Kill to Forget: Part 2
Black eyes slowly opened to take in a vision of a white room. Sasuke's body was aching everywhere and he felt exhausted. Lying in bed, the boy ran through his memories of what happened yesterday. Then memories of last night hit him hard and he felt himself getting even weaker. He felt pain even on the inside, like he was being cruelly dissected and torn apart.
A nurse walked in to do the interval checkup on Sasuke and smiled when she saw him awake. "My, you're up already? You truly are a strong ninja."
"What happened to Naruto?" asked Sasuke with his usual cold tone.
"Naruto?" questioned the nurse. Apparently, she didn't know about the incident last night.
"There was a blond boy I carried in last night. Where is he? Is he okay?" Sasuke was getting impatient as his speech speed up.
"I don't know. But I'll go check with the reception desk." After that, the nurse left Sasuke alone in his room once again. The pain that he felt earlier got worse, even his head felt like it was about to explode to a million pieces.
Why did you do it, Naruto? Why?
Fifteen minutes later, the nurse returned and told Sasuke that his friend had surgery early that morning and the surgery was finished about an hour ago. He was in room 210 but there are only two visitors allowed to visit him.
As soon as the nurse finished talking, Sasuke sprung out of bed and sprinted to room 210. He skidded to a stop in front of the room. His breathing had become shallower and he found his hand to be shaking again like last night. Slowly, he opened the door and slowly stepped inside.
The blond was laying there on the bed, under the thin horizontal rays of sunlight filtered through the blinds. Looking at him for a while, Sasuke started to have flashbacks of last night. He saw blotches of red and suddenly Naruto was bathed in blood. Horrified, he collapsed onto the floor and shut his eyes.
"W-Why, N-Naruto? W-Why did you d-do it? Why?" Sasuke asked. "Why are you always such a fool?"
"Because I fell in love with you," came the reply.
Sasuke shot up and looked at Naruto. The blond's face was directed at the blinds and didn't turn around even when he felt Sasuke's movement. Naruto woke up from the sound of Sasuke's collapse and heard his questions.
"I know how you feel Sasuke. At first, I hated loving you. I thought it was a weakness, especially when the person I love is also my rival. But eventually, I understood it. I found out that loving someone is something that I can't control. So even if you don't like me, or you might kill me some day, I'd still love you because love is uncontrollable."
"Are you ok? You shouldn't talk so much when you just had surgery," Sasuke said with concern filling his tone.
"I'm fine. My stomach still feels numb so I'll be fine for now," came the solemn reply.
After a few minutes of silence pass by, Sasuke asked, "So why did you do it, Naruto? Why did you push the kunai into yourself?"
The blond shut his eyes for a moment, as if he was trying to recall what happened, but he knew perfectly well what happened and he still remembers why he did that.
"I told you already. Because I love you. It was foolish but like I said, people go out of their ways because of love. Besides, you hand was shaking so much I thought it'd hurt if you take so long. So it was much less painful if I shoved it in quickly and let the pain overtake me."
Right at that moment, a nurse entered the room. She politely asked Sasuke to leave because the patient wasn't ready for visitors yet. The raven-haired boy obliged and started walking out. Half way to the door, he paused in his steps to say softly, "I'm sorry, Naruto." Then he left, thinking that maybe the blond didn't hear him. But Naruto did hear him, because rolling down his cheeks were streams of tears that he barely restrained during his talk with Sasuke.
"Good news, Naruto! They're letting you go today. Here's a list they gave me to give you. It has all the things you shouldn't eat in concern of your injury," said Kakashi in one long breath.
The blond quickly scanned the list and dropped his jaws when he saw ramen on the list.
"WHAT? I CAN'T EAT RAMEN?" the blond's shout was so loud people outside the hall stopped to look in the direction of the shout.
"Calm down, Naruto. Don't you think you're overreacting?" Kakashi tried to calm the blond.
"How. Can. I. Be. Calm?" Naruto gritted his teeth as he said these words. His eyes turned fox-like and for a moment, Kakashi thought the Kyuubi was going to break out.
"D-Don't worry about it. I'll talk to them about that." Kakashi was sweating badly and hoped for anybody to come in so he could be rescued from this tension.
His hope came true because just when Naruto was about to go up in flame, the door opened and Sakura and Sasuke entered. Kakashi was never so happy to see them in his entire life.
"Ah. Sakura-chan! Sasuke-kun!" exclaimed the usually calm teacher.
"Don't call me Sasuke-kun," snapped Sasuke.
"Hi, sensei. How is Naruto doing?" asked Sakura, but she clung to Sasuke's arm.
"Oh yes. They said that he's released today!" said Kakashi in a super-happy tone.
"Really? But I'm guessing they wouldn't let him train yet, right?" asked Sakura.
"Oh that. They said he'd have to come back for checkup every couple of days and they'll tell him when he could start training again. I did ask them how much time it would take and they guessed if everything goes fine, it shouldn't take longer than two weeks," again Kakashi said all that in one looooong breath.
"TWO WEEKS?" the blond shouted again but this time there were only a few who stopped to look because the rest apparently got used to it.
"Well, they said your cut was really close to your lung and if you do too much heavy breathing, the lung might cause the cut to widen."
Naruto lied down on his bed with arms crossed and growled.
"Well, I'm gonna go down to the cafeteria to grab something to eat," he said as he pulled out his Ichya Ichya Violence. Kakashi was almost at the door when Sakura's stomach growled loudly. She laughed nervously and said she'll come get something to eat too.
After the two left, the room was suddenly too quiet. Naruto and Sasuke had stopped talking about their love problems and pretended that nothing happened to cause this whole mess. But they couldn't go back to the way they were before and act natural.
"Is it nice outside?" asked Naruto, trying to break the uncomfortable silence.
"Uh…yea. It's cloudy and cool," replied Sasuke. He had been thinking a lot about Naruto the past few days and came up with a solution. The hardest part is to tell Naruto about his decision.
Come on. I can do this. I've been through life-threatening crisis before so this shouldn't be a problem.
