Sakura Haruno & the Routes to True Love

Pre-Game

A/N: Hello, thank you for reading. Expect graphic violence, probably no worse than the actual show. Rated M for language.

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any pop culture reference in this fic.

Sakura stares at her phone, waiting for an indication that the universe is playing some sort of cruel joke on her, and that her boyfriend of three years—ex-boyfriend now, actually—hadn't just broken up with her via text message. She rereads it again, her face neutral, because she'd be damned if her resident nemesis-turned-icy-roommate saw her cry:

"I met someone else. I'm sorry, but it's over."

Sasuke was never one to avoid ripping the conversational band-aid, but fucking seriously, Sakura inwardly seethed. After three years, a text message? And he knew she had a quiz in the morning, a quiz that she should be studying for instead of obsessing over this damn text. She had half a mind to storm across campus and beat his door down—

Her gaze shifts to Ino, who is eyeing Sakura suspiciously. She pulls her platinum blonde hair into her infamous high ponytail without batting a lash, "I thought you had a thing early tomorrow?"

Sakura's tempted to say something snarky in response, but she settles for flatly responding, "Yeah, I was about to go to sleep. Have fun."

Ino focuses on the mirror, adjusting the buttons on her jumper. "Thanks," she stuffs her lanyard with her key-pass into her pocket, not sparing another glance as she leaves.

After the door closes, Sakura huffs loudly. Who parties on a Wednesday? Who leaves for a Wednesday party at eleven o'clock at night? Sakura clicks out of her messages, opening the app to her email and snuggling further into her comforter. More bad news: Sakura's RA is unsympathetic to her plight of sharing a room with someone who has despised her since the third grade.

"'Try and get along,'" Sakura mocks, quickly growing frustrated as she opens and closes her socials. Her feeds were all littered with excited freshmen, staged photos of beautiful people enjoying their college debut. Was Sasuke out with a girl like these? If Sakura had been prettier, if she had been more fun, happier—If he had dumped her without that first sentence, even in a text, would she have felt this peach pit sized ball of rage in her gut? Misty eyed with her frustration in knowing that Sasuke is the ass and not the peppy girls on her Instagram feed, Sakura scrolls over to her games and notices a new app: Root, with a small leaf design.

Sakura clicks on it, her other hand roughly wiping away a stray tear. The app updates for a few moments, and Sakura waits, absently wondering whether she should change her relationship status or leave it for him. She can't dwell for long; once the app is finished, it launches, and she's quickly distracted by a cute blond boy on the screen.

"Are you ready?" He shouts, the sudden volume surprising Sakura. He's handsome, giant black and orange jumper aside, and Sakura likes his cheerful exuberance.

When the start button flashes on screen, Sakura selects it, an amused smile on her lips.

"Believe it!" The boy cheers.

"Cute," Sakura says, pausing to skim a dialogue box asking her to agree to the Terms and Conditions of Use. Sakura hits agree and the app loads the main menu.

It's a series of files, some of which she skims, about a village and its politics. Every link leads her down a rabbit hole of other links—Konohagakure, Hokage, Shinobi, all words she'd never heard before. Her eyes grow heavy, lashes fluttering shut and her phone flopping unceremoniously to the side as she drifts off.

…

Sakura wakes up in a bedroom, but certainly not the cramped dorm she shares with Ino. Neither of them had filled out a roommate request form—Ino's female friends went out of state, and Sakura had always been a loner besides Sasuke—so they were stuck with each other in a room half the size of Sakura's bedroom at home. Even still, this room is a far cry from the pastel pink theme of her own bedroom. This room is all sleek angles and beautiful wood, a soft bed with sheer pink draperies around it, targets lined up across the wall with weapons hanging nearby on wooden racks, and tidy scrolls tucked by the corner of a large desk.

Sakura marvels. She's never been in a lucid dream, not that she can remember anyway, and she runs her hand over the handle of a polished sword.

"Please start your dialogue with 'Sai' if you need access to the guide," a voice mumbles to her right.

Sakura yelps, turning to find a young man dressed in all black sitting on the floor, back propped against the wall, "Who the hell are you?!"

"My name is Sai. If you need to reference the guide mid-game, please look at me directly and speak or begin the sentence with 'Sai' to temporarily phase out NPC awareness." He stands up and moves to sit at the edge of her bed, a thin smile on his face that didn't quite reach his dark eyes. He tilts his head at her, "You look frightened. There is no need to be."

