For the most part, the rest of Sakura's second year of life went rather calmly. Ren and his new girlfriend moved in together, Sayuri got a field promotion after her team caught three chuunin at the same time, Aoi left on a 'trip,' Kaede made genin, Kamui started his apprenticeship at the restaurant, Akina and Arato managed to successfully pretend to be each other for nearly three months during gender-specific lessons with no one noticing, Fujio entered the Academy, and Kohana really really missed her.
As for Sakura? She kept a tight lid on Arden's pandora box of information, as well as her own similar box of chakra sense, and took it easy. In fact, for the first month she didn't even have to worry about lessons—it was only as she began to find the energy to do things that she was explicitly sold not to do that lessons once more made their way into her schedule. Still, life was good.
And her birthday? That was great.
For her birthday the Akimichi members in attendance made sure to gift her every food she could ever want—all the sweet, salty, and just generally bad-for-you treats that she was so rarely allowed to consume. It seemed as if everyone she knew was there too, mixing and mingling and wishing her happy birthday and smiling indulgently and playing games, and Sakura spent the day absolutely giddy, so high on life that she didn't even care about what abandoning a game with a Nara mid-turn due to boredom looked like.
It had been a while since she'd felt that good—she didn't explore much anymore, didn't talk as much as she'd used to—but the good food and smiling faces and good music made it hard to feel anything but happy.
She'd already had to participate in similar events in the previous months for Kohana and Kamui and Ayame and, in the coming week, would have Sayuri's and Kaede's birthday to celebrate, followed by little Himari's two months later. But parties were a part of life, and this one was all about her, which meant that it was her favorite food on the table and she didn't have to be polite and let elderly aunties squeeze her cheeks all night—only once at the beginning. She already knew she'd be bored at Sayuri's and Kaede's party, given that she had no doubt it would all be about Shinobi things she wasn't yet allowed to know, so she might as well live it up now.
For all the good, the party also brought an unwelcomed revelation. It was the first time she truly understood the connections between the Akimichi, Yamanaka, and Nara. For one, the non-Yamanaka adults—two Akimichi couples and two Yamanaka couples—each had one spouse on one of Sakura's parents' genin teams. For another, each of her siblings seemed to follow this pattern—Ren's girlfriend was another Yamanaka, Ikue, but his teammates were a Nara girl and an Akimichi boy respectively. Sayuri's contained an Akimichi but a civilian took the place of the Nara, and while Aoi didn't have a team to bring (and did not, in fact, come at all), Kaede's new one was outfitted with the stereotypical Akimichi and Nara teammates.
Sakura could even see the pattern being maintained for those not yet graduated—Akina was hanging out with two boys, a Nara and an Akimichi, while Arato was hanging around the Nara's brother and an Akimichi girl. Ayame, too, held firm to the pattern, as did Fujio—all of them, intentionally or unintentionally, maintaining the Ino-Shika-Cho combination.
This made what her parents did when it came time to eat more than a little telling.
Just as she was beginning to feel hungry, Sakura was lifted up, swung around until she couldn't stop laughing, then plopped between a three-year-old Nara (Shin) and a four-year-old Akimichi (Juro.)
"Get to know each other," her mother smiled. "And be polite!"
The Nara did not say a single word. The Akimichi couldn't, with how much he was stuffing his face.
Sakura didn't really think she needed more friends—she already had Kohana.
She wondered why they were all different ages.
She pushed the thought out of her head, recognizing her brain's realization that it was something her consciousness did not want to know.
She ate cake.
In the months following her birthday Sakura quickly fell into a routine. While her parents were weary of pushing her as far as they had the last time, the longer she went without incident the more they tried to see if she could handle it. By the start of the new Academy year that summer she was up every day at seven and followed a rigorous schedule until dinner: a half hour of (very basic) chakra-less chakra lessons, followed by equally basic survival lessons, followed by practice memorizing weaponry and throwing balls, followed by exercise, followed by kata training, followed by simple math, followed by her lessons on plants, followed by family history, followed by etiquette. Somewhere in there her lunch, playtime, cleaning time, and afternoon nap would be slipped in, and before she knew it, it was time for the bustle of dinner.
