Chapter 10.

Sakura couldn't explain how undeniably fatigued she felt while practically running down the street away from the cafe. Seeing Sasuke had jolted her heart like a defibrillator, and now she felt off-kilter, almost out of breath. The feeling frightened her.

She stopped running, slowing to a walk that slowed again to barely moving as she leaned against a wall of a tall, gray building beside her. There were people everywhere, scuffling around her, bumping into her, talking, laughing, chatting on cell-phones. Children were crying, or whining about something off in the distance. There might have been a park nearby that Sakura couldn't make out amongst the din of the crowd, but she could smell the hints of the running water of a fountain along with smoke and fried food. No one seemed to notice how pale she was, or how wide and confused her eyes were. She reached hurriedly into her bag, pulling out a small silver plate, similar in design to a flat calculator, and pressed it to her chest. The small object beeped repeatedly, warning beeps then projected Sakura's current heart-rate on the flat metallic screen. It was dangerously fast.

Sakura had to find a place where she could relax, a place where the crowd wasn't stealing her air.

She stumbled onward, looking hazily for a small shop to enter or another cafe where she could sit down. Preferably she wanted a place where she could be completely alone, like a changing room at a department store... But there was nothing around save for gray business buildings and the roar of traffic. A bike messenger abruptly passed Sakura, clipping her slightly off the side of her long-sleeved shirt and tearing the fabric. She cried out in surprise and fell down.

The crowd, this time, did not completely ignore her. An old woman and a boy with his girlfriend stopped to see if she was okay, helped her to her feet. Sakura thanked them all, assuring them she was fine and attempting to smile.

"Hey, are you okay?" the boy asked, noticing how a few drops of sweat beaded on her forehead and the unhealthy pallor of her skin. "Do you need to go to the hospital?"

Sakura's chest clenched just at the word hospital and she shook her head vigorously, no. If she went to the hospital, they wouldn't let her leave for days, until Dr. Tsunade would be satisfied that Sakura was in prime medical condition. Sakura couldn't have that. The track meet was that coming weekend. She had to be in tip top shape for it.

Sakura knew that whatever was happening now wasn't an attack. Not a normal attack, anyway. There could be any number of things wrong with her at this point. She just had to find a place to relax just for a few minutes.

Sakura's hazy eyes scanned the crowds again, searching for reprieve when the sign for a public bathroom caught her eye. She hated public bathrooms. The ones in Konoha were always generally clean, but Sakura usually despised the smells of the places, the types of people who were there, the dirtiness of the floors.

But this wasn't the time to be prude.

Again thanking those who had stopped to help her, Sakura made her way slowly to the bathroom, stumbling through the door and out of the busy crowd. The place looked deserted. She thanked her lucky stars and walked very slowly to the counter, running water through her fingers and into her hair, trying to wash away the sweat that had gathered on her head and neck. It wasn't long before the bathroom door, closed for a good ten minutes, abruptly opened.

Sakura didn't look to see who was coming in, her eyes focused on her own reflection and how unhealthy she looked in comparison to what she'd been that morning. Sakura didn't even hear the footsteps coming closer and closer. There were three sets of them.

"Sakura."

At the sound of her own name, Sakura turned in surprise and blinked. Her name sounded almost foreign to her coming from such an unexpected source. "Karin?"

Karin's arms were folded over her smooth chest. Her red hair hung loosely down her shoulders and back, kicking out slightly at the sides where her wire-rimmed glasses interfered with the flow of her hair. Her black short shorts and long-sleeved shirt complimented her figure nicely and was offset by a pair of black boots clinking against the tile floor. She approached Sakura like a lioness, calculating, cold, and somehow angry. No, Karin looked rather furious. At her sides were two other girls that Sakura recognized from school, girls who were longtime friends of Karin. They looked to be equally pissed as the their leader but more reserved than Karin's blazing eyes.

"Sakura, you sure are clever," Karin said, her voice quivering from rage. "To think this whole time, you acted so aloof to him! And then you go and punch him out of the blue! Then hit on him! It's the weirdest technique I've ever heard of!"

