::

::

There were two things Neji hated in life:

One) Fate. The sheer notion that premonition can overcome free will is absolutely terrifying; it fed his childhood with nightmares, troubled his quavering mind thinking that Someone could be out there controlling him with a sadistic smirk!

Two) Birds. Goddamn he hated birds. Stupid animals. Shitting all over you.

He also didn't like the element of surprise. Birthdays were an unpleasant time of the year. Though, not as unpleasant as the day he was struck by the surprising discovery that he was developing man feelings for-

~~Missing scene due to technical glitch. We'll resume the film as soon as possible.~~

:: ::

Friday's afternoon Neji's house was invaded with joyful young adults, wearing swim suits under summer clothes and supporting alcohol-filled backpacks. Those who had classes opted for the responsible decision of skipping them, just so they could enjoy another hot summer-like day in the middle of October, all thanks going to Global Warming.

Neji's house became a common desired place for pool parties, not only for the obvious fact that it had a pool, but also because of its convenient location near the campus. Almost all the residences in the nearest perimeter of the University were of rich families who settled themselves in the area to assure the academic future of their offspring. It was illogically reductionist, but Kyoto's main University (1) had an application selection system that favored students of closer location.

Naruto was probably the only not-rich guy that also lived near the University, in his stepfather's house (the apartment, modest but expensive due to location, was a lucky family heritage that played as a bonus when the man was trying to conquer Kushina's heart). The majority of students lived in rented rooms, the cheaper ones for the poorest being located quite far from College – society never fails to remind you that social injustices are as essential as the oxygen you breathe.

Sasuke was among the poorest students that lived far away, as he still lived with Kurenai and Asuma (renting rooms just to be closer was a waste of money, in his opinion). He didn't mind though, because thanks to his beautiful lady – the Escorts Yamaha RX135 – he took little more than one hour to arrive at the University, as he didn't need to rely on public transportation anymore that got stuck in three-hour traffic. Asuma and Kurenai helped him pay for the bike (for which he had been collecting for about three years with working hours), and even though he so protested that he didn't want their money, inwardly he was deeply grateful for their generosity.

He parked her (the bike) in what he considered to be a safe place in the shade, suspiciously scrutinizing the area around. She (the bike) had been left alone these last two weeks in the mechanic's garage because some shithead tried to forge the oil filter. No worries, she (the bike) was fine, beautiful as always, and the one responsible for that depraved act was still lying in a hospital bed with three stitches in his left eyebrow.

Sasuke was welcomed inside the Hyuuga mansion by two maids, who led him through the three hundred yards of marbled floor to the backyard, passing through two hundred decorative pieces of furniture (each of them more expansive than his own house certainly).

People used to refer to the Hyuuga's mansion as Neji's house, even though the real heiress of that house was Hinata – aka 'Neji's Cousin', as she was known by most people, including her friends. In fact, Neji's official residence was in the outbuilding located somewhere in the middle of the huge shadow casted by the luxurious mansion, but who cares about details nowadays? Besides, it was always Neji who wasthe one popular enough to invite 'everybody' (meaning 100 Students out of 5000 invisible worms that went to Kyoto University); and thus Neji will forever be the greatest party-maker of the campus, thanks to the help of Hanabi, party lover and father's favorite.

There was a lot of juvenile activity in the backyard, where the enormous fancy-designed pool was. At the left, there was a mini-bar tent serving drinks, and near it a set of tables with some snacks and candies; at the right an expensive DJ was playing downloaded music. Some people were inside the pool already, others were preparing to do so, and the water had three cups of chloride and fifteen cups of margaritas.

He spotted Naruto and Sai sitting on a couple of plastic chairs near the bar tent, with a nice blue parasol casting an inviting shadow over them.

"Yo, Sasuke!" Naruto waved to his friend, grinning as always.

Sasuke walked over the perfectly trimmed grass to meet them with his typical sullen look.

"Lots of people here." He snorted.

"It's a pool party!" Naruto reasoned out. "Chill out, man. It's not like you were forced to come."

Pool parties were in fact like normal parties except that they were during daylight and most of the time you could actually see the face of the one you were making out with.

Which could also be a minus. It was a minus for Sasuke. He hated pool parties.

"Go grab a chair!... Oh wait…" Naruto positioned his flat right hand over his eyebrows to better scrutinize the area around. "I don't think there's any chairs left…"

Sasuke eyed around, noticing that all the plastic chairs were occupied. There weren't many, since chairs were always a better choice than the hard grass. To solve his little problem, the brunette quickly analyzed the groups that were sitting on chairs, until his eyes stumbled on the noisy teenage girls that were most probably Hanabi's friends (that's what you get for coming to Neji's parties: Hanabi is always there, so are her pimpled childish friends).

