The Anatomy of Love

by Banana007

KakaSaku/College AU: Arranged to marry the Uchiha company heir since she was little, Sakura's always known her future. Now ready to start her first year of college, life decides to throw her a curveball in the form of Professor Hatake, the new & mysterious Anatomy instructor. She knows what to expect from his syllabus, but it didn't mention anything about falling in love!

19. Wolves at the Door

The Anatomy of Love

Written By: Banana007

Chapter 18: Wolves at the Door

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A/N: Hi guys, first of all, I'd like to thank you so much for your support and patience. I really appreciate it. I also want you to know I'm grateful for your guys' kind comments, your Tumblr asks, and especially your enthusiasm & patience!

Next, this is indeed a new chapter! HOWEVER, I am posting this chapter only because I was already almost done with it when my family's health crisis hit. So I decided to just finish the rest of this chapter and post it so that you guys are left on a smaller cliffhanger compared to last chapter's big cliffhanger. It's also my way of saying thank you for being such awesome readers!

Finally, here is an update on my hiatus. Regarding the health crisis in my family, great progress has been made. However, things are still precarious for us right now as we test the waters to see just how much recovery has been made and how much more recovery is still needed. While the recovery period is still indefinite, the recovery progress made so far has now given me an idea of how soon my hiatus may end which might be as early as December. Nothing is definitive yet but, for now, it looks like December is the earliest if the recovery continues to go well.

Now with all that said, the hiatus will remain in effect after this chapter, so please enjoy this reading!

***WARNING!***This chapter features graphic depictions of violence and sexual assault that may be disturbing to some readers. Reader discretion is advised.

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PREVIOUSLY, ON THE ANATOMY OF LOVE...

Feeling the oppressive silence between them, Mizuki sat against the back of the couch and jerked a thumb over to the kitchen just past him. "You want a beer? It's been a while since we knocked some back together."

Kakashi leveled his stare with Mizuki. "Cut the bullshit. You know what I want."

Hanging his head down, Mizuki sucked at his teeth in quiet contemplation. When he raised his face back to Kakashi, his smile had twisted into a smirk. "Of course I do," he chuckled lightly, reaching into a back pocket to pull out his phone. "I know exactly who you want."

His fingers briefly flew across the screen and then he tapped once to open something.

When he flipped the phone around, Kakashi leaned in to study the image of Sakura on her hands and knees just as she had been this morning. With her hips raised high and her back arched low as she reached for the water bottle under the table, the perfect peach shape of her ass was definitely the main focus of the picture.

For any man with a dick, the image was certainly sexually provocative in nature. It could easily evoke the fantasy of rutting this girl like she was a bitch in heat. The way her thin running shorts rode dangerously high on her shapely thighs—just barely covering the cheeks of her ass—did not help either, and Kakashi was loathed to admit that it stirred salacious thoughts in the recesses of his own mind.

It was clear that Sakura had only meant to bend down in this position to retrieve her professor's fallen water bottle. Little did she know that her position was the same kind of position girls got into when they were about to get fucked doggy-style.

"So?" Mizuki grinned, wagging the phone in front of him. "Did you want just this photo or the whole album?"

---

"I told you to delete that photo of Miss Haruno," Kakashi said, tearing his eyes away from the phone held before him. "The one from this morning's marathon and any other photos you have of her."

Mizuki hummed, evidently miffed by Kakashi's indifference to the photo presented. "Well, I wasn't sure if you wanted to see the pictures for yourself first." He turned off the phone and waggled it again as if to entice him. "I could send you the copies if you want?"

"I don't want—"

"Oh, please, don't kid yourself," Mizuki snapped at him, his façade falling away now as well as the phony smile he'd kept plastered on since the marathon. "Just because I got kicked out of that military academy that doesn't make me a fool. I caught you eyeing that girl's ass too. Can't say I blame you when it's that round and perky. You should see the way it jiggles when Saku—"

Quicker than Mizuki could blink, Kakashi had grabbed his wrist that belonged to the hand clutching the phone. Similar to how he'd confronted Mizuki after the marathon before Sakura had interrupted them, Kakashi clamped his fingers tight around the knobbly bones of Mizuki's wrist and leaned in close until he could see those forest green eyes alight with a tincture of fear. "I said to delete those photos of Miss Haruno," he repeated in a low, careful voice. "Right now."

Mizuki's throat bobbed, but he raised his chin defiantly. "Or what? This isn't the battlefield, Kakashi, and neither Obito and Rin—" His words died with a gasp as Kakashi tightened the grip on his wrist in warning. Lips twitching to fight back a grimace, Mizuki went for a sneer instead. "Why are you trying to play hero? You're anything but that. In fact, you're exactly like me. No, wait, you're much worse than me."

"I don't take inappropriate photos of my female students. Particularly the underage girls."

That only had Mizuki laughing as if he'd just been told a joke. "Oh, don't act like you haven't done worse than that, Kakashi. How many girls comforted you during the war?" he asked, lips stretching into a derisive grin. "How many bled on your cock when you tore their hymen? How many bled in a ditch after you shot them dead? Or... are there just too many to count?"

For just a split second, Kakashi's breath froze in his chest as the sound of screams echoed faintly in his ears. "You don't know what you're talking about," he muttered. "How would you? You never even graduated from the academy let alone got deployed."

It was an age-old burn that Mizuki was evidently still licking his wounds from as he scowled back. "I never had to participate in the war to hear all about the comfort women—or girls, if you want to be more accurate."

The screams rang more profoundly now, stirring up the images of girls whom he'd buried in his mind the same way he'd buried them at the crack of dawn.

Straightening to his full height, Kakashi took a step forward, forcing Mizuki to tilt his head back and backtrack until he was pressed up against the back of the couch. "Delete Miss Haruno's photos," he ordered, his patience running thin now. "Don't make me tell you again."

Staring down at him, he gave Mizuki's wrist a sharp squeeze for a final warning even as a dozen ways to snap that wrist raced through Kakashi's mind. Mizuki's breath caught in his throat as he seemed to contemplate through the bite of pain the decision to surrender. The mild 'tick' of a clock nearby filled the gap of conversation as each second passed and the tension curtained around them.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

The fist flew faster than Kakashi had expected, but he still caught it. A quick strike to the jugular had Mizuki jerking his hand back to clutch at his throat, eyes bulging wide as he let out a pained gurgle. He lurched forward, aiming a punch for Kakashi's face again.

How sloppy.

A slight tuck of his shoulder and Kakashi felt nothing but a breeze tickle his cheek as the fist missed him. His first instinct was to respond by spearing his tantō straight through Mizuki's gut which he'd left wide open, but Kakashi had no intention to kill the guy even though all his training urged him to do so.

He retaliated with a sharp kick to the chest, sending Mizuki falling over the couch in a clumsy, backwards somersault. The remote control sitting on the cushion was rolled over in the process, prompting the TV to wink a few times as the channels were switched.

"Ah! Aah, yes!"

Kakashi blinked and peered past Mizuki's shoulder to the porn channel playing on the TV now. The girl on the screen was thin and petite like Sakura, but lacking her toned build as she laid on her back, legs splayed all the way open to show off the swollen cock pumping in and out of her and jiggling her small breasts. Running a hand through her blonde tresses, the girl gave the camera a sultry look as she fingered her pierced nipples before dragging that hand down to her hairless pubis to play with her clit.

Still gathering his bearings and rubbing his head where it'd banged on the coffee table, Mizuki glanced back at the girl now whimpering as the man behind the camera started fucking her faster—harder. The puffy pink lips of her pussy remained stretch tight around the engorged cock until the man pulled out to shove his cock into the dusty pink hole of her ass instead. The girl wailed, flushed face screwed tight in either pain or pleasure as her partner continued to hook his thumbs onto her folds, stretching them apart in an obscene presentation of the entrance of her reddened hole.

"High school teacher fucks his student," Kakashi read the title aloud with a hint of scorn. He'd never been one for staged porn videos, but it wasn't surprising to see that Mizuki had a fondness for the... art. If that could even be called art. "I never knew you had such a sick sense of humor, Mizuki."

Over the sound of the girl's sobbing and the furious wet slapping of skin, Mizuki laughed as he pulled out a knife from seemingly out of nowhere. It was almost obviously meant for dicing vegetables and not humans, but Mizuki wielded it with the tip pointed in Kakashi's direction, his eyes shining with the intention to maim.

Kakashi almost laughed with him. He'd wrangled with guys wielding kukris that were double the size of that knife. Compared to that, this was child's play.

"Fuck, you're so tight," the man in the TV groaned at the girl at the same time Mizuki started to pace side to side with only the couch in between them.

If it had been a school night, Kakashi would've ended this the moment Mizuki made that first strike. But it was a Friday night, and he had time on his hands to teach one more lesson for the week. And he would make sure this would be a lesson Mizuki would never forget.

Still pacing and contemplating, the knife glinted dangerously as Mizuki flipped it in his hand. What a show-off. But the guy was all bark and no bite, and the knife in his hand was no more dangerous than if it had been a rubber knife.

"You know, all the women like to go ga-ga over your scarred eye. So you won't mind if I carve you a new one on your other eye, will you?" Mizuki jeered at him only to scowl when Kakashi hardly blinked at the threat.

With a growl, Mizuki leapt across the couch and dove straight for him with the knife swinging down. Kakashi caught the wrist, stopping the knife inches away from his face as the men fell to the floor together. They wrestled briefly on the ground as the girl moaned on in the background, elbows digging into ribs and knees aiming for groins. Several times, Mizuki struggled to straddle Kakashi in the hopes of using his weight as leverage. Each time, Kakashi dragged him back down to his level with a double-leg takedown or a sweep kick that landed Mizuki on his ass.

Honestly, it was more of a struggle to keep from knocking the bastard out with a solid punch, but Kakashi still needed Sakura's photos deleted. Knocking out the only guy who had the password to unlock the phone would be counterproductive.

