, lacing up his brand new New Balance training flats and mulling over the events of the day. Everything had been pretty normal until about fourth period.

His teacher had given them a year long assignment, on the first day, never a crowd pleaser, that involved partners. From what he gathered, he was much more content with gazing out the window than paying attention, everybody got one partner, partners were suppose to read all the books on the reading list for that year, analyze them, and then discuss the themes and topics that the author was trying to include.

This was not a Sasuke approved assignment. For starters, he was an introvert, he was much more keen on reading the books and then writing an essay on his reaction to it, thus involving no real source of human-to-human interaction. Talking, let alone about feelings and themes, was not something Sasuke was good at. So not only was he going to fail this assignment, (which was 50% of his grade, so by failing that he failed the class) he was also going to hate every minute of it.

Drawing his attention back to the front of the room Sasuke waited for the teacher to sign his academic death sentence and assign him his cell-mate on death row. Glancing back out the window, Sasuke inspected the students entering and leaving the quad two stories beneath him when he heard...

"... and Sasuke Uchiha."

Of course he had zoned out and missed the name of his partner, now what was he suppose to do. Scanning around the class room he saw desks being haphazardly pushed together and awkward smiles as students met their new year-long partner. He decided to just sit there, surely his partner would come to him. But then, what if his partner was zoning out as well? What if they didn't hear their name being called? At least then, by process of elimination, they'd be the only two idiots in the rooms sitting by themselves. Sasuke's thoughts were halted as he felt a presence on his right. Effortlessly, Sasuke's eyes glanced over at his fellow classmate. It was a girl. A girl. Oh shit. With a quick, furious, glance up at their teacher he could have sworn he saw an evil smirk on that mask-wearing bastards face. If looks could kill, Mr. Hatake would have been dead in an instant. Sasuke could barely communicate with a fellow XY chromosome holder, replace that Y with an X and all chances of conversation, hell, speaking on an intelligent level, were struck from the records.

Upon further inspection of the female specimen in front of him he deemed her quite odd. For starters, she had pink hair. She also had light green eyes, pale skin and was dressed simply in skinny jeans and a graphic t that read, "Make Art, Not War," with a paintbrush painting a peace sign. Then there was the fact that she looked torn between being mortified and like she just won the lottery. Maybe she was having a brain aneurism. Quickly casting that thought aside her expression morphed into one of, expecting something? What the hell could she ... oh yeah, he hadn't exactly introduced himself yet. Then again, neither had she but maybe she was big on that whole, "the guy should go first," thing. So ... introducing himself. What was her name again? Oh yeah, he didn't know because he was too distracted by a freaking walkway to actually pay attention in class. Well, it never hurt to show a lady some respect by giving her your name first, his mother had raised him with manners, after all.

"So ... who are you again?"

Close enough.

"It's Sakura Haruno."

Now she sounded annoyed, angry even. There was no winning with this girl! It was pretty much all down hill from there. She cleared her throat a couple of times, fidgeted with the papers on her desk, tapped her pencil for a good ten minutes or so (just great, of course she was a pencil tapper), and bolted out of the room the second the bell rung.

As he left the room he couldn't help but think that he knew her from somewhere. He quickly deemed trying to figure out why he thought that as a really good project for future Sasuke.

His coach's whistle sliced the air, pulling him out of his thoughts and back into reality. Today was the first day of fall training. While the season wouldn't kick off until late March, the varsity team practiced and trained all year long. In the fall they would build cardio and endurance by running laps, ladders, stairs, and laying on the mileage until it slowly ebbed into winter and they had to move indoors. Then they utilized Konoha High's state of the art weight room, for strength training, and one of it's two pools (one being used by the Swim and Dive team) for lung capacity and keeping their stamina up. The JV and freshman team would often join them early March and practice for two weeks before time trials started. The coaches used time trials to figure out who got put on relays, what heat to place runners in and what events each kid should focus on.

So to say that Sasuke was surprised to see the face of one Sakura Haruno starring at him from across the team huddle was an understatement. She ran track? She was on varsity? No wonder she sounded annoyed when he didn't know who she was, there were only about twenty or so kids on varsity and, to make matters worse, they practiced together everyday after school, even on Saturday mornings, all year long.

Suffice to say, he was an oblivious idiot.

Review? Yes, no, maybe so? The chapters will be short for a little longer until the story gets some real meat on it's bones.

Always, musicXinXtheXdark