Nonchalantly, letting a tiny gentle smile surface and a sunlit hair tress threatening to fall over his sunglasses, he approached the group of giggling 14-year-olds and picked the nerdy-looking one with the thick spectacle frames and the braces, who was sitting in a chair alone.

"Hey." He smiled to her. Her friends stopped giggling and glued their attention on him. "Can I have your chair? My back is killing me." He purred the last sentence.

The nerdy-looking one's face blushed so hard that it brought to Sasuke's memories the fresh tomatoes Kurenai bought early that morning. While her friends behind her started whispering between them, the blushing girl moved her gawking mouth to try to pronounce a complete sentence through choked sounds:

"Y-ye-yes, yes! I c-wil-I'll-sit-he-here." Something like that.

She gauchely stood up, bowing for who-knows-why, gesturing him to take her chair, and Sasuke pronounced a "thank you" before he grabbed the chair and walked back with the wanted item, putting it down near Naruto's chair, seizing the left shadow casted by the parasol. He rapidly took off his clothes to reveal his well-built half-naked pale body on navy blue colored swim shorts. After removing the towel and the newspapers from the backpack and putting the clothes in it, he laid down the towel on the chair, sat down and stretched his body to the fullest, letting out a sigh of contempt.

"That's not fair." The blonde uttered, watching out of the corner of his eye the group of hysterical teenagers still hungrily watching his friend's movements. "When I want something, if it's a girl she always tells me to buzz off."

"I wouldn't give you anything either with those swim shorts of yours." Sasuke was referring to Naruto's choice of style, always wearing the same bright orange colored swim shorts.

"I would."Sai uttered.

"Why am I not surprised…"

Sasuke opened the newspapers (reading the newspaper was a habit he picked up from Asuma, though he didn't like to admit that) and tried not think about where Itachi and Sakura were, since he hadn`t spotted them anywhere yet.

Glancing to his friend he noticed Naruto had moved his chair out of the shadows (movement mimicked by Sai), and was right now handling a bottle of sunblock, clumsily smearing his overly tanned legs with the cream.

"Since when do you wear sunblock?"

"Since my dad started bitching about skin cancer." The blonde replied. "I can't put this on my back-"

"Here, let me help you." Sai promptly approached his dear friend to gladly help him with the task.

"Didn't know you listened to Iwashi (2)."

"Well, he is my dad."

"Your stepdad." Sasuke corrected.

"Whatever. Do I have another living dad?"

His response had a taste of bitterness and Sasuke felt like he wanted to swallow back his words. He didn't reply, apologetically observing his best friend acting like life was great again, as Sai rubbed smoothly his back with the white cream and caused him little tickles here and there.

In part Sasuke did understand how Naruto could easily accept a stranger in his life. His father died as a hero when Naruto was still a child, trying to save a family from a burning apartment while the firemen were still taking their time to arrive at the scene. Because of that his mother went into serious depression and had to be interned in a mental institute, and until his mother completed the six years treatment, Naruto had to live in a children's house (also known as 'orphanage', a name that Japanese people still grimace at).

They met at the children's house. All three of them, Sakura inclusive. They weren't friends exactly. They were just kids among twenty other children that lived in the same small house cheaply subsidized by the state.

Sasuke didn't really recall the conditions in which he was living before he was brought to that house, at the age of four. He once asked about it to Lady Tsunade, the householder, and she said he was found malnourished in an abandoned warehouse next to the body of his assumedly mother, whose arm was half-corroded by necrosis and still the syringe was sticking out. Not exactly in these words but for a six hear old, he really got the picture. Tsunade had never been one to deal with children, even though she did the best she could.

(She said to him, "Don't worry, the worst is over."

Oh boy, she couldn't be more wrong.)

He remembers that Sakura was the first girl he saw being taken away. She got lucky; she was adopted by a nice couple right at the age of seven and her only living relative didn't oppose to that (3). Sasuke was adopted a year after, and Naruto stayed in the house for three more years until his mother, whom he barely remembered, picked him up and decided to restore the family bonds.

A few years ago Kushina decided to bring a man into their household, who even renounced to his fairly prestigious "Tatami" family name to adopt the "Uzumaki" surname (supposedly out of love). Shortly after that they were moving to a bigger apartment. The weirdest thing is that Naruto, instead of revolting against it, he accepted it. That's not normal.

