Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or its characters.

A/N: My apologies! It took me quite a while to flesh out his chapter, and it's pretty rushed, but I hope it'll still be enjoyable or readable, at least :P

Also, I have nothing against corncobs.

Review if you'd like to, and enjoy :)

At the End of the Corridor

Chapter 3

It had already started before Sakura was halfway up the stairs.

"SAKURA! WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT MATH TEST FROM YESTERDAY?!"

Sakura felt her fists clench instinctively. Count! She urged herself.

One…

She took two steps a time, the sound of her stomps resounding throughout the house.

"Haruno Sakura! Don't tell me you failed again!"

Two… Three…

There was no 'again' to begin with!

Sakura felt her eyebrows knitting together gradually and her lips pressing against each other into a very, very thin line, with the sole purpose of holding back the torrent of retorts that now threatened to overflow.

"Why can't you do anything properly! Let me tell you, you've been nothing but a lazy slob since the beginning of the year!"

Four… Five…

And you've been nothing but a waste of space.

"…look at Hinata! Her grades are far better than yours! And that's because she puts in effort! Don't complain about your lack of sleep when she's been sleeping at 3 a.m. everyday! It's that lazy attitude of yours…"

Sakura reached the top of the staircase before she knew it. The bold child tuned out on her mother's nagging and made a dash for her room, the expression on her face screaming "Salvation!"

To heck with her mom—it was time to get down to writing business.

After an hour or so, the only child of the Haruno household was completely, utterly convinced that she had as much talent in writing as a corncob. She used to believe she had had as much talent in writing as a naruto (the fishcake with the spiral pattern found in ramen, not the friend), but now she had been reduced to a corncob.

A mere corncob.

(And how the hell was that supposed to make sense? Sakura never made any sense when it came to writing.)

Papers, crushed mercilessly into tattered, deformed balls, lay strewn all over the room, ranging from usefulness levels of 'Nope' to 'Time to try defying gravity' (aka take a flying leap off a cliff).

Sakura had tried, oh how she had tried, to unsuccessfully write a reply note. Her vocabulary was about as wide as two inches, and she was probably trying too hard—way too hard to come across as the nice, demure-sounding kid she had sounded like based on the first note.

A groan escaping her lips, Sakura threw her pen and stack of papers down, allowing the latter to scatter like fallen flower petals in the spring breeze.

Sakura cringed at the thought. Flower petals? Spring breeze? Gee, it seemed that all that note-writing had served to eliminate about 90% of her brain cells.

She collapsed onto the floor in a mix of lethargy and confusion. What to write what to write what to write—her fingertips brushed against one of the balled-up papers of uselessness. Out of pure boredom, she unfurled the tattered thing and read it, because she honestly couldn't remember what she had written (why would she want to, anyway).

"I know this sounds clichéd, but I'm experiencing so much hardship now. Sometimes I just feel on the verge of a horrible meltdown and—"

There was the sharp sound of paper being shredded.

Yep, she would try defying gravity anytime sooner than this.

Maybe it was better to write something as herself… it wasn't like the other person knew her identity… hopefully…

After a bit of stretching, Sakura leapt to her feet and sat herself down at her study desk. With much more confidence, she whipped out her pen once more and scribbled away:

"I've just traversed the depths of hell—and guess what, I made it back alive. Honestly, my mom needs a lifetime supply of duct-tape, for her mouth, that is. She wouldn't stop nagging at me…"

Was she coming across as too rebellious?

Was she being too direct?

Was she writing a bit too much?

Sakura couldn't care less.

She hadn't felt this free in ages, she hadn't allowed her thoughts to flow out neatly onto a page (or a post-it, whatever) for the last millennium or something.

She finished the message full of satisfaction, and was already fantasizing thinking about how she would stick the lovely post-it onto the board the following day.

Indeed, such were the literacy skills of a corncob.

Sakura's eyebrow twitched unnervingly.

The auditorium was stuffy and suffocating to some degree, what with the entire of Sakura's cohort packed in it.

Sakura felt her eyelids droop while Kakashi, who stood at the podium on stage, droned on and on about some stuff that she seriously couldn't get into her head.

Fiddling with the pink post-it in her pocket, she willed her eyes to open and stay that way. The ramification of snoozing in a lecture was detention, and Sakura didn't need that tainting her record.

All she wanted to do was escape this oven and get her note on the board. Was that really so hard?

With a heavy sigh, Sakura leaned back into her seat and ran the words through her mind.

"I've just traversed the depths of hell—and guess what, I made it back alive. Honestly, my mom needs a lifetime supply of duct-tape, for her mouth, that is. She wouldn't stop nagging at me…"

…And then it occurred to her that she was actually pouring her true emotions into the whole messaging thing; wasn't it supposed to be a prank?

Suddenly flustered at this thought, Sakura snatched her bag from under her seat and began rummaging for a new post-it so she could re-write everything or many just a correction tape so maybe she could just white-out everything—

Uchiha Sasuke glared at his pink-haired friend next to him. Was she a mental retard or something? Did she not know that she was creating quite the ruckus? Sasuke watched on in irritation as more and more students started staring at Sakura. Which was pretty much in his general direction as well.

Sure, Sasuke loved to be the center of attention, but not like this.

Not. Like. This.

"Stop that, you blithering idiot," the raven-haired teen hissed, because that was the only thing he could do when he tried to whisper.

Sakura paused her frantic searching and looked up. "Who, me?"

"No, Naruto." Sasuke deadpanned. Naruto from across the aisle stared at them quizzically.

"Hah." Sakura realized how much of a ruckus she was creating and quickly sat up straight in her seat, smoothing out the tangles in her hair out of habit.

Sasuke continued to make a typical insulting remark about how she was as dense as a corncob and Sakura countered with a quick "I won't be having corncobs for dinner tonight, then", which left Sasuke utterly stunned because that didn't make sense at all, and went on to speak his mind about how he felt about that statement in the most concise manner possible which was a "Tch", then Sakura got quite agitated at this and—

"Having quite the heated discussion, aren't you?"

The two adolescents froze.

Sakura, who was back-facing the owner of the voice, mouthed a swear word to Sasuke, who promptly averted his gaze, eyes narrowing in annoyance. Of all the teachers who could've caught them talking, it just had to be him.

The one and only Orochimaru.

Sakura unfroze herself and turned to face said person (or snake?).

"Uh, no, Orochimaru-sensei." Insert fake cheerful face here.

"Sssure, care to explain why you wouldn't be?" Orochimaru's tongue flicked about in a manner that wanted to make Sakura barf.

Instead she swallowed hard and came up with a wonderful excuse fit for a Biology teacher.

"My enzymes would denature?"

On her way to the detention room after school, Sakura made sure she dropped by the message board to fix on her post-it. There hadn't been time to change it, but Sakura had come to realise that maybe she didn't want to change it.

It's not like anyone would know it's me.

A small voice at the back of her head said "Excuses, excuses", but Sakura didn't give two cents worth about its existence.

… Sometimes she truly felt like it was these post-its that kept her going at all.