Disclaimer: Please, I don't need to own Naruto to write fanfiction.
Penname: LiveLoveLaugh
Fanfiction Story: Teenage Rhapsody
Summary: AU She was new at Konoha High. But she didn't have a dark secret. She wasn't social. She wasn't very attractive. She wasn't very popular or very geeky. Hell, she was always alone. Now that Sakura became a senior, things start to mix up a bit.
AN: THIRD CHAPTER!
Chapter Three
Hard Knock Life for Us
"So is Hayate-sensei a hard teacher?" the green-eyed girl asked Naruto, who chose to sit next to her on the right by the windows. Kids start to file into the classroom with hoots and talkative voices.
"Nah, well, not that hard," Naruto grinned, unzipping his orange backpack and took out a notebook, "You'll like him, he's one of the better teachers in this shit hole." She watched attentively when the notebook cover was sprawled with chicken scratches made by ball-point pens, all badly drawn stick-figures with empty circles that had wild curly hair shooting out in disarray and big 'boobies' on the thin chests, covered with lopsided words of 'Most Wanted'. Sakura made a wincing face when she saw that, and glared at him for offending the opposite gender.
…and for being so disgusting…
Naruto shrugged and flipped over some pages of the notebook where he began to scotch tape gum wrappers and chocolate bar logos over the blue lines. A burly young man with frightening, yet exotic red scars on his face took the liberty to flirt shamelessly with a girl with four amber ponytails and sharp cerulean eyes. When she walked by her desk, she grinned at Sakura with her eyes drifting over her hat as if wondering what kind of hair she had. Or if she had any hair at all.
The girl's stare was not the only one bothering her, some other's were more likely inquisitive and analytical as if they were judging her (probably they were), but people began to whisper to their seating mates. One blond girl she noticed was looking at her, not in a scoffing probing way, but just curious.
Someone in front of her tapped on her elbow, getting her attention. It was a rather tall guy with a pale complexion and a crazy mop of wild dark brown hair held tightly up with a matching navy headband, his eyes were covered up with hollow black circles of his sunglasses. His face was unmarred, his thin lips were taut and unmoving, even when he began to talk to her.
"You dropped your pencil," she saw his long pale fingers grasped on her plain white mechanical pencil that fell on the wooden ground, his look was apathetic. His voice was deep and low.
"Thank you," she said, placing the writing tool on her desk, looking up again, "I'm Haruno Sakura, I'm new."
He took his time to speak, "I know, my name is Aburame Shino." Without any other words, he turned around and sat two desks away from her in the front. Before she could set out her school books, someone quickly dashed to sit right in front of her with his/her elbows on her desktop.
"You are so cool, you know that?" he/she said so suddenly, unlike the plaintive politeness of that Shino guy, "I was obviously shocked! I mean, I didn't you had in you! I like you Sakura-kun, you're very interesting! And of course, anyone who is Naruto-kun's friend is my friend too! Oh, and did I mention, you have nice eyes? Very pure and green!" With an exhilarated sigh, he/she patted the back of his/her neck, "I can tell you must be nervous about your first day here in Konohagakure High! I was too, well when I a freshmen but that's going off the point! So how's your day…?"
His/her eyes were big and brown, his/her lips were silvery-gray from the lipstick he wore and his/her expression was utterly happy. His/her hair was styled partly into a bun with sticks, and long bangs tied lowly with elastic ties down to his/her chest. But his/her chest was covered by the sleeves of his navy jacket he tied around his shoulders. When she looked closely, she saw very feminine looks then when she blinked all she saw were his/her masculine features when she saw the arch of his/her nose and his/her jaw. Sakura couldn't make up her mind whether this person was either a boy or a girl (or both?), and so she smiled uneasily and very nervously. "It's going pretty well, thank you for asking…uh…?"
"It's Momochi Haku!" he/she giggled, his/her face was like a porcelain face.
"Gah! Haku! You're scaring the poor girl!" a brunette girl with two hair buns cried from across the classroom, instantly stopping her talk with this tall guy with black buggy eyes, a bowl-cut, and thick creepy eyebrows.
"No I'm not! I just want to be friends with her!" Haku hurled back, his/her brown eyes slightly narrowed. He/she turned back to Sakura with a huge toothy smile, "We're just small talking aren't we?"
"Yeah…of course, sure…" she was uncertain about his/her actions, even though she knew Haku was just being nice from the bottom of his/her heart. The tattoo guy laughed, while a dog barked and she didn't know a dog was even allowed in the campus.
"SEE!" Haku exclaimed back at the girl, who was rolling her dark eyes with a grin on her face.
Before he/she could talk to her again, someone walked hastily to her side and roughly wretched his hand on her bicep bringing her quickly off her seat. Soon Shino, the two staring blond girls, the brunette and his friend looked around when they heard a screeching noise of the chair. She was shocked, then turned deathly afraid when she was met with two blazing white eyes. Naruto quickly got up too, and so did that tattoo guy and Haku. This kind of action had everyone in the classroom, even a few people outside in the hallway who looked into the room had seen it and stopped their activities.
