Sakura Haruno could safely say that being Naruko Uzumaki sucked. Absolutely fucking sucked.
The first couple days weren't that bad. Having to hold the Transformation to pretend to be Naruko was still exhausting to do for longer than a couple hours, so she mostly went for grocery runs.
Except she didn't realize just how expensive everything was. Getting fresh fruits and vegetables was a nightmare! No wonder Naruko stuck with ramen! It was annoying as hell!
The cold shoulders, the lack of smiles, the feeling of being unwelcome, didn't really sink in back then, because as far as Sakura was concerned, Naruko had earned her reputation. Being such a prankster and an annoyance to everyone around you? Of course they wouldn't want anything to do with you!
Then, it began to sink in when Sayuri took one look at her fruits and vegetables before throwing it in the garbage. That, that hurt. She might have nearly tried to punch Sayuri for wasting so much money, until Sayuri looked her dead in the face and explained that the fruits and vegetables were not edible.
To demonstrate, she sliced open one of the tomatoes, revealing the rotting insides alongside what looked like a fake shell around it.
Sakura's stomach dropped at the sight.
Naruko was a menace, a prankster, a loser, but... did Naruko really deserve to be treated like this? Was Naruko really so bad that they'd tried to kill her?
That's when the cold glares and hateful remarks in the background really began to kick in. Or the fact that the apartment, whenever they left it pretending to be Naruko, would be devastated when they returned from pretending to both be Naruko going in different directions.
Or the fact that the hot water never worked, and the cold water was smelling funky and moldy, like something had died in there. Sayuri had nearly had a fit when she came out of the shower looking ready to murder whoever fucked up her shower system, and forget drinking the water out of the tap!
Sakura felt herself getting nauseous at the sight of Sayuri opening up the tap water only for it to be red in color, and had nowhere the consistency of regular water either. It slopped out of the faucet like a gel, and the smell was horrifying. Like vomit mixed with raw chicken left to rot out in the dumpster in the Suna desert. For months.
Sayuri seemed to stare at the faucet and the cup she'd used, looked at Sakura, back at the faucet for a long moment. Silent.
"I'm going to fucking kill the owners of this complex." Sayuri said coldly, and Sakura didn't even offer a defense toward the civilians. Not anymore.
The nights weren't any better. Sayuri had woken up nearly setting the apartment on fire with her fireball jutsu, and Sakura had likewise wanted to scream, cry, and vomit.
Bed bugs. Bed bugs everywhere. The insects seemed to come out in droves at night, and the two of them were absolutely covered in bite marks as the bed bugs seemed to love the taste of blood.
Cockroaches too. Sayuri had been trying to heat up instant ramen, and could hear the sounds of something cracking in the microwave. She opened the microwave to see what looked like a lot of dead cockroaches in her now definitely not edible instant ramen.
Needless to say, neither one of them bothered trying to use the oven, with Sayuri joking darkly that the oven was probably rigged to blow up if they used it anyway.
After the first few days, Sakura was finally able to be Naruko outside in full time, and that was an experience, to put it lightly.
The glares and cold shoulders from the civilians was one thing, but the absolute dismissal of her fellow shinobi struck Sakura as even more hurtful. Old retired shinobi that she'd never met would get this cold distant look in their eyes, looking at her if picturing how to kill her and get away with it. The younger shinobi were kind, but distant, as if trying to avoid being associated with her, as if her existence would stain their reputation.
Sakura felt like a part of herself wanted to curl up and die. It was one thing to be treated like this for something you deserved, but from people she never met? From the people she had once happily called friends? The dismissive gaze in Ino's face, like she was a particularly annoying piece of garbage, really made Sakura almost want to tear off the Transformation and scream at Ino.
Almost.
Sayuri nearly stabbed someone when she found them trying to pickpocket her when she was Naruko on her shift, and the civilian had backed off once he realized that Naruko looked out for blood. The horror and terror on the civilian's face almost made up for the fact that Sayuri had admitted that it made her want to throw up afterwards.
Itsuki had forced Sayuri to watch as Itsuki killed every single family member, every civilian, every shinobi. Every child, every infant. The same look of absolute terror and horror on their faces, their lips trying to move to ask Itsuki why she had done this, only to drop cold to the ground without an answer, their blood spraying and coloring the empty grey world of Tsukuyomi. Seeing the same look on the civilian, just from Sayuri losing her temper while pretending to be Naruko, had deeply shaken Sayuri.