"Why do you have to make things so complicated, Mizuki?" he sighed out after a gentle roundhouse kick that forced Mizuki to stumble back and clutch his jaw.

This had to be embarrassing for the guy, so why even bother fighting a fight he could not win? Kakashi had to wonder if it was out of pride or determination. Probably both.

"You were always so hardheaded," Kakashi continued while waiting for Mizuki to recover. "Even before the court, you continued to lie under oath despite everyone knowing what you did. Doctor Sarutobi must've taken pity on you and offered you a teaching position at the uni."

"Shut up!" Mizuki barreled towards him, invigorated by the salt Kakashi had rubbed in his old wounds.

Down Kakashi went, rolling onto his back with the momentum and digging his boots into Mizuki's gut to throw him straight over. With a yelp, Mizuki sailed into the hallway and crashed into the wall along with something made of glass that shattered from the impact.

"Oh, yes! Yes, baby!"

Standing to his feet, Kakashi rolled out the kinks in his shoulders before turning to pick up the TV remote. The volume of the girl's moans rose until they were practically blaring through the small household before he dropped the remote back onto the couch. He didn't need the lovely neighbors of Taffy Drive calling the police over a possible break-in. Better to let them think that Mizuki was just a pervert enjoying some hardcore porn on a Friday night (although that wouldn't be far from the truth anyway).

Still struggling to his feet, Mizuki dusted off the shards of glass from the vase he'd broken with his fall. He glared over his shoulder where the plastering of the wall had crumbled under the impact of his body crashing into it, and Kakashi shrugged helplessly when Mizuki turned his glare to him.

"I'm not paying for that."

"The fuck you are!" Mizuki snarled as he swiped his knife off the floor.

"Ooh, baby, right there!"

Adrenaline rushed hot through Kakashi's veins, filling him with an urge he'd not felt since that night he met Sakura. His leather jacket left him feeling warmed up, but he kept it on like it was the tactical vest he was used to wearing for so many years. Even without the actual vest, his training still kicked in and Kakashi couldn't help but assess his opponent for just a second. He ran his gaze from the gash dripping blood on Mizuki's cheek down to his exposed throat before eyeing his shirt-and-shorts attire. Besides the knife, there wasn't anything else dangerous on him which left Kakashi mentally listing dozens and dozens of ways to kill the guy with his bare hands.

But even as Kakashi studied the way Mizuki favored his right side, he had to remind himself that he didn't come here to kill anyone tonight. He was only here to have Sakura's photos deleted and teach his colleague a lesson.

"I'm gonna come in your lil' pussy," the man in the TV growled out.

Mizuki's bare feet padded lightly on the floorboards while Kakashi's boots silently followed him, the both of them leading each other in slow, cautious circles. Once the couch was at his back, Kakashi stopped, prompting Mizuki to do the same. They eyed each other with bated breath, the clock ticking down to a decisive outcome that would determine who was the predator and who was the prey here.

The answer was clear.

"Ohhh, yes!" the girl on TV whimpered out. "Harder!"

Kakashi flexed his hands, the leather of his gloves creaking softly amid the noise of the girl wailing behind him, her orgasm fast approaching.

"Don't make this difficult," Kakashi started. "All you have to do is delete Miss Haruno's—"

He didn't even get to finish as the knife flashed towards him. He dodged, swipe after swipe as Mizuki continued to slash blindly at any body part. Hands, arms, shoulders, chest, stomach, face—especially Kakashi's face. The blade cut through nothing but air as Kakashi stepped around the furniture with the grace of a dancer, consistently eluding every swipe of the knife. His footwork would have made the drill instructors back at the academy weep with pride. But as agile as Kakashi was, Mizuki was just as persistent. He refused to capitulate even as Kakashi sidestepped every strike with such ease and efficiency that he hardly wasted a breath whereas Mizuki was already panting.

From the TV, the girl's wailing started to rise in pitch, foretelling of an orgasmic scream.

For a fitness instructor, Mizuki was ridiculously clumsy. When his foot caught on the corner of the rug, Kakashi was the one to catch him by the arm to keep the fool from falling onto his own murder weapon.

Except he'd forgotten the coffee table by his leg. He pivoted at the last minute to swing around the table's corner, but the heel of his boot twisted over an innocent bump in the rug.

The men tripped together and went tumbling onto the coffee table, the wood splintering under their weight and the knife skittering across the floor to hide beneath the couch. Forgotten cups of tea and coffee spilled across the floor along with Playboy magazines featuring women in skimpy dresses as the table collapsed beneath the men. Kakashi grunted from the pain of a glass shard poking against his back. The thick leather of his jacket kept the shard from stabbing too far into him, but he wasn't eager to test its durability. More shards of glass went flying as Mizuki snatched a small plate off the floor and smashed it against the side of Kakashi's head before shoving a hand beneath the couch.

Ow.

Shaking his head free of the leftover fragments caught in his hair, Kakashi reached beneath the couch as well. He frowned in confusion when, instead of pulling out the lost knife, he pulled out a pair of pink panties with a white frill trim and bow.

What the?

Before he could dwell on it, Mizuki raised the knife triumphantly in his hand. Kakashi shoved the panties forth and the knife ripped through the bridge before Mizuki's hand got caught by the rest of the cloth. In a deft move, Kakashi tangled the panties around his hand before yanking sharply, twisting Mizuki's wrist and sending the knife flying into the debris that was once the coffee table.

They grappled with each other, hands locked together with the panties as they each struggled to find some sort of leverage against the other. Irritated by how long this fight was dragging on now, Kakashi swung his leg high, hooking the back of his knee around the crook of Mizuki's shoulder and pivoting his body onto the floor in a straight armbar lock. It was a common submission move but, for someone like Mizuki who'd never made it through basic training, it was impossible to escape.

Grunting under the weight of the leg over his throat and his dominant arm pulled taut, Mizuki could do nothing but clobber blindly at Kakashi's thigh.

"I-I can get you Sakura's nudes!" Mizuki gasped out, still struggling with his free hand to ease Kakashi's leg off his throat. "Locker room pics! How about that, huh? And I won't even save the photos for myself—it'll be exclusively yours! Nobody will know, Kakashi." His chuckles came out weak and raspy. "Come on, you've probably already thought of her naked if you've been checking her out. Those mini-skirts, crop tops, and booty shorts don't hide much, so why not see it all? I know you want to!"

Wow, he'd always known Mizuki wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but he'd never thought the guy was so foolish as to dig his own grave even deeper while trying to escape it.

In answer, Kakashi pulled harder on Mizuki's arm, eliciting a groan that was pained compared to the pleasured groans coming from the TV. "I want Miss Haruno's photos deleted. Every copy."

Besides, any nude photos of her were pretty redundant at this point. He'd already gotten a good look at Sakura's naked body when she ran into him at his office during the Naked Run. As much as she'd tried to cover all the essential bits, her small hands had left little to the imagination. It also didn't help that he'd accidentally copped a feel of her breasts when she fell through the doorway of his office and right into his arms. Her instinctive slap across his face hadn't been a hard enough hit to make him forget how soft her breasts were and that they were small enough to fit perfectly in the palm of his hands.

Photos weren't needed when he could easily fill in the blanks for himself. And besides the fact Mizuki had taken Sakura's photos without her consent, the guy was a complete amateur in photography. Just the oversaturation effect from the photo he'd seen earlier was enough to have Kakashi cringing in horror.

The clinking of glass rustling together snapped Kakashi out of his thoughts, and he quickly disengaged from Mizuki to roll away before the knife could stab him in the thigh. Mizuki dogged after him, his eyes wide and wild with a lust for blood as he swung the knife in a vicious arc without any coordination whatsoever. It wasn't a fight to prove himself anymore; this was a fight for survival. Driven by such primal instincts, Mizuki howled like a cornered animal and continued to slash the space between them, forcing Kakashi to back away as he waited for the right opening.

"Oh, I'm gonna come!" the girl on TV cried out. "Keep going, baby! Just like that!"

The staccato of wet flesh beating together grew louder, more voracious. As did Mizuki's curses as he tried and failed to land a blow on Kakashi. Just as he tried for a backhanded stab, Kakashi caught his wrist again and this time he threw his fist in a short, controlled hook that whipped Mizuki's face to the side with a tooth flying out (oops). In retaliation, Mizuki raised a fist to strike back but Kakashi beat him to it with another punch.

"I don't want to hurt you, Mizuki," Kakashi calmly said as he struck him across the face again. "But I will if I have to."

Clutching his cheek and working his jaw, Mizuki remained standing but wheezing after a third punch straight to the gut this time. Kakashi took the chance to twist Mizuki's arm to get him to drop the knife, but the former cadet surprised him by dropping the knife to his non-dominant hand and making another stab attempt. Catching that hand in the crook of his elbow, Kakashi instinctively followed his training and slammed his free arm against the length of Mizuki's.

Crack!

The girl in the TV screamed through her climax at the same time Mizuki screamed from the pain of his elbow joint snapping in the wrong direction.

Kakashi pulled back at the sound, mystified by his own actions even as a sense of satisfaction flooded him. That hadn't been part of the plan, but his body had moved of its own accord, obeying the innate instincts that'd been drilled into him since the war. He took another step back and squeezed his hands into fists to stop the imminent trembling even as a cold fury continued to rise from deep within. Inhaling slow and deep, he paced his breaths to wrest back control.

To his credit, Mizuki recovered in only a few seconds. Or perhaps that was just shock as he gaped at the arm hanging limply at his side. The joint of his elbow was visibly deformed and already swelling but, luckily for Mizuki, there was no open wound, so at least the bone hadn't punctured the skin. Still in shock, Mizuki sputtered for an insult or curse to compensate while Kakashi picked up the fallen knife.

"Have you reconsidered deleting Miss Haruno's photos?" Kakashi asked, quite exhausted of having to repeat himself. While waiting for Mizuki to catch his breath, he turned to the TV to observe the girl's post-orgasm face in favor of Mizuki's pained face.

