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"and those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music" -Friedrich Nietzsche
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In place of a heart was inured stone and a dull ache.
Sasuke wasn't feeling the slightest bit peckish. He glared down a ceramic plate with two eggs and a strip of bacon shaped to form a smile. It felt as though Itachi were taunting him with the sentiment. Most mornings, without thought to flounder, it was this same boorish dance. Fugaku and Itachi would each rouse early and sit to breakfast prior to their respective laboring days. Sasuke would ready himself for high school and wait for the anticipated jingling of keys, followed with whispered chatter and the soft closing of the front door. When he strode downstairs himself, he regretfully always spared a glance through the opened door to the kitchen. He would always see one isolated white plate left forsaken on the wooden counter-top, showcasing a cold meal that inevitably gathered dust.
Conventionally, Sasuke would evade it and leave whichever prepped meal there was to stew, discounting his brother's best efforts. On this day, he granted the plate a cold stare, one pale hand lingering on his school bag's strap, with a faraway look in his barren expression. There was a scant nausea-induced feeling churning at the pit of his stomach, but he couldn't match a word to describe the emotion he felt. It took some time before a faint recognition registered in his mind's eye that a black-clothed figure gingerly tapped his fingers on cedar.
"I'm worried you're not eating, Sasuke."
The figure's voice drawled in front of him. Itachi, dressed in dark slacks and a hoodie, sat atop a dark grey metallic bar stool, elbows rested leaning on the burnt-stained wooden breakfast bar. He cupped in his hands a faded rustic blue coffee mug, his eyes keenly fixed on the ripples of the steaming black liquid he was drinking. There was a minor tremor in his left hand when he traced a fingertip across imperfect ridges painted round the cup. His black hair was drawn back into a tight topknot bun and when Sasuke's eyes met his brother's brown eyes, it wasn't difficult to discern the visible dark lines beneath them.
"Thought you had class," Sasuke replied coolly, disregarding his first statement.
"Not today," Itachi spoke dryly, a somber look to his expression. "Another one of those teacher strikes."
Sasuke paused for thought; sat behind Itachi was his mother's old record player, placed at the far corner of the room. His eyes caught it and found his head again wandering. From what little remembered, his mother had been an old artistic sort. She'd always insisted that analogue sound had a healing effect on the soul, which was why she snubbed CD players and religiously collected vinyl. She had also held fond adoration for black and white film masterpieces like that of Casablanca or Orochi. Sasuke had inherited her old collection of recorded film when he was a boy. He had, at first, barricaded himself to his room to watch them, acquiring a like more for old satirical comedies like the Producers despite trying to engross himself into his mother's old world. Being the age he was at the time, he had struggled to comprehend most of it till he was older.
It was staggering to see it again; Fugaku had stuffed it away in a box against his youngest son's pleas and hidden it from view a few months after his mother's funeral. Sasuke had been fidgeting with the vinyls one late afternoon and figured out how to work it. Fugaku had cried to himself that same night, when he thought no one was around and that his sons were tucked to sleep. Sasuke'd just turned seven and had perched quietly on the stairs, hugging his knees to his chest, unable to sleep from the images. He had gone to call for his father's comfort, only to hear his quiet sobbing, before he silenced his wish to do so.
"How've you been, Sasuke?" Itachi's voice disturbed his daydreaming, bringing him back to a colder reality.
"The same," he admitted.
There was an unspoken exchange left between them when their eyes finally met in reluctant consideration. "I've got school," the younger spoke to break up the silence and signal his departure. Itachi gave a solemn nod as Sasuke turned and walked out the front door.
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Konoha was an official island city just off the coast of Japan, not far a stretch across the water from Yokohama. The island was spacious and vast, enough to be called a small country in its own right, lush with ample green forests and an abundance of hills and mountain peaks. Considerably removed from the outside world, the city itself spanned 170 odd kilometers and held a population of 500,000. The walk to Konoha Gakuen was neither too brief or long as the outline of the high school came into Sasuke's dotted vision. He soon found himself entering the gates, and then walking its halls.
Konoha Gakuen was a unique high school, in that, despite officially being a part of Japan, the school adhered to the Americanized education system, meaning that the year began in August rather than April. It wasn't quite clear to Sasuke or any of the other students as to the particulars of why this was the case, but Sasuke supposed it had do with the headmistress supposedly having more connections abroad than nationally. This also offered an easy explanation to a quarter of the school's student count being made of up international students.
Just little over a decade ago, Uchiha Mikoto's graphic death was published front page as an exclusive article in Konoha's daily newspaper. Fugaku had been outraged and sought to have the story revealing personal information on the Uchiha family removed. Eventually it was, but by then the seeds had already been sown. People still seemed to recall the motherless traumatized boy pictured in the columns from all those years ago when the name Uchiha Sasuke slipped the tongue.
