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Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or the Naruto characters. Masashi Kishimoto does.
Kyoko: Phew. Being sick and having lots of homework sucks. So, sorry for this chapter taking so long! :P
Victorique: It was a long time…
Kyoko: Ya…but anyway let's just get right to the story! XD
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Chapter/Episode 52
A Day in the Body of Kyoko Tanaka
Sasuke walked along one of the market streets in Konoha as he cursed Lady Tsunade for switching his body with Kyoko's.
"This is all because of her stupid outburst this morning," he thought to himself. "If she hadn't been so irritable, this wouldn't have happened. Why did she snap all of a sudden anyway?"
"Hey," a female voice called out to him. He turned to see a girl with straight navy blue hair and a group of girls behind her approach him.
"What do you want," he asked irritably, forgetting that he was Kyoko for the duration of the day.
"I see you're not with Sasuke like you normally are," the navy blue haired girl grinned maliciously. "You're heeding my warning…that's good, but I suppose you do care a lot about her friend. Her business definitely would fail without the help of my father, so you see it's definitely important that you stay away from Sasuke like I told you."
A vile feeling turned in the pit of Sasuke's stomach at the girl's fake innocence. "Was this the real reason Kyoko had had such an outburst this morning," he wondered to himself.
"Goodbye for now Kyoko," the girl said all too cheerily as her group followed her. "And remember…stay away from Sasuke…if you don't want to hurt Victorique."
Sasuke gritted his, or rather Kyoko's, teeth as they walked away. How could he have been so selfish…so stupid? He should have known that the girls that liked him in the village would go after Kyoko too.
He continued on to Kyoko's house as he thought to himself. "I'll definitely have to talk to Kyoko about this," he thought. "But…how? She's not one to want to talk about such things."
Finally reaching Kyoko's apartment door, he opened it and stepped in. The door was unlocked like always and Sasuke decided to make a mental note to mention something about that to Kyoko as well.
Stepping inside, he closed the door and looked around the very small apartment. He decided to sit on the couch as he surveyed the place Kyoko called home. It wasn't completely spotless like Sakura's apartment had been, but it wasn't nearly as messy as Naruto's. Sasuke listened as the clock ticked by. It seemed loud and suddenly Sasuke realized that it was way too quiet in the apartment.
He turned on the television but it didn't do anything. The silence of the apartment seemed to even slice through the voices and sounds coming from the television. Still, the clock ticked by and it seemed to be louder than the television.
"This is ridiculous," Sasuke concluded, standing up. "I have to DO something. It's too quiet…eerie almost."
He got up and looked around. He remembered making the promise not to touch anything of hers, so he just viewed what was lying around.
A few moments later he found himself in her bedroom. He looked out her patio window and noticed that despite the busy time of day not many people were outside her apartment. "It just makes the place seem even more…lonesome."
As he turned to leave her room, he stubbed 'Kyoko's' toe on something that was sticking out from under her bed. He cursed in pain and looked down at whatever he had slightly kicked. It was a book of some sort.
Curious, he picked the book up. On the front it said in big colourful letters, 'Kyoko's Picture Book'. It was written messy, as if a child had wrote it, with the 's' backwards and the word 'Picture' spelled 'Pictre'.
He opened the book, which resembled that of a story book. The first page was a very bad drawing of a brown haired girl with a taller brown haired girl and a tall brown haired boy. There was a heart above the three of their heads. "Kyoko and her family…," Sasuke wondered.
He turned the page to reveal another childish drawing of what seemed to be Kyoko and Victorique holding hands on her a brightly colored, yellow sun. He flipped the page once more to see Kyoko's and Victorique's family together. It looked like a bad copy of the photo he had seen before in Victorique's photo album, where Kyoko, Victorique and their mothers were all having tea.
"Despite the fact that these drawings are terrible," Sasuke thought. "They're still nice to look at. Everyone seems so happy."
The drawing on the next couple pages shocked Sasuke deeply. They were all grey, black and white, there was no colour. They looked as if they were drawn in vain, as if someone was trying desperately hard to be happy. There were a couple pictures of Kyoko by herself of what Sasuke could only barely pick out to be a forest. The next page was the same, only there appeared to be a rabbit with Kyoko.