Staring directly at the viewer—at him—the girl smiled coyly, blinking her warm brown eyes as the man tugged aside her abused folds to show off the ridiculous amount of cum now gushing out of her in a thick, white river. Purring in satisfaction, the girl grabbed the back of her knees to pull her legs higher and give the audience a better view of her pussy glazed like a doughnut.

The video then ended. The screen went black for a second before automatically moving onto the next video that started with the same girl now draped over the back of a sofa. She peered back at the camera, lashes fluttering and pouty lips quirking up as she wiggled her bare ass in front of the camera to tease the viewers. Reaching back, she spread her ass cheeks to give the audience a glimpse of what they could expect for this video, and Kakashi tipped a brow in faint bemusement of the jeweled buttplug peeking out between the plump globes of her ass.

He supposed porn was entertaining in its own way, but these staged productions that overexaggerated everything about sex paled in comparison to the content of the Make-Out series. He would choose Professor Jiraiya's books over a high-budget porn film any day.

"Why... should I delete her photos... when I know you want them?" Mizuki finally wheezed out, still clutching his broken arm and huffing for breath. "You like Sakura. Just fucking admit it. You were practically eye-fucking her lil' tits that day she played basketball with us!"

Kakashi's eye twitched at that even as he continued to watch the girl giggle and raise her hips higher so that the man could shove his cock back inside her. Had he been that obvious? Well, in his defense, he'd tried not to look below Sakura's shoulders during the basketball game. But after feeling the soft swell of her breast graze his arm during the game and realizing that she wasn't wearing a bra, it'd admittedly been a struggle to not steal a peek at the thin layer of ruffles covering her chest. And he'd struggled even harder after he cushioned her fall and felt those small breasts crushing down on his chest, her little nipples hardening against him. Of course Kakashi had tried to be a gentleman about it and look the other way, but his curiosity had won out more times than he could count and he'd often found his eyes straying to those ruffles as he wondered if those nipples were as rosy pink as her hair. It'd been a fleeting curiosity soon followed by the crushing pressure of guilt and shame, but that didn't excuse him.

Catching that same guilt in Kakashi's expression, Mizuki smirked. "Don't think I didn't notice the way you look at her. Now look at the girl on that TV and tell me you don't imagine Sakura like that."

As if on cue, the camera panned up for a close-up shot on the girl's face. She was already blushing from the man's fervent thrusts, the color of her cheeks a rosy shade that eerily matched the same demure shade that often bloomed across Sakura's own cheeks whenever she was shy or embarrassed of something. But the girl on the TV lacked the stubborn vivacity that usually filled Sakura's verdant gaze. Instead, those warm brown eyes had cooled down to an icy, empty stare that no amount of acting could disguise.

After all, this was porn. It was staged the same way the man in the camera staged the way he lovingly shoved his cock between the girl's glossy lips, prompting the girl to roll her eyes back and fake a moan of pleasure.

No, he could not imagine Sakura like this at all. Not even for him.

"See? You're a monster," Mizuki chuckled through a wince of pain. "Just like me."

A monster? Maybe so, but if he was a monster just like Mizuki then Sakura would've already been shrieking from a mix of pain and pleasure beneath him, her eyes vacant and without their usual warmth. Yes, Kakashi would admit that he was a monster, but of a different kind. The kind that ate monsters like Mizuki.

Smack!

The crack of his palm against Mizuki's face was enough to steal the man's attention from his broken arm. He slowly released his good arm to touch the cheek that was already swelling from the previous punches. "Did you just... slap me?"

Kakashi shrugged. "I doubt you can take another punch."

"Oh, fuck y—"

Smack!

Rage renewed, Mizuki surged for him once again. Kakashi spun on his heel and kicked him with enough force for Mizuki to careen across the room and crash against the bookcase of DVDs. DVD cases tumbled down, smacking Mizuki's head on the way before clattering onto the hardwood floor. Mizuki groaned in disorientation before he noticed the DVDs scattered about him, the covers of which were blank with only scribbled dates to mark them. He hurried to grab the disks that had fallen out of their cases but Kakashi threw the knife in response. The blade spun through the air and sunk into its mark with a heavy 'thunk!', inches into the wooden platform of the shelf and mere millimeters away from Mizuki's ear.

Frozen in fear, Mizuki could only rip his eyes away from the blade still humming by his head to glare at Kakashi. "You could've killed me, you son of a bitch!"

"But I didn't," Kakashi said quietly.

Stepping around the fallen DVDs, he crouched down to Mizuki's level and eyed the blade wedged deep into the wood. With a crease-eyed smile, he tapped a finger against the knife's handle and let it bounce against Mizuki's temple with a soft 'twang!'. Mizuki's eyes widened as he realized that the knife had been thrown so close to his head not by accident but by intention.

By deadly precision.

Leaning towards Mizuki's face, Kakashi creased his eyes under the guise of kindness, "I was an Anbu Black Ops Commander for years until last year. You? You were just a washed-out cadet from the beginning, and always will be." Kakashi's smile fell away as his gaze darkened so that it was like staring straight into the barrel of a gun. "Do you still want to try me? Because the next time you do, I won't be so gentle. Then again, I bet you're the kind of guy who likes it rough, aren't you?"

When Mizuki responded with a mere grit of his teeth, Kakashi sighed and shoved a hand into his shorts to steal his phone. He pressed the phone into Mizuki's good hand and gestured for him to unlock it. Dark green eyes glared back in answer, burning with such spite as Mizuki clenched his phone tightly but didn't lift a finger to input his password.

More glass tinkled and tumbled out of his hair as Kakashi ran a frustrated hand through his locks. He was half-tempted to tie Mizuki up and interrogate him the way he was used to. The same way he'd been taught through personal experience. But he wasn't a soldier anymore, and this house was a far cry from a war prison.

Grabbing Mizuki's wrist, he wrenched back the hand clutching the phone until a wrangled cry escaped Mizuki again.

"You think breaking my wrist will magically unlock my phone for you?!" Mizuki spat out along with a few drops of blood from where his tooth had been knocked out earlier.

"I can break a lot more than just your wrist."

"You can be charged for assault!"

"And you'll be charged for a lot more once I hand the police a copy of your taped confession."

That was a bluff. Kakashi hadn't bothered to record their conversation since he knew he wouldn't need to anyway. But Mizuki was unaware of that, and he swallowed hard at the threat, lips pressing into a thin line for a moment.

Finally, he caved in with a click of his tongue. "All right, fine!" He wrenched his hand free of Kakashi's grasp and turned his phone on to unlock it. "That girl is too flat-chested for my taste anyway," he mumbled with contempt.

"Just shut up and delete them," Kakashi growled back.

Still tapping away at his phone, Mizuki muttered, "So it's okay for you to ogle her ass, but it's wrong for me to take a photo of it?"

Yeah, Kakashi could see how that wasn't exactly fair, but it was still comparing apples to oranges. It was one thing to check someone out for a second, but it was a different thing to take a photo of that person without permission all for the sake of sating your own lecherous impulses. Kakashi wasn't that depraved to fall in the latter.

"It's done."

Kakashi snorted. "I'll be the judge of that," he said, snatching the phone back.

He squinted at the photo gallery still open on the screen, thumb flipping through all the photos in every folder in search of anything that might have a hint of pink. There were more photos than he'd expected—over a thousand according to the number at the top of the app—and he painstakingly scrutinized each and every photo. From the photos of random cups of coffee to the photos of parks, tourist shops, clothes with their price tags, restaurant mascots—just mundane things. Nothing sensual or inappropriate. By the time he reached the earliest photos taken three years ago, they were only of Tsubaki. There was no photo of any other girl.

But Kakashi was not one who could easily be fooled.

He exited the Gallery app and went straight for the files of the phone's memory card. After skimming through all the images saved in the card and finding nothing suspicious, Kakashi narrowed his eyes at Mizuki who instantly threw his gaze down to a discarded DVD. No, there had to be more photos. His gut was telling him to pore through every damn app on this phone if he had to.

But what other kind of app could store photos?

Perusing the home screen for a minute, Kakashi paused at the sight of the Notes app. His thumb hovered over it before he finally opened the app. His stomach instantly curdled in disgust of what he saw. The app had been used recently as Mizuki had created a new Note to store photos of Sakura—some of which were just as lewd as the one taken from this morning, if not more.

The first photo had been pasted at the very top of the page. It was innocent at first glance; just a shot of Sakura smiling at something off-camera as she was in the middle of tying up her hair. She was outside, sporting a grey shirt and black spandex shorts that showed off her shapely thighs. The afternoon sunlight highlighted her languid smile as well as the pink wisps of hair that curtained her face like a rose gold frame with her as the picture of modest beauty. Given how innocent the photo was, Kakashi would have normally thought nothing of it. But upon scrolling down, he found that the notes typed below the photo reflected thoughts that were far from innocent.

'Very pretty; athletic and toned body'

Sakura was indeed very pretty, and she clearly had the toned body of someone who led an active lifestyle, but Kakashi knew there was a lot more to this simple sentence. The way his stomach continued to churn with unease was enough warning. So he scrolled down to the second photo.

This one was still casual, but not quite as innocent as the first. Here, Sakura was outside again under the scorching heat of the sun, and she was obviously feeling the heat as her cheeks were stained a pretty pink with droplets of sweat spilling down. Her lips were parted into a small 'o' as if she was in the middle of catching her breath. But what made this photo not so innocent as the first one was the beautiful reveal of the milky skin that was her stomach. She had grabbed the hem of her shirt to wipe at the sweat dripping down her chin, flashing the toned muscles of her stomach including her little belly button.

She has an innie, Kakashi couldn't help but make that mental note as his eyes lingered over the vertical shape of her navel. It was a little detail he'd missed during the Naked Run since he hadn't quite been afforded the time to let his eyes stray below her shoulders (at least not for too long without her noticing). But he then scowled at the notes typed below, seeing that they were more sexual in nature compared to the notes for the last photo.

