Chapter Three: Naruto And His Mind

Naruto was surprised, and I could tell, for he always referred to me as 'the smart dude'. I knew he was wondering what we were going to do, if I hadn't thought of anything. Being the idiot he was, I could have no idea what he would do next. "So what do we do?" I could have laughed, hearing him say that, but I was not, nor was I ever, in a mood to laugh. After noticing I was just staring, he said, "Sasuke, we have to do something! We can't just do nothing!" Well, he did have a point, there. I could have given him a pat on the back, for making his first ever point, but, again, I was not, nor was I ever, in the mood to pat someone on the back. Naruto turned away from me, and I noticed his fists clenching. His voice came out in a rough whisper.

". . . Sakura." I jumped, hearing him say the name. Sakura, she was gone, and I had no clues as to where she had gone. "I will-"

"Sakura," I said, interrupting Naruto. I realized I couldn't remember the last time I had said her name aloud, before tonight. "She has run away, and I'm here, thinking about your idiocy." Even though his back was to me, I could tell Naruto was surprised and a little confused. He slowly turned to me. "I need to find her." Naruto swallowed audibly, and he nodded. He, too, loved Sakura, and I could see all the many reasons why. But he and I were not a 'we', he and I could never be a 'we'. I knew, though, that he would want to try and find her. "We need to do something." There, I had said 'we', anyways, and I wondered why.

"So where should we look?" Naruto asked, looking worried.

"I thought we had established the fact that neither of us has any ideas of where to look."

"But we can't look nowhere," another point, Naruto was on a roll. ". . . Well, if we don't have any ideas, we should ask someone else. . . . Let's ask Kakashi. I'll bet he's smarter-err than you are than me, and he knows Sakura real good."

I sighed, faced with the multitude of flaws in his idea of telling Kakashi that Sakura had run away and asking him where we should be looking to find her, not to mention the flaws in his sentence. I was about to say something to him, but he turned and started running. He was waving both his arms over his head, like a crazy baboon. "Kakashi! Kakashi!" he hollered, though there was no way the man could hear him.

X

Naruto knocked on the door, and we heard Kakashi's voice telling us to come in. We did go in, and Kakashi was sitting in his living room with only the light of a few candles. "I'm surprised to see you, here. What's up guys?" He was holding a rose, and he twirled it curiously between two fingers.

"Sakura ran away," Naruto said simply. He just said it. Even I was surprised, hearing it the way Naruto had said it.

Kakashi casually sniffed the rose, which he had placed up to his nose. "I know."

"How do you know?" Naruto asked, confused, but it never did take much to confuse him.

"Oh, I'll tell you, Kakashi said, sounding almost happy that Naruto had asked. He turned finally to look at us. "I know, because . . . She told me." Kakashi closed his eyes and gave us a funny smile, not that I would have laughed.

'Why would she tell you and not me?" I asked.

"Oh, I'll tell you that, too. Sakura said that if she told you, Sasuke, that she was going to run away, you would just think she was trying to get you to show some kind of feeling toward her. She didn't want her last image of you to be you calling her annoying, so she didn't tell you."

Naruto's face shrunk, and he said, Oh." He gave a discernable twitch, obviously expecting me to pound my fists into his head.

"She should have left you a note, though. I'm sure you must have read it."

Naruto had no clue, I hadn't shown it to him, he would probably have said something like, "I am the one for Sakura! Believe it!"

"When did Sakura tell you all this?" I kept my voice steady and unemotional . . . Somehow.

Kakashi put his nose into the dark red rose, again. The rose reminded me very much of Sakura. She did wear red, but she always had a bright, red glow about her. "This morning." I could see her telling Kakashi, and then going to train with us, before finally running away. "I even doubled the time you would have to train, hoping something would happen to prevent her from running away." I knew there had been some reason for the extra time we had spent on practicing our aim, practicing our jutsus, and even sparring a little, not to mention how cold it had been.

Sakura had told Kakashi she was running away. She had told him she would be leaving a not for them to read. I wondered what else he knew. "Kakashi, where is Sakura?"

"Well, you must have some idea where she might have run off to."

I could feel Naruto's eyes glancing over to me, before returning back to Kakashi's face. "No, we have nothing." There was that 'we', again.

"Ahh. Think harder."

After only a moment, Naruto spoke, "Maybe she ran to the Land of Tea. She seemed to like Idate." I knew, as soon as he said it, that he was wrong, but I was surprised Naruto had come up with an actual location with a legitimate reason for Sakura to have gone there. I had figured he was imagining Sakura, covered in mud, laying on the ground, in some forest. Perhaps he was smarter then I had thought. . . . Of course, he was still and idiot.

"Hmm. Well, let's go.," Kakashi said, standing up, the nose still held up to his face. I wondered what he meant by 'go'. Sakura couldn't have gone to the Land of Tea. Kakashi wouldn't have us go there, knowing she wasn't there, though. It was, after all, the only other place Naruto or I had been able to come up with.

Naruto looked at him with a confused face. "I thought you were sick."

"I am," Kakashi said, smelling the rose, once again. ". . . Lovesick," he added, and he pointed to the unconscious Iruka that was strapped to the other couch.

That's that. Don't worry, though. I'll update as soon as I can, and Sakura will not be lost in the dust of some seventeen chapters. P