Section 13: A New Crush?
Sakura and Naruto walked slowly down the long street way next to each other, without making any real eye contact. Naruto was looking away with his arm folded behind his head, and Sakura had her arms together behind her, looking at the walkway opposite of Naruto.
Naruto glanced over to Sakura out of the corner of his eye, without moving from his positioning. With a large grin aimed towards her, "Hehe, so are you feeling any better, Sakura-chan?"
Sakura doesn't respond at all, and Naruto's smile grows flat and his eyes squint. He looks straight ahead, and sighs despondently. "Sorry Naruto..."
He gets startled, and looks over towards her, "Huh...? Sorry for what Sakura-chan?"
"Well... Treating you so terribly all this time.
"Eh? What do you mean terribly? You treat me great!"
"No... I'm mean to you, even after everything you've done for me... you probably hate me by now."
"No! No way, you're my friend no matter what! Nothing you can do will ever make me hate you. Plus, I'd never let any of those jerks hurt my Sakura, eh?!"
"... I'm still sorry..." She looked away a little ashamed.
Naruto placed his hand on her shoulder, and turned her back towards him. "Sakura-chan...?"
She locked eyes with him, "...Naruto..." There was a long pause as they looked into each other's eyes for an extended period of time. "...is... is he going to tell me... Now that I feel the same..."
"...Can you please shut up already?"
Saying with her mouth hanging open wide, "EH?!" She lunges forward towards Naruto waving her fist around angrily, "What do you mean shut up?! What was that for?!"
Naruto leaned forward with a pleased crack across his face. "Now there's the Sakura I know, hehe."
She looked at surprised at his response, and smiled slowly. "Hehe... you're such an idiot."
"You're favorite idiot though, right?!" The pair started laughing together, while Sakura turned significantly blushed. Naruto seemed settled to see Sakura smiling again. "I'm glad you feel better. If anything else is wrong..." He flings his fist up with his thumb pointing toward himself, "...you come to me, Uzumaki Naruto! I'll fix anything!"
She smiled and nodded in approval. "Thank you..."
Naruto grinned, "Mm hmm! That's what friends are for anyways, right?"
"Friends...?" she thought with a seemingly disappointed look on her face. Then she changed her expression, to one with a content smile, "Yea, friends. I like how it is now." "Exactly..."
Naruto scratched his head chuckling. "So you want me to walk you home Sakura-chan? And maybe you could let me in for some of your mom's Mochi?!" he exclaimed with a huge grin on his face.
"Alright, Naruto..." she responded with a cute expression of happiness.
"Woo! Woo! Thank you Sakura-chan!" She watched him turn away and head down the road in a juvenile sprint, while he flailed his arms around ridiculously.
As she was watching with a shy but happy look on her face, "I'm so glad he didn't say what I wanted him to say. If he did, I wouldn't know what to do. I've always thought of Naruto as a bumbling idiot of a friend, but now... I... I'm starting to like him more and more. But... I wouldn't want to mess anything up between us now though... and plus..."
Sakura looks down to her hand near her hip, which seems to be pulling out a small, folded piece of paper. Only a small section of the note is visible when she looks down at it. It reads, "Naruto-kun... I've always watched you wherever you went..."
She looked up Naruto, who was frantically waving for her attention in the distance. She smiled gladly with her eyes glassy from tears of joy. "...there's someone who loves him a lot, already." She begins sprinting towards Naruto yelling, "Naruto! There's something I have to show you...!"