It hurt, sometimes, her lessons. They weren't bad, really—actually, she found the information riveting, even if it had taken much too long to understand how a taller, skinnier glass filled with water held as much as a shorter, wider one. The problem was more the loneliness of the schedule.
She only saw Kohana for an hour of playtime, now—her only hour, and the third of Kohana's that day. The rest of the day, however, she had no company but Kaa-san, who had to split her time between Sakura, Kohana (Tou-san having left), Himari, and daily chores, making her less than ideal company.
Sakura started to kind-of understand where Fujio was going with this whole jealousy thing.
That didn't mean it was all bad, though! Now that she could clean her own teeth and only needed a bath every other day, she got to have reading time with Ayame after dinner while Kaa-san finished helping Kohana and Himari. While the six-year-old's reading wasn't… ideal, it was still reading, and Ayame also had a habit of dragging her finger along the words she was reading, which made it easier to follow and try to make out the symbols.
In this way the summer and fall passed uneventfully, with, perhaps, the exception of Shin and Juro being pushed on her for an hour at least once every other week. They still hadn't spoken much beyond social niceties, but it was good to have an extended nap, so Sakura wouldn't complain too much.
January, however, brought another Yamanaka party.
More specifically, the fifteenth of January bought the sixth month of the Nara heir's life. He, as well as the Akimichi heir (born shortly after Sakura's own birthday) and the Yamanaka heir (born January 24th, which she really didn't recall), would be the next Ino-Shika-Cho trio, and in celebration (as well as an early birthday party for the oldest), all three clans held a large gathering at the Yamanaka's main house.
Sakura's family was invited.
It would be her first time in the main house, and it was also Akina's, Arato's, Ayame's, Fujio's, Kohana's, and Himari's first time too.
Kaa-san may have been panicking.
"It'll be alright!" Chichi (who had reappeared only a week ago) laughed, half exasperated and half amused as he helped Kamui fix his outfit.
"It will not be alright! We are expected there in fifteen minutes—fifteen minutes—and we still need to switch Akina and Arato out of each other's clothes and get Kohana to stop picking at her ponytail!"
"I don't want to wear my kimono!" Akina griped. "It's too girly! Arato likes girly stuff anyway, I don't see what the big deal is!"
"And, as I've told you before, Akina, I don't care what you wear day to day, but at formal events you will dress properly, and that's final! Kenta, help them switch," Chichi (Kenta?) sighed and dusted Kamui's shoulders one last time before turning to a pouting Arato. Sakura had a feeling that Kamui's outfit had been fine for at least the last three or so minutes, but that her father had simply not wanted to get involved into the argument until he absolutely had to.
In other news, Kohana's ponytail was now completely disassembled. Sakura was jealous.
"Kohana! What did you do to your hair?!" Kaa-san cried.
"I'll fix it, Kaa-san," Sayuri said. She was going to be attending as part of the family for the ceremony, but Ren wouldn't be, instead choosing to escort his girlfriend Ikue and her elderly grandmother on his own.
"Thank you, Sayuri," Mama sighed. "Alright, is everyone ready?" Sakura looked around. Out of those attending (which unfortunately did not include Aoi—how long had it been since she'd seen him?) Sayuri was, of course, perfectly made up, and while Kaede's was a bit off, Kamui's obi had been knotted to perfection. Akina and Arato were in the right kimonos, and Ayame and Fujio had each fallen asleep on each other against the wall. Sakura knew that she herself was prepared (having been made up last), and the baby didn't really need to be all that dressed up, being only one, so that left Kohana.
"It hurts!"
"You'll get used to it."
And that was everybody.
"Remember proper etiquette!" Kaa-san cried, and they were out the door.
As they walked up the hill Chichi began to describe the main Yamanaka house. It was at least three times the size of any of its neighbors and held not only the current head of the family's family but also any who could not live on their own, be they elderly, orphaned, or ill. The eastern part of the main house also held a number of offices for Yamanaka matters, but, her father explained, they generally went unused, being positioned as they were directly next to the (very noisy) Yamanaka training grounds.
