"Hn. Idiots."
Sasuke rolled his eyes at the results of his teammates' carelessness. Of course Naruto would manage to break more than half of his dishes. Of course Sakura would manage to drop her bowl of soup on his living room carpet.
The Uchiha sighed and rubbed his floor with a rag once more, grumbling when the stain of tomato soup refused to go away. How did he, the shinobi prodigy of his generation, get stuck in this situation? It all had started with a innocent, and clean, team dinner. At his house, of all places.
Naruto had teased Sakura a bit ("You begged me to bring Sasuke back!" "Oh, that time? Sakura-chan's face was redder than a tomato! By the way, don't you like tomatoes, teme?") and things escalated quickly after that.
So it all resulted in their team dinner ending early and Sakura apologizing countless times before finally leaving.
As Sasuke gave his carpet a final scrub, he caught his eye on a small, red object underneath the couch. Frowning, he picked it up and looked at it closely. A book?
The cover was plain and it seemed to be a notebook of some sort. Sasuke raised an eyebrow and turned to the first page of the book, when familiar, sweeping handwriting came into his line of vision—
The Diary of Haruno Sakura. Sasuke scoffed in disapproval. Only Sakura would do such a worthless, time-consuming thing like keeping a diary. And he thought she had finally grown up. He gave a small "tch" of annoyance and turned to the next page. As much as he hated to admit it, he was… curious. What did that kunoichi write about in her diary, anyways?
"Probably stupid things," he muttered to himself, scanning her first diary entry.
'So Ino gave me this diary for my birthday. I know I shouldn't have accepted it from her, since we're rivals and all that, but she ran away before I could hand it back to her. Not before sticking her tongue out at me, though.
That pig.
Well, anyways, so here I am. Tomorrow, I'm planning to give chocolates to Sasuke-kun to ask him on a date… Maybe. I hope he likes sweets. And maybe he just might remember my birthday this time!'
A smirk settled on his lips. He was right. Stupid. He guessed this was during their Academy days. He didn't remember much from then. Turning to the next entry, he was a little surprised at how brief it was.
'Sasuke-kun hates sweets. And he doesn't do birthdays.'
And this is how Uchiha Sasuke came to spend the next two hours reading all of Sakura's journal entries, from the most embarassing to the most ridiculous. He couldn't believe Sakura had kept this journal for so long. He couldn't see the reason behind it. She had recorded their genin years in more than half of the tiny book:
'I'M IN SASUKE-KUN'S TEAM, SHANNARO! But then I also got stuck with that baka, Naruto…'
'We went on a mission to capture someone's cat, for kami's sake…'
'There's something going on between Sasuke-kun and Naruto. I don't know what it is, but I'm worried…'
Sakura had always been so worried about them. Sometimes she worried too much, and it unnerved Sasuke to see someone who actually cared so much for him. Who valued his life over her own.
"Hn." Sasuke huffed to himself as he turned to the second-to-last page of the diary. The first things he noticed were the strange crinkles and stains in the paper, like someone had cried over the page.
'He left. I did everything I could, but…'
His eyes widened slightly. So this was the night he had left Konoha. He could remember her frantic confession to him with those tears running down her face, he could remember being swayed—just for a moment—that he could be satisfied with his team in Konoha, he could remember knocking her out and placing her ever so gently on that bench…
'Everything I said to him last night was true. It will never be the same.'
The entry ended there, with more tear stains and ink smudges. And that was the end. No more entries. The last page was a blank one. Sasuke sat back and closed his eyes. An overwhelming feeling of guilt, of some kind of regret, clenched his heart. He was the cause of her happiness, and the cause of her pain. He had made her wait so long. He had been the idiot.
So he creased his brow, grabbed a stray pen, and began to write.
.
.
.
Sakura heard a sharp knock on her door just as she brought her steaming cup of tea to her lips. Frowning, she walked on light feet to see who in the world was visiting her so late at night. After that disaster of a team dinner at Sasuke's apartment, she was not sure that she wanted to face even more trouble.
She opened the door hesistantly, a forced smile ready on her lips.
"Why so late—"
She froze. There was no one there. Then who had knocked?
Her sharp eyes scanned her surroundings for a trace of her mysterious visitor. They caught on something red lying on her doorstep. 'My diary…?
She narrowed her eyes in confusion. She was sure she had kept that thing safely in her purse at all times…
'Huh… It must have fallen out…'
Picking it up gently, Sakura rifled through the book experimentally, her hand freezing when she reached the last page. Her green eyes grew wide with both shock and understanding and a small smile crept its way up her features.
For where there was a blank page before, an all-too-familiar scrawl graced its space.
'Thank you.'