Well. I hope this chapter goes better than the last one.

Another day, another science lesson. This time in the North side of the building since the South was currently under construction. Even with the depth of darkness invading my vision, I could tell all eyes were on me as I sat next to Sasuke and Kiba. The piercing stares of my classmates were burning my skin almost as violently as the sulphate had burned at my eyes. I really wanted to be back in bed -- I'd even settle for the infirmary's bed. Anything was better than being scrutinized and not being able to see the scrutinizers.

I fiddled with the sheets of paper in front of me. The lesson plan had to be read out, and I'd made sure to sit completely still as Kiba poured various liquids into a test-tube. The only advantage to this set up was the fact I didn't have to wear those damn goggles. I'd also convinced myself that the guy in the infirmary yesterday was a side effect to the medication the nurses had me on. I didn't know what they were. All I got was, "open up, Mr. Uzumaki. Your pills are here." When Miss. Haruno wasn't around. By the end of my stay, I felt like a druggy.

My body lurched forward as hands grabbed the tips of my shoulders. "My dear friend, how are you fighting the forces of blindness?" It was Lee. If his voice didn't give it away, then his choice of speech certainly did. However, having to listen to him while being blind can get very aggravating since I could'nt imagine his eyebrows turning into caterpillars and walking around his face while he spoke… so I had to actually listen to him. "Your braveness is an inspiration to us all. We should all take a leaf out of your book and thrive to become better people. To show my support, I will blindfold myself and walk by your side in our struggle back to sight."

Cue my sigh. The second good thing about the blindfold was not being seen rolling my eyes. "Lee, you don't have to do that… really. My eyes are feeling better already, I'll probably be able to take this thing off in a couple of days." I pointed to the cloth on my face.

A stool scratched across the floor and my hands were clasped as breath tickled my face. Lee was definitely too close. I was blind, not deaf. "I will still be by your side through your battle back to health. I will become your eyes and shall start right this second! Mr. Kabuto is writing something on the whiteboard. Neji and Shikamaru are handling their chemicals very precisely. Quite a wonderful job. I must applaud their brilliance." My hands were released from the iron grip and Lee clapped. "Kiba is mixing chemicals that if I am right shouldn't be mixed because they produce an unstable formula--"

"For the love of crap, Kiba," I said. "If you don't stop mixing those things right this second you're going to find out what it's like to be beaten by a blind person." I didn't turn my head when I spoke, because the threat wouldn't have been the same if I'd looked in the wrong direction.

"--And Sasuke is currently giving me an odd look. I must ask him what's wrong. Sasuke--"

"Lee," Sasuke said. His voice was muffled, so I'm guessing he'd dropped his head into his hands out of frustration. "God help me, if you don't shut the fuck up right this second I won't be responsible for my actions." Thank you, Sasuke.

"You are right. I must not exhaust this method too early. I shall wait until there is something important to describe to my dear friend."

"It's fine, Lee. I can hear what's going on. I appreciate you wanting to help."

I felt another presence arrive at our workbench. "Lee, I've told you to stop bothering people while they're working." Neji to the rescue. I looked in the direction the voice came from. "How are you doing, Naruto? Mr. Kabuto told us you were lucky. You could've gone blind for good."

I nodded. "I'm fine now. No pain, just waiting for the old sight to come back, shouldn't be more than a few days."

Lee jumped into the conversation again. "You are also lucky that you have dearest friends who risk their lives to protect yours." I could just imagine the burning in his eyes as he pumped his fist in front of himself. "If it was not for Sasuke's brave actions of loyalty, you could have been trapped in the fire--"

"Hey, I would've helped, but I was having a problem not being swept away in the freak-dash to the door," Kiba said.

"But it was Sasuke who fought his way through the crowd as the terrifying fire burned across the benches in one ignition due to all the chemicals. He risked life and limb beating the fire out of the bottom of Naruto's lab coat with the arms of his own, and sacrificed the edges of his own hair by directing Naruto out of the fire's path and to safety."

"Which I still haven't been thanked for, by the way."

That's how his arms had been burned. And he'd came back for me? I just thought he was still beside me and dragged me with him on his way out. "Thanks." It came out kinda pathetic. I owed him big-time.