"Uh," Sakura pauses, unable to think of a proper response. What did he mean, mid-game? NPCs?

"Earth to Sakura Haruno, come in Sakura Haruno." Sai leans forward expectantly. "This is called a joke, you are meant to find it amusing and be set at ease."

"Where am I? And what's going on?" Sakura feels her panic rise, "What do you mean 'game?' I'm dreaming, right? Tell me I'm dreaming."

"Sort of," Sai tuts at her. "Didn't you read the Terms and Conditions of Use?"

"The what?"

"The Terms," Sai raises a brow to her, the pause pregnant with his expectation of her understanding. "You know, the ones you agreed to when you opened the App."

Sakura squints at him, "Did I die? Am I in hell?"

"Of course you aren't dead," Sai rolls his eyes. "You're in the App. Hell is objective, and I'm not coded to recognize religion, but nonetheless you're the one who agreed to play the game."

"I didn't agree to play any game," Sakura bellows, yanking the covers off to get out of bed and put some distance between them. "Send me home right now!"

"You did agree." Sai says slowly, his brow knit in annoyance with her, "I have made it very clear; Sakura Haruno agreed to the Terms and Conditions of Use, and had you read them, which it's evident that you didn't—"

"No one reads those," Sakura snaps, skulking to the window. "And how do you know my name?"

Sai raises his voice in return, ignoring her question, "Had you read them, you'd understand that you'll appear in the game every night, as you sleep, until you beat it."

Sakura hesitates, half-tempted to denounce this as some nightmare fueled by her real-world anxieties and half-curious, "What exactly does beating the game entail?"

Sai resumes his fake smile, any hint of his irritation gone, "To beat the game, you must complete all of the playable routes. Since you didn't read the Terms, I'll assume you didn't read any of the source material when you opened the game."

"I skimmed!"

Unimpressed, Sai goes on, "This place is your home village of Konohagakure, commonly called Konoha. It's a shinobi or ninja village, where you along with many others work—in your case, as a kunoichi or female ninja, a subsection of the general term shinobi—to help protect this village and help its inhabitants. This is signified by the headband on the desk, which you wear to show allegiance to your particular village. Do you understand?"

"So far," Sakura says, moving across the room to grab the headband. On the metal plate, that same symbol from the app icon is carved carefully—maybe the app got her full name from her phone.

"The point of the game is to complete all the applicable routes, and a route is complete when the love interest genuinely confesses that they love you. If you concentrate, you can access your character's knowledge of the history of this place and what knowledge your character has of its inhabitants, information normally accessible to you on the app when you're awake. Focus on me, for example," Sai puffs out his chest.

Sakura focuses on him and a text box appears: 'Sai: your noble guide.'

"Who writes these?" Sakura complains, "This seems biased."

"They start with the essential truths of the game, and expand as you have more experience with a character, place, idea, et cetera. It would be advantageous of you to learn the information as it becomes accessible to you. Anyway, when you go outside, you're going to notice that certain characters have a heart symbol where their real heart would be. The color of the heart indicates romance points, or RP. There is no visual indicator for friendship points, or FP, but they also increase or decrease depending on your actions in the game. Right now, you are in a 'neutral mode,' but once you begin a route, only the romanceable character in that route will have a visible heart meter. The RP you earn will stay in that route, but you keep the FP even as you return to this 'neutral mode,' and it will make completing the rest of the game easier. All the characters start with small, gray hearts and as you increase their affection for you, they will change color—purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red—and once the heart is red, they will confess."

"Sort of like Harvest Moon?"

"I don't know what that is. So, you can select a route yourself when you are awake, on the app. You're now free to roam the village." Sai gives her a once-over, lips pulling in an unsubtle grimace, "I'll leave you to change out of your pajamas." He disappears with her next blink, leaving Sakura alone in the room.

Sakura hesitantly opens her closet, rummaging for something suitable for a fighter to wear. She settles on a red shirt with a thin circle outlined in white stitching on the back, a brown sporty skirt, and compression shorts for underneath. It was difficult to imagine a qualified ninja running around in most of her wardrobe, something she would have to amend—Would it be too much to ask for some leggings?

