Title: Haven't you heard what becomes of curious minds?
Chapter: 2 – Forest Green
Author: Killaurey
Rating: T
Word Count: 5,389
Summary: AU. The night before they're assigned to Genin teams, Sakura wakes up with Ino in her mind—and she can't leave.
Disclaimer: Naruto doesn't belong to me. It's Kishimoto's and I just play with it. Part 2 of ? Unbeta'd.
What happens next happens in weird, janky moments that seem to be connected by eye-blinks but they make no sense when strung together. She remembers someone screaming, she remembers firm arms (not Dad's, but Dad's not here, even though he's right here and that's not her thought), she remembers a harrowing cacophony through a forest of writhing shadows, she remembers the scent of jasmine tea and red bean desserts, the sharp sound of wood splintering, the incomprehensible fervor of a hundred voices talking in unison, there's an argument, there's grief, there's a building rage…
Later, she'll realize that shock held her tightly and would not let her go. Later.
For now time passes in a halting, nightmarish kaleidoscope of feelings, sensations, and empty, yawning loss.
Sakura doesn't remember when it ends and, when she wakes up in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room, with Ino's mind tangled all up in hers like an unruly blanket, she just feels very, very tired. How is she ever going to explain this to her parents?
Her list of crimes starts at leaving without notice in the middle of the night (no matter how early Ino had claimed it was—it hadn't been early in Sakura's home) and only gets worse from there. She left the village. She stayed out overnight. She…
Shares her body with another person now.
Sakura hopes it is temporary but she does remember the pale green nail polish on Ino's limp hand all too well and—
She doesn't want to think about that. It hurts.
Ino's presence is heavy, and, after a moment of considering it, Sakura realizes that Ino is sleeping. She doesn't know enough about bloodline limits and Clan jutsu to know how any of this works really but she decides that it makes sense enough that Ino's presence in her mind when Ino was awake was lighter than it is when Ino is sleeping. In one case, Ino was able to control her mind.
Sakura carefully pushes herself into a seated position, feeling oddly weak and vulnerable. She's wearing a white nightgown, one too large for her, and she doesn't remember when that happened either. She checks and is relieved that her underwear haven't been changed without her knowing.
First, that would be super creepy.
Secondly, it means she's got something of hers with her.
Not that a pair of panties with stars on them is really going to help her but… as she looks around and finds that everything is unfamiliar… it's still an incredible comfort somehow.
She thinks about the way Ino's dad had held them both and wonders how much of her anyone is going to care about—and then immediately, she feels guilty for thinking that way. Ino's the one that died.
Ino's the one that died.
Sakura scrambles out of bed, her bare feet hitting the wooden floor and finding it smooth and cool as she lunges for the vanity and, most importantly, the vanity's mirror. She stares into it for a long moment and then collapses against the table heavily.
It's her in the mirror. Her green eyes that stare back at her. Her disheveled pink hair and it's her very familiar (and loathed) forehead that she sees. If she squints at the edges of her reflection, she can still see Ino—a hazy ephemeral ghost—which both reassures and frightens her at the same time. Sakura is glad her body is still hers but Ino is… it's just…
She's just… got a passenger.
Her stomach rumbles as Sakura peers out the window, pulling aside the dark green curtains (they have little flowers embroidered on them) and sees nothing but trees. Are they still in the greenhouses? Or some area nearby? She shakes her head and rummages around to see if there's anything for her to wear.
Her clothes are decidedly missing in action and the only thing she's got to comfort her is that no one seems to expect her to wear Ino's clothes either. After seeing Ino dead last night… she thinks she might start screaming if someone asked that of her. There's a perfectly functional, if rather dull, brown pair of pants and matching tank top. She scrounges up a brush in one of the vanity's drawers.
She can't find her hitae-ite. She has no weapons. Or shoes.
Shinobi Rule Number forty-seven: A shinobi is never unarmed!
Which. Okay. Yes, she has her (pitiful, tragic) taijutsu skills and the three (bunshin, kawarimi, henge) jutsu that she knows from the Academy but… Sakura feels unarmed. She looks out the window again at the swaying branches of the forest as far as her eyes can see and decides that, until she knows more about what's going on, she'll stay in the house.
She's pretty sure that, if nothing else Yamanaka Inoichi is going to be willing to protect her life since it's also Ino's for the moment. And since they'd found him last night, they must be somewhere that he deems is safe.
