Much to Sakura's distress, captain Yamato had decided that with Kakashi out of order and no missions planned for the three young shinobi under his temporary command for the next several days, they would do some training that day, coordinating their teamwork as a four man cell, which meant she'd be spending the whole day side by side with a certain blue-eyed blond. Sai would also be there of course, but she doubted that she would be able to hide behind him the whole time. Her hands went all clammy just thinking about it.

Fortunately for her, Naruto was late, a habit he'd seemed to pick up from Kakashi after training with him so much, which allowed her to focus her attention on Sai first, staying as close to him as possible, keeping him positioned between her and Naruto. For Sai this may not have been so lucky, looking rather like a stunned deer, unsure what to make of all this sudden attention from his pink-haired teammate and frantically leafing through the various books he had stowed in his backpack to find an explanation.

Suddenly the hairs on the back of Sakura's neck stood up as Sai put his hand on her inner thigh. This was quickly followed by a host of more violent reactions, not the least of which was smacking the pale-skinned boy's hand away with enough force to break the bones of most other people.

"Keep your hands of me you pervert!" She was in one of her full-on rages by now, her teeth gnashing together, her eyes squinted in anger. Poor Sai of course had no idea what he'd done wrong.

"But you like me, right? According to this book, if a girl suddenly starts paying a lot of attention to you and tries to stay in close proximity to you, it means she's probably interested in you. It also says that a good way to reciprocate that attention is to subtly touch her in an intimate fashion."

Naruto and Yamato just looked at each other bemused, while Sakura clenched and unclenched her fists several times, letting this information sink in.

"I don't like you, you knuckle-head! Didn't I tell you that you should learn such things from experience and not from books! Also, that was far from subtle and way too intimate, you little pervert!"

Sakura probably would have smacked Sai again had captain Yamato not intervened.

"Alright, that's enough you two! We'll be working on teamwork today, so get over it already. I will hide in the woodlands behind us, you will search me out and immobilize me. Sai, you provide reconnaissance and ranged support using your paintings. Naruto, you will provide close combat offense. I won't be holding back, so Sakure, you stick real close to Naruto to back him up and heal him if necessary."

Stick... close? This was turning into a very bad day indeed. Sakura gulped audibly causing the others to look strangely at her for a moment. This was just a training session after all, hardly anything to get that nervous about.

For most of the rest of the day Sakura didn't get a chance to worry about how close she was to Naruto though, as Yamato kept them pretty busy. Nonetheless, throughout the day there were moments were things quieted down and where Sakura's eyes wandered to the boy... No, the young man she had know for years but now suddenly saw through whole new eyes.

She couldn't help but notice how much taller he'd become over the years and how much more masculine; the soft, round face he'd had before leaving for his training with Jiraiya exchanged for strong, handsome features; his short, immature body for a tall, athletic frame. The only things that thankfully hadn't changed were his eyes and his smile. And perhaps the spiky blond hair on his head. It was unusual, but that rather fitted him, as he was an unusual kind of guy. That was one of the things she liked about him.

A kunai came shooting out of the bushes behind them, Sakura too lost in her thoughts to notice.

"Sakura!!!" With a mighty leap Naruto jumped on his teammate, pushing her out of the way of the kunai and landing squarely on top of her. It felt rather good. It really felt rather good to have his chest rest on hers, his legs touching hers, his solid abs...

"Naruto! What the hell do you think you're doing! Get off of me, you idiot!" Sakura angrily grabbed the blonde's arm and tossed him to her side, sending him rolling headlong into a nearby tree.

"Ouch! Why did you have to do that? I just saved you!" It seemed like every time he tried to do something nice for Sakura, his only reward was getting smacked on the head or punched in the stomach. Still, her reaction this time seemed a bit much even by her standards. Come to think about it, her behaviour had seemed off all day. She was looking in the other direction when she was supposed to be covering him, jumping out of her skin whenever they accidentally touched and she seemed even more on edge than usual. Considering she was pretty high-strung to begin with, that really didn't make this day any more enjoyable. It also made the training rather useless.

Captain Yamato apparantly came to the same conclusion as he came out of the woods shortly after.

"Ok, let's call it quits for today. This training isn't going the way it's supposed to be going anyway. Sakura, whatever is going on with you, deal with it. Your performance today was deplorable."

"Hai, captain Yamato. I'm sorry. I've... had some things on my mind, but I shouldn't have let it affect my performance."

What had been going on with her was that, no matter how hard she'd tried not to think about him or even look at him, all day long she'd been trying to peer straight through her teammate's orange and black outfit in order to discern the skin and muscles underneath. To no avail, obviously, since no matter how many skills a shinobi had, even with an ability like the Byakugan such a thing could not be done. Could it? The mere possibility of it was enough to make Sakura burn with jealousy for Hinata.

She wished she just knew what he looked like, in that state, so she could stop wondering and friggin' fantasizing about it already. After all, the real thing could never match her imagination, right? People always imagined their ideals, so the real Naruto could only disappoint by comparison, allowing her to finally get over this weird obsession. Right?