"Now that we've cleared up that Sasuke is God and I'm the crap friend who abandoned Naruto, can we get back to work? I want to finish this before the bell so we don't have to stay behind."

"You are absolutely right, my friend. We should also take our leave and return to our own workstation. Shikamaru should not be left to do all the work himself."

Sasuke snorted. "I don't think you have to worry about that." Shikamaru was asleep. I didn't need my sight to know that.

Neji and Lee left our bench, and I picked our worksheet up. "Could someone read this out to me?" I asked. "If I can't do the work, I might as well learn something about the chemicals."

The sheet was taken from my hands. "Maybe you should learn Braille." Sasuke laughed.

"I'll put it on my to-do list ."

Sasuke read the sheet, and I mentally stored the different chemicals we were using and their functions. When he finished, I sat and listened to the conversations floating around the classroom. It's funny what you hear when you actually listen. A couple of boys were talking about sex and how one of them 'pounded some girl's wet pussy dry', which is actually physically impossible. But being in an all boy's academy usually meant most conversations around my peers were about sex. Hot sex. Sex backwards. Sex forward. Sex up against a wall. And even sex upside-down. I changed my track of hearing and heard Lee telling Shikamaru how, 'his un-youthful laziness did no good but slow his learning process', which, again, must've been physically impossible seeing that Shikamaru was the smartest boy in the whole school.

"Holy Jesus, be my Light. Shine upon my way through this tempting, changing life. Lead me day by day." Glass clinked and scratched together. I wasn't still on medication, but maybe it wasn't out of my system yet. "Jesus, help my eyes to see, all the good Thou sendest me." Yeah, it was definitely still in my bloodstream. I mean, it'd only been a day since I'd stopped taking it. "Jesus, help my ears to hear, call for help from far and near." I clamped my hands over my ears. Maybe the Sulphate had screwed my brain up. "Jesus, help my feet to go, in the way that Thou wilt show." It was that guy's voice again, but he wasn't real. It was my imagination. He didn't exist.

"Dude, what's up?" Kiba asked from somewhere in the darkness.

I took my hands off my ears. "Can you guys hear that?" The glass was getting louder.

"Hear what?" Sasuke asked.

"That noise." I had to raise my voice over the chipping glass. The chipping beads.

"What noise? Are you okay, Naru? You're shouting," Kiba said, and I felt hands touch my arm.

I moved my limb and stood, knocking the stool's legs out from behind me. It crashed to the floor and the room fell silent.

"Jesus, help my hands to do, all things loving, kind, and true." Clank. Clank. Clank. The fucking noise.

"You can hear that, right?" I shuffled my feet forward to clasp onto the workbench.

"Naruto," Mr. Kabuto's voice came from the front of the classroom, and I jilted my head in its direction. "Stop shouting and sit down. I think you've already caused enough fuss in the last week to serve you a lifetime."

"Jesus, may I helpful be, growing every day like Thee."

My stool was stood back up and either Kiba or Sasuke helped me backward to sit down when I stopped speaking. It couldn't still be the medication. Did blindness cause schizophrenia?

"Amen."

"I'm telling you guys, I could hear something. I'm not making it up."

I sat at the corner of the bed in my small room as Sasuke occupied my blue swivel computer chair. Kiba was sitting up on the windowsill. I knew where they were from their voices. I'd been trying to convince them about the glass clinking and prayers for almost an hour. Neither one of them believed me, though. But then again, I wouldn't have believed it if someone had told me the same thing.

"We know you're not making it up," Sasuke said. "We just think that you might have been right with your first conclusion. It must've been the medication still in your system. Or it could've been the Sulphate. Mr. Kabuto did say that it could cause damage to the brain if inhaled."

"Maybe it's God trying to speak to you." Kiba laughed. It wasn't really the right time for jokes. I was becoming a freak who heard noises!

"Maybe you should go see the nurse again," Sasuke said. He sounded genuinely concerned, almost as if he thought I was losing my marbles.

I shook my head. "I'm not going back to the infirmary. I had to stay there for a week already, and for a week I thought I was actually going to die of boredom. If I have to spend one more day in there I'm going to jump out a window."

Sasuke clicked his tongue off the roof of his mouth. "You won't be made to stay there just for hearing noises. It'd be a waste of a bed."