'I should make her get a belly piercing – a dangly one that will jingle for me'

A belly piercing? How crazy was Mizuki for him to think he could make Sakura do that for him? Kakashi shook his head.

The third photo was straight to the point and blatantly sexual now. It was a close-up shot of Sakura's breasts as the front of her shirt was drenched in enough sweat to darken the thin material and make it cling to her chest to pronounce the curves.

'Beautiful bouncy little B-cups'

Kakashi's stomach was twisting in knots now but, somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew it wasn't nausea. Not even close. It was something else, and he could feel it coiling tight inside him as he scrolled on.

The fourth photo was just as perverse in nature with Sakura stretched out on the floor of the gymnasium to perform a perfect side splits. The shot was taken from the back, however, to show off the firm contours of her ass since the spandex shorts fit a bit too well on her.

'Very slender and flexible body; I can probably do advanced positions with her'

Kakashi's fingers tightened around the edge of the phone's screen as the implication rang loud and clear like warning bells. Jaw clenching almost painfully hard now, he forced himself to continue.

The fifth photo was a familiar sight and, to his surprise, even included him. It was taken from the day Sakura had played basketball with him and his colleagues at Kage Park, but the shot was taken in secrecy from a high vantage point that captured Sakura's smile. While he wasn't entirely in the frame itself, Kakashi would recognize his own silver tufts of hair anywhere. But the photo focused on Sakura's expression, and the sight of it slightly eased the knotting in his stomach. She was smiling up at him, eyes crinkled almost in the same fashion as his as she seemed to be reacting to something he was telling her. It was just a smile, but it was soft and genuine as if she sincerely enjoyed hanging onto every word he spoke and not just pretending for the sake of kissing ass.

Without thinking, Kakashi swept his thumb over the photo as if to touch her smile. He accidentally scrolled down instead, revealing the notes for this image.

'It seems Hatake keeps an eye on this girl too - is he also interested in her? Be careful - save her for last and get her to register for my class next semester for more.'

For more? More what?

While Kakashi was distraught that his attraction to Sakura was strong enough for Mizuki to notice, he was even more disturbed by the fact that Mizuki had plans for Sakura in the long-term. Plans for what, exactly, he wasn't sure. But his gut told him these photos were only the start of it.

Hurriedly, he moved on to the next photo. It was eerily similar to the one Mizuki had taken today after the marathon just as Kakashi had caught him in the act. Except this photo had clearly been taken at a different time and place as it showed Sakura wearing that same grey tank top and black spandex shorts that conformed much too tightly to the perfect peach shape of her ass; her fitness uniform, he realized belatedly. The shorts were more than a size too small for her ass as it pronounced every shapely curve, including the gentle curve of her pussy that the spandex seemed to dig into (almost painfully like a wedgie even). He could almost make out the slight dip in the center and fought back the urge to zoom in on that spot. But with the angle that the picture was taken, he was given a clear, tantalizing view of Sakura's buttcheeks peeking out past the hem of her shorts that had risen high as she had herself positioned in a deep arch against the maplewood flooring to reach for something.

Kakashi swallowed back his shame as he felt the front of his pants start to tighten to the point of discomfort. But his shame soon joined the angry knotting in the pit of his stomach as he read Mizuki's notes that had been updated just yesterday.

'5 feet and 3 inches; 100 pounds; 17 years old; lives with roommate but is alone on weekends (parents work abroad); no boyfriend; definitely a virgin; her body bruises easily so must be careful when handling her; her petite stature will make her more easily susceptible to long-term training (reduce the dosage for her small size).'

Long-term training? Reduce dosage? But before Kakashi could dwell on that, his eyes landed on the last set of notes that were mainly comprised of numbers and months as if Mizuki had been drafting a schedule of sorts. A schedule for her—he squinted at a word labeling the first column—menstruation?

His fingers gradually squeezed the phone tighter in a death grip as Kakashi continued to read every date marked and labeled. By the time he'd finished studying the schedule, the phone was trembling in his grip. It was the only thing keeping Kakashi from punching the rest of Mizuki's teeth out of his mouth.

"Do you keep track of the menstruation schedules for all your female students or just Sakura?" Kakashi asked, finally turning his attention back to Mizuki who gulped at what he saw in Kakashi's eyes. "You've even calculated the exact dates for her ovulation and fertility windows. Now I know what you needed all those Plan B pills for. It would be very suspicious if your class had a record of girls who suddenly found themselves unexpectedly pregnant."

Still slouched against the shelf, Mizuki spat out a wad of blood before quirking a sneer at him. "What can I say? I like taking care of my girls."

"Says the pervert."

"Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!" Mizuki scoffed only to wince when his broken arm jostled from the movement. "Even you are super strict with protection. Or so I've heard."

Ignoring him, Kakashi proceeded to delete the notes on Sakura from the phone before doing one last peruse through the apps and files for any more photos. He couldn't find anything else pertaining to Sakura, but with technology these days he could never be too sure. For all he knew, there were probably photos of other female students hidden away. It was sorely tempting to do a factory reset to completely wipe the phone clean, but Kakashi decided against it. Scrubbing Sakura's photos and notes off the phone was good enough, but it was best to leave the photos of the other girls alone. The more evidence left behind then the easier it would be for the FBI to incriminate Mizuki and put the bastard behind bars for good.

"So we're done here, right?" Mizuki asked, smirking as if he thought Kakashi was too foolish enough to destroy all evidence of his crime.

"What? Thought you wanted to knock back some beers for old time's sake?" Kakashi said dryly as he gave a pointed look at Mizuki's broken arm. He tossed the phone to the floor, watching in satisfaction as the screen cracked upon impact before the phone bounced and landed on an open DVD case. The DVD tumbled out and rolled across the floor to bump against the tip of Kakashi's boot. Noticing the date that marked the DVD was as recent as last week, Kakashi stooped down to pick it up.

"What? Are we having movie night now or somethin'?" Mizuki chuckled, but he was eyeing the disk in Kakashi's hands nervously. When Kakashi started for the TV to pop the disk into the DVD player, Mizuki tried to stand to his feet to stop him. The pain of his broken arm getting jostled prevented Mizuki from moving away from the shelf, however, and he was helpless to watch as the TV screen switched away from the porn actress to another naked girl whose body was slender much like the actress's. Much like Sakura's.

Stretched across what looked like an office desk, the girl had her legs splayed open with the camera shot capturing the length of her body from the shoulders down. But instead of focusing on the hand that gripped the girl's breast, Kakashi's attention was on the desk itself. He'd seen that exact model once before... in Guy's office. Which meant this scene was taking place in Mizuki's own office just across from Guy's.

His blood ran cold.

"It's just a porn film!" Mizuki said from somewhere behind.

Kakashi ignored him as the camera panned down from the view of the girl's jiggling breasts to where a cock was plunging in and out between her trembling legs. Thick and thin rivulets of blood stained her inner thighs as more continued to dribble out from the seam where the lips of her pussy stretched tight around the cock. The girl shrieked as the man behind the camera snapped his hips against hers for a hard thrust, prompting a fleck of blood to land on the corner of the screen.

"Keep going, baby!" Mizuki's voice came out in a groan. "Keep your legs open all the way for me!"

"Ye-ah! Y-Yes, Professor Mizuki!" the girl whimpered out, gripping the edge of the desk as she struggled to keep up with his thrusts.

Kakashi couldn't even see the girl's face, but it was obvious that the pace of the thrusts was too brutal for her. And with that much blood staining her legs... staining the space of the desk between her thighs... she had to have been in far more pain than pleasure.

In the video, Mizuki pulled out from the girl, aiming the camera to where the swollen tip of his cock was nestled against the girl's entrance. The length of his cock glistened with blood and other fluids and Mizuki continued to tease out a few more whimpers from the girl as he dipped his tip in and out of her, repeatedly breaching her and smearing the fluids and blood all around.

"Mm, look at that," Mizuki purred to her. "I popped your lil' cherry and now your juices are running down my cock. Damn, you're dripping all over my desk."

"Popped my-ah!-cherry..?"

Kakashi couldn't recognize the girl's voice, but he could recognize the confusion that wavered in it.

Chuckling softly, Mizuki reached past the camera shot as if to stroke the girl's tears away offscreen. "You're no longer a virgin," he murmured gently before plunging his cock back into her.

The girl's wail mingled with the sound of wet flesh smacking furiously. "B-But I wanted to save myself f-for marriage?!" she gasped out.

"No, you were saving yourself for me," Mizuki insisted alongside his persistent thrusts. "You were saving your cherry until it got ripe and sweet enough for me to pop!" he enunciated the last word with a vicious snap of his hips that forced another broken cry to spill from the girl's lips.

"Yes! Yes, Professor!" she sobbed out.

Kakashi could hardly stand to watch the video. It was sickening, listening to the girl's pained cries as she was forced to endure every thrust into her body and every greedy squeeze of her breasts. He could see how her nipples were red and swollen from too much pinching and pulling, and the reddened marks all over her hips and waist that would deepen into colorful bruises soon enough. Her flat stomach tensed with every thrust as if her body was desperately trying to fight back despite her verbal compliance. And Kakashi could practically smell the blood that was smeared all over her trembling thighs as she struggled to keep her legs open for her professor—for a man she was supposed to trust.

"That's a student you're having sex with. Your student," Kakashi said aloud, finally confirming his own suspicions with the accused sitting in the corner of the room and not even trying to deny it. Glaring at Mizuki over his shoulder, Kakashi had to fist his hands and let his nails bite into the leather gloves to keep from marching over and beating the living shit out of the guy. "Who is that girl?" he demanded over the noise of the girl whimpering and the desk beneath her banging against the wall. Mizuki's lips remained sealed. "What's her name?!"

Not Sakura. Not Sakura. Please not Sakura.

"Tell me who she is!" Kakashi roared, taking a menacing step towards Mizuki.

"H-Hanako! Her name is Hanako!"

