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Chapter 6

Confessions

What the heck, but it was still worth humiliation.

Sakae watched me intently; I saw resentment, passion and empathy all blended.

"Sakae," I felt an unexpected thrill go down my spine when I said her name, and it bothered me a bit, even though I was a …comfortable with her.. "I'm hopeless."

"That's sort of the mental thing I hear from cowards. You're not a coward." The last words had a ring in them.

I fidgeted with myself, thinking of how to start my crazy story.

When I looked up at her from beneath my lashes, her face was in inch from mine. Her eyes were suddenly overwhelming; when she spoke, her awesome scent reached my nose. Blimey, how did she do that?

"This can be easy, or this can be difficult, Sakura," She said, irritated.

"Okay," I took a deep breath. "What do you wanna know, anyway?"

"Why do you think you aren't worth release? Why are you here? Not like I don't know the main point, but I'll like to hear that from your view."

I listened to her musical, soprano voice, and then started in a slow voice.

"I don't know if you ever knew that soon after I met Sasuke –" pain strangled me within at the mention of his name and my voice shook " – we started going out. It was just…I mean, no one was that important to me than he was. He was everything for me, and … every second he was away from me, his voice, his face…everything, vividly, was in my mind and it kept me okay…"

I was staring down in my lap as I spoke, feeling like an utter moron and bizarre. But she was a woman, so I was able to say some. I looked up to gauge her reaction, and realized that she wasn't there on the seat anymore. She was standing by the break-proof window, the window that was long and rectangular and the sill was a foot from the ground only. She was looking at me as keenly as before, and then she smiled crookedly in encouragement.

Had she not looked down, I would have been staring at her like an idiot. "When…he fell from the cliff –"I clutched at my throbbing chest "– and when I got to know the bad news, it wasn't what I could handle. I couldn't attend the funeral; I shut myself in my room, and out of grief and pain…I tried to stab myself with a dagger."

I looked up. Sakae raised her eyebrows, but didn't say anything.

Shoot. It seemed like this girl was just like Sasuke, who always guessed at things beneath the calm surface.

I pulled my legs up the bed, and wrapped my arms around them securely. I mumbled into my knees. "I don't have much memory of it. But I guess...it's more difficult for me than others to take over things. I was...very hurt and when I tried to kill myself, my parents sent me here. They thought I had grown crazy.

"And seeing me, I am crazy and lunatic, right?" A looked up at her with a hint of a smile playing on my lips, but a very sad smile. Her eyes were very gentle.

"I'll see much of that when you tell me more," she said placidly.

"...Well, then they sent me here. They thought I was insane. But still, see? I'm talking to you, and I remember stuff and I'm not banging my head, so why the hell are they -" I jabbed my finger at the door "- and my parents not letting me go home?"

"I don't think you're outta your mind," said Sakae, with a tone that added obviously. "But still. The thing is that, you haven't told me everything. Why do you think you aren't worth getting back?"

Crap. Why couldn't she drop it? I looked down, hoping that my expression would not betray confirmation. But my silence seemed to irritate her.

"Sakura, if you don't speak, I'll drag you from here, and take you to a shrink. How's that?"

"A shrink?" I nearly shouted, my voice jumping up to three octaves. A shrink? That would be worse than an asylum!

Sakae looked at me stubbornly, her jaw set. "I do what I say."

Silence.

A snarl of fury from Sakae.

Hesitation from me.

A very pronounced growl from Sakae, and I looked up to see her lips curling back over her perfect teeth. Her eyes were frozen solid.

I put my head down on my knees, and decided that I would better speak, anyway. Everyone knew, so why not her, too? Was this a secret I was bound to protect? It didn't look like it. And she would not tear my body away if she knew something.

"I see Sasuke. I talk to him. I touch him. And he does, too."

"What?" Sakae's voice was a dead monotone. She came to me, and sat back on the stool. "What?"

