Sakura Haruno first memory of Naruto was when she was only five years old. She had been walking with her mother when she saw a small boy in an alley. Pulling on her mother's hand she stopped her. For a moment they both gazed at the boy.

"Leave him be Sakura." Her mother pulled on her hand and she started to walk again but she glanced back once and wondered why he was so sad. She would forget this memory for a long time.

A few years later she was at the entries ceremony for the Academy. She was nervous and a bit angry, her father wasn't in the audience and he was the one who wanted her to go to this place. As soon as the ceremony ended she ran to her mother and asked if they could go home.

Her mother had smiled down at her and said she should try and make some friends among her new classmates. Disappointed she had turned around and gazed at the group of her classmates most had already broken into pairs or small groups clearly everyone seemed to know someone.

A tuff of blonde hair caught her eye. The boy it belonged to was alone. She thought it would be easier to approach an individual rather than a group, but as she took a step towards him her mother caught her shoulder. "Look there's Machi, why don't you say hi?"

Machi was a girl that lives a few doors down from them. They had played together but only because they live close to each other. Still, she was used to obeying her mother, so she abandoned the boy.

The first few weeks at the Academy went well for her, she liked learning and it was fun. Her father was proud of her every time she brought home a test with a perfect score on it, but soon her grades would get her into trouble.

"So, Sakura what did you get on the last test, another perfect score?" Chizuko a girl she had a tentative friendship with asked. If Sakura had been better acquainted with the politics of childhood that infected every classroom and at times could rival the Hidden Villages alliances in complexity, she might have recognized the trap.

Instead she smiled and held up her test which was only marked by a simple Perfect scroll across the top of it.

"Well I suppose nothing gets lost in that large forehead of yours," Chizuko and the girls behind her erupted in laughter.

That was the first day she would go home crying, but not the last. After spending a little time with a mirror Sakura had to admit her forehead was large. She fought with her mother for the right to change her hairstyle, something that her mother had always decided on before.

She wanted to hide it as best as she could. Unfortunately, the teasing didn't stop. wanted to height Sakura wasn't used to being teased and easily broke into tears. That was until she met Ino. She gave her confidence and a best friend.

It was a few weeks after she was befriended by Ino that she had another run-in with Naruto. She was just arriving at the Academy when she saw two boys standing over a third who had crawled up into a defensive ball. During her short time of being bullied she had grown to detest it and almost before she knew what she was doing she was running towards the group shouting, "get away from him."

The site of a small girl running at two larger boys couldn't have been that intimidating but something scared both of them off. She kicks some dirt at they're retreating back before she turned to face the boy she had rescued.

There was something odd in his expression. She didn't know what but his eyes held her for a minute and suddenly he exploded upwards wrapping his arms around her neck in a tight embrace. She blushed furiously and the situation was made worse as several of her new friends rounded the corner. Fortunately, the warning bell rang and she darted towards the classroom.

For the entire morning she had the feeling that she was being stared at but didn't have the nerve to look away from the teacher. When lunch rolled around she sat with her friends on a bench and thankfully no one mentioned the incident from the morning. That was until she went to throw away the paper bag that had formally held her lunch.

When she turned back around he was standing in front of her, smiling and holding out a fistful of dandelions. At first she didn't want to take them but he wasn't getting out of the away. When she took them he said, "thank you for this morning." The word sounded odd to her untrained ear but he ran away so she shrugged it off. Of course her friends had seen it and she had to spend the rest of her time insisting that she didn't like him.

Later she talked to Ino about him, "I don't even know who he is. I just helped him."

"He's Naruto, remember the kid who threw the water balloons from the roof?"

"Oh yeah," She vaguely remembered him now. He always seemed to be getting in trouble.

She had put some of the dandelions he had given her into her pockets earlier and now she took them out now letting them fall to the street. They had been her first gifts from someone who wasn't a family member but, she couldn't let a trouble maker be her friend.

Sakura thought that would be it, but she was wrong. He always seemed to be around and whenever she was alone he was there trying to talk to her. It became embarrassing and her friends started to tease her about it. She told her mother about it and she said to make sure to stay away from him because he was trouble.

When the end of the year came around she hoped he would lose interest in her but that proved again not to be the case. She tried to ignore him, but as his pranks became bigger and bigger it became harder, especially when she found them funny.

He wouldn't leave her alone and soon rumors started to spread. By this time she had developed a crush on Sasuke and didn't want the rumors getting back to him. She's decided to flat-out ignore his existence but he seemed immune to this. When they were twelve he asked her out and she turned him down in a very loud way.

When she graduated and he didn't she was happy at first assuming they would never see each other again. Then she saw him sitting alone on the swing and for a moment she pitied him. It didn't last long, somehow he became a Genin and when they were assigned to the same team she knew that some omnipotent being was having a joke at her expense.


Next chapter: Apartment