"Hey! Hey! Neji get off her!" Naruto yelled, grabbed his hand on the guy's wrist, but the Neji fellow threw off his arm. He strictly set his terrifying eyes on the pesky girl's wide green ones.
"Don't you EVER push me like that EVER again, do you hear me?" Neji barked, shaking her quite roughly. Sakura didn't know what he was talking about, because she did push a few aside but she clearly didn't remember him.
All around the classroom, some of the people were either deathly quiet or a few (some of his many, many fan girls) were glaring at Sakura, either jealous of her getting their Neji-kun's undivided attention or angry that Sakura had ignited his anger. The more courageous ones were like Naruto, and the past paragraph of people mentioned by the author.
Sakura's entire body was fidgeting as she looked wide-eyed at this young man, this bully, reminding her of all things in her past…something completely snapped, something had horrified her, as if she was remembering all those years in elementary, middle school, the past three and a half years of high school in all the different countries she moved…always the same thing, always about her looks, her personality…
She couldn't speak, she couldn't talk. Her toes curled underneath the woolen fabric of her knee-length socks and the hard cover of her leather strapped shoes with those clickety-clack heels, to her jelly-like legs. Voices rolled her head, as if the entire face of that man's face had been altered. It had changed his angry white eyes to flaming taunting orbs of evil brown, from his dark coffee-brown hair to lopsided cuts of raven black from his clenched teeth to a smirking mouth of lip gloss. Watanabe Ami. From elementary.
Then changing over and over again with past faces to all sorts of other bullies who picked on her. Hans-Jurgen Braunemaiur from Germany. Alexandra Smith from the States. Akasun Sasori from Tokyo. Fritz. Deidara. Tamika. Raidon. Henri. Carlotta. Bernadette. Estevan. Blond hair, pale-skinned, brown hair, short and cropped, long and straight, freckled face, dark skinned, blue eyes, black eyes, tall, short, beautiful, good-looking, double-jointed, black hair, violet hair, green eyes unlike her own, all averaged fore headed, all normal, all horrible, all evil in their ways but so alike with each other. From all around the world, people teased her, taunt her and she had remembered every moment with them…
She broke down completely, unable to breath while her lungs engulfed her and turned her into a prone wooden doll, her heart was splintered and cut into halves, turning out all her inner fears so easily like turning out folded sleeve cuffs, all of her dreaded fears and abandoned emotions poured out and took over her, turning her…into something so small, so weak…so afraid…that she could not hear the words a few helpful people tried to throw into Neji's ears, or Naruto's electric blue eyes…she could feel his iron grasp on her arm burning her delicate skin like acid, and the worst part was that she wasn't angry at the guy but at herself…
Her difference.
Ino was shocked, and she saw all of that, she was utterly sympathetic for the girl. Haku had turned from innocent to rage, proving how close virtue and evil were, with his fists clenched from leaping onto that crazy Hyuuga. Shino's brows lowered tensely. Akamaru growled. People kept getting off their seats and gathering around Sakura and Neji.
"Hey Takara-chan! Look into that class!" one passerby to her friend, pointing into the display.
"Whoa, what's happening in there?"
"CUT IT OUT!" Kiba yelled at Neji, his dog barking.
"That girl has a lot of nerve getting Neji-kun angry!" one fan girl cried, with a toss of her hair.
"Neji! That's not fair! You promised me not to do that!" Tenten yelled, irritatingly, walking over immediately.
"NEJI! YOU SHOULD STOP YOUR RIDICULOUS WAYS! YOUR YOUTH WOULD NOT SUFFICE IF YOU KEEP CONTINUING!" Lee cried, his cries doing nothing.
"Naruto, you fricking loser!" Temari held him back.
"YOU BASTARD! STOP HARASSING HER!" Naruto struggled not to turn demonic.
"Woman! Listen and look at me while I talk!" Neji shook her frozen body, not really knowing what was happening to the girl's lifeless green eyes and the way her hands shook when she kept petting her ski-cap, tucking in invisible hairs, her mouth kept opening and closing like a fish's mouth. Her face was flushed of all color, her eyes darting elsewhere desperately.
"PUT HER DOWN!" Uzumaki Naruto cried, his voice seething and his hands were pleading to bash some heads.
Neji had always had had an odd respect for Naruto. And he obliged, watching her sink down into her seat like marionette doll drawn by strings in crooked movements, and he came to thinking about the new girl.
