AN: No difference at all from the last chapter, this is a modern!au on the difficulties of being multilingual. My prompt was:

"I lied and said I could speak a different language to impress my crush but now he wants me to tutor him so I need to become fluent in Mandarin in 3 days HELP"


"I think this is probably the stupidest thing you've ever done in your entire life," says Ino, and Sakura can't do anything but nod her head in misery.

"Why did you say Mandarin, Sakura-chan?" Hinata queries, and her voice is softer but her barbs almost cut deeper. "Why not one of the languages you do speak?"

Holding her face in her hands, Sakura speaks around her embarrassment, fingers digging into her temples in agitation. "Because," she mumbles, "Sasuke said he needed to pick up some Mandarin for a business trip, and he remembered I speak some languages, and when he asked if one of them was Mandarin I just…"

The rest of the story is obvious, if the sighs around the table tell her anything. Tenten shakes her head deploringly and Sakura sees it through the small slits of vision afforded through her fingers.

"Well," the brunette suggests, "you could always just teach him a few words of Cantonese, throw him off the scent."

Sakura shoots her friend an unimpressed frown. "Tenten, you know more than anyone else the differences between the two languages," she remonstrates, and is rewarded with the sight of her friend's canines as she grins. As a first generation Chinese immigrant, Tenten is intimately familiar with the ways both languages get conflated with one another.

"Yeah, but Sasuke only speaks Japanese and English, right?"

"I think so."

"Then it'll probably fool him," she finishes.

"Can't you just teach me Mandarin?"

There's polite - and less polite, from Ino - tittering around the table.

"Sakura," pipes Temari, "you're a genius, but I don't even think you could learn a language in three days."

"Watch me," the pink-haired woman replies darkly, and it's the last her friends see of her until the morning of the day of reckoning. They've regrouped in the same brunch place, a miracle of scheduling in and of itself but even moreso because Ino comes prepared with the makeup, Hinata brings along her hairbrush and Tenten has written a few flashcards to give to Sasuke on her behalf.

"Sakura," Temari says critically, eyeing her friend as she slides into the booth. "When did you last sleep?"

"Tuesday," the woman in question replies, but there's a hint of humour. "I'm a doctor, I can take a few sleepless nights."

"What Temari is trying to elegantly say, Forehead," and Ino's holding up a commanding finger, "is that you were about to go on a date looking like absolute shit."

Sakura blinks. Sucks up the rest of her mimosa and then shrugs, trying and failing to keep the nervousness from her features. "It's not a date," she says defensively, then looks down at her plate when the rest of the women express their disbelief. "I'm helping him out with something. In a friendly way."

"Oh, sure," Ino agrees, "and where are you doing this helping out?"

Sakura names one of the most exclusive restaurants in the city, and the admission raises some excitement amongst the girls. The rest of the brunch is spent strategising, helping and teasing in that order, and Sakura leaves them behind armed with flashcards, Hinata's best pearls and Ino's coveted cashmere jumper.

When she sees Sasuke sat at the table, Sakura almost turns and runs out the door, but she's not fourteen any more and it's been over ten years since the last time he told her she was annoying. Still, when he raises his head from the menu and smiles, really smiles, like he's pleased to see her, Sakura is glad that her hands are full otherwise they'd be wringing themselves into oblivion.

"Sakura," he greets in his usual way, standing up and pulling her chair out to help her sit down. She remembers their last conversation, the one that had gotten her into this mess, and she can't do anything but give him a wide smile back before spreading the flashcards over the table.

"I've brought loads of materials for you to get started with-" she begins, speaking far too quickly.

Sasuke nods along and then scolds her in his particular gentle way:

"I thought we could eat, first."

Sakura is half-tempted to start shouting in Cantonese, or English, or German, or any of the other languages she knows that aren't Japanese. But that would probably get them thrown out of the restaurant, so she simply lets Sasuke order for her - his taste is far better than hers - and manages to eat with minimal outbursts.

"So when's your trip?" she asks eventually, clutching the stem of her wine.