"Now," Kaa-san interrupted, "I need all of you to remember to be on your best behavior, and to congratulate Inoto-san for his healthy baby boy—whose name is Inoichi. I mentioned that, right? I'm fairly sure I mentioned that. Anyway, the Akimichi heir is Choza and the Nara heir is Shikaku. That shouldn't be too hard to remember—after all, they were named after Ino-Shika-Cho, so just try to remember to congratulate—oh, we're here."
They entered and began the long-standing tradition of too-many-social-niceties-for-any-reasonable-person-to-endure.
Sakura, perhaps spitefully, intentionally did not congratulate Inoto on his soon-to-be one-year-old son. The clan head did not seem to mind, but then he seemed to be more on autopilot than actually listening to anything that was said.
Sakura wondered if there'd be any sweets.
"C'mon!" Kohana said, appearing from out of nowhere. "I want to meet your teammates!"
"Teammates?" Sakura asked.
"You know!" Kohana whined. "Shin and Juro!"
So, it seemed her policy of ignorance hadn't worked. How unfortunate.
Eventually, she and Kohana had weaved through the crowd far enough to reach Juro, whose (extremely) large father had been easy to pick out of a crowd, even with the two's less-than-optimal perspective.
"Hi!" Kohana started, completely disregarding all the etiquette her mother had so thoughtfully made her memorize once a day, seven days a week. "My name's Kohana! Yours is Juro. Did you know that the Camelia flower is not only used in teas, but also in cosmetics?"
"Um, no," Juro said.
"Go, play," his mother said. She seemed distracted. "I need to find your brother Hachiro."
"Hachiro?" Sakura asked, against her permission.
"Dad's not very creative with names," Juro explained. "Kazuro, Jiro, Zoro, Shiro, Goro… first son, second, third, fourth, fifth… I'm the tenth, and the youngest."
Kohana curled her lip. "Didn't your mom come up with any baby names?" She asked.
"She and Dad made a deal that she'd name the girls and he'd name the boys. The problem is they only had sons, so she never got to name anybody. And anyway, Dad swears up and down that we have good names."
"I guess they're not… awful," Sakura said, trying to be polite.
"We're all named after flowers," Kohana said. "That's much better than just birth order!" Juro shrugged. "Anyway, do you know where Shin is? I want to meet all of Sakura-chan's future teammates! I haven't seen any of you since her birthday."
Without missing a beat Juro shrugged again. "Dunno. We've just arrived ourselves. That's why mom's so worried about my eighth oldest brother, Hachiro. He shouldn't have disappeared so quickly."
Why didn't he seem surprised about Kohana thinking they were a future team? They were all different ages! Who knew if they'd even get along as ninja? And it wasn't like Kohana had any obvious future team, so why did Sakura have to have one?
"C'mon!" Kohana whined. Sakura realized her sister was trying to pull her forward. "This place is really big and we need to start looking immediately!"
While they never did end up finding Shin, Kohana's incessant efforts to find "my best sister's future teammates!" seemed to endear everyone they met. More worryingly, not one seemed surprised at the proclamation.
Eventually, though, Kohana began to exhaust herself and went to find mama while Sakura turned back to her original goal: food.
Just as she'd spotted a table of finger snacks and noticed that the only ones in her reach were annoyingly healthy, a conversation to her left caught her attention. More specifically, the voice of Sakura's oldest sister made the topic more interesting than carrots, but then that was a pretty low bar.
"She won't even talk to me!" Sayuri whined to the girl next to her. "I mean, yes, I probably shouldn't have made out with her brother, but he was so cute! But now Yua's threatening to kick me out and we've been best friends since our first year at the Academy!"
"I mean," the Yamanaka next to her responded, "she did catch you with his tongue down your throat and your hand down his—"
"Hush! You never know who's listening," Sayuri said, slapping her hand over the other girl's mouth and whipping around to see if anyone had, indeed, caught their conversation.
Sakura blinked at her.
