Posted on October 26th 2024
- Chapter 2 –
The boy with the Fox
There was a saying that the moments that changed your life would freeze the time and place when they occurred.
For Sakura, it wasn't about the people next to her, but about the pannoramique view behind the Hokage. The main road, the overhang of the national assembly, the wooden tiles of the ninja library. A pale sun lit the same buildings and yellowing trees, its lack of warmth apparent to her even through the thick windows.
Jiraiya and her mother moved first, excusing themselves to the Hokage before they walked side by side towards the door. Once they were outside the office, they each turned on their heel ninty degrees and headed in opposite directions. In the void they left, she could swear she saw a spark.
"After I visited dozens of towns, I came to see there's history in every brick, even if it hasn't left a trace," the Fifth Hokage said.
Sakura hunched her shoulders, letting it be. "Who else knows the truth?"
"Kakashi," she answered, leaning back into the chair. "Iruka knows a watered-down version, one that was sufficient enough to adapt the training you'd receive."
So, his answer to me was rehearsed, she thought and asked, "No, I meant about Naruto and the Fox."
Tsunade smirked, giving in exactly what she wanted. "Naruto knows, he found out when he graduated." She slid the Hokage cloak off her shoulders and said, "I don't agree with his methods but Jiraiya's right. The Akatsuki are dangerous and unpredictable. We can't mess this up, I'll help you prepare."
First, she got her hopes up, then they were crushed and now fate gave her what she wanted. Tsunade would train her, but for something that broke her heart.
Before she left, she was instructed on where and when they'd meet the next day. Still feeling a bit outside her body, she meandered through streets on the east side of the village. She rarely went here.
Her eyes saw, but her brain didn't. Another movie ran there, covering everything Naruto came to mean for her. He was a friend, a protector, a prankster, a clueless student, a foodie and more.
Nowhere inside him had she seen the evil of the fox.
It was like a coin that tossed inside her mind that always fell on one side.
She sat on a bench on the side of the road and watched as figures passed by her. Then, a group of kids around six years old gathered at the bottom of a two-story home. One of them had a reddish blanket tied across his shoulders. The others ran after him or threw sticks and rocks at him.
It was obvious, they were playing trickster fox. A traditional game for this time of year, when everyone wanted to chase away the spirit of the fox.
"Honey, it's him, but we need help with roof tiles," the wife conciliated.
He didn't budge, arms crossed over his chest. "No, I don't want no help from a trickster fox."
She blinked from that memory. They had just made team and were on a D-rank streak. The man didn't change his mind, but they still got payed. Kakashi took them to ramen with the free money.
"Mommy told me to never speak to that boy," a little girl told Sakura on the Academy playground.
"It's him…!" little Sakura heard a man gasp next to her while she waited in line at the market with her mother. Her mother picked her up and mumbled that the butternut squash wasn't worth it anyway.
Her heart raced in the same rythm as the flashes of memories rolling in her head. Tsunade was wrong. The civilians knew something, and they acted accordingly, signaling him out. How did Naruto feel once he realized the reason why he was ostracized?
Sakura flexed her toes repeatedly. She had to see it for herself to understand, at least to catch a glimpse at the other side of the coin. And that she would, after she explained to him everything that happened.
A heavy weight shifted the bench.
Jiraiya sat next to her, watching the same game in silence. He sighed.
"Don't tell him the truth."
Sakura looked up at him and it made her shiver.
"The only thing he sees when he looks at you is his absence. You noticed, haven't you?"
She nodded, hesitantly.
"You're children, the present is all you've known. All this talk about bonds, sacrifice and never giving up will be null in a few years."
She leaned in. "Sasuke means a lot to us, we've been through so much together-"
His voice was heavy. "How long have you known each other?"
"We're teamm-"
"How long?"
"Many w-"
"Sakura," he cut. "Number."
Her heart dropped. "Eight months and three weeks."
"Not even a year. Do you know what's left of that friendship in forty years?" A cold wind picked up orange leaves from the road. "I'll tell you. Absolutely nothing, not even a distant memory."
