Sakura opened her eyes to view her dimly lit room. The sun had not yet risen to declare the morning but she could tell that it was past midnight already and the room was lit well from the light that streamed in from the open door to her bedroom from the lit hallway.
Sakura blinked her eyes several times to allow her eyes adjust to the new lighting and the pillow beneath her head shifted.
Naturally she would have jumped in reaction to her pillow moving but her reflexes were slow and she already knew that her head was resting on Naruto's abdomen as he sat up in her bed and closed his eyes to rest while Sakura had fallen asleep beneath the safety of the bed covers.
Sakura let out a comfortable but tired sigh and gazed to the open doorway and studied the white walls of the hallway and wondered if she had left the door open earlier or if Naruto had been the one to open it.
She blinked once and the white walls were a mix of red and white. Red smears and splatters of blood covered the former white wall and gave the hallway an ominous red glow that reminded her of Naruto's red ringed eyes when he tasted her blood.
Surprisingly Sakura kept her head against Naruto's resting body and studied the blood across the hallway walls but she didn't react. She studied it like it was the most normal thing in the world to see and like it didn't demand any more of her attention.
She blinked again and a figure stood in the door way leaning against the open door frame. Tatsumi smiled slyly over to Sakura from where he stood with blood covered lips and hands and his blue spiked hair stood out against the red and white surroundings.
Tatsumi's presence put Sakura on edge but she didn't move or react.
Sakura moved her gaze to look straight ahead, across Naruto's abdomen and blinked again. When she opened her eyes Hinata was lying on the other side of Naruto with her head on his abdomen just as Sakura was lying.
Hinata matched Sakura's gaze and a twisted smile crossed Hinata's face and Tatsumi laughed in the background.
Hinata parted her lips to reveal each and every one of her teeth sharpened like fangs and she let out an equally twisted giggle before she lunged for Sakura.
Naruto felt Sakura jump in her sleep and his eyes shot open and he jumped himself from Sakura's sudden movement.
After her jump she settled back into sleep beneath her bed covers that Naruto had moved her to after she fell unconscious from letting him drink her blood.
She slept on her side with her back to him, her short pink hair messed from her sleep and a hand rested on her pillow before her face as she slept peacefully again.
Naruto relaxed again and rested his head against the wall behind him from his upright sitting position on Sakura's bed.
The sun would rise in a couple hours and Naruto closed his eyes to rest but he remained incapable of sleep.
He felt better, more capable, more alive from Sakura's blood. All in all he felt a lot better, but he knew it was the beginning of the end. He had tasted the richness of blood, the food of the shiki and the life force of the living human and he knew that he will crave more and now that he had tasted blood he would find it difficult to resist it the next time he craved it.
He opened his eyes again to observe the room for the 11th time that night. He wanted the sun to come so he would fall asleep and wake when the sun set at the end of the day. To him the twelve hours of sunlight past like they were only a couple minutes if not less. It never felt like enough time to rest but he couldn't say that he didn't fell like he hadn't been resting.
But the sooner the sun rose, the sooner this guilty night would end and the sooner he could awake again and the closer he would be to finally taking down the shiki and Tatsumi, even if he did need the help.
So far it was clear that Natsuno was with him on the plan to rid the village of all the shiki even if it meant suicide for them in the end and Hinata wouldn't take much persuasion to join him.
Same story with Sakura and Sai and maybe even Toshio, he was sure they would want to join in on the shiki hunt.
Naruto, knowing that most non-shiki creatures were diurnal, needed to leave a message for Sakura and the others for them to see in the morning.
He crept off of the bed, careful not to move to quickly for Sakura to notice in her sleep and exited her room to search the house for paper.
Over the previous few nights he had explored at least half of Toshio's home, needless to say not the half of the house that contained Toshio's bedroom as Naruto had no real desire to run into Toshio in the middle of the night, not after having Toshio inject and slice at him when he had first re-awoken from death.
He eventually found paper in a desk draw and went back to Sakura's room. He wrote what he needed to on the sheet of paper and placed it on a bedside table beside Sakura's bed.
To waste away another hour Naruto took the step forward to explore the other side of Toshio's home, avoiding opening any closed doors that may enter to Toshio's room. If Toshio was to awake and Naruto was by his door, he would most likely think the worst case scenario and act impulsively to defend himself or at least that was what was running through Naruto's mind, though Toshio wasn't really an impulsive man.
After completing his mental map of Toshio's home – not including the rooms with shut doors for the obvious reasons – he made his way back to Sakura's room.
He stood by the end of her bed and watched her sleep for a short while, just watching her body rise and fall as she slept and he noted that she looked slightly pale from her blood loss which just refreshed his feeling of guilt.
When the sun was only an hour away from rising he felt the first signs of tiredness come over his body and his shiki instincts ordered him to find someone out of reach of the sun's rays to sleep the day away.