Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto

A/N: haha... Someone asked "if the mansion is so big, how come there's only one bathroom?" (y'know, from chapter one?) haha you got me stumped on that one. Seriously I never even considered it. Maybe it's the only bathroom in the part of the mansion they were actually living in at the time.

A/N: Also, I know that the names of all Cheri's friends and who their parents are can get a bit confusing, (I'm constantly forgetting who is who these days), so I'm putting up a list to make things easier for you.

Ayame & Amaya Hyuga - twin girls, daughters of Hinata and Neji Hyuga. Amaya is the one that has a crush on Yasashiku.

Haru Hatake - oldest of three, son of Kakashi and Iruka Hatake (yes, somewhere along the line Iruka and Kakashi did get married), Haru's two younger brothers are not yet old enough to join the academy.

Kiyoshi Akimichi - son of Choji and Ino Akimichi, only sibling is a seven year old girl.

Kichi Akimichi - youngest child of Choji and Ino, older brother is Kiyoshi.

Mika Lee - daughter of Rock Lee and Sakura, I haven't decided if she has any siblings yet, she's surprisingly pretty, she has Rock Lee's glossy black hair and Sakura's normal eyebrows, she's also clumsy.

Yasashiku Nara - only child of Shikamaru Nara, mother unknown (thought to be Temari), always bored, gets detention a lot.

So, time passed as it always does. Naruto officially became Hokage as Tsunade went into "retirement" - the last anybody'd heard of her she was off gambling somewhere in the Land of the Water. Cheri ignored her family for the most part, but she went back to cleaning with a vigorous determination. Hemiko kept quiet, staying in her room for the most part whenever she wasn't in school. Neither Naruto or Sasuke had gotten pregnant yet - a thought that brought a sneer to Cheri's face whenever it crossed her mind. She also figured that her parent's hadn't had the chance to notice her ignoring them, though she'd tried to make it obvious - Naruto's new job kept them both too busy to have time for their kids anymore.

Cheri hadn't told her friends about what had happened, but most of them could tell that something had changed. They still agreed to help Cheri with the house, never questioning her about why she was now in such a hurry to get it done, but most of the time they avoided talking to or looking at her. Then came the day that Cheri could no longer put off finishing the one room - the room with the stain. ...the room where her grandparents had been killed.

And now that she knew exactly what the stain was, she had to fight back nausea when she saw it. Standing before this room reminded her all too well of the day that Sasuke had stood in the doorway with that stricken look on his face. She shook it off and, taking a breath, went on inside. Her friends followed her with a strange hesitation in their steps that hadn't been there before. They eyed the stain warily.

"What is that?" Ayame asked with her nose scrunched.

"Is that blood?!" Kiyoshi asked. "Cool!" He bent down the examine the stain closer. Yasashiku joined him silently.

Haru and Mika both looked at the stain with similar, almost horrified expressions.

"There's no chance of scrubbing it up," Cheri said casually as she absently began to wipe one of the walls, though it hardly needed it. "We're going to paint over it." After a moment she added, "Yes, it's blood."

Haru gave her a strange look, and Mika seemed as if she wanted to say something, but she kept her mouth shut. Yasashiku stood up and shrugged like he didn't care what the hell the stain was or what they were going to do with it. Kiyoshi grimaced like he was going to protest.

"Gross!" Ayame said.

"Why is there a blood stain on the floor?" Amaya finished for her.

Cheri shook her head. "You don't want to know." She sighed. "Now let's get to work."

Her friends looked reluctant to stop talking about the stain, but they did as she said and got out a fresh jar of paint. Cheri watched with her eyes hazed over as Yasashiku slowly painted over the blood stained wood.

It didn't take long to finish up the room. The floor had needed painting over, and the ceiling had needed a bit of cleaning up, but other than that there was really nothing wrong with it. The door, of course, creaked when they opened it, but most of the doors back in that part of the house did, and they could live with that. So, taking all their cleaning supplies, her friends began working on the next hallway, and Cheri gave a sigh of relief, glad that they were moving on. She did hope, however, that they wouldn't run into any similar stains in any of the rest of the rooms.