Sasuke frowns, then pulls out his phone to check. "Saturday, actually."

"Tomorrow," she confirms. He has always been loose with dates and times, except for when he's meeting herself or Naruto, and it's funny to see that continue into his professional life. "You want me to teach you Mandarin… for a trip you're going on tomorrow."

"Aa."

"Well," Sakura says, feeling infinitely relieved, "we'll probably only have time to go over the very basics…"

During her university years, she'd paid part of her tuition by tutoring in languages and it's something Sakura knows how to do very well (when it's something she can speak), so the fact is that going over greetings, numbers and days of the week is probably within what she'd crammed over the last few days.

"Shall we start?" she queries, and Sasuke just nods, chin balanced on his hand as he watches her smooth out flashcards.

"That's not your handwriting," he observes after a moment, and Sakura looks down at Tenten's handiwork.

"No," she says, thinking fast, "this is some of the materials my teacher gave me when I learned."

"Hn," is Sasuke's only comment, and she spends the next ten minutes coaching him through the basics of hello, goodbye, my name is…

"How would I ask whether someone wants to go for dinner?" Sasuke interrupts.

"Like… for a date?"

Sasuke smirks, leans forward a little, and taps the folder of work he'd put next to his empty plate. "No, like professionally."

Of course. Sakura hasn't been on many business trips - it's not what she does, right in the thick of the action - but it's fairly standard procedure to wine and dine the kind of clients she knows Sasuke courts. The only thing is… she hadn't thought to ask Tenten how to say that.

"Um," she hedges. She could attempt to brush him off with some Cantonese, but Sasuke is far from stupid, and Sakura's sure he'd see through the ruse.

"I was looking online," Sasuke starts, and Sakura finds she can't meet his dark eyes, "and I think it went something like this…"

He says something in Mandarin, and Sakura is too distracted to hear the suspiciously accurate tone of his voice. Sakura bites her bottom lip, missing the slowly spreading smirk on Sasuke's face, and answers him with false brightness in her tone.

"Yes, I would think that would work!" she lies, nodding furiously. She'll just have to trust he hadn't looked anything strange up.

"Hn," Sasuke muses, "that's funny."

It's as though he's plunged her head first into a bucket of ice. "How… how so?"

"Well, I just asked if you'd accompany me back to my hotel room. Is that how business works in the medical world?"

He cocks his head to the side, innocent as all hell except Sakura can see the way his eyes are crinkled at the corners. And she's in love with him, but Sakura and Sasuke have also been friends for a very long time, so it's with real feeling that she says "damn it, Sasuke, can you speak Mandarin?"

He shrugs, but it's decidedly affirmative and she sighs deeply. "Why did you pretend not to?"

The dark-haired businessman leans back in his chair, folding his hands on his knee and looking inordinately pleased with himself. "I wanted to eat here," he explains, but Sakura doesn't buy it.

"With your position, you could get a reservation here any day of the week," she scolds, unimpressed.

"With you," Sasuke clarifies, and watches as she flushes red from the roots of her hair to her neck. "I wanted to eat here with you."

"Oh," is all she can manage.

"Oh," Sasuke repeats, and then gives her his devastating smile, accompanied by a string of fast-spoken Mandarin. It sounds suspiciously similar to what he'd said before, but she doesn't quite think he'd ask her to a non-existent hotel room.

"Did you just…?" she queries, but can't quite say the words.

"Ask you to dinner?" Sasuke finishes, draining his wine and tapping his chin thoughtfully before nodding.

"Yes," he says, and it's a second before she processes that he'd said this in perfect Cantonese.

"Damn you, Sasuke," she repeats in kind, but it's rewarded with her favourite smile and she thinks maybe, maybe I'll let him away with it.

Then he repeats the offer in English, in German, and finally in Japanese, and Sakura decides that perhaps Uchiha Sasuke doesn't deserve anything but the sight of her rosy red cheeks.


AN: There you go! I think that this world is pretty funny, also I love the idea of disorganised businessman!Sasuke being a tease.