"And then you arrived, and you know everything that happened after that."

Sakura exhaled slowly, her story finished. Tsunade looked at her with an unreadable expression. The explanation had taken a long time, on top of a very long operation. The Hyuuga had died in the night, and Kakashi had been rushed straight to the operating room after Sakura arrived with him. Tsunade had been summoned immediately, and then things had all happened very fast. Sakura had warned her about the three infiltrators, as well as her conviction that they were using henge no jutsu to keep their civilian personas and their enemy-nin identities separate. As several more people had been instructed to investigate this new threat, Tsunade had worked on Kakashi's transplant. Sakura had waited outside; Tsunade had decided that she and Shizune could handle it after all. The pink-haired kunoichi suspected her mentor might be punishing her, or perhaps even being merciful, by leaving her out.

After a few hours, Tsunade and the others shuffled out and informed her it was an overwhelming success. Kakashi would remain heavily sedated for several days, just to make sure the chakra vessel had time to rest, but would soon be better than ever. Then Tsunade had summoned Sakura to her office, and she had broken down and explained all the events leading up to dragging Kakashi into the ER. It felt oddly cathartic to admit all of her guilty actions and even guiltier feelings over the past couple of days, and to her credit, Tsunade never interrupted her.

"Well," Tsunade finally spoke, "What do you plan to do now?"

Sakura knew what her answer was. "First, I'm going to help free my mother's restaurant, and then I'm going to transfer to Sunagakure."

Kakashi's dreams were peaceful and indistinct, as he lay recovering in his hospital bed. Blurry splotches of colour danced before his eyes, pale forest greens and beautiful cherry blossom pinks. The sedatives finally eased enough that he could wake, and even though the antiseptic smell of the hospital was the first thing to reach his senses, he did not panic. He could feel the bandage over his sharingan, but his other eye was mercifully free and he settled for using it. Slowly, he cracked the lid and allowed his eye to adjust to the light. By the time his eye was fully open and able to take in his surroundings, the Hokage had entered his room and sat waiting patiently beside him.

"Hospital?" he asked groggily, and Tsunade nodded.

"Do you remember why you're here?"

Kakashi paused, letting his memories slowly return to him, like pigeons coming to roost. "Operation," he finally replied.

"That's right," Tsunade said, "and you'll be pleased to know it was very successful. As long as you rest for a while, and I mean actually rest, your sharingan shouldn't trouble you any longer."

Kakashi processed this information, waiting patiently for his brain to start working at full capacity. There was a thought he had, hidden inside the cotton wool filling his head. It felt important.

"Umeko," he finally managed, "Umeko. You know who she is, don't you?"

To his surprise, Tsunade reached out and placed her hand on his arm. "She's nobody."

Kakashi frowned. "She isn't nobody. She's a- shinobi. She has to be somebody."

Tsunade shook her head. "No, Kakashi. Somebody was her, but they aren't anymore. They're just themselves again, like they've always been."

"So who are they?"

"They didn't want you to know, and I respect their decision."

Kakashi remained unsatisfied. "Then what am I supposed to do now?"

Tsunade stood up, brushing non-existent lint from the front of her jacket.

"If you were inclined to ask my advice, it would probably go something like this: if you can't let go of the idea of Umeko, you'll never be able to find the woman she really is. If you start to see the qualities you liked about Umeko in another person, perhaps that's her. And if you can't, even when that person is standing right in front of you, then you wouldn't appreciate her anyway."

Sakura had felt stifled in her mask.

It wasn't a true ANBU mask, just a blank white face to protect her identity during the raid. She had been selected (partly because she knew the most about the enemy, partly because she had begged) to lead an ambush on Ichi and the others as they laid low at The Blossom. They hadn't realised Sakura had figured out their alter-egos that night, and so they had returned as Kenta and his cronies the very next evening. Ambushing them had been a simple affair, and though The Blossom had sustained a tolerable amount of damage in the fight, Haruno Takara was just happy to be free of her lodger.

Sakura sat up at the bar as her mother poured tea for her and the clean-up crew. She fiddled with her mask, whose blank face stared up at her from the benchtop. She had removed it almost the second the enemy had been dealt with, and had no intention of putting it back on. She didn't know how Kakashi could stand having his face covered like that all the time. Thinking of Kakashi made her heart hurt, so she looked to her mother to distract her.

Haruno Takara seemed to read her daughter's mind, and leaned over to place a cup of tea beside the mask.

