Haruno Sakura burst into the hospital room, slightly out of breath from sprinting all the way from Ino's flower shop and climbing six flights of stairs. The sight beyond the door was quite underwhelming, but years of medical training with the best of the best taught her not to let out a sigh of relief just yet.

"Sakura-chan?" Came her teammate's voice. It was so unlike him, so unsure of what was going on. Bandages were wrapped around his entire head, this time not even sparing the eyes. Still, his sunshine blond hair managed to peek out from in between the wrapping.

Sakura didn't answer. The signs were telling, and she could only confirm with the clipboard at the foot of the bed. She recalled doing this before, in the same emotional state as she was now, as she examined Naruto's Rasenshuriken-destroyed arm. But this time, it was his much more fragile head that was at danger.

"Sakura-chan, why am I in the hospital?"

She still didn't reply, her mind too engrossed in the information on the paper before her. There was very obvious brain damage. It also detailed of how the jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi had been caught in an ambush with Kabuto, and how he managed to grab a hold of Naruto's head and slam it into the ground. In her sensei's frantic writing, she quickly added in a note of how a young Naruto was subjected to an attack from Kabuto that severed his arteries with no external damage.

"Naruto..." Sakura began hesitantly. There was something that she had to confirm for herself. "What is the last thing you remember before you ended up in the hospital?"

Naruto's lips turned upwards, the way they always did when he was deep in thought. "Mmm... you were helping me study for the Chuunin Exam, and then I..." He blushed.

His pink haired teammate would have as well, had it not been for the fact that that was just over a month ago. Tears began threatened to spill over her eyes, but she had long promised herself that she would no longer cry in front of Naruto. Steadying her trembling hand, she reached for the pen and wrote:

Amnesia - retrograde or anterograde unknown. Possible damage to explicit and implicit memory encoding.

"Oh! Is that you, Sakura-chan?" Naruto repeated once again. The atmosphere in the room took a turn for the worse. "Where am I? Am I in the hospital?"

"Yes," She replied after a deadening silence. Even after the long time she took to steady her voice, she feared the worry in her voice had slipped out. She crossed out some her notes and continued to write, her penmanship much less legible:

Anterograde amnesia. Unable to encode explicit memory. Once patient lost focus he could not recall conversations prior. Most likely damage is to the hippocampus.

"Why?" Naruto whispered. He had caught on to the lack of casualness they shared today.

"You... fell, idiot." Sakura said. It sounded forced and she could have sworn she saw Naruto tense. "You hit your nose, and it broke."

His hand subconsciously reached for his nose. "I healed it," Sakura interjected before he could make contact with the perfectly intact nose. Naruto's hand dropped back into his lap. "I... I'm going to go report that to Tsunade-shishou."

"Sakura-chan! Wait!"

She didn't wait. She felt absolutely terrible for not waiting, but she knew she had to get out of there for as soon as she closed the door she fell to the ground, weeping uncontrollably. Naruto would never be able to remember anything past that stupid fake date. He would forever think that the girl he liked for so long was mad him for kissing her forehead in front of her parents, when in reality it had made her aware of her feelings for him. He was doomed to believe the girl of his dreams was out of his reach, maybe even that she still bore romantic feelings for Sasuke.

Naruto didn't deserve this.

Every day after that, she would visit Naruto in his ward, which had become his residence indefinitely. He couldn't live on his own anymore, after all. He would greet her the same way every day, and ask why he was in the hospital when he felt fine. Sakura stopped answering after a while.

Naturally, Sakura was given the task of being Naruto's personal medic-nin, and she kept to her task diligently. On the fifth day, she brought him a book.

"You'll be discharged soon," She lied. It had become effortless after saying it so many times. "But until then, you still have to study for the Chuunin Exams."

Naruto groaned, but accepted the book anyway. "Page 336, question number eight. It's the hardest one I could find, and it's pretty similar to the ones on the Chuunin Exams," Sakura explained.

The blond followed instructions, and with much guidance from Sakura, solved the question on his second try. Sakura proceeded to pretend she needed to attend to other patients, and left him to his own thoughts for the rest of the day.

The following day, Sakura handed him the same textbook, and asked him to do the same question. He completed the question in half the time, with no assistance from his teammate.

"Good job, Naruto!" Sakura had said. "Are you sure you haven't done this question before?"

"Positive," He had replied, unaware of how much the confirmation had darkened his green-eyed medic's mood.

That day, Sakura had written the words: Implicit memory is intact.

On the eighth day, Sakura had been recording her former team mate's (he had been relieved of his shinobi duties) behaviour when he snatched the clipboard from her hands. She had briefly fought for its return, but Naruto was fully healed save for the permanent damage to his brain and easily overpowered her.

Sakura trembled as Naruto exploded with the information he would be unable to retain as soon as he lost his focus.