Sakura just wishes she was more certain about what all of this means for her. Her parents are going to flip.
The room doesn't hold any answers for her, though, so she runs the brush through her hair a few more times, wishing for a headband to hold it back but there's nothing she can use unless she rips a strip off the curtains or the bedding and that seems so incredibly, unbearably rude that—
She could make a garrote!
Thoughts of a headband are discarded and then, after a moment (where she judges that the sewn hem of the curtains would be the most useful for her purposes and tears a strip off, promising herself that she'll pay for the curtain out of her allowance if anyone asks her to) she decides that, no, the headband actually makes a perfect cover story. Neatening up the edges the best she can without scissors, which isn't very, Sakura gives up and instead neatly folds it to hide the worst of the devastation, and then checks it in the mirror.
The curtain, with the little yellow flowers on the deep green background, actually looks… really nice in her hair. She decides that, if she can, she's going to keep this strip of curtain and later turn it into a proper garrote/headband combo, once she's gotten her hands on some wire, scissors, needles and thread.
Feeling much better, now that her hair is tied back and she has a weapon, Sakura gives the room she woke up in another, more thorough, once over to see if she missed anything (she didn't) and then braces herself for anything and steps out of the room—
-and into another room. No, Sakura corrects herself, I'm on a landing. She can see the railing of a staircase and an open spot where there must be stairs that go down, but she was thrown off because the first thing that caught her eyes was the low-slung couch, two armchairs, and an old, but still well-kept coffee table.
Nara Shikamaru is lounging on the couch, his hands behind his head, looking up at the ceiling, while Akimichi Chouji is eating a bag of chips in one of the chairs. On the coffee table, in front of him, is a half-played game of solitaire.
Feeling suddenly, horribly awkward Sakura almost gives up on the idea of finding out what's going on and retreating back into her room, but both boys are looking at her now, Shikamaru half-sitting up, Chouji putting the bag down, and so she blurts out the first thing she can think of to say to these relative strangers:
"What about team assignments?"
Immediately she regrets it, as Shikamaru heaves a sigh and collapses back onto the couch, while Chouji's smile falters a little.
Sakura wishes she could sink into the ground. Or… or… hide in a closet. Or…
Well, no, she doesn't wish she was dead. That's… too uncomfortably close right now. It's not funny. In her panicked thinking, she wonders if she'll ever find it funny again, even if this gets fixed.
"I can go," she offers, in a high, nervous babbling sort of voice that she barely recognizes as herself these days. "I mean, you're not here for me, so it's deeply weird that I'd be here for you and we barely know each other! I just need my clothes back and I'll—go? I can figure out what team I'm supposed to be on and see if the sensei can excuse my absence," she wishes deeply that she'd stop talking about the team thing when, right now, it barely even matters but, "on the first day—it is still the first day, right?—and even though it's a terrible first impression but, well, and I'm sure it will all work out so we can all just forget about the fact that I've been essentially turned into an apartment and now I'm kidnapped and has anyone told my parents?"
Both of them are staring at her now, wide-eyed, and Sakura wishes she could just stop but, no, she's on a roll now and even when Chouji opens his mouth to say something, Sakura just keeps going:
"I totally understand if no one did! I mean, it's going to cause me so much trouble, but Ino tends to ruin plans without even trying and I get that and even though this is a bit much more trouble than usual it's really just more of the same and I'll just, you know what, maybe this is all a stupid, horrible dream still because I honestly don't even know why you two would be anywhere near me in real life, looking at me like that, like you're actually concerned, when we were classmates together for years and have exchanged maybe ten words unrelated to class assignments and that's… that's okay! It really is! Even if you're figments of my imagination, I know you're here for Ino and honestly that's really kind of reassuring in a concerning way but—"
"Would you just shut up?" Shikamaru snaps.
Sakura flinches, taking a step backwards, the door frame of her room bumping into her shoulder as she does so.
"He didn't mean it like that," Chouji says, with a look at Shikamaru that Sakura can't read. "He just…"
"I did mean it that way," Shikamaru said crossly. "I can speak for myself. Do you know how much trouble all of this has caused?"