The two had made it a point to apologize to Naruko when they saw her before the next mission. No one deserved to be treated like this, especially when Sayuri connected the dots and told Sakura with a look of horror on her face that Naruko never said anything because to her, this was normal. Naruko grew up like this.
Sakura tried to picture that this was her whole life. No family. No friends. No comforts. The bed bugs. The cockroaches. The broken microwave that stopped working a week and a half in. The water likely being so biologically harmful that she had been tempted to bottle some of it and test it for new poisons/toxins to use against enemies outside of the Land of Fire.
'I would rather die. I would rather die than live like this.'
Sayuri would say that being Naruko Uzumaki, was shitty and kind of boring.
Yeah, the civilians treated her like shit, but Sayuri honestly didn't appreciate when they tried to kiss her ass when she was Sayuri Uchiha out of pity either. Yeah, some of the older retired shinobi gave her the creeps, those icy cold gazes of 'I'm thinking of a dozen ways to kill you, I just need to figure out how to get away with it' reminded her too much of Itsuki on the night of the massacre. Yeah, bed bugs and cockroaches in the apartment, along with everything else in the apartment, was absolutely disgusting to deal with.
The real pain was just how empty this village felt. Nothing to do. Nowhere to go. She couldn't train because, for the life of her, she actually hadn't seen Naruko go out and train. Certainly not in any of the public training grounds, and the less said about trying to train with the extremely overpriced equipment and goods, the better. Naruko had no books, well, she had one book. The Tale of the Gutsy Ninja, was a rather pitiful book. No actual useful thing in there aside from the fact that the main character's name was Naruto, and that the whole book was about determination. In one's life and one's goals. Sayuri had gotten careless and left it out one day in the apartment, and returned to it utterly destroyed, the pages torn out, the book absolutely ruined, and the smell of human excrement was very much present. Sayuri had to put on what felt like five pairs of gloves, a gas mask, and several wrapped up paper bags, because she didn't trust the plastic bags that were under the sink weren't compromised in some way, to dispose of it.
How pathetic. Determination didn't stop you from dying by a kunai. Determination didn't save you from the slowly approaching death by starvation or dehydration. Determination, meant absolutely nothing in the face of reality.
How a Shinobi should die is a much better novel. All the honorable ways to go, none of the pretty bullshit. Dying trying to avenge one's family was fine. Death by old age was considered the pinnacle of shinobi success, but very, very, few got to reach that kind of end.
Still, the fact that Naruko had lived like this, still lived like this, was absolutely upsetting. She had plenty of space in the Uchiha District. All those buildings had been cleaned up by the ANBU, so Sayuri knew they were at least up to construction standards, and Naruko could've been at least living it up in one of those empty houses all this time, if she had just opened her mouth and asked her for help.
It's not like the Uchiha Clan was using those houses anymore anyway. The thought stung, but it stung less when she thought about having others use the houses, people that needed homes, so that way they could be put to good use rather than slowly wasting away in the silence of the dead and gone.
The one good thing she could say she got out of this was that her Transformation of Naruko was so on point that she had actually felt some confusion and a feeling of deep disorientation when she looked herself in the mirror some mornings, still in Naruko's form. That and the slowly growing idea of just donating most of the Uchiha District to be converted into future homes for the orphans or the needy to be used as required. With the number one person in mind being Naruko, because she'd be damned if she had to pretend to be Naruko in the future, and still deal with this shit.
Don't kill the civilians. Don't kill the civilians. Don't kill the retired shinobi with the missing leg.
A small part of her, in the back of her mind, in Itsuki's voice, whispered.
You know, if Naruko snapped one day, would you really blame her? Would you even try to stop her? Wouldn't you say she's justified to test the limits of her abilities against those who wronged her?
Sayuri was deeply unsettled at the thought of someone with Itsuki's mindset being justified, waking up in a cold sweat as she had to swallow a scream as she recalled the dream of Itsuki nodding in approval as Sayuri slaughtered the Uchiha Clan with her, the two sisters against the world.
Sayuri wouldn't sleep for the next three nights, shaking silently as her pale gaunt face always seemed to look too much like Itsuki's when she wasn't pretending to be Naruko.