There were a few more like these and Sasuke could only guess that the gloomy black drawings were drawn after Kyoko had lost everyone dear to her. "And at such a young age," he thought sadly.
The grief was evident in the drawings and pretty soon Sasuke found it hard to look at them. Not willing to take any more, he flipped to the last page of the book.
The drawing was done remarkably well compared to the first ones. It was a more of a mature looking grey, pencil-drawn drawing with more detail. It looked as if it had been recently drawn as Sasuke noticed the eraser bits that were still on parts of the page.
Unlike the first few drawings, this drawing of Kyoko was one where she wasn't smiling. Her face looked sad, sorrowful even. She had on her Konoha headband and ninja clothes and her hands were behind her back. Her head was looking down slightly and Sasuke thought she looked sort of like a guilty-looking child that just got scolded by their parents.
That was all there was to the drawing, nothing more but empty space. Sasuke stared down on the page and suddenly Kyoko's outburst made sense to him. She still felt alone despite finding Victorique and making friends here in Konoha, and even though she left the village that had bullied her long ago, she was still receiving the same treatment from before.
Sasuke didn't want to admit it earlier, but he couldn't lie to himself. He had seen some of the faces that watched him in Kyoko's body as he passed. There were faces of fear. Even some of the kids looked nervous being around when 'Kyoko' walked by, and Sasuke knew it had to do with the Ten-tails. They were afraid…of the Ten-tails and ultimately her. Now he finally understood how Naruto must have felt back then.
He could hear the ticking of the clock once again. The tick-tick-tick noise was breaking into his thoughts and rattling his nerves. It was so quiet, so lonesome. "I'm such an idiot even though I'm meant to be a genius ninja," he thought. "I lost my entire clan and suddenly I thought I completely understood what it was like to be alone and miserable. I only thought about myself…"
He closed the book. He had an idea, but he couldn't put his plan into motion right now, not while he was in Kyoko's body anyway.
-At the End of the Day-
Kyoko waited in Lady Tsunade's office for Sasuke to arrive in her body. "He better not have done anything stupid in my body," she threatened in her head.
Finally, she watched herself walk through the door. Kyoko sighed, "About time."
Sasuke just looked at her and said nothing, which surprised Kyoko.
"All right Ino, Inoichi," Lady Tsunade nodded to the two of them. "I think it's time they were switched back."
"Right," they nodded.
"Hold on," Kyoko interrupted with Sasuke's voice. "I thought you said that the jutsu would just wear off…"
"That's true," Inoichi confirmed. "But it's kind of a special situation with you."
"Huh," Kyoko asked confused.
"The Ten-tails," Inoichi explained. "We have to switch you back instead of the jutsu just wearing off and switching you back automatically because of the Ten-tails' interference."
Kyoko nodded Sasuke's head, "Right. I almost forgot about him."
"Alright Ino, let's go," Inoichi told his daughter.
Ino nodded and the two got into their familiar poses. Both Sasuke and Kyoko blacked out subsequently and a few minutes later they were waking up in their own bodies.
Kyoko stood up, as Sasuke did the same, and she looked up at him, "Awwwww. Now I feel short again."
"Because you are," Sasuke confirmed.
Kyoko sweat dropped and dead panned at the same time, "You didn't have to agree with me…"
Sasuke turned to leave and Lady Tsunade raised an eye brow, "You're leaving already?'
"Ya," he said without turning around. "There is something I have to take care of."
Lady Tsunade smiled as he shut the door behind him and left. Kyoko looked at her confused, "I don't get it…"
"Never mind," Lady Tsunade said smiling. "Why don't you, Ino and the girls go get something nice for dinner, on me?"
Kyoko looked at her confused. Something was definitely up.
"Alright," Ino exclaimed, taking Kyoko's hand. "Let's go."
"But-," Kyoko broke off before Ino dragged her out the door to look for the other kunoichi.
"Do you think your plan worked," Shizune asked Lady Tsunade.
