"So you wanted to make me happy by picking my lock and destroying my kitchen?" A clearly irate Sakura questioned with a glare that made her eerily similar to Tsunade.

"No." Sasuke avoided eye contact, suddenly finding the burnt teal walls so fascinating.

"Yes… But Sakura-chan, you're overlooking the fact that we were making lunch for you," Naruto whined, the only thing she has seen him do ever since the two came back. "We promise we'll clean it up."

She rubbed her temples. She really just wanted to go back to bed. "So, what do you want?"

"To apologize. For leaving." Sasuke finally looked back at her, and despite the most of the village thinking so, it didn't feel intimidating at all, even with his ever-present rinnengan. "I'm sorry for leaving you again."

"I'm sorry too." Naruto looked like an abandoned puppy and as rude as it would be at that moment, a part of Sakura wanted to smile at how innocent he had looked, like a child who got caught stealing from the cookie jar.

She sighed. "As much as I'd want to, I can't accept your apology."

"Wha–"

"I'm not the person you should be apologizing to." She stood up. "The person who you should be apologizing to should actually know you. I don't."

She made a beeline for her bedroom. "Clean up and leave, and for Kami's sake, don't make too much noise. I already have enough to apologize to the neighbors for."

She shut the door behind her and plopped down on the bed. From the rummaging she heard, they were probably trying to clean up, and from that sudden loud crash, they must've failed miserably.

"'War heroes' my ass," she groaned, "Can't do shit without making a mess." And for a split second, some weird memory popped up for the first time in years, like this wasn't the first time they've done this.

But thinking about her missing memories took too much brain power, and that said a lot as a medic who had to memorize every muscles and nerve and bone in the human body. Should she tell them directly? Tell them that she somehow just forgot them and only them and that any attempts of a relationship, at least one that they likely had before the two left, would take years?

A note was slid from under her door.

'We'll send someone to fix the kitchen later. Sorry.'

She has no recollection of them, yet the aloofness and neat handwriting made her realize who had written it the moment she saw it. It was weird. She knew how memories worked—- at least the technicalities and processes that surrounded them, yet she couldn't seem to figure out how to fix things. She needed to fix herself.

She wasn't stupid. The moment she realized she had blanks about her teammates, she studied every single memory-related book she could lay her hands on and continued to do so until she consumed all the psychological researches in Konoha, then some more in Suna and Iwa. Although she found out, roughly, the 'how' and slowly started figuring out the 'why', she could never find a solution or cure or treatment for it.

The worst part about not finding a solution was that it raised alarms to what more she could lose. Will she eventually forget how to be a medic? Her friends? Her family? What if she forgets how to breathe? How to live?

Maybe she should send that letter to the Mizukage.

Just a little past midnight, Sakura stood at the gate of the village, double-checking that she had everything she needed for the trip. Afterall, it was quite a long way to Kiri, most of it she'd spend on water, so she needed to have as much equipment (and Cyclizine because Kami does she get sea sick) as possible.

After going through her list for the third time, she zipped up her bag and headed out. It took her three hours to get from the village to the port.

It also took three hours for her to lose patience.

"Are you two really going to follow me to a very important, confidential mission?" She asked the two knuckleheads who were so discretely yet so obviously following her. As powerful shinobi, one would expect them to practice chakra suppression and lighter footsteps at least. But that is apparently too much to ask of them.

"We got permission from Kaka-sensei though," Naruto laughed sheepishly, Sasuke right behind him glared at her in a how-dare-you-leave-without-telling-us kind of way. Huh. "He asked us to go with you."

She is so burning down all his books when she gets back.

"Do you even know how long I'll be there for?"

"Nope." Idiot.

"I'll be here for two weeks."

"That's oka—"

"That means you won't get to eat ramen for two weeks." A pause. Yes, she doesn't have any personal memories of him, but all of Konoha knows about Naruto Uzumaki and his ramen obsession. His name and face was used as advertising for Ichiraku, which she frequented.

"Tha- That's o-okay." Hesitation and no eye contact. Now for Sasuke… What does she even know about him?

"Listen, I've been on a lot of solo missions and I'm old enough to handle myself. This won't even be the longest one I've been on. Besides, my person won't appreciate two lost puppies following me around while I work." She sighed. She wasn't going through to them.

"Your person?" For the first time, Sasuke spoke up, looking slightly irritated. The audacity of this—

"It's fine, Sakura-chan! You like puppies, don't you?"

White flag raised, she accepted her two week long hell.