Sai entered Sakura's apartment through the window as cautiously and quietly as he could when he saw that she was reading. On the couch, Sakura barely gave him a passing glance, feeling his weight settle on the opposite end of the furniture and frowned when he dropped his head to her lap. He heaved a heavy sigh, something she felt as she rested her elbow on his shoulder and glanced down at him from under the pages of her text.

'I am depressed, Ugly.' Sai stated simply, closing his eyes. `In case you were wondering.'

Sakura shook her head, running her tongue over her lips as she reached forward over Sai's head to drop her book on the coffee table with a very loud smack. Her irritation was obviously transferred over to that simple action as Sai flinched slightly, never lifting his head from her lap. Sakura sighed, placing her left elbow on the couch arm rest, placing her chin in her open palm leaning over into her open hand to observe the man resting on her thighs. His hair was messy and he looked tired.

'And...?'

'I am not happy.' He opened his eyes briefly, glancing at up at her. 'I am depressed.'

He shifted his eyes forward again, pouted and sighed. Obviously, Sai had been watching locals, or paying close attention to Naruto or herself when 'down in the dumps', Sai had at least managed to get his face into the appropriate scowl. Not to mention the head in the lap, common practice among for Naruto. She wanted to pass it off as that, a child mimicking his parents perhaps.

'There is this... knot in my stomach.' Sai explained further, placing a hand on his stomach and wincing.

'Maybe you're sick?' She suggested, charging up her medicinal chakra. 'It is that time of the year, Sai.' Sai pulled his legs closer to his body, in a very uncomfortable mock fetal position.

'I am not happy.' He repeated as Sakura let the green glow of her hands fade at the sheer certainty of those words. Sai doesn't do genuine; Sakura wants to believe that, yet... the tug of those words...

'Sai...' Her hand fell to his head instead, stroking the messy raven locks. 'You can talk about it... '

'The date, Hag.'

She frowned deeply, balling a fist at his term of endearment, Her eyes shot to the calendar, hung in the corner of the living room, dates crossed off with flowered stickers.

'December twenty third...'

'Is this the face I should be making?' He asked. 'I feel....'

Sakura frowned and fingered the collar of his shirt, watching his brow furrow in a knot, tongue darting out to wet his lips, chapped from the cold. Coal black eyes narrowing on the wood paneling of the wall in front of them and then he turned his head up to her. He wrinkled his nose and shrugged against Sakura's body. She remembered the date, vaguely, written in dark black letters in the familiar cover of a book Sakura traced within her own mind

'Tell me about him, Sai.'

As if a weight was being brought off his shoulders, Sai began.

'He was like Naruto...'