Sai is waiting for her on her front steps. "Now that you're ready, please set your preferences for gender and sexuality. These preferences can be changed at any time, but should you choose a sexuality that excludes the current route you are in, you will exit that route and progress will be lost."

Sakura presses one of the options that appear before her, she/her, and hesitates on sexuality. She's only ever dated Sasuke—did she want to try dating a woman? Did she really want her first time trying to be inside a game she was trapped in? She chooses heterosexual, figuring she can change her mind later if there's a route she wants to play.

"Thank you. Rest assured, you can always quit a route and restart at a later date, and characters will not move forward without consent. It is possible to win the confession with no romantic moves on your part at all. How you choose to pursue the route is up to you, and generally you'll be able to tell quite easily if you've done a bad job."

"Great." Sakura deadpans, "Can we just go?"

Konoha, the short form of Konohagakure, is bustling with friendly faces. Townsfolk mill about the shops, talking with one another and waving when they notice her.

She waves back, not wanting to seem rude. She starts to notice a few characters in passing with gray heart meters in front of their chests. She notices one in particular, a text box popping up: 'Neji Hyuuga.' There's no further information.

He's tall, with brown hair long and loosely tied around his mid-back, and unusual bright, moon pale eyes watching impassively as he deftly weaves through the crowd.

"Cute," Sakura squeaks, quickly averting her eyes when he sharply looks at her. When she firmly avoids his eye contact, he continues pointedly pushing through the crowd.

"Way to go, weirdo," Sai jeers.

"Oh, shut up," Sakura scoffs at him. "He assumed I was talking about him anyway."

"But you were."

"Whatever! He'll come around when I play his route." Sakura spots a head of platinum blonde hair, styled in a high ponytail. "Ino?" She calls out, picking up speed. "Ino!"

Ino flicks baby blue eyes in Sakura's direction, raising a brow.

"Are you trapped in this trippy shit too?" Sakura asks her as she approaches, "Are all these people trapped in here? Seriously, I thought I was fucking losing it 'cause Sasuke broke up with me tonight."

"Did you just say…?" Ino starts warily, "Sasuke broke up with you?"

"Is that seriously your hot take on this? Yeah, go get him, Jesus—"

"As if you could even get a date with Sasuke, forehead! That'll be the day!" Ino guffaws at her, laughing so hard she has to wipe a tear from her eye.

Sakura stiffens, "You don't have to be a dick about it. You're not freaked out by all this?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Ino flicks her ponytail over her shoulder, "but I have places to be, so if you'll excuse me…" She trails off, brushing past her.

Sakura recoils and sees Sai, sitting on a nearby bench to wait for her. She marches over to him, getting in his face, seething, "Alright, gonna explain that then?"

"As you've just noticed, you're going to see familiar faces in this game. That's the point. The men in the routes are going to love you deeply, but this isn't the real world, Sakura."

"And Sasuke's here too," Sakura says flatly.

"Not your Sasuke. This world's Sasuke is a young avenger driven to kill his brother for the murder of his entire clan, about to run into the arms of a snake-themed narcissist bent on immortality so that Sasuke can train and become incredibly powerful."

Sakura's face twitches, "I—what the fuck?"

"Which part?"

"Okay, all of it, but Itachi would never—"

"Again, not your Itachi. His storyline is relatively complicated, politically and emotionally speaking. If you'd like to play his route…?"

"No! No, no, I really don't need to woo my ex-boyfriend's brother," Sakura chortles.

"Even in a game, where they're completely different people?"

Sakura snorts at him, "Better not."

"But you have to play all the routes—"

"Even Itachi? This is fucking bull—"

"Even Sasuke, Sakura."

Sakura goes beet red, so angry her ears ring, "Absolutely not. There is no way, not for anything—"

…

Sakura's phone alarm goes off and she sits up sharply, sucking in air. She pants, looking eagerly around the room. Thank god, she inwardly chants as she sees her messy clothes sprawled across her desk's chair. Thank god for her tiny dorm—

"Sakura," Ino groans, tossing one of her several pillows Sakura's way, "turn your goddamn alarm off, I feel like shit!"

Thank god for her hungover roommate, Sakura rolls her eyes with no malice as she turns her alarm off. Her phone's almost dead, she fell asleep without charging it, but she quickly checked her apps and froze. There it is, the tiny icon right in front of her on her screen. No way. No, it could just be a coincidence. A dream about something she noticed right before she went to bed. That wasn't too far fetched.