"Did I mention how grateful I am to have my strong, beautiful daughter come save me in my hour of need?"

"Several times. In front of the whole team..."

Her mother chuckled. "A mother has the right to be proud of her children. It was always my biggest regret after becoming a civilian that I'd probably never get to see you as you are."

Sakura frowned. "As I am? I know I haven't visited as often as I should, but we do still see each other."

Takara stroked the blank mask with an idle finger. "I see you when you're off-duty. And of course I saw you all the time when you were still training. But this," she gestured to Sakura, taking in her dirty flak jacket and forehead protector, "This is who you're supposed to be."

Sakura jerked a thumb over her shoulder to the mural on the wall. "I thought that was who I was supposed to be."

"And why can't you be both? I know you hate that painting, but I don't think you've let yourself properly acknowledge your beauty. Not since you first graduated from the academy. But it's still there, you know. You're still everything that woman on the wall represents."

After a pause, Sakura placed her hand over her mother's and gave it a squeeze.

"It'll be even harder for me to visit when I'm in Sunagakure."

"That will just make your return even more exciting."

Sakura released her mother's hand, her expression suddenly morose. "I don't plan on coming back for quite a while, though." She hadn't told her mother the exact reason she was leaving the country, and to her mother's credit she hadn't asked.

Takara flapped her hands dismissively, before briefly turning away to swipe at her teary cheeks.

"But just think of all the fascinating new people you'll meet in the meantime!" she beamed. "And you know, if you do find yourself wanting to come home, your old bedroom has just recently become vacant."

Kakashi had waited patiently in his hospital room for the entire duration of his recovery. Sneaking out at night now seemed a foolhardy idea that only led to trouble. When he had finally received the all-clear and been released, he felt like a prisoner that had been away from the real world too long to feel comfortable in it. He didn't know what to do with his time, or where he could go that didn't remind him of her. Battle and bloodshed could usually be pushed from the front of his mind when he was home, far away from the nameless places where they had happened. But Umeko seemed all around him; the bridge, the clearing, even places he often visited like Ichiraku ramen, were now haunted by his imaginary friend.

That was what she felt like; a person who had never really existed outside his perception of her. And yet, Tsunade's words had reminded him that even though Umeko wasn't real, somebody out there was. Somebody had talked to him, shared with him, and made him feel something for them. The problem was, he couldn't know if those feelings were real, or also imaginary.

After a while, the restlessness was too much, and he felt that it would be best to simply face it head-on. It would be cathartic, he decided, to retrace his steps and go to The Blossom for the second and last time in his life.

There was a different atmosphere from the last time he had been there. Apparently the enemy nin who'd attacked he and Umeko had been traced back to that restaurant and then flushed out. Hence, both the patrons and Takara, the owner, seemed to have been given new life.

Takara greeted him warmly when he arrived, and waved him over to sit at the bar. This was sufficiently different from the 'private corner' he had been ushered into when she had thought he was on a date, and so he accepted gratefully.

"What can I get you, dear?" She asked.

'Pork buns," he replied without thinking.

She winked. "They're the best in Konoha, you know. Once you've had a taste, you never forget it."

Kakashi tried to keep his expression neutral as she disappeared through the side door to the kitchen. After a few minutes she returned with a heaping tray of steaming buns and sat it before him.

He thanked her, picking up his chopsticks and prodding one half-heartedly. His appetite seemed suddenly diminished.

Takara, the perfect bartender, sensed his mood and gently probed him for more information that she might gossip about later. "Something on your mind? I notice you don't have that pretty girl with you this time…"

It would be too rude to get up and walk away, so he continued to play absentmindedly with his food, avoiding her eye.

"Would it be too much of a cliché to say 'it's complicated'?"

Takara laughed. "There's a lot of that going around I fear. Complications, I mean. Being a bartender, I see a lot of long faces like yours. But you know the old saying: if you love something, set it free."

Kakashi remained silent.

"…and if it comes back to you then great, and if not then it probably wasn't meant to be. Or something like that. Hey, my daughter does that."

Kakashi looked up. "Does what?"

She pointed at the pork bun he had turned inside out and refilled. "That thing with the buns. She said it makes them taste better."

The silver-haired jounin stared at the woman. Every noise in the restaurant became little more than buzzing in his ears.

"Your daughter…?"

Takara smiled indulgently and pointed over his shoulder. Turning, he saw the mural on the far wall, of a beautiful young woman with familiar cherry pink hair.