In that moment when he looked at her, Neji realized what he was doing and the intensity of his humiliation had dried up. He listened to Naruto, his idiot friends Tenten and Lee, he saw the sizzling eyes of Haku's, he noticed all the people around him and how this could soon affect him in a way he much not prefer, and he should stop it. Neji looked apologetic and his anger vanished. He let go of Sakura, sorry for putting the new girl on the spot. He knew he shouldn't have done that, but he again remembered the morning when his uncle began to give him a hard time, his father and mother too, then that Uchiha bastard ignited him into a human torch. He really didn't mean it, but when this girl had pushed him into other people when all everyone could talk about was her fifteen minute fame, all he knew of was his hurt pride…he really didn't mean to hurt her…
In many respects, this girl had reminded of Hinata-sama…
He walked back to his desk. Tenten and Lee were aggravated at him, but forgave him even though they clearly were pretty much pissed off. The entire class was quiet, what just happened was so much bigger than the Uchiha-Hyuuga-got-pushed-apart moment. They eyed the hat-wearing girl and felt sorry for her.
"Good morning, you insignificant specks of dirt…" Gekkou Hayate whispered coughing, his eyes straight ahead. His students quickly stopped joshing each other and went to their seats. He shook away the ache from his head and looked at the seniors running back to their desks. He coughed to get their attention like always and smiled behind a tired mouth that was almost slipping off his face. The drooping dark lids and coughing fits only gave his students in the front roll to inch back their desks to avoid the mysterious chronic sickness he was infested with. His uncombed brown hair was tied with a black bandana (ironically was illegal in schools), a seal-gray cardigan over his thin shoulders, and a slouch in his posture.
He was quite surprised, looking at each student, though not even noticing a shaking Sakura, and raised his eyebrows up into the chunk of brown hair that hung in between his eyes. He never had his homeroom so quiet before.
"Uh…" Hayate looked around again, coughing in his hand, "Settle in, class?"
The hallways were empty, leaving only the quiet sounds of music coming off someone's earphones. The janitor walked around, mopping up the linoleum floors after he left Iruka-sensei's classroom all clean and shiny. He whistled and danced to the music, knowing very much what happened in Room 146, Gekkou-san's room. When the tardy bell rung off, everyone tucked into their classes, he drifted away with his cleaning tools whistling and mopping with soapy waters, the janitor smiled behind his mask.
After the tardy bell rang, he finally settled in his seat letting his long black-blue bangs fall in front of his onyx eyes. He folded his arms together grudgingly, spending the first fifteen minutes listening to his homeroom teacher Mitarashi Anko-sensei bitch about her summer like a child. He didn't really want to listen to her spring vacation of her spending her precious time in the junkyard, where she had packed iron and lifted weights like a maniac, then challenging her students in a risky game of Blackjack. Even though gambling is illegal in school, she was an immature wild woman when she wasn't around other adults.
He leaned into his chair, the back of his dark hair had come closer to the girl who sat behind him. She cooed and blushed infinitely at having that kind of great luck, as if Sasuke-kun had planned for her to sniff his hair. Other girls who sat all around were either fawning over him or angry and jealous over that damn lucky fan girl. The guys in his class, like Shikamaru and Chouji, were more engaged in talking boringly with each other, or like that Shakespeare guy Kankuro who was in for the blackjack deal with Anko-sensei.
"I bet you five bucks," Sabaku Kankuro announced.
"Ha! I put in ten!" Akadou Yoroi cried.
"Twenty for ya fuckers!" Tayuya swore.
"Tayuya! Girls aren't supposed to use bad language!" Jiroubou scolded.
"I'll put in twelve dollars and seventeen cents!"
"Eight bucks!"
"Twenty-five!"
"Hey! Let me bet some!" a kid whined, slapping some money out.
Anko's childish dark brown eyes glittered with greed as the math teacher began to shuffle up her 'special' deck.
Sasuke rolled his black eyes at the morons in his classroom, wondering if he were the only sane person alive on earth. When he closed his beautiful orbs from the entire world, girls were slightly disappointed but loved him anyway, and he began to think. The Uchiha could already feel the women's eyes on him, caressing his pale unfeeling skin with their staring, their longing. He really didn't give a damn, when he was reminded of that girl all he could do was question about her to himself.
He only saw her push him and the Hyuuga apart, he felt her hand on his chest when she went through them. Soft but forceful, her eyes were only looking ahead. It was strange. Very strange for a girl to openly touch him, and yet not know it…she dismissed him like nothing important which was weird because he was supposed to be Sasuke-kun to the women around him—not that he cared. But it was weird for any girl not to admire him, well on the exception of Hyuuga Hinata who sat in the corner of the classroom with her sad white eyes on her lap, but he never really cared about her either.
That girl, Sakura, was it? She was a weird, yet interesting one.
He opened his eyes when moans and groans of lost had filled the room.
"Aww, man!"
"I can't believe I lost!"
Anko's devilish grin grew and grew when the boys who betted in the gambling circle slapped their money on her hand.
"How does she do it?"
"She always, always wins!"
"I'll get her next time!"
And after that sentence, Sasuke did sense that for pushing him (touching him nonetheless) so rudely, he glared forward, that new girl would get it for his humiliation…and his entertainment.
To Be Continued
I think I'm going to not tell anyone about the pairings, I don't want anyone just reading my story for that reason.
Even so, any pairing suggestions? But it's not a poll.
Don't blame Neji, he just has problems of his own.