Disclaimer:

I'm sorry for the past tenses, guys. No, they're not dead. They just sound better in past tense.

It's sad that I don't and can't own Naruto. I don't and can't even own a legit manga copy. Why must you be so cruel, Life?

Sakura was an outgoing person.

Of course, the villagers of Konoha who recognized the kunoichi would often see her out in the streets, casually taking strolls with her beloved team of men.

It took a silver-haired jounin who could never seem to take his eyes off of a porn book, an extremely blunt and rude artist, a dark human being who seemed to only have the words "hn" and "tch" in his vocabulary, and a painfully annoying blonde known for being the most surpsing ninja of the village, to fill the bonds that were the main foundation of her reputation as an outgoing kunoichi.

At her age, people would still see her as a blabbermouth smacking against an even bigger blabbermouth, who was none other than a certain tan-skinned Jinchuuriki with three little whiskers on each cheek.

She was always out with Team 7.

And that was clearly the problem here.

Don't get her wrong though, she held onto her team dearly and cared for every single member despite the flaws in their words, behaviors, and personalities. She treated her team in the same way she would treat her first family. It took four years for them to fill this special bond. Although it was a different case for Sai, time was just a pebble on the road. A speck even.

But seriously, that was the problem here.

With her image tightly linked with Team 7, people would think that she was a very loyal member. She really was, but the truth was so unbearable that it blinded people from seeing what the problem really was.

She was loyal, all right.

She was loyal to the men of her team.

The highly, extremely, achingly, severely overprotective men of Team 7.

And that was an understatement.

They would keep everything about her to themselves and themselves only. It was the norm for them to prevent any other men from enjoying the chance of adoring her soft, shortly cut pink tresses, her wide and bright green eyes, and even the violet colored diamond on her forehead that seemed to value emphasis on her womanliness.

First, Naruto once misunderstood Inuzuka Kiba, insanely out of his mind to go out of his way and think that the dog-using shinobi was attempting to flirt with the kunoichi's delicate heart. He even went as far as farting on his sharp-looking face on purpose, with the stock knowledge of his nose being gifted for its sensitivity, a nose that was a thousand times better than that of the normal human nose.

Second, while Team 7 was out on a mission, Kakashi didn't miss the very sly way their male client would eye their pinkette's back, especially at the bottom of her spine. The matter with that old pervert was cleared when the silver-haired jounin had announced to his team, "Watch out for approaching enemies, everyone. Strictly use your eyes for such purpose only."

Third, Sai, believe it or not, even stood up for her. Well, there was really a time when the brown-haired Inuzuka attempted to flirt with their female teammate and Sai was the only one present to witness the situation. The pale artist didn't do anything harsh, however. At least that was what he thought.

As they were eating at the dango shop, Kiba had told Sakura that the barking Akamaru meant to say that she was a lovely and beautiful lady, which was an obvious lie and way for him to grab the chance to flatter the pinkette without much hassle. Before Sakura could even react, the black-haired painter told the flirt, "Oh, you and Akamaru understand each other? Can you please tell your dog that he smells so good that he smells even better than his owner?" Kiba never made an attempt towards the kunoichi since then.

Team 7 consisted of men of which three are overprotective and one is Sasuke.

The stoic and easily irritated male cared for Sakura and her dignity, all right. Yet, being a male named Uchiha Sasuke meant that his way of protecting the pinkette was quite different to that of the other men in the team.

That simply meant that he would look and act the same even around situations wherein someone would make an attempt to break into the doors of the medic's heart. But such was only the case if the people of Team 7 were around. In essence, things were utterly, utterly different when his teammates were absent.

There was this one time when the whole team were out on a mission to escort a male client whose age was near the team's own (minus Kakashi). The events transitioned similarly to that of their first ever B-rank mission back when they were genins. The client had been a target by a small group of ninjas and he was badly hurt by them.

Of course, Sakura, being the team medic, came to the aid of the injured man and was unknowingly attracting him with her beautiful face of genuine concern and innocence.

And then there was Sasuke, who was the only one able to notice the client's infatuation towards his female teammate. It took a year for Sakura to learn about the events on that fateful night. A night, in which a certain Uchiha silently kidnapped the client while the team was resting in the woods and harshly, coldly, cruelly, threatened him to never ever look or speak to the girl.

An Uchiha boiling in anger and rage would obviously appear with blood red eyes.

Nevertheless, the mission still turned out okay without ending up with problems possibly like a client complaining to the Hokage how a certain escort casted an inhumane genjutsu on him that caused his whole heart to shut down in fear of loving someone else again.