"You are sure I'm crazy? Sasuke isn't dead. I can see him, touch him, talk to him. No one believes me. And I'm not hallucinating."

I took a deep breath to stop myself shouting; she obviously thought that keeping me in an asylum was the right thing.

But what she did was surprising. She looked at me for a long moment, and then said, "That's all? That's why you think you aren't worth getting back?"

"Is that not enough?" I asked, surprise in my voice.

"You are so foolish."

"'Cause I hallucinate?"

Silence.

"What are you thinking?" I pressed, just because I wanted to hear her attractive voice, not because I wished to be showered by questions again.

"I'm thinking," Sakae said, pushing her raven hair back, "that this room is very stuffy. And you need to clean up. And that you also need some new dresses and something -" she looked around the room "- to keep yourself entertained."

With that, she stood up and walked around to the door. Then she paused and looked at a bemused me.

"Oh, Sakura?"

"Yep?"

"Tomorrow is game."

She flashed a dazzling smile in my direction, and slammed the door behind her.

=o=

I had never, ever spoken that much than I spoke when Sakae came around. That first day she had drilled stuff out of me that was humiliating. Now her times with me were the most exhaustive times of my life in the asylum, but also exciting, fun, and gossipy.

And different. I was so used to waking up late in the morning, seeing the dark walls and the same, grim room, and then bathing in the dark, inky bathroom, wearing the same faded clothes, and then eating woody breakfast. Then after that, nothing. Just read some books, and sometimes Dara took me to play unsuccessfully with the other kids of my age. I always ignored them, and then they started talking about me behind my backs, so the nurse employed me to cook a bit in the kitchen. Which was the most boring activity that I did once a week. The same medicines, confused and dead thoughts, and cleaning of the cell.

Nothing more terribly exciting.

And then Uchiha Sakae came to change my life. The second day after we met, she brought a football with her, and we played soccer with her and two other girls who used to cook with me. I vaguely remembered that they were named Kira and Lily. Both were pale and weary-looking like me, and part albino. Well, I used to be pretty good at soccer, and Sakae never let me go until three hours were up and I was going to die with tiredness. But I had won the game.

Then she helped me, Kira and Lily with cooking; they both were very much happy to be helped, too, but I thought they seemed a little jealous as they looked at the beauty that shone out of Sakae. I pitied them and myself: I had to admit that Sakae looked fantastic whatever she wore, even in a grim gray apron.

We had delicious steak, bologna and sandwiches for lunch and dinner with all the other people on the same floor as mine. It was fun to watch as the kids smacked their lips and requested Dara and the other nurse to employ Sakae as a chef. But of course, Sakae wasn't crazy and she obviously got school every other day; we could be with her after noon only. But that was enough.

At night she kept me awake with dreary, boring questions of my childhood; my pets and my friends; my favorite teachers and celebrities and movies, and music, until at twelve I begged her to let me sleep.

"Where are you gonna sleep?" I asked her as I came back after brushing my teeth and slipping into my holey sweatpants and battered Tshirt I used as pajamas. I was very tired, as I came to sit on my bed. She was leafing through the two or three barren books on my table.

"Home, of course," she told me.

"Uh, okay."

She saw the reluctance in my expression: reluctance to let her go, and she laughed throatily. "Trust me Sakura, I'll be back after school. My parents will probably be worrying whether I am kidnapped or something."

"Okay," I repeated, scowling as I tucked myself in bed. "See ya."

She smiled again, then ruffled my already ruffled hair before leaving.

I stared a bit at the closed door that I could see in the dim light of the oil lamp on my table. Maybe she would have something more interesting tomorrow. That'd be nice, and...different. For the first time in a very long time, I didn't know what to expect of the next day.

Why is she so interesting, anyway? I wondered dully, as I drifted to a dreamless sleep without any faces of the ones I loved and the ones I had lost.

Ultra, ultra late update. Sorry. Review please?