Sasuke couldn't be like that. It's a stranger, for god's sake. It's not your blood. It took nearly two years for him to accept Asuma and Kurenai as his new family, and even though he would never call Asuma 'dad' or anything – he was just his foster dad and Kurenai was just…Kurenai, or Crazy Woman when she was on her period. Because Sasuke understood that they were just temporary; he understood that someday, he will leave them, and find his permanent -real- family.

You see, Sasuke knew that his biological parents were alive. He just knew. That junkie he was found with in that abandoned warehouse wasn't his real mother, because her autopsy's report said she had 'Congenital absence of the uteri, meaning she was born sterile.

During the first year in Asuma's house he had a sort of identity crisis and frenetically started digging around whatever information he could find that would give him some clues.

(To tell you the truth, that identity crisis started earlier with his previous 'adoptive father' – if one could call him that – but back then he didn't have the means, nor the healthy state of mind, to perform an amateur research about it.)

His investigation was still incomplete –better yet, almost stuck in a dead end. He found that that junkie had no Japanese identity, which could mean she was an illegal emigrant, and that left him unable to link her to his parents.

Old newspapers around his time of birth bared no relevant news about kidnapped babies, though he found a report about abandoned children and how most of them ended in cradles of drug addicts. Mostly because of financial problems, desperate couples abandoned newborns in the streets while the gods closed their eyes, as they were too embarrassed to be seen in a children's facility.

Hey, don't make that look of disapproval. Blame society taboos, blame obsolete mind, blame traditional thinking; don't blame poor families for being desperate. Because that's what Sasuke thought had happened: his parents were very, very poor, so they had to ditch him in an alley.

Whatever, the important thing was that Sasuke had more and more certainty about his parents being alive. And until he finds them he isn't entitled to consider anyone else as his parents, no matter what.

That's just not right.

One day, when he graduates as a lawyer and thus has more means to decently search for them, he will find them, and they'll regret abandoning him, cry for 20-30 minutes and accept him back.

And they will finally be a family.

"My, you're fairly early Sasuke."

The piercing voice of his ex-girlfriend forced him out of his utopia, much to his displeasure. He turned his head to grunt back a reply but his voice got stuck in his tonsils, when he met the couple in their swimsuits.

Itachi was wearing speedos.

"Yo Sakura! Itachi!" Naruto yelled the greetings, like usual.

"Naruto, you're wearing the same swim trunks again?" Sakura joked.

Itachi was wearing black speedo shorts with two red stripes on each side.

(He also had nice abs.)

(And that observation shall forever remain between parentheses)

Outside Sasuke's world, the friendly bickering between Naruto and Sakura continued. "You're one to talk! You always wear pink bikinis!"

Who the fuck wears speedos?

Besides Sai and Rock Lee. And professional swimmers, of course.

"That's not true! I have a lilac bikini!"

Black speedo shorts with two red stripes on each side, that clung to every eye-gluer curve of his pelvic area and bounced his quite prominent-

Oh fuck.

"Sasuke, are you ok?"

The brunette in question was stuck with the realization that he had effectively spent nearly one minute staring at Itachi's crotch. The awkwardness of his subconscious act exploded ferociously in his cheeks, and not even the shadow could disguise that sudden colored saturation.

"Yeah, your face is all red."

"The weather is hot." He mumbled as a response to his blonde friend, feeling extremely embarrassed for calling everyone's attention in such a way.

"Are you sure you're not getting a fever?" Sai asked.

"Oh he never gets sick." Sakura decided to reply for his sake. "Besides the swimming contest-"

"If you have a temperature, swimming is a bad idea." Itachi interrupted her abruptly. She even gawked.

Sasuke looked at him in slight surprise; his voice –surreal like all the reactions he casted on Sasuke– showed apparent concern, but his face remained blank. Itachi was again imprinting his powerful gaze on him,

(Devious eyes that tried to penetrate through his shell of human being, only to leave him trapped with his own subconscious mind)

And Sasuke watched, as Itachi stepped forward, his chiseled half-naked body bending over him while a pair of black orbs under the mascara-commercial eyelashes looked into his own; and his heart yelled as the space between them was choked, and his hand – Itachi's right hand, the perfect fingers and the perfect metacarpal bones- were so close, almost touching his face, almost feeling his skin-

Violently Sasuke snapped Itachi's arm away with a rude shove, as if his primary instincts had just woken up to defend himself from his own secret not-to-be-consumed indulgence.

"What's your problem, he was just checking your temperature!" Sakura yelled.