As they were in the process of working on the third and fourth rooms of the new hallway - they got finished so quickly by splitting up and tackling two rooms at a time - Hemiko joined them. Everyone popped their heads out of the doorways into the hallway as Cheri confronted sister. "Uh... I was thinking, maybe I can help?" Hemiko asked, glancing around at Cheri's friends.

Cheri looked at her suspiciously. "Why?" she demanded flatly.

Hemiko looked down at the floor. "Well... I've just been thinking a lot lately. And I was thinking that I should do... whatever I can. I feel like I need to."

Cheri scoffed and rolled her eyes, walking back into one of the rooms as if she were going to deny her sister the opportunity to work. However, a second later she reappeared with a bucket and mop, and shoved them into Hemiko's hands. "Start on the hallway floor, okay? We're working on the rooms. When you get finished with that I'll give you some rags and stuff to clean the walls with."

Hemiko didn't argue. In fact, she looked grateful. She smiled a little at her sister. "Thanks, Cheri," she said. Slowly, she got to work.

Cheri was as confused by this as her friends were, so when they turned to her questioningly, she had no answers for them. But she wondered idly how long it would take for Hemiko to give it up - if Cheri remembered correctly, her sister didn't exactly like getting her hands dirty.

Cheri and her friends soon got used to Hemiko being around whenever they cleaned, though nobody really talked to her. Hemiko didn't seem to care, though. She just stayed quiet and did whatever Cheri told her to do. Other than that, nothing changed. Hemiko began going out with her friends after school again, but she never abandoned her duties at the house. Cheri kept cleaning and ignoring her fathers.

Then one day, Mika and Haru stayed to talk with Cheri after everyone else had left. Hemiko watched questioningly as if she wanted to stay too, but Cheri gave her a look that sent her on her way. "What's up, guys?" Cheri asked warily.

Her two friends shared a look. "We've been meaning to ask you..." Mika started. She didn't continue.

"What is it?" Cheri asked.

"Well," Haru started. "You know that one room we cleaned up a few days ago? The one with the blood on the floor?" Cheri felt a little of the color drain from her face. She nodded, but didn't say a word. "You know what that was all about, right? Your parents told you what happened here?"

Cheri stared at the two of them for a long moment. "How do you know about that?"

They shared another look. "My mother told me," Mika said. "She knows a lot about Sasuke."

Cheri's eyes scanned the recently cleaned floor. Yeah, she would, she thought. They used to tell me about Sakura's old crush on Sasuke. Of course by "they" she meant her fathers.

Haru spoke next. "I heard my dads talking about it once."

Didn't both of his fathers used to be my dads' teachers? Cheri wondered.

"I don't think any of the others know about it," Mika said after a moment of silence.

"Good," Cheri said. "I don't want them to know. They might get freaked out."

"Well... it is a little weird," Haru said.

"You're telling me," Cheri agreed with a grimace.

"Did you just find out about it?" Mika asked. "You started acting different and everything. And then, you seemed like you didn't want to go in that room for a while, the one with the blood..."

"Yeah," Cheri snapped. "I just found out about it. Apparently our fathers feel that Hemiko and I aren't... important enough to tell things to." She knew she sounded childish, but still, Cheri couldn't help but be mad.

Mika patted her comfortingly on the arm. Cheri sighed. "Just don't tell anyone else, okay?"

Mika and Haru both agreed. They left. Cheri stood there in the empty hallway for a long time after they were gone, feeling more alone than she ever had in her entire life.

Cleaning of the house was almost done, and it surprised the hell out of Cheri. Sure, they'd been working on it for months already, but it was a big house - a mansion. Was a few months enough to get the whole thing finished with? Just a few more hallways were left, then maybe a few more touchups here and there, and they would be finished for good. Cheri felt kind of sad about it in fact. She'd miss having her friends around so much.

As far as family issues went, Hemiko was still around, helping with the cleaning everyday. Cheri was sure, though, that her sister was bursting with impatience - ready for all this to be done. She never complained though, which was good, or else Cheri would have just told her to get the hell over it - she'd committed to something and she would stick with it dammit.

Also, Cheri could tell that she was worrying Naruto by still not speaking to either he or Sasuke, but at the moment her important-Hokage-father just didn't have time to deal with it, so she went on with her life as if she didn't notice that anything was wrong.