People, and especially children back then, didn't properly know how to handle or process it. Before the accident, he'd been sociable. Impish, sprightly and typical of a little boy. 'A real talker,' one teacher had referred to him as once. But after, there was little semblance of the smiling child he'd been. Some kids hesitantly accepted this, then outright avoided him. Others endured months of awkward exchanges and treated him as though he were glass, before they too eventually cut contact. Sasuke learnt the hard way that it was easier, and preferable, to keep to his own. Nowadays, he didn't bother with people and they left him to his own devices.
Instead, when his social life began to decline, his schoolwork began to thrive. His younger self developed a quick habit of looking for distractions and school was the most obvious one. He redirected all his energy into his academics and found that soon he had a knack for committing knowledge to memory. He became top among his grade. A few years back he'd been offered the chance to skip ahead, but hadn't on account of never having felt the need.
"What's with the expression, Hinata?" A low female voice broke through the concentration of his thoughts, as he curiously turned his head to see two familiar girls conversing by their lockers. A feisty blonde sporting two pigtails gingerly approached a girl with dyed blue hair whom she'd called Hinata. Sasuke had circumstantially seen the two around, but he'd never made any effort to learn names.
"D-didn't you hear, Temari?" Hinata unerringly squeaked, fidgeting at the hem of her jumper with small palms. "Another girl went missing last night."
"Really?!" The blonde exclaimed in exaggerated dismay. "That's three in this last month now! What exactly are the police doing?! They should-"
Sasuke hastened his walk down the corridor with a hare-footed eagerness not to hear the rest of the tenacious blonde's speech, as inspiring it would likely be. He wasn't usually in the habit of eavesdropping on other's conversations, but the topic had promptly piqued his interest and he'd been well within earshot of their discussion.
"Oh, crap-"
"Wha-?"
Thud.
A loud gasp reached his ears as he realized something solid bounce off his chest, knocking the breath out his abdomen. As he had turned a corner, Sasuke had scarcely registered the blindly dashing girl colliding into him. A scurry of papers, his eye catching scrawled class notes and an administration form, flew out in pirouetting whirls. As they transcended air, the sheets descended down and landed- so numerous they painted laminate floors white as they scattered. His eyes fell upon the girl who clumsily ran into him, cussing quietly beneath her breath, dropping to her knees to gather her papers. She looked up to make panicked eye contact with him, her eyes green as grass in wild woodland and round as a doe's. His lips motioned to speak, but she precipitously cut him off before he was given the chance.
"Don't apologize! It was my fault!"
"It's fine."
"Sorry to run into you like that. You wouldn't happen to know where-"
What a fucking annoying entrance, he thought to himself, the whole morning thus far having irked him. Was he going to keep running situations that forced him into unwanted, awkward social exchanges?
The girl vehemently spoke with exaggerated expression and wide eyes, creating massive flailing gestures with her arms even as she gathered papers. Whilst she rambled, he found himself mirroring her kneeling position as he picked up a few stray sheets on his own. She rambled so fast that he didn't even try to hear all that she was saying because he found himself dizzy, almost bemused, with all her flying limbs.
"-could you show me directions?" She finished with an exasperated sigh.
Sasuke, bewildered by the exchange, quirked an eyebrow at her. "Right. Sorry, that was clumsy of me." She sighed, then brought out her hand out for a handshake as she stood up with all her papers messily in check, folded within her other arm. "I'm Haruno Sakura."
For a moment, like the predictable anti-social individual that he was, he stared at the hand offered to him, before reluctantly shaking hands with the energetic girl stood before him. Sasuke understandably wasn't fond of introductions; offering his name to people was usually enough to alienate himself. Some had even been unabashed enough to question if he was 'that Uchiha Sasuke.' Whenever he confirmed that indeed he was, the conversation either quickly ended, turned sour or was immediately written off.
"And you?" She asked curiously, waiting, with a small smile plastered on a naive expression.
"Uchiha Sasuke," he answered with visible discomfort.
To her credit, if Sakura had any recognition that his name was familiar to her, she didn't let on. Instead, the energetic girl beamed from ear to ear with a smile so stupendously wide she virtually lit up like the Konoha Market lights at Christmas. "So, Would you by any chance know where the administrations office is, Sasuke?"
She asked, batting long eyelashes in an almost playful manner. He found himself considering her appearance; other than the green doe-like eyes that he'd already fixated on, she possessed fair skin though less pale than his own, dyed light pink hair styled in a short tousled bob, thin lips and a heart-shaped jaw. She was of a moderately average height, not considerably less than his own, and had a slender physique.