That, Sakura feels, is incredibly unfair on basically every level imaginable. She didn't ask for this. She was in bed, sleeping, just like she'd been supposed to. Lives weren't supposed to get turned upside down while people were sleeping safely in bed! And now to be blamed for—
"I'm not the one that killed Ino!" she exploded, all of her horrible anxiety and fear and all the things she wasn't saying transmuting into anger on a hair trigger. "If you want to blame someone, blame the person who did! Or blame Ino for not being good enough to avoid being murdered or maybe her Dad for not being able to stop it! He's a Jounin! We literally just graduated and I was home in my bed when this all landed on me so don't you even—"
"Sakura-san—"
"—because from where I'm standing, you two are just as much at fault as I am! The only reason I'm even involved is because, without my head, Ino really would be completely gone! So maybe, just maybe, you should be thanking me instead of blaming me!"
"That's enough."
It's a pretty woman's voice that slices through Sakura's fury, leaving her tired and spent, trembling on an edge of a dangerous emotional precipice, as the woman, with her long dark hair and clothes marking her as a Nara finishes climbing the stairs. She looks at all three of them with equal irritation. "What's all of this about."
It's not a question.
Shikamaru recoils. "Mom—"
Chouji is crying and Sakura feels a weird stab of mingled pity and pleasure. She stomps on that thought savagely and says, unsteadily, "I want my parents."
Then she slams her door, locks it, and bursts into body-shaking, soul-breaking little gasping noises of splintered pain. No one comes after her. She's alone. Even Ino, stuck in the back of her head, is still asleep. Somehow, this makes it worse, and shaking terribly, feeling chilled right down to the bottom of her heart, she staggers over to the bed, steals the blanket, and tucks herself into the back of the empty closet and then she just… bawls.
Eventually, she falls asleep.
She wakes up disoriented and headachy and… smelling rice porridge? Sakura peels her eyes open—which is almost painful, as her tears have all but glued them shut—and what her nose told her is confirmed by her eyes.
There's a tray with a bowl of rice porridge on it. Pickled plums top it.
"Good," a woman says. "You're awake."
Sakura eyes the sandaled foot that comes into her view for a moment before she drags her gaze upwards to confirm that—yes, this is Shikamaru's mom, the same pretty woman from before. Now, as she slides down to sit on the floor with Sakura, Sakura thinks that Shikamaru's mom also looks tired. She knows the feeling.
Even the fact that Shikamaru's mom broke into the room doesn't stir up much outrage in Sakura right now. She just doesn't have the energy.
"Here," Shikamaru's mom says, handing her a damp face cloth. "You'll feel better once you wipe your face."
Sakura takes the cloth dutifully, shaking it out and rubbing her face clean. She does, in fact, feel a little better once she worst of the gunk is off her face, though she'll still need to have a proper wash at some point.
She's not given the choice though, as Shikamaru's mom takes the cloth once she's done with it and hands her a spoon instead.
Obediently, Sakura eats.
Shikamaru's mom stays quiet until the spoon is scraping the bottom of the bowl. "Do you know who I am?"
Sakura nods slightly. She has to clear her throat before she speaks. "Shikamaru's mom."
"That's right," she says. "Nara Yoshino. There's a lot of Nara about here, so you'll be better off calling me Yoshino-san while you're here."
It's left unspoken that once they're out of here, Sakura should use the more proper 'Nara-san' but Sakura doesn't need that spelled out for her. She can't imagine calling someone's mom so casually by their first name in the village.
Sakura tries to think of what else she knows of Yoshino-san but can't come up with anything. She really doesn't know much about Shikamaru or Chouji's families. They never really talked about anything in their personal lives.
"I've asked the boys about you," Yoshino-san says. "And I got your name and what you were good at in school and that you and Ino-chan were friends, but I don't know much about you."
Right now, Sakura's really not in the mood for sharing. Not that she ever really is—before Ino, sharing anything about her life had only gotten her more ridicule and teasing at school. It's just safer to keep most of herself to herself.
"Are my parents coming?" Sakura asks, instead of answering Yoshino-san's implied questions.
"You know they're not," Yoshino-san says, almost gently, with a bit of a sigh to her words. "Shikamaru grudgingly admitted that you're really smart. Do you want to know why your parents aren't coming?"
Because I've been kidnapped, Sakura thinks savagely, but she's still too tired to throw another fit and the food has left her feeling a little more stable and settled.
Ino is still sleeping, a heavy presence in the back of her mind.
"Why has Ino been sleeping so much?" she asks, instead. "Is she okay?"
Immediately, Sakura feels a bit silly and a bit awful for that question. Of course Ino isn't okay. She's dead.
Yoshino-san doesn't make fun of her or chide her for poor phrasing though.
