DAY 1
Sakura woke, disheveled, in the middle of the night. Her breathing came out heavily, with her heart racing with an abnormal speed. She had another nightmare. This time, she remembered the last parts of her gruesome dream. She was crying for all she knew. She was crying and trying to run but her legs were too wobbly to support her weight. From whom she was running from, she didn't know. But one thing was for sure, that the thing was purely evil.
Naruto and Hinata had paid her a visit, when she was on her holiday from work during the weekend. When she had gone and opened the door of her home, she was met with their bright smiles. But strangely, those smiles disappeared as soon as they saw Sakura. She didn't exactly know the reason behind their actions, but still had let that slide.
She had invited them inside and as she was serving them tea, was when Naruto had asked, out of nowhere. "Sakura-chan, are you ok?"
"Naruto, I thought, we had already greeted each other at the door, earlier." She said, jokingly, thinking that he was trying to know because, like everyone else, he knew that she had been working nonstop while, at the same time, running her family as well. But when she saw him not taking it for a distraction, she added, "don't worry. I'm totally fine."
To her surprise, Naruto didn't seem even a little of bit convinced. Even Hinata, who was talking before, more than Naruto, had stopped and was watching her with a concerned look. After a short awkward pause, he replied, "If you say so. But still, you should take care of your face. Those bags under your eyes are clearly visible, dattabayo."
Sakura had laughed nervously while saying, "Are those really?"
It was possibly the end of that topic. After that the conversation about other things had started again, including possible whereabouts of Sasuke. Naruto had told Sakura that Sasuke had supposedly been seen last at a place even farther than rain village. That news had made Sakura depressed. She was wishing all this time that may Sasuke visit her, but all he did was to move further away.
That evening, the clouds were rumbling with great noise as the thin zigzag lines of thunder flashed in the sky. Sakura rushed outside into the lawn to grab her, somewhat, wet clothes. She quickly collected them and was just making her way into the house, when all of a sudden, she felt someone pushing her from behind. She fell down, instantly while the clothes sprawled onto the ground beneath her. As soon as, she got her senses back, which was actually in a split of second, she turned her neck so quickly that it hurt. But to her dismay, there was nothing other than some plants behind her. Thinking that the culprit of this action was faster than her head turning, she collected herself and picked up the clothes from the ground and ran quickly into the shelter of her house, as the first drops of rain had just started falling.
At night, she was watching with half interest, some cartoons with Sarada, looking curiously at the strange characters on screen. She had been thinking the entire time, that how come they had started making these poor quality cartoons, while back in her time, the animation was something that attracted every little child of her age.
When she found her annoyance increasing more and more with each passing minute, she changed the channel to her desired station, NinjaTimes. She watched it for atleast an hour or two while Sarada who was playing with her bracelet when her focus was distracted from the screen, the moment those cartoons had disappeared. When Sakura came back from the world of TV, she realized that Sarada had fallen asleep for some time now. So she closed it and picked up the little uchiha baby, carrying her to the bedroom. After putting the child in her bed, she turned around to leave. Just then it happened again, the pushing. She almost fell but caught herself in midair and then turned to look behind even faster than before.
…
…
…
…
…
But there was still no one.
DAY 2
For all she could say, she was unable to sleep the following night. Her mind was over-conscience about someone, other than her and Sarada, being in the house. Even though, she was pretty sure that someone WAS actually there, the strange thing was that she couldn't sense any chakra from that being. It only meant either that person was so much good at hiding his chakra that it almost felt like there was no one or maybe that person had long left the house. She considered the second scenario only 30% possible, the way, she was pushed twice within her home's territory.
Sakura laid quietly on her bed, nothing in particular on her mind, other than the strange events that kept happening at irregular intervals. In the end, she was even tired of just lying on her bed like that. So she got up and left her bedroom, after giving a last check on the sleeping figure of Sarada.
Sakura first wandered towards the kitchen, in search for something to eat. But she realized that she was not exactly feeling hungry, so she went out, without even looking in the fridge. Then she just paced in the living room, just looking up on the ceiling and wondering, what she could do exactly about the intruder. Maybe, she could report him to the police of Konoha. But the problem was that she had no idea about if the intruder was even a boy or a girl. So, maybe she should wait for him to show up again. By the look of antics of that person, Sakura could only imagine it to be a small boy or girl. But then there was another thing. The size of hands, which she had felt on her back, unmistakably belonged to a grown-up.
As she was walking randomly in the house, the door in which she had entered once came in front of her sight. Then, this thought came to her mind. Maybe, he's hiding in one of the rooms I didn't open…
Without thinking about anything else, she reached her hand out to twist the door knob and open that door once again. Even though it was past midnight, she wasn't afraid of that place that much. After all, all she had seen there was only dust and that black cat, which had, possibly left the place, from here, it came from. As the paper door slid open, she noticed that it was much darker in there, just like before. So before she got in, she went to grab a flashlight from one of the drawer in her bedroom, while leaving the door opened. When she came back with the flashlight, now on, she got in carefully, looking in all directions for the traces of the intruder.
As her flash circled around the room, which she noticed, was almost the same size as her bedroom, she saw that there was little to nothing present in that room. The floor was bare, no carpet covering the wood. There was an old, dusty mattress on the wooden floor, on the corner left of her. Then, there was a door, she recognized as the bathroom door. There was absolutely nothing there, other than these things. Now that she thought about it, when she came in before, she had never tripped even once. Now it made all sense.
She walked around the room, an assurance settled within her automatically that as there was not a single place there to hide, there was not a single possibly of someone hiding in the room, except that if that person had hid inside the bathroom.
She was reconsidering her thoughts to even think about someone in the house, because there was not a chance that someone entered that door, where she had seen the black cat, because the door had creaked so loudly before and Sakura was sure, if the person had entered there, she should've heard the creak, even if she was in her bedroom. But just in case, she went to open that door.
Her pulse was running quick as she subtly opened the door, even though, she was somewhat sure that there would be no one in there. In the end, it turned out that there was, in fact, no one. So she took a sigh of relief and turned around, before taking a few steps forward. When she was about to leave, she saw one thing more, which she had not noticed before. A picture hanging on the wall, a few inches away from the dusty mattress was placed. She went near it. The picture was dusty and she could not see it clearly.
Just when, she reached out to touch the picture, she felt the same cold hands again on her back. But wait… were they cold!? She was feeling them!
This time, the hands never pushed her away. Instead they grabbed her waist and before she had the chance to pull away, she was forcefully thrown on that dusty mattress.
The dust flew on around her. Her heart was thumbing so fast, now that nothing was making sense now. She remained still, for god knew how much, until she slowly moved her head left to right, looking around her. She realized that she was alone in that room. Her body started to shake furiously, as her heart beats quickened even more.
After a few moments of lying still in the mattress, she started to get up ever so slowly. Her mind was drawing a blank all this time while horror was creeping inside her entire body. As her hands moved, catching the thick dust in the process, something touched them. She looked down to see a book that seemed like a diary at the side of mattress. She grabbed it and opened the first page of the old book. There were only two letters written with a foreign writing.
Uchiha Itachi