Sakura, her mind muddled from lack enough oxygen, didn't understand the statement and merely blinked in response, her breathing increasing along with the light heaving of her chest.

"You're not even going to deny it?" Karin hissed through clenched teeth. "I'll have you know that Sasuke was going to ask me out the other day! You're too late to try to get him now!"

Sakura swallowed deeply in her throat, a wave of nausea sweeping over her and limiting her breathing further, which caused her to pant even more. Another bead of sweat trickled down her neck. "I don't... I don't feel good," she said slowly, her words slurring.

Karin abruptly leaped forward, snatching Sakura's arm in a vice-like grip and pushing the smaller girl to her knees. "Don't you try to lie your way out of this, you slut! I saw how you were at the cafe! I can't believe you!"

Something broke in Sakura the second her knees touched the floor. The sudden jolt flipped an abrupt switch in Sakura's chest, and without warning, her brain began sending messages to Sakura's lungs, demanding more air, demanding more oxygen. Sakura's lungs in turn responded, sending the girl into a fit of panting and heaving for air, but no matter how much she sucked in, her brain demanded more of her body.

"Karin, she looks sick!" one of the girls cried at Karin's side.

But Karin didn't care, grabbing Sakura by the collar of her shirt and bringing her closer to Karin could yell in her face, "I don't ever want to see you around Sasuke again, you got that!"

Sakura was scared but not of Karin. She couldn't care less about what Karin did to her. Sakura didn't know what on earth was happening to her body though. She felt sick, she couldn't breathe, but this was still different from the normal attacks. If her heart was stopping, she'd be unconscious now. This was different, and Sakura couldn't decide if it was worse or not. The paralyzing fear sent hot tears to her eyes, which squeezed out in big, fat drops, spilling from her eyes and down her face.

"Karin, stop it!" the other of Karin's friends cried. "I think she's hurt or something!"

Again Karin didn't listen. Hoisting Sakura up by her collar, Karin threw her with such force against the sink that when Sakura's head collided with the adjacent mirror, she saw stars and almost passed out, but somehow the heavy panting in her heart kept her conscious. Now she felt angry at the tears rushing down her face, knowing Karin thought they were out of fear of her.

But Sakura couldn't stop them as she stumbled backwards, hitting one of the bathroom stalls with a hunched back before Karin shoved her roughly against them. Holding Sakura's head by her pink hair, Karin pulled up viciously until Sakura screamed out in pain, the roots of Sakura's scalp stretching to their limits, some of the hair flitting before Sakura's eyes and onto the dirty bathroom floor.

Karin seemed to almost have lost her mind, so bent on destroying Sakura until nothing else was visible to her. Perhaps it was because Sakura had always seemed to be a step ahead of Karin. Perhaps it was because Sakura was smart, athletic, genuinely kind, and very popular among everyone at school.

Karin had always felt a kind of hatred for the pink-haired girl, but when Sasuke had gotten close to Karin, just a few days ago, perhaps she had taken that as a true opportunity to get closer to the boy she liked. Karin was smart though. She knew that Sasuke was the aloof type, that she'd have to play her cards right to get the dark-haired boy into her hands, but she didn't expect the sudden rivalry with Sakura. Because Karin had seen what Sakura hadn't.

Just as Sakura left the cafe, Karin and her friends had passed the place, and Karin had gotten a good look at Sasuke's face, staring after Sakura with a look so akin to longing that Karin almost lost her mind just staring into those dark eyes. Sasuke's face was normally beautiful but depressingly vacant of emotion. But in a single second, Karin saw the look of a boy enthralled in the effect of a passing scent, as if he were under a spell. His face, that angelic face, had looked disturbed, then recklessly happy, then almost lusting before in the very next second falling back into its normal, expressionless state. Karin would have given anything to have Sasuke think about her with that kind of expression washing over his features like a crimson wave. But Karin knew already that he was thinking about Sakura.

He was thinking about Sakura, and Karin was almost dying from jealousy.