Sayuri did not look thrilled at the attention.
"You—you didn't hear that, did you?"
"What did you have your hand down?" Sayuri asked. She wondered if she'd put it down the hole at the bottom of the toilet. Kohana did that last week (to see where it led), and Kaa-san had gotten really upset.
"Nothing! I didn't put my hand down anything!" Sakura opened her mouth to point out that the other Yamanaka had, in fact, sounded fairly certain about the events, but Sayuri groaned before she could get a word out. "How about this: I give you three pieces of dango, and you tell no one anything about what you heard."
Sakura thought about it. She didn't understand what the big deal was, but it was obvious Sayuri really cared about her answer. "Five pieces."
"Four."
"Five, or no deal."
"Fine!" Sayuri groaned. She stomped over to the appetizer table and grabbed the requisite pieces off of one of the higher-tiered plates.
"Nice," the other Yamanaka girl nodded at Sakura. "But next time remember you could go for higher. I'm pretty sure you could have gone up to eight before Sayuri would have even tried to argue back," Sakura nodded in return, filing that information, as well as the side-eye Sayuri gave her companion for giving it, in her mind for later evaluation.
"Well, you didn't agree at eight, you agreed at five. And you better honor your promise!" Sayuri snapped.
Sakura hummed happily around a mouth full of dango. "I have no idea what you're talking about," She mumbled. "This dango fell out of thin air."
"Good, good," Sayuri said. "Now, shoo!"
Sakura shooed.
About five minutes later she came upon the very trio the party was about. They had been sat in the middle of a room, and a photographer had been hired to take a picture of them, so their parents were trying very hard to get them to sit still and have their eyes open long enough for a good photograph to be taken.
It wasn't going well.
Behind the adults Sakura began making faces (a surefire way to get her little sister to laugh), and while Shikaku couldn't care less and Choza still looked like he was about to cry, Inoichi began crawling towards her. The adults thought he was trying to crawl to his mother, and Sakura disappeared before they noticed her. The heirs were even more boring than Himari!
Shortly after running from one end of the estate to the other, twice, however, she began to experience the dreaded sugar crash.
She decided to look for a blanket, and a place to nap. She'd barely found the first, however, when large hands wrapped around her, picking her up and putting her against their hip.
"Hi Chichi!"
"Hello my favorite blossom!" Tou-san replied. He said that to all of his kids, but it still made Sakura happy whenever he said it to her. "Shouldn't you be with Juro and Shin?"
"Why?" Sakura asked. No one had told her that she was supposed to be with them.
"Well, they're your friends, aren't they?" Chichi asked.
Sakura didn't know about that. They'd never played together, after all, only slept. But she guessed this particular friendship wasn't up to her, so she nodded in agreement when Tou-san offered to carry her there.
"Are you looking forward to the Academy?" He asked.
Sakura made a noise. "That's forever away," she mumbled.
Chichi laughed. "It's this summer!"
Sakura blinked at him. It was? "I'm not in the pre-Academy group."
"Well, no… you're not," here Chichi looked kind of uncomfortable. "Your mother was just going to teach you until then. After what happened last winter…"
It had been a year already? Huh.
"Anyway! You are catching up to where they were supposed to be about a month ago, and you're moving at a much faster pace than them, so you'll be plenty prepared by the next semester."
Sakura squirmed. "And Shin and Juro are entering with me?"
"Yep!" Tou-san said. "Won't it be nice to have your friends by your side?"
Sakura made a noise that sounded like agreement, and didn't protest when her father settled her next to a sleeping Shin and a playing Juro. "Have fun!"
Sakura turned and blinked at Juro, who was holding a stuffed bear. "What's its name?"
"Bear?" Juro asked. It seemed as if he'd never questioned that it could be anything else.
"Boring!" Sakura said. "I'm going to name it Toad."
"It's a bear," Juro said.
"Whose name is Toad!" Sakura grinned. New goal for the party: get Juro to call his bear Toad.
"It. Is. A. Bear," Juro said.
"Yes it is!" Sakura replied. "And his name is Toad!"