Then one day, things changed. The date had snuck up on Cheri; the very last day of school at the ninja academy. They'd be graduating, and in a few weeks afterward, they'd all be presented with their ninja headbands and split into their teams. In a way, it was kind of saddening, and in another, exciting. Cheri couldn't wait until the moment when she could be referred to as a true ninja of Konoha. She'd always looked up to her fathers, had always wanted to wear their headbands - though they'd never let her.

And it was over just like that. The very last day. Her friends all smiled tentatively at one another as the school day let out for the final time, and silently Cheri said her goodbyes to the place that she had attended for so long. It was time to move on and do something new.

The next day while cleaning, (though Hemiko wasn't with them that day, it was the first time she'd skipped out), Cheri and her friends discovered something they hadn't expected. An ordinary door near the end of one hallway opened up to a flight of concrete stairs in the dark. Her friends, standing all huddled up behind her, whispered amongst themselves, wondering if they should explore. "It's probably haunted," Yasashiku said offhandedly. Mika squealed dramatically and clung to one of Ayame's arms. An expression of faint horror crossed Ayame's features as she stared down into the darkness. "What if it is haunted?" Amaya asked, clinging to Ayame's other arm.

Cheri felt a bit disappointed in her friends - she'd thought they'd been a little more mature than that. "Come on, you guys," she encouraged them, not bothering to hide the annoyance she felt. "It's worth investigating."

And yet as Cheri planted her foot on the first stone step, she felt a shiver go up her spine. The darkness consumed the rest of the stairs below - she hesitated to take the second step. Cheri knew more than her friends how well this house could be haunted.

Then, she shook it off, and turned to take a lit oil lamp from Haru. Together, she and her friends began to make their way down into the darkness.

Even with several lit lamps, the darkness felt suffocating. Nothing was visible except for the next few steps down, and if Cheri didn't have one of her hands on the wall next to her while she walked, she would swear that the two or three steps in front of her were all that existed - even as she walked on, there was never anything more but those two or three steps. Determined to reach the bottom of the stair, she kept going, but she felt as if she were walking on a few never-ending self-replacing steps. There were no sounds except for her friends' heavy breathing, and Mika's occasional stumbling. Finally, Cheri paused once as the thought crossed her mind - what if they never reached the bottom? What if there was no bottom to reach? Impossible thoughts, but down there in the darkness she couldn't quite contain the icy fear she felt in her stomach. If it weren't for her friends' anxious faces, still huddled together in a group behind her, she would have turned and ran right then and there.

Taking a breath to calm herself, Cheri kept walking.

Down the next few steps, she was suddenly glad she hadn't stopped. The tiny light of the lamp in her hand now revealed a smooth, concrete floor. Feeling somewhat relieved, even though she was still surrounded by darkness on all sides, Cheri stepped down from the last step and turned to her friends. "Okay," she said, and her voice seemed unusually loud. "Let's split up and see what this place is."

There was no need to walk very far, though. They were in a narrow hallway, and the stone walls were as smooth as the floor. "Maybe we should turn around," Mika suggested, her voice meek and shaking slightly. The girl was looking off down the stone hallway - there was nothing to be seen beyond the darkness, and Cheri had a feeling that this hallway, like the steps before it, would also seem never ending if they attempted to walk it.

Cheri examined her friends' faces, and she could see that they were all as ready as Mika to turn around and go back upstairs. She took another deep breath. "No," Cheri said. "If we turn back now, coming this far already would have been pointless." Then she paused and added, "If any of you want to go back up, you can, but I'm going on." She sounded determined, but she felt afraid.

Trying hard not to let her nervousness show, Cheri turned away from her friends and started down the hallway. Once again, they let her lead the way. None of them broke away from the group to go back upstairs - nobody wanted to trek the staircase alone. "Feel the walls for a light switch while we're walking," Cheri advised her friends.

Thankfully, it was not a very long hallway, or else Cheri would have gone insane. At the very end wall was a wooden door. No one had found any light switch. The door looked very old, and the handle was dusty and rusted. Cheri was used to the dust by now though, so she didn't hesitate before she reached out and yanked the heavy door open. Out of nowhere she had felt the strangest urge of determination to just get this all over with.

The door creaked slowly open. There was nothing beyond - just blackness. More reluctant now, Cheri went in, followed by her nervous friends.