"How about these, Ino-san?" I pointed to what I thought were cherry tomatoes inside of the fruit market.

Ino looked at me with a weird look. "Sasori, that's not even cherry tomatoes." She giggled at me, and I laughed a little, too.

"You're the expert here. Tell me which are which."

The blond-haired girl tugged me by my cloak towards a bunch of bit-sized tomatoes.

"These are cherry tomatoes, Sasori-kun. You can tell they are because they don't look like that." Ino pointed to the cranberries I actually thought were tomatoes and laughed. "Do you get it now?"

I nodded and said, "Yeah, Ino. I get it now. So how many do you want?"

She patted the pocket where my wallet was, and said, "Enough that will make you pay a lot. How much you got?" Before I could answer, she slipped my wallet out of my pocket and began to open it.

"Hey!" I laughed before reaching for it. Ino pulled it away and opened my wallet with a sly grin.

"Aww! Look at us when we were younger." I looked over her shoulder at the picture of us when we were around 10 and officially became friends. I was sticking my tongue out playfully at Sakura and hold the bunny ears up behind Ino's head. Ino was laughing cheerfully while trying to push my hand away. My crush turned and asked, "You kept this for 6 years?"

"Umm…" I smiled nervously while rubbing the back of my neck.

Ino laughed and hugged my waist, making me try (but fail epically) at hiding a small blush. "You're such a softy, Sasori!" She kept laughing.

"Can I finally get me wallet back?" I laughed.

"Sure, softy." She wiped her laughing tears from her eyes and passed me back my wallet.

I walked up to the counter with 3 full containers of cherry tomatoes and said to the old lady clerk, "Just these 3 containers please."

The clerk nodded and she took my 12 yins. A smile swept across the old lady's face as she said, "You two seem like a lovely young couple."

Ino and I looked to each other quickly. Ino then turned away at the sight of my face and blushed hard. All I said to the lady was, "You can say that," with a smirk.

"So what's next on the fun training agenda after this, Sasori?" Ino joked as we sat on the grass of the training grounds.

I caught the cherry tomato she threw to me with my mouth and asked, "What do you mean?"

"Well, this wasn't much of a training. All we did was about 20 minutes of fighting, then we got the tomatoes."

I threw a tomato to her mouth and said, "It hasn't been much of a training, Y'know? I mean, I beat you twice without even trying." I laughed loudly before Ino tackled me to the ground. She then pinned my arms to the ground and climbed on top of me, making me laugh harder.

"You take that back," She laughed. "You know you put up a fight those five times and I beat you three times out of that!" We kept laughing until our eyes met up. It was like one of those moments in Make Out Paradise where "the two lovers fall into the gaze of each other's eyes," but I didn't even gag at the sound of romance. It was actually enjoyable.

Ino then came to her senses and jumped off of me. I sat up next to her and we looked around the scenery before Ino asked, "Did you really mean that?"

I looked to her and jerked an eyebrow. "Mean what?"

She blushed hard and said, "Y'know," She looked away before continuing. "That we're a couple?"

Tell her! My inner self was talking to me again. Tell her how you feel before it's too late!

"Ino, I-"

"INO-SAN!"

"Aww, damn. What is it, Sakura?" Ino stood up quickly in front of the panting pink haired girl.

"Seriously, what is it?" You just messed up the best moment, I thought to myself.

Sakura panted one last time before blurting, "SASUKE-KUN IS BACK!"

"WHAT? YAY!" It wasn't long before Ino and Sakura began jumping around holding hands in a circle. They finally noticed what they were doing and pulled away from each other with disgusted looks.

"Any…ways…" Sakura continued, "He was here since yesterday! Naruto and I found him today in his old apartment reading a forbidden scroll."

"We have to go see him, now!"

My heart was crushed. One of my friends who hasn't been here for a long time just happens to come back, and the girl I'm in love with falls head over heels for him. Sure, I was supposed to feel happy because Sasuke was back, but I wasn't. At all.

Ino and Sakura left me in the training grounds on the grass with a bunch of cherry tomatoes.

"She didn't even say see you later or anything?" I grabbed a full container of cherry tomatoes and threw them all the way into the stream nearby. Angry, hot tears streamed down my face at I walked back home. I've never cried like this before, not even when I found out my grandmother was dead.

"Get the hell out, Shikamaru!" I found Shikamaru on my kitchen table sitting criss-cross with his eyes closed. "What're you even doing here?"

Shikamaru opened one eye, then stretched. "Thanks a lot for waking me from my nice dream about sleep."

"Answer the question."

"Okay, okay. My mom kicked me out of the house again for being so lazy. I was tired, so I came to your house. Your door was open. Typical of you, especially since there's a robber going around the village."

My eyebrows went up. "Robber?"

"Yeah." My lazy friend climbed off of my table and yawned. "They started their reign of terror yesterday and already robbed about 10 house in one night. The ANBU are working on finding them, but the crook covered up his footsteps nicely." Shikamaru looked at me and said, "Are you… crying?"

My face grew hard as I said, "No. Now get out."

Shikamaru headed for the door and said, "Alright, alright, sheesh."

As soon as the door closed, more tears poured out of my eyes. I sat down on the edge of my bed and silently wept to the sound of pitter-patter at my window. It was raining at the perfect time, when I was crying.

"Yeah, that lightens the mood," I said sarcastically. I pulled off my cloak and shirt and threw them to the floor along with my sandals. For the rest of the night, I sat there thinking why I was doing this to myself before drifting off into a deep slumber.