Hanako. Not Sakura. Relief flooded him but it was just as soon followed by guilt. The girl in this video didn't deserve this, but Kakashi was loathed to admit that he would've preferred anyone else but Sakura.

"P-Professor!" Hanako cried out uncertainly. "I feel weird!"

"Ooh, you're almost there, huh? Yeah, I can feel it."

The camera panned up to capture the girl's face finally. Chin-length lavender locks of hair clung to flushed cheeks that were stained with fresh tear tracks. More tears raced down to Hanako's chin while she craned her head forward to watch the cock pumping in and out of her as if she was enraptured by what was happening to her. As if she couldn't believe it was happening to her at all.

The camera zoomed in on her bottom lip trembling before sweeping slowly down the length of her body to stop for a close-up shot of her clit. A thumb popped into view to rub the swollen nub, eliciting a surprised mewl from Hanako.

"Fuck, baby, you're so tight," Mizuki growled behind the camera, rubbing her clit more roughly now. "Virgins like you are always so tight and hungry for cock."

When he pinched her clit, she shrieked again. "Pro... f-fessor! Something's coming!"

Nausea churned in Kakashi's gut again. The girl had no idea what was happening to her. A virgin indeed, but she also seemed completely clueless in the matters of sex. Someone as innocent as her made the perfect target for someone as cunning as Mizuki.

In the TV, Mizuki cursed under his breath but didn't stop his thrusts. "Your pussy is clenching like crazy all around me. You want my cum, is that it? Yeah, you want my cum!"

The camera returned to the girl's face, revealing her shy smile that painted her as the picture of demure and vestal. But something about her eyes looked off—as if her mind was a million miles away. Kakashi would recognize that look anywhere because it'd been haunting him in his nightmares for years already.

"Yes," Hanako mewled out in answer. Her smile stretched wider as she finally released the edge of the desk to raise her hands towards the camera—towards Mizuki—as if ready to embrace him like a lover would. Except they were not lovers. They were teacher and student having rough sex in his office. "I want your cum, Professor Mizuki," she smiled sweetly at the camera.

Mizuki slowed down his thrusting just enough to cradle Hanako's face in the palm of his hand. His thumb stroked away another stray tear. "There's my little slut. You're going to take in every last drop today, okay? Just like last time."

Hanako's smile wavered slightly. "But... what if I get pregnant?"

Sweeping his thumb down to slide it into her mouth, Mizuki shushed her. "Don't worry about that. You know you can trust your professor to take good care of you just like I did last time. Remember I fucked you in the ass last week? You had trouble walking for a few days, but you were okay in the end. So all you need to do is just trust me, all right?"

With Hanako still suckling on his thumb, she was unable to answer until he finally pulled his thumb out with a little 'pop!'. "I trust you, Professor Mizuki," she said, her smile widening with earnestness.

"Good."

The camera view started to shake again as Mizuki returned to his brutal thrusting pace that had the girl sobbing and her tits bouncing from the vigorous movement. Her hands scrambled across the desk for purchase, nails scrabbling over the cold metal. Yet, she remained obedient, keeping her legs parted wide open and hands aside to show off her nudity to the camera. While the whole thing seemed staged like an amateur porn video, it was anything but that. This was far more intimate and personal than porn. Worst of all, this was forced.

The realization hit Kakashi like a truck and the TV remote slipped from his hand as he stood there, watching this random girl lose her virginity to her professor seemingly by her own volition. But there was that haunting look in her eyes that did not match the smile seated on her face. It wasn't a look that anyone would notice much less recognize, but Kakashi did, and that look was the only truth he needed to know what was happening here.

Mizuki wasn't sleeping with his student. He was raping her.

On the TV, the girl's face contorted into a mix of pleasure and pain as she experienced her first-ever orgasm. It was ripped right out of her, leaving her shaking like a leaf and panting for air while Mizuki merely laughed and praised her like a teacher would with a student who had passed a test with flying colors.

"You're my little slut, Hanako. A teacher's pet. My pet," Mizuki hummed, finally pulling out of her and lowering the camera for an up-close shot of a white glob of his cum squeezing its way out past her folds. Blood was mixed in with the white, and it trailed down the inflamed seam of her cunt before disappearing past view only for more cum to ooze out after it. Ignoring the girl's whimpers, Mizuki tugged apart her abused folds with a single hand to show the viewer the devastation he'd wrought on this girl's body.

Kakashi felt numb as he watched a fresh wave of blood trickle out of the girl and spill down the crack of her ass to pool with the cum between her legs.

"Now it's time to get clean," Mizuki announced, taking a step back and giving Kakashi a glimpse of the blood and cum dripping off the edge of the desk. The girl remained sitting on the desk, legs still splayed open all the way until Mizuki beckoned her with a hand. "Come down and suck my—"

The TV winked off, the black screen reflecting Kakashi's stony gaze as the silence returned.

"Did you ever touch her?" he asked quietly, gripping the remote he'd picked up because he could no longer stand to watch anymore.

"Her?"

The hard plastic of the remote cracked aloud in Kakashi's hand as he remembered all the seemingly innocuous times Mizuki would touch Sakura's back, pat her shoulder, or tug her a little bit closer to him under the pretense of safety and comfort. The sharp edges of the plastic fragments dug into the leather of his gloves for just a second, and then he was crossing the room to grab Mizuki by his neck and slam him against the shelf.

More DVD cases tumbled to the floor with a clatter over Mizuki's cry of agony, but Kakashi could hardly bother with the mess as that cold fury from earlier returned in full force, flooding that empty well inside him until it was all Kakashi could do to keep from breaking more than Mizuki's arm.

"Sakura," he ground out, tightening his grip around Mizuki's throat. "Did you ever rape her like you did that girl?"

A gurgle was his only answer, prompting Kakashi to loosen his grip just enough so Mizuki could rasp out, "N-No!"

He went back to squeezing harder in response.

"I swear, I didn't!" Mizuki insisted, fingers clawing weakly at the hand wrapped around his throat. "She's menstruating! O-Or about to! That's another reason why I calculated her menstruation schedule... I'm not going to fuck a girl who's bleeding out!"

Kakashi's eyes narrowed at him. "You didn't seem to mind fucking that other girl while she was bleeding. In fact, you seemed to like that you 'popped her cherry' as you claimed in the video."

"That's different!" Mizuki said with a curl of his lips. "I don't fuck girls when they're on their period! I'm not into that shit—it's disgusting!"

"Hard to believe that, coming from you."

"I'm telling the truth!" Mizuki winced as he earned himself another squeeze. Watching in cold satisfaction as Mizuki's face started to turn a pale blue now, Kakashi frowned when a chuckle shook its way out of Mizuki's throat. "Besides, I was saving Sakura for last!" he added, deep green eyes twinkling with sudden glee despite the left eye already swelling shut. "She's my favorite… wanted to… savor her… and her sweet cun—"

The next punch shut Mizuki up and, sent two more teeth flying out of his mouth.

Blood dribbled down the corners of his split lip, and his face was starting to look more unrecognizable with every fresh welt Kakashi packed onto him. Still, Mizuki wheezed out another chuckle as he allowed a thick line of bloody drool to spill down to his shirt. "Ah, there's that Kakashi I know," he murmured, squinting at him through his one good eye. "Still so fucked up in the head just like his daddy was. Admit it, you wanna fuck that girl's lil' pussy all for yourself. Can't blame you. Bet she's a real tight squeeze," he spat out along with another wad of blood. "Bet you fucked countless little girls like her during the war!"

"How would you know?" Kakashi hissed back. "You never went to war. You've never known what it's like to have the muzzle of a gun dig into your skull. You've never known how it feels to slice a man's gut open and feel his insides spill all over your hands, all hot and slippery. You don't know the pungent odor of phosphorous in the air, or the heat of explosions burning your face. You don't even know what it's like to stand on the precipice between life and death."

Leaning in so that their noses almost brushed against each other, Kakashi dug his fingers into the thin skin of Mizuki's neck, feeling the frenzied pulse at his fingertips.

"Maybe I should show you..."

"You gonna kill me?" Mizuki asked almost gleefully. He shook his head. "No surprise there... friend-killer."

Kakashi's eyes widened at the moniker and he quickly released Mizuki before his hands could start trembling again. It wasn't the first time he'd been called that slur before, but it'd been a while since the last time.

Friend-killer.

Dozens of voices started to fill his head, the ghosts surrounding him as they chanted the name in unison.

Friend-killer.

Friend-killer.

Friend-killer!

It would be so easy to snap his neck, Kakashi mused to himself as he gazed down at Mizuki. He'd done it before—countless times. Never had he done it to a civilian though. Then again, all those people he'd killed had once been civilians too. Men and women who wore the same uniforms and yet were cut from different cloths. The only difference between those people and people like Mizuki was the rules.

And looking at the subtle smirk on Mizuki's face now, he could see that a killer was exactly what Mizuki wanted from him. For Kakashi to give in to his primal instincts—the same instincts that'd been honed on the battlefield—and kill him. To be charged with murder for it and get sent straight to jail where he would live out some years in misery before returning to society, his name stained even more than before. But most of all, Mizuki wanted him to prove that he was every bit the monster Mizuki believed him to be, if not more.

Kakashi's mouth twitched into a smile. He wouldn't give this bastard the satisfaction of anything.

"Who said anything about killing you?" Crouching down to Mizuki's level, he pulled the knife free from where it'd been buried in the edge of the shelf. He paid no mind to Mizuki's confusion, turning the blade this way and that to study its serrated edge. "You know, when I was in the military, it wasn't uncommon for soldiers to run out of rations while out on a mission, especially when deep in enemy territory. The dropships often got shot down, so supply caches were far and few.

At the corner of his eye, Mizuki frowned, wondering where he was going with this.