Team 7 was there to care for her, protect her from the rapidly rising and uncontrollable hormones of the various men of the world.

And that was clearly the problem that other people don't see.

Sakura wasn't allowed to date. Even if she was, she wasn't.

Those were the thoughts circulating inside the mind of the girl dressed in dark red, with a white circular emblem printed at the back.

At the moment, she was still facing the man who had just asked, rather, forced her to go out on a simple date with him.

Clearly, the situation had an advantage to it: the absence of the Team 7 men.

"Shannaro..."

The tall Uchiha stood on the same ground with the same expression on his face. His face then exhibited a slight tinge of amusement through his two eyes and smirking lips.

Sakura gaped at him with confusion and terror, presenting a face that was written with all the other adjectives that could possibly capture the impossible emotion between those eyes and lips.

"If I'm not mistaken, shannaro means 'hell yeah,' Sakura-chan," the man said while running his left hand through the strands of shadowy color.

"Wha-!" Sakura stopped herself before emitting another use of her infamously regarded catchphrase.

"Hell yeah? So does that mean you're willing to date me?"

"No!" she immediately replied. "Like I said, I barely even know you. And I swear, I'm not free to date."

Shisui pondered on her reply. Needless to say, it was unusual for a person to ask a stranger on a date. But were they strangers? He could count her as an acquaintance. No romantic feelings involved. He simply mused at the idea of dating her and getting to know her better. After all, at the very least, strange as it may sound, he was interested in her.

And what was that about her being free to date? As far as he knew, his cousin, Sasuke, held no interest in dating. Could it be her parents? Shisui mentally shook his head. After all, the fact that she used to freely hang around the Uchiha Compound back when she was young proved otherwise. Heck, even her presence in the compound at the moment was a case in point.

Then, she had overprotective friends? Shisui thought that she was rather mature enough to make decisions on her own. Ironically, though, he kind of cornered her into dating him. But at the very least, he was not forcing her to agree.

It took a few steps for Shisui to effortlessly reach her side, bend his knees, lift a single chakra pill from the basket, stand up, and toss the pale indigo-colored sphere into his mouth.

A short sound of crunching was heard before he managed to say, "Tomatoes?"

Sakura was not entirely sure what to do if the man who was standing next to her continued on speaking. The topic was seriously transitioning into another subject, a predicted subject. It was the power of tomatoes.

"What of it?" she challenged him before mentally smacking her face for doing so. Inner Sakura helped by tightening her own hands around her own neck, as if she had already lost the will to live.

"Nothing, maybe you coincidentally flavored the pills with my little cousin's favorite food."

"No, I didn't-! I didn't... know."

"It sure doesn't look like it with your face all red."

Sakura turned her back on him, not favoring the idea of showing her vulnerable state to the Uchiha. Was she that obvious, really? She wasn't, right? In the world of love and women, there was just no way a woman could go through a conversation with their love as a subject with just a straight pale face. There has to be some tinge of red or a feel of heat.

"Look, there's nothing, okay? Sasuke-kun's just my teammate," she snapped.

The Uchiha questioningly raised a dark brow at her while biting his bottom lip. "Sasuke-kun?"

His two ebony orbs chased her two jade eyes that were running away from his gaze, covered by her weighing eyelids that seemed to want to put the girl in an eternal slumber for the rest of her life.

Now, Sakura thought, what was the deal with him and honorifics? Their encounter at the hospital made it clear to her that he placed value on how she called him. Was the honorific inappropriate? Certainly not. Did he want to be referred to as "Shisui-kun"? Now, that was a little too childish. Shisui might have made the situation seem that way, but she knew, deep down, that he was not inclined to trivialities and conventions.

Furthermore, he was older than her by a few years, and so "senpai" and "san" fitted him better. However, she also thought that that was too formal.

Perhaps, he had noticed that Sakura held some meaning to "kun". And even she could not deny the assumption. To her, Sasuke was the only person in their circle to have qualified for that honorific. And for his brother, Itachi, she purposely addressed him in the same way in order to avoid making her feelings that transparent.

And so, reflecting on her efforts, Sakura decided that she didn't want to be challenged and then defeated just like that. She wanted to stand up for herself, to claim that she wasn't as shallow as she looked like. No one should dare mess with her unless they wanted to land at the other end of the world with her chakra-powered jab.

"We're just friends," she said, placing the basket on the traditional end table inside the porch of her friend's manor while masking her face with the typical Uchiha emotion, the holy emotionless emotion.