She makes sure her phone is on silent, wary of the loud blond boy, and clicks the app. To her dismay, there he is, as cheerful as before. The screen loads to a collection of the articles she'd seen earlier, and a previously missing banner across the top of the screen that read 'Routes.' She clicks on it.

It's a bunch of profiles, men abdomen up staring sternly at her through her screen. She scrolls until she sees Sasuke and panics, quickly scrolling away. It couldn't be true, to be trapped every night in some dating game with Sasuke. She had to get out of it, there had to be.

Sakura tries to uninstall the app, she tries resetting her phone, she tries to Google the problem, all with no success. She's running out of time before she has to get out of bed and get ready for class. She tells herself to just pick one and get it over with. She wasn't ready to play his route, but the sooner she beat this damn game, the sooner she could exorcise him from her life.

With renewed spirit, she opens the app and heads right for the routes. There's a button near the top, marked 'Random." Alright, she muses, the odds of not getting Sasuke or Itachi were high. And if she did get them, well, wasn't it so Sasuke-esque to rip the band-aid right off? She clicks the button, accepting her fate.

Her screen fades to black, write cursive scrawling across the screen to spell an unfamiliar name:

Gaara of the Desert.

An option appeared to play the preview, but Sakura had to get going. She rushes out of bed, making it to her classroom in a hoodie and sweatpants, her pink hair sloppily tossed in a bun.

Sakura had done the reading in preparation for the quiz, but she'd have normally liked to have reviewed her notes. She can answer every question adequately, but she's never been satisfied with adequate. Still, she can barely focus, thinking about that damn app. The moment class ends, she's whipping out her phone, yanking her earbuds from her bag to play the—

Of course, her phone is dead. Why wouldn't it be?

Grumpy, tired, Sakura slings her bag over her shoulder and heads straight for her dorm, ignoring a friendly face ready to joke about how difficult the quiz was. She doesn't need forced peppiness, she needs a goddamn nap. But she knew what would come with sleep.

Ino is gone when Sakura returns to the dorm. If the path of clothes strewn on her side of the floor were any indication, she had dragged herself out of bed and rallied for her morning lecture. Perfect. Sakura plugs her phone in, flopping on her bed and waiting at her desk for it to charge enough to turn on.

Finally, finally, the screen glows right and Sakura heads for the preview of her first route. She turns her volume on for it, watching colors flash across the screen to reveal a vast desert at night. The shot zooms in rapidly, settling on a small boy, crying and alone on a moonlit rooftop. He's surrounded with blood—not just that, he's bleeding from cuts on his forehead so brightly crimson it's like the color leaked right from his hair.

""Why?" His voice whimpers."Yashamaru, why?!" Sand swirls around him, curling swiftly around his body as he forms a sort of shield.

Another voice answers off screen, "I have always hated you, Gaara."

The scene changes abruptly to a dainty tea shop. The same redhead is sitting, now a lean and sour looking young adult—handsome, but all scowls. Sakura reels when she sees herself, in the same outfit she was wearing in the dream, sitting there across from him. "Oh come on," she hears herself say to Gaara, "just try it! I promise it's good!"

Sakura sees herself fleeing through a forest with tree trunks as large as houses. She breathes heavily as she runs, weapons slicing through the air behind her. She rounds a corner and slams into a wall of sand.

"Sakura?" A hushed voice calls from behind the wall. It begins to dissipate, sucked back into the gourd strapped to Gaara's back. He stands with his arms crossed, his neutral face touched by a hint of surprise.

Their eyes are locked. Gaara's sand snatches a weapon flung through the air, aimed for Sakura. The moment is broken, and Sakura leaps to her feet to flee.

"You don't understand." Gaara mumbles as the screen goes dark, "Sakura, I'm a monster."

There are wild swirls of sand on screen, stained with blood, the flash of a giant creature made of sand and then a heavily bruised Sakura unconscious on the ground. "Sakura," a frenzied voice calls from the mass of sand. "Sakura!" The screen goes dark again. "I—What have I done?"

Lulled with her worries about the video, Sakura nestles in her bed as her phone charges, her eyes heavy from her restless night.

…

Sakura wakes up in a field, the sunshine harsh on her face.