"In the jungle, we learned to become more than killers. Mother Nature taught us to be predators, hunting down prey of all shapes and sizes." Flipping the knife once, Kakashi then slashed the small space in between him and Mizuki, mimicking the act of killing said prey. Mizuki's wide eyes remained focused on the blade glinting an inch away from his nose. "But out on the desert? Everyone is fair prey when you've got nothing but the sun blistering your skin raw. Or the wind whipping you blind with sand. In the desert, the soldiers would get so hungry, they'd start eyeing their enemies with a new kind of lust," he said, eyeing Mizuki's crotch to hint of what he meant.

Following Kakashi's gaze, Mizuki laughed at that. "Well, if you've got no girls to rape then I guess you might as well fuck the enemy in every sense possible. Although I didn't take you to swing that way."

Kakashi shook his head. "Oh, that's not the kind of lust I'm talking about. I'm talking about a ravenous kind of lust hardly any man would be able to resist if on the brink of starvation. After all, war is a fight for survival. It wasn't uncommon for soldiers to take the bodies of their fallen enemies, chop them into pieces, and roast them like pigs on a stick. And if the enemy was still alive, we'd torture him by chopping off his... pride," Kakashi drawled out, lowering the knife so that the tip of it rested gently against the center seam of Mizuki's shorts. "The very thing that made him a man."

Mizuki's jaw had dropped as he gaped at the pointy tip of the knife poking his dick with only millimeters of cotton protecting him. "Y-You're fucking with me."

"Am I?" Kakashi pressed the knife ever so slightly into the seam, prompting a few strands of thread to snap apart. "I could give you a demonstration right now, if you insist?"

Mizuki visibly gulped at the veiled threat. Still staring at the knife pressing into his crotch, he shook his head before raising his glare back onto Kakashi. "You really are a sick piece of shit! I always thought so-called geniuses like yourself are fucked up in the head to begin with, but wow. War suits monsters like you. Shame it didn't kill you though—only your family."

The latter comment stung, and Kakashi briefly considered castrating him right then and there for it. His fingers spasmed around the knife's handle just once before the putrid stench of urine stung his nose. He looked down to where a dark stain was quickly spreading across the front of Mizuki's shorts. Wrinkling his nose at the pool of piss quickly crawling towards him, Kakashi slammed the knife down, directly in front Mizuki's crotch. The blade sunk deep into the floorboards but the pool of piss only spread faster.

"I'm not going to kill you, Mizuki," Kakashi said as he stood up. "That would be a mercy."

No, he would've tortured him instead. A punishment to reflect all the pain he'd caused that girl in the video. A warning to remind Mizuki to never do it again or else. Castration would be the perfect punishment, but Kakashi didn't trust himself to stop there. Once he started, he knew it would be almost impossible to stop.

He turned to walk away, knowing that his job here was done even when his military training urged him to finish the job properly. With a bullet to the head or a knife in the gut.

"I can give you Sakura!" Mizuki pleaded with him one last time. "You wanna fuck her without anyone knowing? Without her knowing? If we work together, then you can have her as many times as you—"

Kakashi reached down and pulled him up by his hair, wrenching out another cry of agony from him. "You stay away from Haruno Sakura," he snarled into Mizuki's pained face. "If you ever touch her or even look at her, I'll make you wish you were dead a thousand times over. Do you understand?"

Mizuki could only answer with an anguished moan.

Dropping him to the floor, Kakashi tugged at the hem of his gloves as he gave his colleague one last look of disdain. "Have a good night, Mizuki."

He stepped all over the DVDs, leaving Mizuki behind and filling the house with the noise of glass and disks crunching under his heel. The cool air greeted him outside; a telltale sign of the coming October weather that was just around the corner. Soon the trees would be naked and decorations would light up the streets in celebration of the Halloween spirit. Kakashi stepped off the sidewalk that would eventually see hordes of children journeying across their neighborhood in search of tooth-rotting sweets. The thought of Mizuki opening the door to face these children with a fake smile drew a scowl from Kakashi as he took one last look at the innocent-looking house with its empty porch and blue-tiled roof.

It didn't sit right with him, leaving like that without burning the house down along with every dark secret hidden in its walls. He was used to finishing loose ends by his own hands, but he knew it was best this way.

His motorcycle purred to life beneath him and then roared as he tore down the street of Taffy Drive. Speeding through the streets, Kakashi allowed the city lights to blur all around him. The world seemed to melt away and fall behind him with every increasing number on his speedometer. Yet, it wasn't enough. He felt as if the demons were still chasing after him, and he could feel the oppressing weight of his ghosts clinging onto his back. They called for him—for the 'friend-killer'-demanding that he return and continue suffering his life-long sentence.

Kakashi twisted the throttle and he shot forth through the night. He couldn't outrace his demons forever, and his ghosts would continue to haunt him at every turn, but he could pretend otherwise for now.

.

.

.

If there was anything nice about Hokage Rock besides the beautiful view of the city it offered, it was that its hiking trail had yet to see a single mountain lion in all of its seventy-five years of existence. Kakashi was thankful for that as he followed the popular trail still littered with the footprints of the many hikers and tourists who climbed this small mountain.

Without a flashlight on him, he had to make do with the light from his phone, but that was all right. He knew every rock and tree like the back of his hand. He also knew when to diverge off the trail and follow the small grove of trees that disguised one of the older trails that had been closed off by a fence. The fence was now more of a wall of shrubbery as nature had been quick to take over it, but Kakashi tugged aside a stubborn bush that concealed the latch of the gate.

The gate swung open with an ominous creak. Kakashi strode right through, feeling more at home on this forgotten path than on the main trail. Slowing down his pace, he turned on his phone's flashlight as he proceeded forward with caution until he caught sight of a tall silhouette in the distance.

The pike stood tall and proud, marking the edge of the cliff like a monument for any brave hiker who dared to enter this area. While there was no fence to keep anyone from falling off the cliff, it wasn't dangerous for anyone so long as they made sure to stay away from the edge where the loose pebbles made it easy to slip and fall to their doom. Kakashi kicked one of those pebbles off the edge of the cliff as he approached the tall, metal structure that marked this particular spot as The Pike.

His fingers trailed over the many stickers he and Rin would slap onto the marker. Most of the designs of the stickers had faded after taking years of beating from the sun and rain, but he remembered every last one of them. Just like he remembered every conversation he'd had with Rin here.

He could still see the fury so vivid in her eyes when he had told her to quit the military.

'War is dangerous, Rin,' he'd warned her at this very spot. 'Even more so for girls.'

She'd already known the risks then, but she hadn't yet understood them. Not until she'd been betrayed by her own allies as they'd stripped her naked and beaten her to silence. Not until Kakashi had found her with her legs wrenched open and the men from her own unit pinning her down so that their ringleader could finish unbuckling his pants without getting kicked in the balls. She had finally understood after that incident. After Kakashi had finished beating every man in that room black and blue and handing Rin his own jacket to cover herself with.

But even after that first incident, Rin had never lost her kind and gentle heart.

Could the same be said for Sakura had Mizuki been able to go through with his plans?

Kakashi balled his hands into fists. All this time, Mizuki had been taking photos of Sakura, taking personal notes on her, and plotting her rape... and it was all Kakashi's fault. He'd had the chance to report to Choza about his suspicions that Mizuki was sleeping with a student. He'd had the chance to stop all this and protect Sakura... but he'd failed.

Why? Why was it that whenever it mattered most in protecting someone, he always failed?

Studying the dried blood clinging to his leather gloves, Kakashi then raised his gaze to the city sprawled out before him. Bright dots of light peppered the visage, but the stars hanging above were just as dazzling, especially from all the way up here on Hokage Rock. Somewhere in the city, Sakura was probably tucked safely in bed, peacefully asleep and completely unaware of the nightmare of reality that lurked on the other side of her neighborhood.

How would she react if she were to find out that a teacher she had trusted was actually a disgusting piece of shit? Would she look upon Kakashi with a broken heart and a wary gaze, wondering if he was every bit the manipulative, two-faced bastard Mizuki was? It was that thought that had Kakashi hesitate just a second longer before he decided to fish out his phone.

He'd already failed Sakura once, but he would make sure to never fail her again. This time, he would protect her and keep her safe. Perhaps if he succeeded then all his ghosts would forgive him.

Perhaps.

The phone's line was picked up on the second ring.

"Hey, Inoichi, it's me. I know it's been a while but listen, there's this fitness instructor at the university. His name is Mizuki…"

Their conversation was short and to the point, but two minutes was all Kakashi needed to convince the FBI Intelligence officer. After slipping the phone back into his pocket, he returned his attention to the sparkling city lights that concealed the rotten people who lived there. He'd hoped the military would be different, but his hopes had been shot down during the war.

He'd learned early on in life that it was easy for people to disguise their cunning behind kind smiles, and Sakura was about to figure that out as well.

---

13 years ago...

The lights from the ceiling felt hot on Kakashi's face as he set down his second mug of beer on the coaster. Or maybe that was the flush of the alcohol stealing upon his cheeks now. While Sugi village seemed desperate for grains after a killer heatwave from the summer that had just passed, it seemed to have an everlasting supply of hard alcohol that was potent enough to knock out a grown man. Not many of the villagers seemed to be eager to partake in today's party drinks, however, as Kakashi noted that the bar's atmosphere was just as bleak as before his birthday celebration had started. Even the lively music and the village girls swinging on the dancefloor in time to the song wasn't enough to hide the tepid mood.

Bracing his elbows against the bar's counter, Kakashi watched a soldier from his unit playfully grope his partner's ass. She jolted in surprise but laughed it off as she was spun around and pulled back into his embrace, her red lips stretched wide and tight.

"C'mon!" Obito nudged his side. "There's plenty of ladies lining up for you as we speak!"

Not bothering to follow where Obito pointed to the girls sitting further down the bar from them, Kakashi held back from rolling his eyes. "I already told you, I don't dance."

Obito scoffed at that as if the notion was more ridiculous than Kakashi actually dancing. "I don't believe you. Aren't you a Hatake? Jack of all trades but master of... all? Or something like that?"