She smiled in turn, "I think it was a great success."
-Sasuke, On the Way to See Sai-
Sasuke walked with 'the item' tucked inside his shirt. He had to be careful not to allow anyone to see it, since it wasn't his to share with anyone.
"Hey," Naruto yelled. Sasuke stopped and looked over at the orange ninja who was barreling toward him. "You idiot, you ditched us at the bath house."
Sasuke gave a confused look to the ninja, "What are you talking about."
"You were supposed to hang out with me, Suigetsu and Jugo at the bath house this afternoon but when we all left you in the change room you ditched us!"
Sasuke couldn't help but smirk, Kyoko must have had…an interesting day. "I don't know what you're talking about," Sasuke said simply, continuing on his way. "I was with Itachi this afternoon."
Naruto gave him a confused look, "Then who was at the bath house with us then?"
"Who knows," Sasuke replied simply, leaving a confused Naruto behind.
After a while, Sasuke finally spotted Sai. He was sitting on a familiar dock painting something in a book.
Sai looked up at Sasuke when he approached. "Sasuke," he said carefully. "What are you doing here?"
Sasuke looked down at what Sai had been drawing it was a mixture of swirls and colours. "I need you to do me a favour…," Sasuke replied finally. "However, you have to promise not to tell anyone about this."
Sasuke handed him a book and Sai looked at it with interest, "What do you want me to do?"
-Later That Night, Following Kyoko-
Kyoko smiled and waved goodbye to Hinata as they both went their separate ways home. Today had been surprisingly unique and exciting. It had been weird changing bodies with Sasuke, but she had enjoyed talking to Itachi. The fact that she had made him laugh had made her day and the dinner Lady Tsunade had organised, made it even better. Sakura, Hinata, Ino, Sakura and Tenten had been there including Victorique, which Kyoko wasted no time in telling her what had happened that day. Besides, Lady Tsunade said nothing about not telling anyone what had happened after they had switched back.
When Kyoko reached her apartment, dread came over her. She hated coming home to an empty apartment. It was always so quiet.
She opened the door and walked in and noticed something odd. She looked around and saw that her clock was missing.
"What the-," she said before noticing a digital clock where the old one used to be.
She gave a confused look. Had Sasuke changed her clock? She continued to her room and flopped down on her bed. "Why would Sasuke change my clock…," she wondered as she stared at her ceiling.
Her apartment was quieter now and she noticed she couldn't hear the annoying ticking of the clock anymore...maybe that was why he had changed the clock?
She turned over to lie on her stomach and hung off the bed to reach under it for her book.
The book she had drawn throughout the years. She sighed. Most of it was miserable, but she couldn't help but to look through it. Lying on her back again, she opened the book to the first page.
Her childish drawings were pretty bad, but they made her happy. A familiar look that resembled a look of inner pain filled her face. She put her hand on the rest of the pages and was about to turn to the last page but hesitated. Did she really want to look at it? It always made her depressed. She decided to just look at it anyway, as she flipped to the very last drawing she had drawn and gasped.
On the last page was the drawing of herself, however, it had been changed slightly. In place of her saddened face was a happy one. She had a giant grin and around her were her friends from Konoha. Beside her was Victorique and around them was Sakura, Sasuke, Itachi, Kakashi, Naruto and all the others Kyoko had become good friends with.
"Wha-," Kyoko questioned aloud. "I-I never drew this…"
She looked at the drawing of Sasuke. He must have found her book, she realized, and then he probably asked Sai to draw this for him. All Kyoko could do was stare wide-eyed at the picture before her.
Unknown to Kyoko, Sasuke watched her as she sat up and took a better look at what Sai had drawn. He smirked when he saw her grin and jumped off of her balcony towards his own apartment.
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Sai: So…why'd you ask me to draw in that book?
Sasuke: Hm. Don't worry about it.
Sai: Oh? But wasn't it Kyoko's book?
Sasuke: I said don't worry about it.
Sai: :)
Sasuke: Whatever. Just make sure to review.
Sai: And thanks to all that have read. :)
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