So Karin, her eyes wide as saucers and filled with raw, rage-induced tears, struck Sakura. She hit her hard across the face, a slap. It echoed throughout the bathroom along with Sakura's surprised and pained cry followed by the sound of her falling back to her knees.

"Karin!" one of the friends screamed again, this time so loud that Karin was brought from under her stupor. She looked down to Sakura, a heaving heap on the floor, hot tears running down her face, which was punctuated with a reddening slap mark adorning her cheek. The smaller girl looked like she was hyperventilating, but Karin didn't care about that. Whatever was happening to Sakura, she didn't want to be blamed for it.

"We're leaving!" Karin yelled to her friends, brushing past them quickly to leave the deserted bathroom and to leave Sakura still on the floor.

Sasuke had lost Sakura almost as quickly as he had gotten determined to find her. The streets were a stretched out labyrinth of narrow roads, bustling people, and neon lights, all of which were blinking on frantically with the approaching of sunset, another distraction that made it all the harder to find such a small girl in the crowd. No matter how eagerly he searched, he couldn't seem to find Sakura in the midst of the crowds and buildings.

There was absolutely no sign of the girl, though Sasuke's eyes were keen and fixated upon finding her. Deep frustration began settling in the pit of his gut, formulating into a dam of potential energy just begging to be released. Again Sasuke couldn't quite account for the feeling. It was the same rush of adrenaline that he felt when engaging in a fight at the dojo, or with Naruto. There was no place for it since he was under no attack. However, the feeling did make his limbs move quicker.

Then a bustling beside him and the sound of a familiar voice caused his ears, honed by that unnatural adrenaline, to perk up.

"Come on! Hurry up!" It was Karin's voice, high with fear and anger. Beside her, two of her friends scuffled, one of them repeatedly looking over her shoulder back the way they had come.

"Karin, maybe we should go back," one of them said worriedly. "She looked awful! Was it really okay to leave her in the bathroom?"

"I don't care, alright? Move it! We're not going to go back for her! So what if she looked a little sick?"

Sasuke turned on his heel, hiding behind a few people for cover, while his ears strained to hear what one of the other girls was saying. He didn't quite make it out, but Karin's voice, drenched with guilt and high with emotion, sounded across the expanse of the crowd like a fog-horn.

"Sakura Haruno is none of our concern! We didn't do anything!"

"But Karin!"

"I'm not going back, so just-"

But that was all Sasuke heard before stop and bolted in the other direction, speeding against the grain of the crowd in the direction Karin and her friends had come.

Sakura hated that she didn't faint.

It was an odd feeling to long to faint, but she hated being so damn terrified. Salty tears full of anguish crawled down her face one after the other, falling down to her fingers which were tightly clutching at the fabric of her shirt. Her heart would not cooperate, and her mind wouldn't let her pass out. It was much better to faint and then be lost to sleep. Whether she died or was revived never mattered when she was sleeping. There was no fear when she was sleeping.

But she didn't pass out, and enduring the mind-numbing fear was almost too much. Sakura hated it. She hated feeling the pain and the fear and the loneliness. On the floor of a dirty public bathroom. Sakura clenched her teeth and felt the fear melt under the feeling of disgust and uselessness. How ridiculous. Dying on the floor of a public bathroom with no dignity, no friends to send her off, and no one to help her. How fucking ridiculous!

She gasped and let a hack full of spit fall out her open mouth and onto the floor. She spat, quite literally, in the face of such of fate. Her breathing, despite her act of rebellion toward fate in general, did not stabilize. Sakura kept panting, and crying.

She leaned her head downward, her head spinning from the movement, and her vision began to slowly spot before her eyes. If fainting was gonna happen, it would happen now. Surprisingly, Sakura did not feel better with the enterprise of fainting so close to her doorstep. Fainting would involve her face hitting that dirty floor.

She tried to steady herself, planting a hand on the tiles just under the lines of sinks against the wall. Then the door, echoing like a hammer in a cave, opened. Light poured in from the outside, so bright that when Sakura looked up, she had to squint against the brightness.

"Sakura!"

That voice...