"Just because I'm a genius that doesn't automatically make me a professional dancer too." Not to mention that he didn't even know how to dance in the first place, but he would take that secret to his grave. Kakashi nodded to his friend. "Why don't you dance?"

"I've love to if only all the girls weren't so intimidated by you," Obito mumbled over the thrum of the music, grabbing his beer mug to nurse it. He stole a glance around the bar, eyeing the girls all glamoured up for today's celebration in their best dresses but keeping to the walls for some reason. "With the way they keep looking at us, I can't tell if they're terrified by you or crushing on you, but they seem nervous."

Observing a young woman fidgeting with the skirt of her dress in the far corner of the room, Kakashi began to ponder the same. Despite the balloons and banners they'd strung up in honor of his 18th birthday, the village girls didn't seem so eager to celebrate. Not that that was a surprise. It wasn't easy to have their homes occupied by military units with tanks and jeeps driving by every hour or so. Even the music blasting from every corner of the room couldn't cover up the noise of helicopters and transport aircrafts landing and taking off outside with fresh supplies of weapons and soldiers.

These civilians had never asked to get caught in the crossfire between warring countries, but their neutral territories had made their homes easy targets. In exchange for safety, they'd had no choice but to sacrifice privacy as well as what little crops they could spare. These people had never intended to be dragged into this war, so Kakashi was well aware that their loyalties lied with neither side but their own. It was a gamble staying in this village, and he wouldn't trust even the barmaid to handle his drinks without his careful observation. Even so, this military occupation was for the best for everyone here. None of these girls had any reason to be afraid to dance with any of the soldiers here even if some of the men could get a little too rough with their dancing.

"I've counted at least twelve girls staring at you," Obito noted aloud. "And yet, none of them dare ask for a dance."

"Weren't you saying earlier that ladies love a man in uniform?"

"Yeah, but I guess they love you in it more than me though," Obito snorted before taking a sip of his beer. The frothy layer left a mustache over his mouth but Kakashi said nothing as Obito returned to pouting at the dancefloor where the couples were starting to disperse.

"Maybe it's the medals," Kakashi said in a smug voice, tapping at the silver star over his left breast.

Obito threw him a dry look and opened his mouth to retort back, but somebody approached them to interrupt their conversation.

"So this is where you guys were!" Hands propped on his hips, Genki appraised both men and their lonesome situation. Noticing the empty mugs lined up on the counter behind them, he shook his head in disappointment. "Geez, this party is dead! The hell are you sticking around here for?"

Kakashi glanced at Obito, the two of them thinking the same thing. This village was too small to have any proper establishments to entertain them, was the first reason. The other reason? Obito gave a hapless shrug. "All the pretty ladies are here. They're a sight for sore eyes after staring at ugly mugs all the time on the field."

Indeed. Seven months into the tour and not even the nude photographs Sakae included in her letters to him were enough anymore. At this point, the photos only left Kakashi feeling more frustrated as he was forced to resort to quick rubs during morning piss breaks instead of experience the real thing. What he wouldn't give for some action in bed than on the field...

But as if in answer to his thoughts, Genki tipped his head to the exit, a knowing smirk stretching across his weasel face. "Well, Anzu found a house full of pretty ladies just down the street."

Obito raised a skeptical brow at him. "Oh yeah?"

"Oh yeah," Genki nodded, his shrewd eyes twinkling like a kid's on Christmas morning. "All the boys have been heading there. They say the ladies give some really nice massages to make you feel better. And you get to spend a whole hour for free with them. But you better hurry up and go before a line starts building."

"Massages?" Obito wrinkled his nose in distaste, completely oblivious to the innuendo. "Nah, think I'd rather dance."

Genki chuckled softly at Obito's innocence before turning a knowing look to Kakashi. "How about you? You in, birthday boy?"

Kakashi thrummed his fingers on the counter in contemplation. He wasn't one for sleeping with strangers, and he'd never once considered the services of a brothel house when Sakae or other women back home were more than willing to get in his bed or even offer their own.

Maybe it was the alcohol clouding his judgment or the stale mood of the birthday party his unit had thrown for him (against his consent). He took one last swig from his mug before peeling away from the counter to join Genki. "Let's go."

"You're going?" Obito blinked at him just as one of the women on the dancefloor intercepted Kakashi.

"Hey, soldier," the woman slurred against Kakashi's chest, clinging to his shoulders to either dance with him or to hold herself up. "Wanna take a girl for a spin?"

Smelling the alcohol heavy on her breath, Kakashi crinkled his eyes at her and then spun her towards Obito instead. "Actually, I think this soldier wants to."

Well, it wouldn't be much of a dance when the woman was so drunk that she could barely stay on her feet, but at least taking care of her would give Obito something to do while Kakashi went with Genki to... get that massage.

"Have fun with your partner," Kakashi called out to his friend, giving him a quick salute before departing with Genki.

A chilly breeze soothed the warmth in his face as they stepped outside the establishment. Shivering slightly, Kakashi pulled his cloak tighter around himself. The black cloth rippled like ink over his body with every step he took down the dirt road, but he thought the golden shoulder pads of this uniform were too flashy. So many people already tended to stare at him—at this boy who outranked the men in his unit. Even now, he could feel the stares of the villagers around them burn into his back. It didn't feel so friendly.

He ignored their stares as Genki led him to a corner street on the quiet side of the village. The house they approached looked ordinary on the outside, if a little shabby. Yet, despite its unassuming appearance, two guards had been posted at the door and Kakashi did not doubt that there was an extra set of them at the back as well. He looked up at the fighter jets that shot across the sky as he waited for Genki to speak with the soldiers. The three men eyed Kakashi before one of them slipped into the house.

"You'll be taken care of once you head inside," Genki said, turning on his heel to leave. Brushing past Kakashi, he clapped him on the shoulder as if he'd finally accepted that they were brothers-in-arms rather than teammates who bickered over every move.

Perturbed by the way Genki grinned at him in pride, Kakashi could only watch him trod down the road, whistling a jolly tune to himself. With a shake of his head, he stepped past the soldier guarding the door and into the house. The last person he'd expected to greet him was his own superior—a ranking officer whom he secretly admired for his prowess in battle and strategy.

Before Kakashi could salute the Colonel, the older man was already waving a dismissive hand. "I was wondering if Hatake was ever going to drop by," Colonel Hamamato said, smiling warmly at him and stretching the scars that marred his face.

He took Kakashi by the shoulder and guided him across the living room that was devoid of any furniture save for few chairs lined up against a wall. Kakashi supposed those chairs were for waiting clients as they were filled up by other soldiers, each of them slouched in their seat and eyeing Kakashi with envy.

Kakashi was taken aback by their envy almost as much as he was taken aback by the fact that his own colonel was spending his break in an establishment as seedy as this one. Then again, he supposed it wasn't too surprising that even men as elderly or prestigious as the Colonel needed some release every once in a while.

"So, do you have any preference?" Colonel Hamamoto asked once they reached a door at the back of the room. He began to fish through his pockets for something while waiting for Kakashi to mull it over. "You want dark hair? Redhead? We've even got a blueberry, but she's a lil' shy."

"Any girl is fine."

"Busty or small tits?"

"Busty."

The Colonel stroked his beard thoughtfully. "Mm, those are in high demand. But since you're the birthday boy, we had some choices reserved just for you."

Surprised by that, Kakashi was about to ask what he meant, but the Colonel finally withdrew a set of keys to unlock the door before them. The door swung open, revealing a drabby white curtain that obscured what lay beyond but not the moans echoing over to them. The Colonel lifted aside the curtain and tipped his head in a gesture for Kakashi to follow.

Curious now why a brothel would be so heavily guarded, Kakashi trailed after his superior, passing through the curtain to enter a long hallway that stretched further than he'd expected. It seemed some renovations had been done to this house as he noted the many rooms on either side of the hall, each of which had only the same pair of drabby curtains for privacy rather than a door.

As the Colonel started to guide him down the hall, Kakashi couldn't help but register the familiar faint notes of copper heavy in the air like a miasma.

Blood...?

The hairs on the back of his neck pricked up.

"They're all fresh from this morning's pick," the Colonel explained as he began to guide him down the hallway. "So you can go as wild as you like."

Stomach twisting in knots now, Kakashi paused to take a peek at the first room. A girl only as tall as his hip was kneeling on the floor. Dressed only in a threadbare robe too thin to shelter her from the October wind, the little girl scrubbed at a dark stain on the floor with a bucket and a brush as small as her hand.

Kakashi watched her scrub the stain diligently until a sharp squeal drew his attention to the next room. The alcohol in his stomach threatened to rise as he was met by the sight of a girl no older than sixteen years old—possibly fifteen—naked and sobbing against the wall a soldier had her pinned to. The sharp clinking noise of his undone belt resounded in time to the banging of her body as the soldier thrusted into her with wild abandon. His growls bordered on animalistic while the girl continued to sob out in reply, her gangly limbs flopping up and down around the man's hips.

Standing there in the hallway, Kakashi found himself captivated by the horror of the scene when a pair of teary, honey brown eyes rose to meet his gaze. The girl stared at him over the man's shoulders, silently pleading for help. For mercy. For him.

"Oh no, not that one." Colonel Hamamoto suddenly appeared at his side, dragging him away and leaving the girl to the other soldier's mercy instead. "Don't worry, yours is waiting right at the end there."

The words might as well have come in through one ear and out the other. All Kakashi could hear now were pitched sobs and whimpers mingling with the cacophony of voracious grunts and flesh beating on flesh. There was no time to look into every room as the Colonel guided him down the hall, but he could see in his peripheral vision every act of horror he passed by like the whole hallway was some sick sideshow.

He saw women and girls of various ages with a handful as young as twelve on their knees, backs, or pinned against the wall like the first one. Some of them were completely naked while others had their robes barely clinging onto bruised hips. All of them had their mouths full of either forced moans or dirty cocks.