"Amnesia? I don't have amnesia! I remember everything - you're Sakura-chan, Granny Tsunade is the Fifth Hokage, and my name is Uzumaki Naruto! I can't possibly have amne-"

"You have anterograde amnesia, Naruto," Sakura said abruptly. "It means you can't make memories past a certain point. Your ability to encode implicit memory is still intact - which means you can still learn new things, but you won't be able to declare that you've learned it."

Naruto was uncharacteristically stunned into silence. Sakura kept her resolve to continue, since he deserved to know, even for a fleeting moment.

"You were in a fight with Kabuto. He did the same thing he did to your heart when you were twelve, but to your brain, remember? It's almost certain now that the damage was to your hippocampus, because that's where your explicit memories are temporarily stored.

"I asked you to do a math question the other day. You did it with my help. The next day, you were able to do it by yourself even though you had no conscious memory of doing it before. That's how I know you still have the capability to store implicit memory."

The amnesiac didn't say anything, letting the information sink in. "I won't remember this either," He affirmed. There was a lack of doubt in his voice. He was broken, and in turn, Sakura's heart broke as well.

"I'm so sorry, Naruto," She sobbed and clung to him.

They stayed like that for a while, Naruto remarkably being able to retain his memories for the entire time. Neither of them wanted the moment to pass on, but the silence combined with the night laid a heavy weight on their eyelids, and nobody could say who fell asleep first.

After that night, Naruto no longer asked why he was in the hospital. He still wondered, Sakura could see it in his eyes, but he never asked. She theorized that it was because his amygdala - the part of the brain responsible for emotions, particularly fear conditioning - was still intact. Her heart ached as she realized that his subconscious was afraid of hurting her again.

Late one night, as Sakura laid in bed thinking about Naruto's condition, she wondered if he would be able to retain the procedural memory that she returned his feelings.

He would never be able to say it out loud, but at least a part of him would know.

Two weeks after Sakura had been assigned as Naruto's personal medic, she entered the room with resolve. She would try it. She wouldn't ever know if it had worked, but it had to be worth a shot.

"Hey, Sakura-chan!" The blond chirped, sitting on the edge of his hospital bed.

She avoided his gaze, the one that held so many layers that he himself was not aware of. One layer restrained him from asking why he was in the hospital, another that showed his exhaustion from repeating the same motions day after day, and another that simply wondered why he hadn't been discharged yet.

"Naruto..." Sakura breathed. How did one go about this? Naruto's gaze was fixated on her now, there was no turning back. "About that day at Ichiraku's..."

The amnesiac blond tried to interject, but his teammate continued. "It got me thinking. And I realized that I like you. I might even love you, if it weren't-"

"What about Sasuke?" He couldn't help but interrupt. His face was a combination of hope and disbelief.

"This isn't like last time, Naruto," Sakura shuddered at her pitiful confession in the snow. She had done it to protect him, but she only hurt them both in the process. "I still care about him, I still want to save him, but I've lost him and I know what it's like to lose you, and it's completely different. You've stood by me through everything, protected me... I..."

"You've lost me?"

Tears were streaming down her porcelain face. "You have amnesia, Naruto. It's been a month and a half since our date at Ichiraku's, and I feel absolutely terrible that that will be your last explicit memory. That you'll always think that I'll never kiss you back, when-"

Suddenly, his arms were around her protectively. She returned the hug, her tears staining his once sterile hospital gown. "It's okay, Sakura-chan. I'm happy," he said into her ear.

His lips met her forehead for the second time. "You have such a large, charming forehead... It makes me want to kiss it," He said softly.

The kunoichi, who had been trained in the art of surprise, stiffened. "That... how..." She stumbled.

"You can't graduate from the Academy without being able to do a Henge Jutsu."

Sakura yanked on his gown, pulling him down to her level. Instead of her forehead this time, his lips met her lips. When they parted, Naruto had a radiant expression on his face, his gentle smile ready to split into an exhilarated grin.

Two weeks and one day after Sakura had been assigned as Naruto's personal medic, Sakura arrived later than she usually did. Logically, she knew she had nothing to fear, as Naruto would not retain any memories of the day before. But still, her heart hammered against her chest and she felt a sliver of sadness knowing that she would be the only one to remember their first kiss. After staring at the handle for a good ten to twelve seconds, she entered Naruto's ward.

"Sakura-chan!" His voice was especially exuberant today as he barrelled into her.

She was too shocked to return the kiss he gave her, she just stared in utter disbelief.

"Sakura-chan?"

"How... you have... hippocampus... the..." Sakura had never found it this hard to form a coherent sentence.

"You of all people, Sakura-chan," Naruto chided. "Should know how fast I heal."

Nobody in Konoha had ever been thankful of the nine-tailed beast that resided in Naruto's body as much as Sakura was.