"No, they'll just cart me off to some mental institution."

Kiba's feet hit the floor. "Well, we'll just go ask if there are any side effects to the medication the nurse gave you. If she asks why, we'll just say you have bad guts."

"Okay," I said after contemplating it. "But if I end up in a mental institution--"

"We swear to break you out of you ever end up in a mental institution. Happy?" Sasuke said as hands wrapped around my wrist and pulled me to my feet.

"Unless you deserve to be in there," Kiba added.

So that's what we did. The pair helped me down the three flights of stairs to the infirmary and we waited outside on plastic chairs. She'd made us sit outside the door because she was doing a check-up on a student, and in her words, "We weren't allowed to observe." I was like, Hello, bandages around my eyes, you put them there.

She was currently talking to the student inside. Asking him routine questions. Probably taking his heart rate, oxygen level, the normal stuff. The guy in their probably felt fine, just wanted to bunk a few classes. I was the one sitting outside, wondering when the next church service was going to run through my mind.

"Boys, you can come in now," called Miss. Haruno eventually. She was the pink-haired nurse who looked after me for the week I was bed bound. She wasn't as old as the other nurses, I'd say she was in her late twenties. Needless to say, in an all boy's academy, she was everyone's favourite nurse and probably spent most her nights in half the academy's population's dreams.

I stood and let myself be guided through the door.

"What can I do for you today, Naruto? Are your eyes feeling bad again?"

"No, Miss. I was just wondering if there were any side effects to the medication I was on."

"Hm. Take a seat. I'll have a look."

I was guided to a bed, and sat on the covers as the two sides next to me dipped. A draw opened, there was a bit of rustling and the sound of pills hitting against a plastic bottle.

"Here we go… Doesn't look there should be. Why?" A hand pressed against my forehead. "Are you feeling unwell?"

"Just a bit of a bad gut, Miss," I said when the hand was removed.

"Well, you don't feel warm. I'll go get you some Paracetamol, we'll see if that cures the upset stomach."

When she walked away, Kiba nudged me in the arm. "Dude, she is so hot. You're so lucky to have had her looking after you for a week. I'd break my own legs for special treatment from her."

"Don't be such a dick." I nudged him back. "It's not like I could actually see her--"

"That's the one I was talking about."

"--What?"

"What? What? I didn't say anything," Kiba said.

"See. He can hear me." Clank. Scratch. There went the beads again.

I rubbed at my ear.

"Here we go, Naruto." A cup of cold water was pressed against my hand and pills were put in the other. Great, more pills. I was going to be a walking pharmacy soon. I swallowed them and gave my thanks before being walked from the room.

That bloody voice again. Someone must've been playing a wind-up on me because I set the South side of the science department on fire. Why were people so cruel? So, no side effects. That couldn't be good. It wasn't the medication, then. Maybe it was lack of sleep?

"Did you see that guy in the bed?" Sasuke said to Kiba as they both held onto a shoulder to steer me back to my room.

I wanted to jump for joy. "You saw him?" I said. "The guy with the beads. The guy who was talking in there?"

I was steered around a corner. "Who're you talking about?" Sasuke asked. "I'm talking about that guy who was laying in the bed. That 'Sai' guy."

Kiba laughed. "He looks like your clone, dude. What category do you think he's in?"

"Well, he didn't look very rich. If he was, he could've afforded a decent haircut," Sasuke said.

"What, you mean like yours?"

"Oi, hands of the hairdo."

Sai? Perhaps that's who the guy with the beads was talking to. I had to speak to the boy and find out if he knew what was going on. Maybe he was doing this to me.

Well. That's the second chapter. Do you know how hard it is to write in the POV of someone who's blind. I can't put any description of what things look like, which is very limiting.

I've just sat here from 11:30pm to 6am writing over half the first chapter and now this one. Phew. I must really be looking forward to getting into the actual plot!! Ahh. So excited. Lol. And I just have to say… Lee wasn't included in my last fic, so I just have to have him in this one. I'm sure I can find some other chapters to randomly throw him into. I just love, love and love writing Lee! He's so funny. Only problem is, once I start, I have to try really hard to not make Naruto's internal dialogue lee-ish for the first few sentences afterwards.

Please R&R. I always update quicker when I know people are enjoying the fic.