There were no words to describe how Kakashi felt. Sick to the stomach, yes, but so much more than that. It was as if everything he thought his uniform—even the medal on his breast—stood for had been crammed down his throat and left to rot in the pit of his stomach.

He could barely hold back the bile in his throat as Colonel Hamamoto led him into the last room where a girl his age or younger awaited him with a nervous smile. Unlike the other girls, she wore a simple but clean, white robe that wasn't even long enough to cover the dusky patch of hair at the apex of her hips. The only thing she wore besides the robe was a tattered blue ribbon wrapped across the crown of her head to keep her hair back.

"This is Kohana," the Colonel said, stepping behind the girl to guide her dark hair over a shoulder and slip the robe down her trembling shoulders. Her generous breasts gleamed under the harsh light of the single bulb dangling from the ceiling, the rosy nipples quickly hardening under Kakashi's gaze. Chuckling behind her, Colonel Hamamoto raised a hand to give her right breast a firm squeeze, and then the other. "Busty, just like you wanted."

No, this was not what he wanted.

Watching the girl's bottom lip quiver as his superior continued to squeeze her breasts, Kakashi remained speechless. How could a man who could rouse a whole army with a speech about valor and honor... do this? This was not valor. This was not honor. This was not what soldiers do.

"What's wrong?" the Colonel asked once he noticed Kakashi's hesitation. "Oh!" He perked up, finally letting go of the girl's breasts only to reach down and grab the back of her knee. He lifted her leg aside and the girl looked down in silent mortification as her pink slit was presented to Kakashi. "Don't worry, the medical examiner already confirmed she's clean. Even still has her hymen intact, so you'll have the privilege of pricking her first."

As if to prove it, the Colonel reached between the girl's legs and shoved his fat, wrinkly fingers past the tuft of pubic hair to spread the girl's folds. Just enough to show a hint of the velvet red flesh that enticed many men.

Not Kakashi. Not today.

Finally releasing her, Colonel Hamamoto turned to the girl, touching her shoulders almost affectionately like a grandpa. "Kohana, this is Major Hatake," he pointed to Kakashi whose throat had gone bone dry. "Today, he's become a man. So he's gonna teach you how to take a man's cock, all right?"

"Yes, sir," the girl whispered, still staring down at her naked little toes.

"It's his birthday, so make sure to give him some extra special lip service." Smiling gently, the Colonel stroked back a loose lock of hair, ignoring the girl's flinch under his fingers. He turned to Kakashi and clapped his shoulder again, but Kakashi could only feel disgust as those same fingers that had forcibly touched that girl were now touching him. "Enjoy her, son," his superior winked at him.

The room remained cold once the curtain fell back in place, leaving the two of them with as much privacy that could be spared here.

Still shaking like a leaf ready to be blown away by the barest touch, Kohana remained rooted in place. She was too afraid to meet Kakashi's eyes—too afraid to even greet him. So she flinched again when he touched two fingers beneath her chin and raised her face.

"How old are you?" Kakashi murmured, studying the dark eyes that glistened with tears that had yet to spill over.

Kohana bit her lip as if she wanted to answer but was too afraid any reply might be the wrong answer. "Sixteen," she eventually answered. "Sir."

Sixteen. The same age as Rin.

Kakashi withdrew his fingers from her chin, allowing Kohana to relax for just a second before she stiffened once more when he suddenly knelt down before her. She instinctively pressed her thighs together, expecting him to touch the place between them just like the Colonel had done.

Kakashi didn't.

Instead, he reached down and gathered her discarded robe into his hands. He took the moment to brush off any dust clinging to it before he rose back up. Bewilderment veiled the terror in Kohana's gaze as she waited for his next move—hit her? Touch her? Fuck her?

She blinked in surprise when Kakashi draped the robe over her shoulders and guided her arms through the sleeves. This time, she didn't flinch when his hands moved over her naked breasts to pull the robe over them. The material was too thin to hide the stiffened peaks of her nipples, but Kakashi made sure to tie her sash with a special kind of double-knot that could only be untied by someone familiar with the knot.

When he finished, he stepped back to give the girl some space, but more so to avoid her stare.

It wasn't enough, they both knew that very well.

"I'm sorry," Kakashi said, forcing himself to look into Kohana's eyes one last time so she could bear witness to his own shame.

He turned and left, leaving the girl to her own fate, leaving the superior he'd once admired, and leaving behind a dream he now realized was folly. On his way to the barracks, he felt the silver medal over his breast weigh heavier and heavier with each step. As if the medal was made of lead.

When Obito returned to the barracks later that evening, the silver star no longer decorated Kakashi's uniform. Instead, it sat forgotten, buried beneath his Make-Out Paradise book and the pile of letters he'd received from Rin.

The next morning, Kakashi was glad when orders arrived for his unit. A B-rank mission to rescue a Doctor Tsunade who'd been taken hostage in Kumo while treating the frontlines. At the crack of dawn, their horses were already waiting for them, bags packed onto their saddles and ready for departure.

Obito must've noticed his solemn silence because he was chattier than he usually was this early in the morning. Kakashi chose to ignore him just like he chose to ignore the villagers casting them glares that he now realized were filled with spite and accusation.

He focused on the road ahead, watching another jeep drive by to haul more soldiers to the frontlines. As the jeep disappeared over a hill, his eyes landed on a group of soldiers in a ditch tilling up the soil. They probably had been digging for a while already as they stood around three holes a couple feet long and narrow in width. Kakashi frowned at the holes for a moment before movement caught his eye.

Huddled among the soldiers, three girls stood wearing nothing but the same dreary robes he'd seen them in last time. The frigid fingers of the wind stirred the hairs at the back of Kakashi's neck as his horse trotted onward. He twisted around on his saddle to watch the three girls step in front of the dug holes when an officer barked something at them.

Like watching a car accident happening before his own eyes, Kakashi could not look away from them. From Kohana who stood in the center with her blue ribbon wrapped over her dark hair.

He could not look away even when another jeep cut into view and obscured the sight of the girls.

Three shots rang out in quick succession, and only then did Kakashi look away.

Another gust of wind passed through, colder than the first one. It whipped up the fallen leaves of the season, and Kakashi watched the blood-red leaves dance on the wind. Something blue flashed in between the leaves; Kohana's tattered blue ribbon, the edges of it stained red now.

---

The motorcycle rumbled beneath Kakashi before he switched off the engine and lifted the visor of his helmet to stare up at Sakura's window. Behind the curtains, a warm light glowed from within.

Was she asleep? Or still awake, studying?

Kakashi didn't know what he was doing here. He'd been on his way to the hospital but, before he knew it, he'd found himself driving on Sakura's street to park just outside her apartment complex. As if some higher power had guided him here.

No, not a higher power. Just his innate desire to see her. To make sure she was still tucked in bed, safe and sound.

As Kakashi continued to stare up at her second-floor window, he wondered what sort of dreams she might be having. Whatever they were, he hoped they were something good and nothing like his own. He wouldn't wish his nightmares upon even his own enemies.

Letting his gaze linger on Sakura's window for just a moment longer, he flipped his helmet's visor back down and twisted the throttle to speed off into the night.

---

The low roar of an engine snapped Sakura's eyes open. Her eyes still felt heavy with sleep, but she rubbed at them as she sat up and looked to the laptop she'd somehow pushed to the foot of her bed while asleep. The screen was still on, showing the English essay she'd been in the middle of drafting before falling asleep just before the conclusion. Music played softly from the laptop and Sakura frowned at it before turning her frown to the window.

It was too late in the night for any neighbor to be returning home from school, and it was also too early in the morning for anyone to be leaving for work yet. But Sakura swore she'd heard the roar of an engine just outside her window.

Sliding out of bed, she tugged down the hem of her sunshine yellow nightgown on her way to the window. She peeled back the curtain to glimpse out into the street for whoever could be out at this time of night. The street was barely lit by the single streetlight at the corner, forcing Sakura to squint at the road in search of the vehicle she'd heard just earlier.

Nothing. The streets were empty save for a stray cat scurrying across.

With a sigh, she returned to bed but paused at the sight of her copy of The Company of Wolves still left open and balancing precariously on the edge of the nightstand. She grabbed the book to close it and set it on her desk for tomorrow, but her thumb smeared something red across the bottom corner of the page. Frowning at the blood now smudged on the paper, Sakura turned her attention to her fingers and gasped.

She yanked up the hem of her nightgown and shoved her panties down. Fresh, scarlet blood stained the inside of her thighs and Sakura bit back a curse as a thick river of blood started to trickle out of her.

She rushed into the bathroom to clean up and grab a sanitary pad—an extra thick one since her flow was typically heavy at the beginning of her period.

Shuffling back to bed and checking that her bedsheets weren't ruined, Sakura returned her attention to the book on the floor. She'd dropped it in her haste to clean herself, and as she picked it up, she frowned at the blood she'd accidentally smeared over the last two lines of the story.

'See! Sweet and sound she sleeps in granny's bed, between the paws of the tender wolf.'

The lines were highlighted red by her own menstruation blood now, and she knew the stain was there to last forever. Ah, oh well, it was her own book so what did it matter?

Shrugging, she set the book back on the nightstand and climbed into bed with a yawn. But as she closed her eyes, the words of those two lines remained visible as day and dripping in blood.

'See! Sweet and sound she sleeps in granny's bed, between the paws of the tender wolf.'

It didn't take long for Sakura to fall under the thralls of sleep. And soon enough, she found herself caught in another dream where she lay naked and between the paws of a wolf with silver fur and a stormy gaze.

Tucked safely in bed, she slept on through the rest of the night, sweet and sound with the tender wolf of her dreams.

---

A/N: The concept of comfort women in this chapter is based on the real-life comfort women of World War II when the Imperial Japanese Army forced women and girls from occupied territories into sexual slavery. Essentially, "comfort women" is a euphemism for "prostitutes".

More answers will come in the next chapter but please remember from my above A/N that the hiatus is still in effect until - hopefully - December, so please sit tight!