She's caught Sakura loitering around the shop three times this week alone, so Ino's not really surprised, when, finally, forehead girl does dare to enter, to push the door open and step inside like any other customer. Except that she is kind of surprised, really.
She hasn't seen Sakura since the funeral, after all, but that's neither here nor there.
You'd be pretty busy, anyway, being one-third Hokage, or whatever they're calling that arrangement now.
Not that Ino cares.
She's out.
Beautiful flower shop owner, that's all she is now.
That's all she wants to be at the moment.
So she wipes the counter and shoots Sakura an entirely artificial smile. "Can I help you?" She swallows the "Miss" that wants to attach itself to the end of the question, all sugary-sticky. That would be taking it too far.
And Sakura… Sakura folds her arms across her chest – still flat, Ino would have smirked if she weren't so in shopkeeper mode – and cocks her hip and looks at her with piercing green eyes.
Sakura's eyes sweep the counter – in all its now shiny glory – they skirt the flowers, they settle on Ino's green apron.
"Ino," she says, all challenge, "really?"
Ino can feel the judgment; she doesn't care.
"Yeah,really," she replies brightly, even as her fingers dig into the wet sponge. She feels like flinging the thing into Sakura's face, but she's way too mature for that kind of thing these days. She's a war veteran now.
These days, Ino is the one who gets asked to take her dad's place in ANBU - she declined, but still – and Sakura, well, Sakura is the one who puts the "ho" in Hokage, isn't she?
They're not little girls anymore.
"Are you going to beg now, Forehead girl?" Ino puts her sponge down and folds her arms, mirroring Sakura. There is nothing Sakura can do that Ino can't. Nothing.
Except come home to her dad waiting for her. Or talking to her dad. Or just plain seeing him.
Ever again.
Fuck.
How did things turn out like this, that's what Ino would like to know. How did Ino come out the loser? Because that's what she is.
That's the thing with rivalries, in the end, someone loses. It's inevitable.
And everybody knows.
They look at Sakura and they look at her, and they know.
Like they know that Kakashi-sensei has semi-retired and is spending all his time reading creepy porn in public, proudly. He had three students and all of them have made Hokage – at the same time, but still.
While Gai-sensei… well, people say he's gone nuts, and no wonder after what happened, but really, with him, how can you possibly tell?
Fact is, Gai-sensei lost.
As for them, Haruno Sakura is Hokage and Yamanaka Ino… is Yamanaka Ino.
Flower shop owner who refuses to play the game any longer.
And maybe this is her revenge, the only one she's ever going to get on Sakura for having and keeping it all.
It's not much, but it is something.
So maybe a month from now she will be in ANBU, sifting through brains and wiping people's minds as easily as she keeps her dad's shop running.
But Sakura doesn't have to know that yet.