He figured he'd see her attractive if she talked less. He regarded her a black widow spider spinning a web with each word, aware he was a fly she tempted to draw in and he coolly nodded in response.
"I hope it's not too forward of me to call you on a first name basis," she spoke bashfully. "I just moved from the states and calling people by surname is a lot to get used to," she openly admitted. It would seem strange to her coming from the US that the Japanese would call each other by surname, with first names normally being reserved for close friends and relatives to refer to someone by.
"It's fine," he passively shrugged at her. The Uchiha didn't normally have so much social interaction in the space of the few minutes they'd been... well, she'd been talking, and he had been around. He sped up his pace to find the office, however, as he started longing for an easy exit from the one-sided conversation. The pinkette blissfully continued to monologue, whether she was aware he'd departed the listening train or not. He spared her a glance, and though her lips were moving, the audio had been muted in his mind. "...oh, is this it?"
"Yeah," he responded with veiled relief.
"Oh." She spoke, seemingly disappointed, glancing over an office worker conversing over the phone. "Thank you, Sasuke."
"Your welcome," he politely replied, as he turned round to leave.
"Um, Sasuke... would you maybe want to be friends?" She asked, hopeful.
He internally grimaced at the thought, and spoke truthfully before he left, leaving her standing there dumbfounded. "Not really."
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Awkward social exchanges turned to be the least of his annoyances. He was seated at the back of homeroom, his eyes scrutinizing bleak grey sky outside a window beside him.
"It's that freak," one boy whispered in his friend's ear, ignorant to how perceivable his voice was.
"I didn't know even notice that kid was in class with us, and it's been a week," the other guy, with messy spiked blonde hair, replied.
"Probably 'cause he skips school days at a time. The school board lets him do anything he wants."
"Eh?! How's that fair?! I couldn't even go to the toilet through class yesterday. Iruka-sensei made me hold it in!"
"Yeah, bet he thinks he's so entitled."
"Obviously," the two snickered between themselves.
Most students left Sasuke to his devices, however, nothing would stop people talking or whispering behind others backs. Sasuke narrowed his focused glare to the stained glass.
"Inuzuka Kiba and Uzumaki Naruto!" The teacher, Iruka-Sensei, called out the chattering boy's names as he entered through the room with a practiced frown, and a particular glint in his eye Sasuke didn't miss as he glanced over. "Care to enlighten the class? I could hear your laughter travelling down the hallway. The topic in question must be comedy gold."
"Ah, Iruka-sensei..." The blonde of the two, Uzumaki, sheepishly rubbed at the back of his neck, fidgeting at his shirt tag in blatant discomfort. "We were just catching up."
"Of course you were," Iruka said as he folded his arms. "On?"
"The news, sir," Inuzuka spoke up, with a face less guilt-ridden than the blonde. "You know that case with all those missing girls?"
Iruka raised his eyebrows in surprise. "And that is a laughing matter?"
"Course not, Sensei!" Inuzuka immediately defended. "Missing girls is an awful matter, sir. We'd never laugh at something like that. We were talking about how it's so tragic all those girls have gone missing and we voiced a blessing for their families. Naruto got really depressed, and I told a joke to cheer him up."
"Oh, and what was the joke?" Iruka-Sensei humored, having trouble believing his story, with an unimpressed expression.
Inuzuka leaned back in his chair with a wide grin and shrugged. "Just that Naruto shouldn't be so down about when he's never gonna get a girlfriend with those whisker tattoos, anyway."
"Hey!" The blonde yelled loudly. "You know I only did that cause I was dr-" Uzumaki stuttered, catching his tongue as he caught the teacher's eye. "So hyper I might as well have been drunk!"
"Enough, boys." Iruka's raised voice carried with authority, straining frown lines on his temple that made his headache visible. "I'm giving you both lunchtime detention. If I hear either of you discuss a classmate during school hours again, I'll alert both of your mothers to your questionable after school activities or the fact that you would use tragic news as an excuse for inexcusable bullying behavior." Two loud groans followed Iruka's proclamation, but were quickly silenced by their Sensei's intimidating eye. Two blaming eyes wandered over to Sasuke's direction, fuming with rage he knew'd be best to avoid.
Unresponsive to their intent, Sasuke turned his gaze back to look out his window, watching the activity down below.
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Suffice to say, Haruno Sakura was struggling to fit in on her first day.