"Ino-chan is as fine as she can be right now," Yoshino-san says. "I'm not a Yamanaka, so the details are beyond me, but we've been told that she'll be expected to sleep for at least another day, possibly two, due to the trauma and shock of being severed from her body."
"But when she wakes up…" Sakura trails off, not even really sure that she wants to finish that thought…
Yoshino-san finishes it for her anyway. "She'll still be in your head, Haruno-chan. Ino-chan's body is…"
"Dead," Sakura says dully.
It's impossible for her to forget that. It seems to be the central fact of her life now.
"Yes," Yoshino-san says quietly, before she briskly brushes her hands off on her pants. "And given that, there's a few things you need to understand. Are you ready to listen? I heard what you said to Shikamaru and Chouji."
Sakura winces.
"I won't say they handled it well either," Yoshino-san continues, "and all of you are grieving."
"It wasn't my fault," Sakura mutters, hiding behind her tangled hair.
"It wasn't. That was cruel of him to say and you were cruel in your response back. Again, you are all grieving. Shikamaru and Chouji have been friends with Ino since they were all babies. You're her best friend."
Sakura looks up, startled to be described as that given that they're currently rivals in love more than best friends.
"She never really hung out with them at school," Sakura offers, when Yoshino-san pauses and looks at her.
Yoshino-san smiles faintly. "Of course not," she agrees. "That doesn't mean they weren't friends outside of it and were they really that distant from her?"
Sakura frowns a little, carefully reviewing everything that happened at the Academy. She'd never really paid attention to them. They hadn't been teachers, who'd she wanted to impress, and they hadn't been cute enough to catch her eyes otherwise or good enough at class to draw envy or loud and disruptive enough to draw her ire. She'd spent most of her time alone with Ino or with the other girls.
But…
"They weren't involved," Sakura says hesitantly. "But they were always kind of… around? Like, when we were on the roof for lunch, they'd also be on the roof in a different corner instead of eating under the trees in the training yard. Or if we did extra training after class, they'd nap nearby."
She hadn't realized it at the time.
"They were keeping an eye on her, weren't they?"
"It's a little more complicated than that," Yoshino-san says. "And a little less. They were around her because they wanted to be, just as she never said anything about them being nearby, did she?" Yoshino-san doesn't wait for an answer. "So she also wanted them around while she laughed and played and trained at the school."
"Oh."
Sakura doesn't really know what to make of that or what she should make of that. It's friendship in a way that she doesn't understand.
Yoshino-san laughs, shortly and softly and, somehow, not in a way that hurts Sakura's tender feelings.
"I don't understand," Sakura admits.
"It's complicated," she says, with a strange note in her voice that Sakura also doesn't understand. "Ino-chan and the boys are all heirs to their respective clans and all three of them are steeped in hundreds of years of Clan traditions and alliances from—the moment they're born. There are things that people who aren't blood-Clan will never understand and even fewer things that out-Clan will learn of."
"If… Shikamaru's the heir," Sakura says, "does that make you the… the Clan Head?"
"Some days I feel like that," Yoshino-san says, with a smile that invites Sakura to smile back, which she does tentatively. "But no, that's my husband. I'm out-Clan who married in."
"What?" Sakura blinks, startled. Yoshino-san doesn't look like—
"I do a good impression of it, right?" Yoshino-san says, with another quick smile. "Even still, it's true. Fitting in stylistically was a choice I made to make things easier. Clan heads usually marry in-Clan to keep the bloodline strong. Cousins a few generations removed, that sort of thing. Shikaku breaking with that tradition… well, it made things complicated for a while."
Perhaps, as if sensing that Sakura was only growing more and more bewildered with all of this, Yoshino-san got up and, a few moments later, came back with a glass of water for the both of them, sitting back down.
"None of that is really important to you, I know," Yoshino-san says. "But the reason I'm the adult talking to you is because I'm out-Clan originally. So as you get more used to things, you'll have questions, and I'm the best positioned to answer those questions as they come up."
"I want to go home," Sakura says. "I want my parents."
Yoshino-san sighs. "I know."
"Then why can't I—"
"Because the heir to the Yamanaka Clan has been murdered and her murderer has not been caught," Yoshino-san said firmly. "Ino-chan cannot leave your head now. Her bloodline limit may be mind-based but it's still tied to her body and her body is no longer capable of hosting her. Until a solution can be found, you are the only body that can hold Ino-chan."