"I'm fine, doctor." Grunting, Sasuke stood up, grabbing firmly the newspapers against his pelvis.

Breathe. Self-control is the key word. Imagine Orochimaru in a bath full of blood, fully naked in his aged glory and shriveled discolored skin, purring out romantic words beneath diabolic smiles and yellowed teeth.

Lately Sasuke was finding this mental picture was the best way to kill unwanted erections in public places.

"I'm sorry hun," Sakura tried to excuse his behavior to Itachi, as she grabbed her boyfriend's arm and stroked the skin with her nail-painted fingers. "Sasuke is a special case." She added bitterly.

Sasuke ignored her comment and stood up, leaving the newspapers on the chair. His hormones were calmer now. It was so strange how his body was reacting lately. Aah, he will find out his problem soon, as he already scheduled an appointment with an endocrinologist and an urologist (just in case, it could be some sort of sexual dysfunction).

"Let's just get this shit over." He grunted, nudging to Itachi, and began walking towards the pool.

Itachi immediately followed him – so did Sakura, and her obnoxious smile ready for the outcome.

"Are you sure?" Itachi asked him, once both of them were lined up at the border of the pool. He undid his ponytail, letting his charcoal-colored hair locks fall over his chest. Damn, the guy was really well built. Does he work out?

Some occupants were beginning to leave the water to give room for the competition, under Sakura and Tenten's request. Within the growing audience of curious eyes forming around them, some bets on the guessed winner were already being made.

Sasuke just smirked, putting on his mask of superciliousness again, as he looked at the blue boring sky. No clouds. No raining in the near future. No way to avoid the stupid contest without bruising his ego.

In his mind, Orochimaru was still in the bathtub.

:: ::

"I don't understand what made you so upset!"

The wooden door closed behind Naruto, as he followed his moody friend inside the house. Passing through the modestly decorated living room – extremely modestly in fact, as nobody from that household seemed to appreciate the aesthetic value of decoration – he encountered Kurenai on the sofa reading a magazine with her usual cup of green tea.

"Sasuke a letter came for you!" She screamed before the requested male closed soundly his bedroom door behind him, and still without distracting her eyes from the magazine, she changed her voice tone to greet the well-known visitor of that house. "Hi Naruto."

"Hi, Kurenai!" He replied with a smile, but she didn't look at him. Naruto was used to it; Kurenai was not really the nicest woman walking on Earth, but she was polite at least. Maybe because of that that a lot of people still believed that she was Sasuke's real mother.

Kiba once asked Sasuke if he ever got horny looking at his mother, a question that even intrigued Naruto. Not that he shared the main opinion of his other male friends about Kurenai's body (Naruto appreciated female beauty, but he also appreciated respect for older women, especially older women that are your friends' mothers), but indeed for a guy like Sasuke that formed no prior judgments in regards to age, as Naruto had once the opportunity to verify, and taking the fact that Kurenai was not related by blood… it was not a bad question, really.

It was on one boring night the two of them were just hanging out in Naruto's house that the blonde dared to repeat the question left without answer, and strangely, Sasuke answered.

"She's not my type."

Like that, pure coldness, pure self-centered logic. He could've answered 'Because I respect Asuma' or 'Because Kurenai is my foster family' too, but no.

She's not his type. Like, 'I could do her, if I wanted. She's just not my liking.'

It was in times like these that Naruto felt the urge to beat the crap out of his friend.

Regardless, Naruto asked what Sasuke's type was, and he just said he preferred them with smaller chests. After that, he changed the topic of conversation.

It was in times like these that Naruto felt the urge to beat the crap out of his friend and leave him alone and defenseless in a dark room with five Tentens.

Though he would always forgive Sasuke's disrespectful way of thinking, not only because it was Sasuke, but because he knew that his best friend was still in need to be saved from his past.

But let's not talk about stagnated waters now.

He entered inside his friend's room and found Sasuke conscientiously cleaning up the already annoyingly neat room, an annoying habit he had when something annoyed him. Needless to say, it annoyed Naruto very much.

"You even won! I don't get you! Why are you like this?"

Sasuke sighed and for a moment stopped trying to compulsively bend and re-bend a shirt of his without creasing. He was upset, but he didn't have the energy to explain the details of what was troubling him because he himself didn't really know.

He just didn't like Itachi.

In fact, he hated him. He hated how nice he was. After Sasuke finishing the 10 laps competition only two seconds earlier than Itachi – a victory that clearly disappointed a lot of watchers, he noticed –, Itachi even congratulated him with an apparent honest smile and say something like 'that was a good competition' or something.