There was a tall body framed in a halo of light towering above her, dark hair billowing from the wind the change in pressure of the room created. Sakura felt her head loll slightly to the side, the only show she could muster to express her surprise. She was still breathing heavy, still clutching her chest with her hands.

"What's wrong?"

All at once, there were two very firm, pale hands locking onto her shoulders, and a face was so close to hers that if she leaned forward, their foreheads would touch. She could see him very clearly at this close range, his face, always so expressionless, a mask of worry. Sasuke, those dark eyes never leaving hers, put a hand to her head and wiped the beads of sweat from her face.

"What's happening?" he asked her.

She couldn't respond, her panting only escalating with his presence.

What in the fuck was Sasuke Uchiha doing in a girls' public bathroom, kneeling on that nasty floor next to her? His jeans, her frantic mind raced, would surely get ruined on such a nasty floor. He didn't seem to care, placing his fingers on the sides of her jaw to tilt her head up, forcing her eyes to lock with his.

"Sakura."

It was just her name, yet from it came a billion questions, which swirled around in the vastness of his eyes like souls in the River Styx. Sakura knew she must be hallucinating in order to see so much emotion fill those eyes, and she blinked harshly to try to regain her sanity.

"Sakura," he repeated, shaking her slightly.

"My.. can't breathe..." she whispered in between heaves. Another round of tears fell from her eyes and she couldn't begin to describe her agony. Not only was she having problems with her body, the hottest boy in her school had a front row seat to it all. The humiliation was indescribable. "But," she managed to gasp. "It's different... I..."

Sasuke stopped her from talking by putting a hand over her mouth, only for a second, so her lips stopped moving but she could still draw in breath.

"Sakura." That deep timber of his voice murmuring her name caused a series of shivers to spin down her spine, but that also could have been the result of her flickering vision and deep sighs. "Listen to me," he said, so quietly that she forced herself to still her breathing to listen.

"You're having a panic attack."

Her eyes shifted back up to his, questioning. "Pah-panic...?"

"Your brain does not think it has enough oxygen. Its telling your body to make more. But you don't need it, you need carbon dioxide."

Sakura blinked, another hot tear squeezing out of her eyes and down her face. "A p-panic attack? I've... never..."

"I'll go get a paper bag. If you breathe into it, you'll calm down."

He rose from his knees, his hands leaving her face and shoulders, his warmth receding. Sakura panicked. If he was leaving, she'd be alone again, in the dirty bathroom, without his warmth or protection. "N-no!" she gasped, grabbing his arm with shaking fingers. Even the sleeve of his long-sleeved black shirt seemed to radiate an unnatural warmth. He stopped moving, sinking back down to her level, meeting her eyes with his dark ones.

"What?" he asked in such a soft voice.

"I-I don't want to be... alone."

He seemed to pause, looking down at her, struggling with himself. Sakura lowered her head, clutching the soft fabric of his clothes and feeling both ashamed and afraid at the same time. How like a weak fool she must seem to him.

He knelt back down in front of her, taking her head in his hands with such gentleness that she felt as if feathers were caressing her skin. With a slow, deliberate movement, he guided her head to his chest, folding his arms across her back to keep her firmly in place. "Breathe slowly," he instructed. "No matter how off it feels, breathe as slow as you can."

Sakura could feel her heart-rate quicken with excitement, her eyes wide and unseeing into the black fabric of his shirt, while her body savored the feeling of his warm hands and arms. The only reason she could accept any of this was because she assumed she was passed out. She was already unconscious and this was some kind of strange, unearthly dream. She was fine with that explanation for now, and she felt herself calming down in his embrace. Her tears were wetting his shirt, her fingers wrinkling the fabric, and she accepted it and wasn't embarrassed of it simply because she truly believed he wasn't there.

His voice was so deep and low that despite the hollow, tile walls, it did not echo when he spoke to her in hushed tones. "Breathe. Stay calm. I've got you."

She did as instructed, and she lost track of time, only realizing that it was passing because she felt herself calm down, felt her own tears dry up, and slowly yet surely her mind began to function as normal.