Sakura frowns. "But it's my body."
"Yes," Yoshino-san agrees. "It's your body. And, right now, you're doing an incredible thing, keeping your best friend safe and her mind and soul alive. That's not something just anyone could do. That Ino-chan could even make the leap into your head… it's a testament to the strength of your friendship that she even could, that you had the room for her."
"But—"
Trailing off, Sakura frowns harder. In the face of Yoshino-san, Sakura doesn't want to go into the whole falling out they'd had and how they were rivals in love more than anything else these days.
Especially since… well… it's true that Ino is in her head.
"You don't want Ino-chan to die entirely, do you?"
The question sinks like a rock in her stomach. "No!" Sakura protests. "I don't want that at all! That's why Ino and I went looking for her dad when she landed in my head!"
Yoshino-san hugs her close and even though Sakura doesn't know her, it's the nicest thing that anyone has done for her since all of this started happening.
"I know this is hard," Yoshino-san says. "I know you're confused and want to go home but let us protect you so that we can protect Ino-chan too."
A lump forms in her throat.
"Can we really protect Ino?" Sakura asks, in a tiny voice. "Make her better?"
"I don't know," Yoshino-san says. "But there are three clans who are going to do their best. Is that good enough? Can you give us some time?"
Sakura sniffles but, after a moment, she nods and pulls away.
"Can, can I write a letter to my parents?" she asks hopefully. "Or… a phone call?"
Though that last one is iffy even in the village. Not everyone has a phone line and, from what she's observed, they tend to be more in use by civilians than shinobi. Ino has one—in the flower shop, for their business—but not a personal one.
"There's no lines out here," Yoshino-san says. There's no judgement in her voice, just a gentle sort of look in her eyes. "But a letter? I think we can do that. Do you want me to stay with you or would you like me to go find pen and paper for you?"
"The second one, please," Sakura says feeling pathetically grateful.
"Alright," Yoshino-san says simply. "Now, I'm sure you've got to go to the bathroom by now, so why don't you do that and freshen up? It's two doors down, on the right, okay?"
They both stand up, Yoshino-san taking the tray her rice porridge had been on, while Sakura clutches her glass of water.
"Yoshino-san?" she says tentatively.
"Yes?"
"Can I have my clothes back?" Sakura asks. "These ones fit okay but…"
"I'm sorry, Sakura-chan," Yoshino-san says. "But your clothes are too distinguishable in case an assassin finds this place."
"But my hair—"
Yoshino-san's dark eyes are impossible for Sakura to read. "You came very close to waking up with your hair dyed, Sakura-chan. It's been under discussion several times and likely will be again."
Somehow, hearing this just makes Sakura feel… numb. "Do… do I get a say in it?"
She hadn't had a say in… any of this so far which Sakura feels is pretty unfair. She's eleven but she's a Genin—
"I mean," she continues, feeling a little braver. "I'm a Genin, right? That means I'm an adult as far as the village is concerned."
It would be a lot easier to feel like an adult, she thinks, if she had her hitae-ite but Sakura hadn't thought to grab it when Ino had landed in her head.
"We'll see," Yoshino-san says. "Maybe you can ask the boys about Genin and graduating. There's something I don't think you've realized yet."
"Why can't you tell me?" Sakura asks, immediately and plaintively. She doesn't want to talk to 'the boys'. She's pretty sure that they don't want to talk to her either.
She wouldn't want to talk to her after what she'd said to them.
"Why," Yoshino-san says, with a faint smile, "because I'll be looking for the pen and paper that you need."
Then, before Sakura can even think of a protest to that, Yoshino-san slips out the door, leaving Sakura alone.
And really needing to pee.
Yoshino waits on the landing below, out of sight of Sakura-chan, until the child leaves her room and enters the bathroom. Then, and only then, does she go down the second set of stairs (Sakura's room is on the third floor) and heads for the kitchen.
She is not smiling.
The dishes take a handful of moments, barely noticed as she thinks and done before she's decided anything.
Sakura's a cute girl. Naïve. Trusting. Not nearly angry enough.
That pink hair will be a problem.
But it's not her problem to solve. Yoshino has wiped down the counter and the table and dried her hands by this point, all on auto-pilot. Housework isn't fun but it's a good tool to use while her thoughts are elsewhere and it has the added bonus leaving the house clean.
She can't abide a filthy home.