"Well, if you say it that way, then I guess it wouldn't matter to you if he heard a 'lie' about his teammate's feelings for him from his cousin, right?" Shisui said. Obviously, he was not one for sticking his nose into other people's businesses. Yet, he just had to taunt her for the hell of it.

"Teme! I said there's nothing!" the pinkette yelled with her two eyes melting into the Uchiha's own calm ones.

But then again, he wasn't done with her yet.

"Just a yes or no, Sakura."

Damn. It felt odd whenever he dropped the "chan." It just made her feel... womanly.

Sakura walked out of the porch area, not even bothering to think about laying terse glances on the pressing man, despite how his presence seemed to radiate a certain aura that caused her to be slightly, just slightly, intimidated.

There was just something about him that she hated so much. It could be argued that it was his strikingly conspicuous existence in every crowd she saw. Hell, she was highly aware of the hormonal issues Inner Sakura had buried deep, deep, deep inside her mind whenever she would feel the overwhelming aura of his that alerted her that he was near.

"Sakura."

The odd sensation was surging through her insides again.

It took every ounce of willpower for Sakura to turn to him, face him with the most fieriest of looks, fiercely eyeing him like he was no challenge to her. Sakura was aware that he was simply keeping a request hanging. It was surely a question of yes or no. However, Sakura thought that the only way to keep him from annoying her again was an answer that was in his favor.

"One date, Shisui."

As the rosette followed the path to wherever her sandaled feet were taking her, it took a moment for her brain to register the fact that she had just gone out of the Uchiha compound and had then entered through the doorway of her own clinic at the central hospital of Konoha.

The Haruno sauntered her way to her neatly organized metallic desk, ornamented with a navy blue colored table lamp, a bouquet of daisies held by the hole of her glossy ivory vase, and a very thick stack of folders with very thick stack of papers inserted in each.

She sighed as she rested her rear on the black office chair, arranging the thick pile of folders into four thinner piles. The files were classified by rank, one stack each for the genins, chuunins, jounins, and the ANBU. Fishing a retractable pen out of the small pocket on her pale pink medic skirt, she began to update the medical status of each shinobi that had been examined from a week back.

Resting her left elbow on the table surface, she placed her left palm on her forehead, cupping it gently to soothe out the mild pain occurring in between her temples. She flipped a page, ticked a few boxes, wrote a recommendation, flipped a page again, and then wrote her signature. The same process went on and on and on and on until she had written off for three hours straight in one sitting.

This task was supposed to be done by the Godaime Hokage herself, she cursed. But as much as she didn't want to disappoint her shishou, she didn't want to spend a number of hours failing to relieve her big forehead from the stress.

Naruto had a lot of coping up to do if he wanted to become the Hokage.

Sakura cursed to herself. She had written off three-fourths already of the shinobi files. Three days ago, she had finished the medical files of the ANBU. Two days back, she had written off the papers for the genins. Hell, there were a lot of them this year and she honestly didn't have an idea what could have triggered the jounins to pass so many students. Not that it was unfair for their generation to have only passed nine rookies out of twenty-seven Academy students. Not that it was unfair, at all.

Yesterday, though, she had written off the medical files for the chuunins like crazy, wanting so bad to finish the Hokage's severely laborious assignment for her as fast as possible. But it ended up with a very sore hand that she was forced to heal with what little energy she had left, though effortlessly.

At the moment, pain seared over the base of her right thumb, punishing her for not even bothering to take a short break for the past three hours. Although she had started writing off the files for the chuunins the day before, she had just finished it right now.

She still had about three and a half more hours to spend for the jounin medical files.

Among the thirteen shinobi in their age group, nine could only be classified as jounins. In Team 7, there were Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura herself. Outside their team, there were Rock Lee, Hinata, Kiba, Shikamaru, Ino, and Chouji. As for the other shinobi, they became part of the ANBU squads, going through intensive training in order to do S-rank missions that included marking off some pictures in the bingo book.

Sakura continued going through the folders for the first hour. It was surprisingly easier compared to the other ranks. The fact that she recognized most of the jounins somewhat lifted half of the workload for her. Maybe she was going to finish this an hour early.

Sakura flipped open the next folder, interest sparking through her boredom-and-stress infected body as she silently read the name and image printed on the paper.

Uchiha Shisui.

She frowned at the sight of his files under the jounin rank, then it struck her that he had quit from the ANBU organization just a few months ago. She read the pieces of information printed on the paper, instead of taking a quick scan like what she did with the rest. Shisui was strong, active, and healthy, based on the readings but the pinkette took notice on the several cases he had back when he went on missions as an ANBU captain.

There were cases wherein his sight would dim and blacken.

Is he turning blind?