The illusion of Sasuke, however, did not disappear. He was still there, firm and completely silent except for the rhythmic beating of his heart. Sakura almost began to panic that he was real, but when her heart started to hammer in her chest again, Sasuke's voice said soothingly, "Keep calm." And she had no choice but to obey. She had to obey and accept the reality that this was probably the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to her.

She shut her eyes so tight that even when she was completely stable, and even when Sasuke began to pull away to look at her, she held them shut.

"What happened to you? It was Karin, right?"

Sakura's eyes snapped open, shock masking her features, while her pink mouth parted in surprise. He was staring down at her, his eyes now alight with a very frightening anger that seemed to blaze so brilliantly that it could burn her thoughts right out of her head and into his. To prevent this from happening, she averted her gaze, staring at the tiles under the sinks.

"Tell me," he urged, his voice darkening. "She did this to you, right? Look." He put a hand over the red mark where Karin had slapped her, the red blotch marring her normally pale skin, and she flinched in pain at the touch. "Sakura, tell me."

"It was a... a misunderstanding," she said in barely a whisper.

His eyes narrowed into slits, obviously not believing her, but with a soft sight, she sensed her consented to leave the subject be for a while.

"H-How," she stammered slowly, "How come you're in here? This is the girl's bathroom. If you're seen in here, there'll be trouble..."

He didn't respond to that, more interested in bringing both of them to their feet and urgently surveying her figure to ascertain her current physical condition. In short, she seemed fine, aside from being a tad bit woozy and tired. "I'll take you home."

She glanced upward, meeting his penetrating gaze with her wavering one. He was a giant enigma to her. Nothing he did made any sense. He knew she was dying, but he didn't shy from her. She had physically struck him not more than a few days ago, but he seemed to pursue her, even when she had so blatantly run from him today at the cafe. Now he said nothing, his face completely expressionless, but he did stare down at her, as if expectantly waiting for her to say something to fill the silence that was pregnant with high tensions and unsaid words. Sakura couldn't account for the look he was giving her and didn't even want to characterize the feelings behind the expression.

A rustling outside the door made them both jump, but Sasuke reacted quickly, throwing his back against the door so that anyone who tried to enter would be prevented from the weight of his back alone. Sakura was pulled with him, still clasped by the shoulders in his fingers like a rag-doll. She could feel her muscles slack in his grip as he leaned against the door. Outside they could hear voices.

"Who on earth would lock a bathroom?"

It was at least a pair of random girls, probably filled to the brim with milkshakes and sodas from an all-day outing with their group of friends, seeking to relieve themselves only to be met with a solid wall.

"Did you try the handle?" another one asked, their voices muffled by the metal separating them from Sasuke's back.

"M-maybe we should," Sakura started, but Sasuke stopped her talking with a hand over her mouth. The words froze in her throat and around his fingers in an instant, until he moved his hand into a single finger over her mouth, his other finger over his own, indicating silence. He leaned close to her face, so close that when he whispered, she could feel his lips gently brushing her ear and sending a rush of tingles down the left side of her face and neck.

"Hush. We don't want them knowing we're in here, right?"

Sakura's eyes widened at the contact and the words, spoken in such a playful yet sensual way that Sakura couldn't believe they had come from Sasuke's mouth. She tilted her head, only slightly, just to confirm it was really him, but the action caused their faces to nearly be on top of each other, their noses brushing slightly.

Sakura was met with those dark eyes again, bright and vast like a galaxy, teeming with souls. Without her noticing, his hands had left her shoulders and face, running up her neck and into her pink locks, which were tangled and messy from her ordeal. Those devilish fingers pulled ever so slightly on her hair, tilting her head back and her neck outward. The position made Sakura's heart thump so loudly in her chest, she felt obligated to gasp, whispering, "Sa-"

It was all she got out before his lips, soft and warm like the rest of him, sealed themselves over hers, silencing her again.

Chapter 10 end.

Yes, giant cliff-hanger that's taken about ten chapters to get through. Nyahahhahahhaha XD.