Author's note: I do not own Naruto or any of its characters. I simply borrow them to use in my own sick, twisted fantasies. ^^ I also don't own the song "Remembering Sunday." That belongs to All Time Low and their record label. I do, however, own the plot and the characters of Junko, her parents, and the minor characters that Naruto talks to in this chapter. –Nira

Chapter Three: Waking the neighbors, unfamiliar faces…

I'm sitting in a tree in the forest surrounding Konoha, smoking a cigarette with a bottle of sake resting on the bough between my legs, and I remember waking up in the middle of the night with a foreboding feeling in my gut when I'd gone home. Junko and I had fallen asleep holding each other and were awoken early the next morning by shouting from the hallway of the apartment complex. Junko sprang into a sitting position looking confused and afraid as she looked around the room. She jumped up, rushing me to get up and leave, and I was instantly awake because of the sheer panic dominating her face. I asked her what was going on, but she told me to be quiet.

"You're not supposed to be here. I don't know if my parents are back or not, but if they see you, I'm in HUGE trouble. Shit! This isn't supposed to be happening!" she harshly whispered, pushing me toward the window. "Naruto, go! Now!"

I did as she said and left out into the rain, but I wondered if she was only telling me a partial truth again. Who was yelling like that so early in the morning and why? I didn't have time to ask and I didn't get a chance to see her again that day to ask anything. While I was doing my D-rank that day, I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach that I couldn't shake or figure out, so I tried my best to ignore it. Even when I'd gone to bed, I couldn't get rid of it, and I'd had a bad dream about something or someone really important to me disappearing or leaving and never coming back, and when I woke up, it was still raining and I felt like a piece of me was missing. Suddenly an image of Junko came to mind and I knew that I had to find her.

I ran outside to Junko's window, wanting to tell her about my bad feeling, but when I got there and knocked on her window, I didn't get a response and I could see that she wasn't in her bed. Everything looked like it had when I'd been there that morning—like she hadn't been in it or touched anything there all day. I ran inside the building and knocked on the door to her apartment and a tall man with short, spiky, brown hair wearing glasses answered.

"Um… Hi, Yamakura-san. Sorry to bother you so late, but is Junko home?" I asked.

"She doesn't live here anymore…" he growled and slammed the door in my face.

How could she not live there anymore? She'd just been there a few hours ago and all of her things were still put neatly away and out of sight in her room. Where could she have gone? I walked to the next door in the hall and insistently knocked on the door, wanting answers.

"I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm looking for someone. Have you seen the girl that lives next door? It's really important that I find her," I pleaded to the woman that answered.

"I'm sorry. I haven't seen her. Good luck finding her, though."

"Thank you."

I went to the next apartment and asked. Nothing. I asked everyone on the floor, getting more and more desperate as nobody seemed to know anything and when I got to the last apartment at the end of the hall, I got a lead from an elderly man.

"You mean the girl with blonde and black hair? Yeah, I saw her this morning as I was comin' home from my walk."

"Do you know where she went? Did she go alone?" I probed.

"She was alone, all right. She looked like she was headin' toward the city gates, as far as I could tell."

"Do you know why she left, at all?"

"Beats me. Maybe it had somethin' to do with them parents a' hers. Always fightin', those two are."

I glared back down the hall in the direction that I'd just come from, realizing that her parents knew something. I thanked the old man and he wished me luck as I ran back down the hall to Junko's apartment. I pounded on the door and when her dad answered again, I punched him in the face with all the strength I could muster.

"Where did Junko go? What did you do to her?" I demanded.

"I didn't do anything, you damn brat! What does it matter to you anyway?"

"Where did she go?"

"The little bitch ran away! How the hell should I know where she went? Let her go! She's too much like her damn mother! It's bad enough having her around!"

"She's your daughter! How can you not care where she is or what happens to her?"

"Because I didn't want her born to begin with, that's why! Now get the hell out of my house!"

I punched him as hard as I could again out of complete rage. He was her father. He was supposed to care about and love Junko. How could a parent reject their own child so wholeheartedly? I'd never had parents because they'd died, but this man was alive and still didn't want his own child. It was unfathomable to me how any parents could not want their child, let alone a child as amazing as Junko.

I rushed out of the apartment building and back out into the rain and through the city gate into the woods, frantically searching for Junko. I called her name without response until my voice ran coarse and refused to work anymore, and even then, I didn't give up. I had to find her. I'd made up my mind that I was going to marry her one day and I wasn't going to give up until it had become a reality.

The clouds were taunting me, washing away any tracks that she may have left behind making it even harder for me to track her. I didn't have the Hyuugas' Byakugan, the nose of a dog like the Inuzukas, a swarm of bugs like the Aburame clan, or the Sharingan of the Uchihas. All I had was basic tracking and with the constant rain, it was useless. I was getting drenched to the bone and I was growing tired, but I pushed on. I remembered that she'd told me once that her favorite place to be was a small clearing in the forest just outside of Konoha filled with wildflowers of every color imaginable, so I searched for that, praying that she'd be there. There was no way that I could have been prepared for what I'd seen.

I push the thoughts out of my head, not wanting to relive the moment. It's too painful to even think about, but despite my pushing the thoughts away, the feelings that come with them flood into me. I feel like I'm being torn apart from the inside, out and that everything is being sucked into a black hole where my heart should be. I've always wondered if this is what death feels like, and sometimes I pray that I am dying, just so I don't have to feel it anymore.

No amount of will power can push the feelings away, so I grab the neck of the bottle and put it to my lips, drinking the clear liquid inside like water. Tears stream down my face as I wait for the burning numbness of the alcohol to consume me. The trees around me start leaning and spinning, so I jump down from the branch that I'm on, cigarettes in one hand and the now closed-again bottle in the other. The rush of movement makes me dizzy and nauseous and I fall onto my back, laying in the tall grass and staring up at the leaves overhead. I whisper her name as the blackness rushes over me.