No, that was rather impossible. Sakura was well aware of how eyes would naturally move and behave if they were turning blind because of inherited doujutsu.

But then again, it was Shisui.

He would probably hide it from people he didn't want to spread worry across. And he damn hid it well.

The medic mused over the paper in front of her. It was not really possible for him to control the natural movements of his eyes every single time. That was just not the way things would work.

She read his cases. There were only three rare happenings of which he temporarily became blind and it usually lasted for twenty-four hours at most. She knew that it was the overuse of his Sharingan to higher levels. She had heard that kind of lesson being taught to her by her shishou but then again, there was no cure found yet.

Then what the hell was she going to write in the recommendation part?

Sakura flipped onto the next folder.

It was already nine o'clock in the evening when Sakura had already finished her shishou's assignment. Her back curved inwardly as she extended both of her tired arms for a stretch, letting out a light yawn in the process. Her eyelids were carrying heavy weights as she lifelessly gaped at the blank wall with a blank look.

Without much of an effort, Sakura arranged the piles of folders before bearing the air-like weight (at least, that was the case for her), using her two tired arms for support.

Standing up, she permitted a longer yawn to leave her lips. She then exited the clinic, heading to the Hokage's tower.

It had taken the kunoichi about ten minutes before she greeted the traditionally designed door which led to the office of the leader of the Hidden Leaf Village.

Bearing the whole weight of the files on her left arm, she knocked on the door with her right arm before hearing the approval of a woman's voice beneath.

Sakura entered the office and greeted her shishou, who was currently resting her chin on the surface of her brown wooden desk and her hazel orbs lifelessly staring at her through the slit shapes her eyes had made.

"Good evening, Tsunade-shishou," the pink-haired girl greeted. Tsunade closed her eyes for a moment before opening them back and lifting a single hand to wave at her dryly.

Sakura took the act as her master's way of telling her to get straight to the point. She did understand the situation the fifty year old woman was in. After all, it was the same for her.

"I have finished the assignment just now actually," she reported while placing the stacks of folders on the Hokage's desk by rank before taking a few steps back to her original location.

"That was fast, Sakura. I'm impressed. Thank you for you efforts," the woman said as she sat up straight from her heavenly break and began scanning through the neatly organized files.

"You're welcome, shishou," the pinkette said while bowing in return as an act of respect.

The spheres in Tsunade's caramel colored eyes seemed to be in a cycle of movements from right to left in the seventeen year old kunoichi's perspective as she scanned over the contents of the files, saying, "Do you want a mission?"

"Eh, um, frankly, I'm kind of busy training right now, Tsunade-sama. Would it be okay for me to stay in the village for two weeks straight?" Sakura questioned, careful not to give any hint of impoliteness that could lead to misinterpretation. Her master's question had snapped her from the drowsy state she was in from all the hours of working, specifically about five hours in duration. She really couldn't understand why Naruto desired for the title of Hokage so much. He would need at least three advisers for all the paperwork.

Tsunade caressed the pale golden strands of her right pigtail that was rested on the right side of her chest. Tersely nodding in approval, she said, "Very well. But I thought you wanted a mission to relieve yourself from the boredom?"

"Aa, but there priorities to attend to that are far more important than my social life, shishou."

The Godaime chuckled at her statement. "Are you creating a new jutsu?"

Sakura's dull-looking eyes lit up all of a sudden. There was always a pleasant feeling whenever her master would recognize her ability to enhance the teachings she had passed onto her and her capability to stretch her levels as well.

"I'm going to train right after this, shishou," she said as her eyes gleamed in pride. The blonde noticed this and showed her a genuine smile of pride as well, being proud over her potential to surpass her.

But there was also a hint of concern glinting in her honey eyes that was also shown as her lips curved oppositely.

"At this ungodly hour?"

"Yes, Tsunade-sama. I'm going to be a whole lot busier from tomorrow on so I'll have to train as soon as possible."

Not a single idea about the possible reasons behind her young subordinate's sudden plans would pop inside the blonde's mind. What was she really up to?

"I'll be taking my leave then, shishou. Good night," Sakura said before bowing and exiting the office, leaving her master being dissatisfied over the levels of curiosity racking up and about inside her brain. She was definitely curious about her intentions.

Tsunade bemused herself between two possible options of what to do at the moment: drinking sake or checking the files. She went with the latter.

She grabbed a random folder from the jounin stack and opened it to reveal medical information regarding a man named Uchiha Shisui. She was about to close it when she noticed the recommendation area was blank and untouched.

Now, why the hell would her responsible and analytic of a kunoichi leave things just like that?