Shikaku's in the second library, a room that is jutsu warded and blood-locked. Yoshino presses her hand against the ward and then walks in. Shikaku manually added her to the wards, despite not being of Nara blood.
That much of what she told Sakura-chan was true. Yoshino hadn't told many lies.
The second library is small and dim, a single lantern throwing off smokeless light in soft orange. Yoshino cannot read any of the books in this library and doesn't try. Instead, she steps over to her husband and slides her hands over his shoulders and down his chest, pressing a kiss to the side of his head as he smiles.
"Did you have fun manipulating a little girl?" he asks.
"Someone had to do it," she says comfortably, closing her eyes so she doesn't catch sight of anything he's reading that might be restricted—Shikaku wouldn't care but others would. And secrets to Nara are more appealing than catnip to cats.
They both know why someone had to talk to Sakura. Yamanaka Inoichi is in no place to deal with Sakura's fits and several of the Yamanaka cousins had noted that Sakura had what they called a 'secondary personality layer' that held the potential to forcibly eject Ino-chan from her mind if she continued to fight against them all.
If that happened, Ino-chan would be entirely, irreparably dead.
Ino-chan isn't her child but she is the closest thing Yoshino had ever had to a daughter. She would do anything to keep her alive—and gently manipulating Ino-chan's best friend was barely a blip on her conscience.
"Find anything interesting?" she asks.
He grunts. "Someone needs to talk to her parents. I have questions."
"What sort of questions?"
Shikaku captures one of her hands and squeezes it, which means she can open her eyes. "Look at this, woman," he says.
She laughs softly, doing as he says, and considering the documents he's been studying intently.
"Her graduation papers?" Yoshino reaches out and shifts the pile around. "Her entire Academy profile? What's-"
"Just read. Tell me what you think."
"Alright," Yoshino says. Most of the time, Shikaku is content to let her run the household and shoulder as many of the Nara clan responsibilities as she can. Most of the time. And she loves that. Yoshino rules her family with a sharp tongue and sharper temper and everything is proper, orderly, and has a place.
Sometimes, though, he takes charge.
She loves that too.
Scanning through Sakura's records, she doesn't bother to find a seat of her own, perfectly happy to keep leaning over her husband. He tilts his head back against her shoulder and closes his eyes.
"A paperwork error?" she muses, once she's found what Shikaku would consider to be an abnormality. Yoshino looks between the Academy application, half filled out in a childish hand that must be Sakura's and the other half filled in by one of her parents, and Sakura's birth certificate.
He grunts.
"It does explain why her physical stats are so very terrible," Yoshino notes. "I'd imagine if she was in with her true age group she'd compare better. But some of her classmates are—if this is right, then Chouji's two years older than her—and unless she was a physical type to begin with, she'd have no chance at catching up. Especially not as a civilian intake."
Shikaku doesn't answer her.
"You have questions for her parents."
"Preliminary notes suggest that her parents were not enthused by her choosing to join the Academy. They allowed it, but they weren't happy," Shikaku says, in a slow, thoughtful voice. "But civilian parents who were over-protective of their civilian daughter wouldn't fudge her birthdate so that she's older. They'd mark her younger if they wanted her to have the best chance to succeed."
"Oh?" Yoshino says, drawling the word out just a little, the way he likes it. "But what if they wanted her to fail out of the Academy? Forcing her to go up against children a year to two years older than her would make her training much more difficult."
"It's May," Shikaku says. "Sakura just turned eleven in March. Chouji's already thirteen, Shikamaru and Ino will turn thirteen in September. I want to know what her parents were thinking. Something here stinks. No one puts their child down as older in the Academy. According to her Academy records, Sakura ought to be thirteen."
"You'll figure it out," Yoshino says comfortably, leaving aside the question of Sakura's parents. She doesn't care. Sakura doesn't belong to them any longer.
"So Sakura-chan is younger than we thought. She proved she could pass anyway. Doesn't it work out better for the Yamanaka anyway?" Yoshino smiles. "Ino-chan will be delighted to have a younger sister. An older one would have caused a lot of problems."
"You're a cruel woman," Shikaku says.
"Yes," Yoshino agrees. "And you knew that when you married me."
"I married you because of that," he says, and pulls her into his lap.
She'll have to find Sakura-chan's pen and paper later but, for now, as Yoshino kisses her husband.
There's far more important things to do than give a little girl the ability to write letters that will never be delivered.