Chapter 4

Apparently once you step into the Royal manor, it's really, really hard to walk out.

Sakura realized it when she was placed into the East Wing of the Uchiha Manor, which consists of 12 rooms surrounding a courtyard, and each room has 2-3 girls sharing it, and they are all concubines of Uchiha Sasuke.

To say concubine might be a over exaggeration. These girls, their biggest wish is to spend a night with the Royal Prince and get pregnant, then they're going to swim in luxury and forever be valued as a member of the royal family, whereas Uchiha Sasuke doesn't really know they exist.

The Uchiha Manor is a large, large, place sitting on at least a hundred acres of land. You'd have to walk five minutes from one end of the place to another. The center court is reserved for the Royal Prince himself, South Wing for guards and staff, East Wing for concubines and other female servants, West Wing for important guests, studies, libraries.

The Royal Prince is the twin brother of the Emperor, who lives within a much larger fortress in the center of Capital city. The current Emperor only has been on the throne for 8 years. He is a good Emperor, maintaining peace and minding politics everyday. Up to this day, he claims he is way too busy with the country to have children. So since he sat on the throne, there hasn't been an heir for eight years.

But the Emperor is still very young, so people don't worry much.

Uchiha Sasuke is the twin brother (not to mention the only surviving brother) of the Emperor. He and the Emperor are quite close. Sasuke has always had a lack of interest in politics. He loves hunting, sword fighting, and all things new and interesting. The Emperor adores his little brother, therefore he gave his brother the most honorable title available, a huge piece of land, lots of wealth and artifacts, and some soldiers to train.

Even though Uchiha Sasuke doesn't dabble in politics, there are always people knocking on his door asking his opinion, or tattle tale on one another, or try to win him over on their side so he will say good things about them to his brother. Uchiha Sasuke sees through all of this, and he developed a personal distaste for people who are excessively nice to him. Which pretty much includes everyone in existence. His position does not allow disobedience, therefore when Sakura first got here, she knew she was screwed.

The second clue Sakura received, was a loud cry coming from the center courtyard. She and the other girls ran into the yard to see what's going on, and they saw a young girl dressed in servant's clothing, crying and being beaten by a huge boat-paddle like device.

The paddle slams down on to her body, while the butler stood emotionlessly and counts the number of hits.

When he reaches hits 20, the soldier wielding paddle stopped, and the girl couldn't even make a sound anymore. She passed out from the pain. The butler walked away while rest of the girls quickly helped the unconscious one to the doctor's.

Blood was pooling down on the ground, and immediately there are people who came in with buckets of water and scrubbing towels, cleaned up the blood before it stained.

"What the hell happened?" Sakura hissed under her breath at her roommate, who is a thin and nice looking girl named Sadako.

Sadako said quietly, "this girl, she accidentally splattered ink droplets on his Royal Highness's sleeve while he's writing a letter. Of course he was furious, so he delivered this punishment."

Sakura gasped, "what if this had killed her?"

Sadako shrugged but looked sad, "Then it's her fault. Just last month there was a girl who tried to climb into his Royal Highness's bed and got tossed out and sent to the army as a prostitute..."

Sakura shivered, and for the first time, she felt scare of this place.

At least when she's back home at Haruno Household, there was no fear of being beaten to death, or be forced into prostitution.

Sakura walked back to her room, praying she'll never see that awful murderer again.

XxxxxxxxXxxxxxx

A month has passed.

Sakura was living happily in this manor as a jobless, futureless, prospective-less parasite, when a servant girl fell sick to the flu, and asked Sakura to fill in for her. The job is to bring the Royal Prince's dinner to the dining table, that's it.

Sakura was very nervous. First of all, there are way too much rules in this place. For example the butler repeatedly tells them not to look at the Prince directly in the eye, not to speak to him, and not to make a sound when the prince is eating. Act like you're part of the wall, be as invisible as possible. Sakura can do invisible, but she can't do standing in front of a tyrant for too long. Especially since she really is in contempt of this person from the bottom of her heart.

And she was way too naive thinking it takes one trip to deliver a meal. Apparently she had to do 4 trips, each trip carrying 5 dishes, just for the Prince's lunch.

So he eats 20 dishes of food for lunch?

They're not tiny dishes either. Each dish is a normal sized plate full of food. Sakura laid them out one by one, under the instruction of the butler. Apparently soup goes in the middle, cold dishes goes on the left. Hot dishes served on the right, in the center is a choice of starch of noodles, rice, or buns. Spicy dishes sits far on the edge, and several jade empty plates are laid aside, along with silver chopsticks used for testing poison.

Sakura thought if she ever had to go through all this while eating, Just kill her.

She stood by the door looking down, being as quiet as possible.

When it's meal time, Uchiha Sasuke walked in. He took no notice of Sakura, and sat down.

The butler quickly came up and begin to pick out all sorts of food from various dishes and made them into a tiny pâtée within a jade plate using silver chopsticks, and placed them in front of Sasuke

Sasuke, being used to this, begin to eat. Sakura snuck a peek at the Prince, and realized, he is extremely good looking.

This doesn't come as a surprise, most girls who marry into royalty should be at least pretty. So it seems that generations and generations of beauty are passed down to the pinnacle of perfection and exemplify itself in the Royal Prince.

Sakura frowned. She thinks this Prince looks somewhat familiar, but she can't remember when or where or how he existed in her memory.

By this time, Sasuke was half full. He looked over and realized Sakura is the new girl. She's really in her own little world, making strange expressions while thinking her own thoughts.

Sakura isn't a traditionally pretty girl, her has a round and lovable face, slight round build and bright eyes. When she smiles there are a couple of dimples showing. Sasuke doesn't know why, but he thinks she's extremely comforting to look at.

So he made up his mind, pointing at Sakura and said to the butler, "have her help me to bed tonight."

Then he left, leaving a dumbstruck butler and a even dumber stricken Sakura.

XxxxxxXxxxxx

A/N: I'll keep it PG don't worry. Teehee

In terms of the plot, Maybe I'm moving too fast, that's only because there are so much more plot line to cover. I'll slow down based on reviews and opinions by readers. One reader suggests Izumi as Itachi's love interest, which I thought was an lovely idea. Mainly because nobody knows too much about her character to set it in stone, I can mold her personality a bit into what I want.

Thank you for the reviews last chapter, I was floored. In the beginning I thought not many people were on this site anymore, it's nice to see after years and years, little readers are still engaged in this wonderful passion community.