She'd yet to make a single friend; something which was unusual to her, especially had she been back home in the States, where she was constantly going to parties and maintaining a good social life. When her mum had informed her of her parent's decision to move back to Japan after 15 odd years, on account of her dad receiving a job offer which was too good to refuse, given that they were poor and all that came by way of opportunity was minimum wage back-breaking work her parents were growing too old for, Sakura didn't voice any complaints despite the great temptation she had to in the fall of the moment.
Her parents had sent her to Konoha Gakuen under the pretense that it was an Americanized school. Sakura had been nervous all day, and her mother had insisted she not be. Because international students made up a quarter of the school, the cultures surely wouldn't be so different in such an open-minded environment. Somebody neglected to tell her that most of those international students were Korean or Chinese, and whether she could be considered as such, multiple complications had arisen because Sakura was American Japanese and didn't understand the Asian cultures around her one bit whilst others decided she should.
So far, she felt she'd been tossed through a shredder. She'd been called rude for thanking someone for opening the classroom door for her. A girl had shrieked at her when she asked to speak on a first name basis, and called her shallow and forward as the words were implied to convey the next best thing to a slap on the wrist. One black-haired boy in the morning had seemed fine with her asking to be on a first name basis and he'd provided the best, albeit dull and boring, conversation she'd had yet. The guy had barely spoken at all to her, and seemed ready to ready at the first instance it wasn't impolite to do so. She'd asked for friendship, bluntly she could admit, and he'd reacted like she'd insulted his family's honor.
Everyone she'd conversed with seemed to have sticks shoved so far up their behinds it would hurt if they didn't walk with perfect posture. Internalizing her frustration, she kicked at dried mud under her shoe as she walked the direction of her new house- a tiny flat with one room, two bedrooms and thin wooden walls. It was scarce of furniture and the first time Sakura saw her new bed she had bit her tongue in horror at the thin mattress lacking a bed frame, a traditional Japanese futon, laid out on the ground before her. Sitting to a lowered table with no chairs and using chopsticks had frankly been enough to get used to.
If someone Japanese were the embodiment of the Earth, they'd chastise her walking on the ground, she mused to herself. She lifted her gaze off the ground as she heard the clumsy foot falls of another in front of her. She visibly saw the back of a spiked mess of blonde hair atop a figure wearing the dark green colors of Konoha Gakuen's male uniform. He grunted and cussed under his breath, muttering inaudibly about teachers and temes and detention.
"What does teme mean?!" Sakura wondered aloud unintentionally, making the blonde yell out.
"Hey, what are you sneaking up on me like that for?!" He shouted, his voice so raspy it sounded like he had a cough, and spun round to look at her.
"Sorry," she apologized. "I was thinking aloud."
"You were listening in on me?" He asked curiously.
"Ah, I didn't mean to. Sorry," she mused. "I was wondering what the word 'teme' means."
"You're speaking Japanese right now though, lady. How come you don't know what a teme is?" He tilted his head, like a confused pup.
"I grew up in America. We spoke Japanese at home, but I don't know any slang words," she admitted with her eyes downcast, as though she were embarrassed by the admission.
He nodded in understanding, falling back to walk beside her. He paused in thought, his eyebrows creasing dangerously for thought like he struggled to think. "Teme means bastard," he bluntly spoke. "This black-haired kid with a duck-ass hairstyle is in my class. He's a smug Teme." The blonde snorted, as though it were explanation enough.
"Did he do something to you?" She asked, prying for more of an explanation.
The blonde tilted his head at her. "Ehh, no." He admitted, searching for his words. "But he's a real snob. He doesn't have any friends, and he thinks he's better than anyone else."
Sakura raised a disbelieving eyebrow at him. "Maybe the guy's lonely," she pondered thoughtfully, biting her lip. "He could just be really defensive."
"No way," he retorted with no hesitation. "That teme got me and my friend Kiba detention." He shook his head to himself, shaking out with an audible shudder, his visual discomfort thinking of the trivial trauma of something sounding comical.
"Ah, well," Sakura hastened to change the subject. "I never caught your name, actually. I'm Haruno Sakura."
The blonde's eye twitched visibly, and for a moment, the pinkette figured she'd done something else culturally inappropriate. "Gomen, I forget my manners a lot. Mum would kill me if she saw me right now," he groaned outwardly and brought a hand to rub his forehead in embarrassment like he'd been the one to offend her. "I'm Uzumaki Naruto, but you can call me Naruto." He almost comically picked himself up rather quickly and grinned at her like a Cheshire cat, offering out a hand to shake.
Surprised, Sakura contently matched his stupendous grin with her own and happily shook his outstretched hand. "You can call me Sakura."
"Nice to meet you, Sakura-chan!"
And like that, she would now tell her mother she'd made one unlikely friend.