State of Shock

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I always loved children. They were innocent, easy to understand. They didn't judge me like others tended to do. They waited for me to stop stutter around them, they waited for me to get used to them. Somehow, I could never understand why shinobi had such a time accepting me, when kids I didn't know were so patient.

Sakura's child was no exception. It was a cute boy with big, black eyes and dark hair. He didn't look much like his mother, but I guessed that he would turn into a handsome man like his father.

Sasuke, the handsome prodigy that had stolen the love of my life. I had nothing against him or his personality. His choices and his past didn't speak to me – I could care less what he had done and why. I only started disliking him when Sakura told me what no one else had.

She was the only one brave enough to come out and tell me what she and everyone else knew.

That the Uchiha was having an affair with the future Hokage – my Naruto. I noticed small changes in him when Sasuke came back. He stopped going to Ichiraku's and he talked lower than before, instead of yelling out what he intended to say.

And then, one day, he just stopped speaking. I was just as surprised as the rest of the village, but I couldn't say that it was shocking. If anyone had bothered to look as close as I had done, they might not have been as stunned as they were.

Some thought that it was good change – who really wanted to hear Naruto's loud voice in the morning? I did. I loved Naruto's voice. It showed us all his energetic side, rubbing off his enthusiasm on other ninja.

So when he stopped speaking, he also ate less and less. It came in waves – one week, he would eat almost regularly, three meals a day. The next week, he would be back to eat nearly nothing.

He drank a lot of water, I noticed, to keep himself up and about. His clothes only got bigger and bigger, Naruto stopped bouncing against the walls 24/7.

Some said he matured.

I said he was getting weaker. The weeks he ate nothing, he barely left his house. The weeks he ate three small meals were good weeks – weeks we all bathed in. Our favourite blonde seemed almost normal then, grinning at everyone and listening carefully to those who spoke to him.

I live for those weeks.

To Be Continued