Who says that? It almost looked like he was happy to lose.

The worst though was when they all gathered around an organized set of three tables placed alongside the pool, filled with snacks, sweets and cakes, where a Hinata had the opportunity to shine a little by the time she presented a sickly-looking chocolate cake that she made herself.

In the middle of the frenzy for sugar, Sakura called everyone's attention saying that Itachi was going to cite a Chinese poem. It was clear that the guy was caught in surprise, as he even seemed rather embarrassed when seventy pairs of eyes started to look at him like he was about to do a complicated number of acrobatics in a Chinese circus.

And so, before the imposed silence of the dubious audience – dubious, because Neji's friends weren't exactly known for their liking in culture – Itachi cleared his throat and started reciting something in Chinese.

"Wow, that's cool!" Naruto, as well as thirty other gawking morons seemed to be rather impressed with the fact that Itachi could speak another language. Itachi could have been citing the menu of a Chinese restaurant, but you know how it is, morons are morons – they are easily impressed.

Upon enthusiastic requests, Itachi translated the poem. And while doing that, he had placed his dark eyes on Sasuke, as he enchanted everyone else with his melodic words. Sasuke, who had tried to seem like the most uninterested person of the group, felt himself unable to ignore the voice that seemed to carry enigmatic emotions behind every line of the poem.

It was strangely seductive. The choice of the poem, the voice, the eyes staring at him.

(Or were they? Of all the things Sasuke feared, deceiving fantasies were the worst.)

"Is it about Itachi and Sakura again?"

Naruto had sat on his bed, watching Sasuke's compulsive behavior as he carefully stored the meticulously folded clothes.

Sasuke didn't know the why of his anger, only the who. Most of all, he didn't want to justify his possible unjustifiable anger to Naruto – in fact, Naruto shall never know about tricks that his subconscious mind played with him.

"It's nothing."

He didn't like Itachi. That's all.

(Maybe he envied the admiration Itachi seemed to gather from the others, maybe he envied his power to affect people, maybe –really, just maybe- he envied Sakura.)

"I don't understand." Naruto continued, repeating his eternal doubt. "He seems like a cool guy. He's half-Chinese you know? Sakura told me."

Naruto wasn't dumb - he was, truly, the living contradiction of first sight judgments. And much to Sasuke's dismay, he knew that hiding things from Naruto was almost an impossible task.

"And he can be half-Kyrgyzstanian for all I care." Sasuke replied bitterly.

Naruto sighed and pondered if it was worth talking to Sasuke. It seemed that his friend was becoming more enigmatic each passing day; his attitudes brought to Naruto's bitter memory fragments of the old Sasuke. Maybe it was just a phase, Naruto hoped.

Gazing at his friend he concluded that he wouldn't be able get anymore more out of him that day. The brunette, highly successful in the task of Ignoring Naruto – and by the way, he was also good at Ignoring Reality – had decided it was a good time to re-organized his CDs by alphabetic order. Sasuke was in fact trying to free his mind away from that afternoon and everything that Itachi represented for him, but-

And that poem, what made Itachi choose a poem like that? Tenten said it was for Sakura, because she was the 'special one' and a guy like Itachi must've been tired of dealing with superficial girls. Besides, Sakura was wearing a white jacket (hideous, by the way). Was the poem really for Sakura? It's just, it didn't...-

(He didn't want-)

Whatever, Sasuke didn't want to waste any more brain cells on a stupid Chinese poem about people that doesn't matter.

It's just that, the poem itself, was still repeating inside his head.

::

Outside the Eastern gate

Are girls many as the clouds

But though they are many as clouds

There is none on whom my heart dwells.

White jacket and grey scarf

Alone could cure my woe. (4)

::

::

(1) This info is fictional. The Kyoto University I'm talking here has nothing to do with the real one. That is because I wrote Kyoto University in Chapter 1 instead of using same ol' Konoha University, and now I'm too lazy to change that.

(2) Surprisingly, Tatami Iwashi is a character from the manga.

(3) Blood relations are still overvalued in Japanese culture. Japanese people are generally not delighted with the idea of adoption. It's still viewed as "unnatural" when a well-bred Japanese family has someone else's child. If an orphan child has a living relative (such as an uncle/aunt), it's required his/her consent to perform the adoption and those are rarely given, for they prefer that the child stays in a children's house and let the state take care of them.

(4) Poem from the Shih Ching/Shi Jing (The Book of Songs), 93th in Mao's ordering, translated by Arthur Waley, stolen from the Internet.