Jiraiya got up, towering over her.
"Naruto's bond with that boy isn't good for him," he said, as good as truth. "It almost cost him his life. I won't allow Sasuke to do that to him again, even indirectly."
Suprisingly, she had the voice to speak, "Me neither."
"He has to get strong, or he won't survive the Akatsuki. I can't have him moping around worried about him… or you."
Boom! The kids toppled over the boy playing the fox and they pinned him down. They had won.
Sakura got up, stepping on both feet at once.
"Naruto's not better off on his own. We're a team, I won't abandon him. We need to get through this together."
"We, or you?" he asked, the shock of it making them both pause for a few moments. "There are other ways of doing it together, like the forty-seventh ninja strategy. But first you need to decide what's more important: his safety or your comfort."
He walked away backwards, looking at her with eyes so cold they might as well had been in the dead of winter. Punished, despite being innocent. She hadn't done anything.
And much worse, she was no longer sure of what she would.
—O—
That night sleep had trouble finding her and even once it did, Sasuke's warmth didn't hold a candle to how frozen she felt. When she set foot down in the morning, she lowkey excepted to be thrust into the ceiling.
Sakura didn't want to open the door to her room. She couldn't allow anything more in, it was already enough. When she returned home yesterday, she came straight here and hadn't left since.
Except for one moment.
She went to get a glass so she could drink water. Downstairs was a large room, kitchen on one side, living room on the other, separated in the middle by the open corridor leading to the entrance. In the dim yellow light, her father had dozed off on the couch with a blanket draped over him.
She did her best, but against her better judgement, she glanced at her. Her mother was sitting in an armchair, feet tucked under her. For a moment, she responded, lifting her head and looking her with such sweet eyes, their green reminded her of a pasture on a summer day.
She jolted.
Those eyes show no remorse… Not even a bit more than on that August day…
She got ready with time to spare before she had to meet Tsunade. After pacing around the room, she finally gave in and pulled out a thick leather-bound worned-out book. She read it as if she didn't already know what was written inside.
In team combat or missions, tasks need to be divided based on the strengths of each individual. They need to preoccupy themself only with what's theirs and never will they burden the others with what's not theirs to handle. The teammates serve the mission, and their abilities come in aid of, not in the place of, the person who needs help.
She shuddered.
In the academy they used to nickname the forty-seventh ninja rule the inward "divide and conquer", because it used the same rational but for the members of a team.
She slouched over the chair, eyes plastered on the ceiling.
Do I need help? she asked herself for the first time that year. Before, the answer always loomed around her, making the question redundant.
Laying with the question long enough and still not finding its answer, Sakura picked up her carrier bag and went to the Hokage tower. She settled in one of the accessory rooms, its small frame filled by a couch, a low birch coffee table and a puffy stool.
Tsuande came in on time, wearing her usual clothes and her green cape. They exchanged pleasantries and she sat on the couch, one leg crossed over the other, a brown envelope in hand.
"Before I start, I want you to know that I understand how difficult this is for you. I know you must have a thousand questions, but I can't answer them all. My advice is to focus on the 'why's' that can get you ahead," she said, unraveling the string that kept the envelope shut.
She nodded. "Tsunade-sama, can you tell me again the clause you want to change?"
She pulled out a stack of white papers, flipped through the pages and read out loud, "Haruno Sakura and Uzumaki Naruto are to be kept in the general vicinity of one another. They must be in the same village, towns, etc."
Cut and dry, she thought. "How are you going to change it?"
"Jiraiya and I prepared some documents, and we have solid arguments for our side. That's all done for. You can't help us with that," she said, eyeing her sweetly. "I'm here to help you stay safe from the Guardian. Jiraiya put you in danger…"
Sakura nodded and started to fiddle in her chair. "What are they like, the Guardians? Why are they so dangerous?"
"The Guardian is a Tokubetsu type ninja. You know what that means?"
"They excel in a specific area…"
"That's fighting sairo. Someone who's en expert in countering a specific kind of ninja is deadly to it. If the Guardian decides you can't stay here anymore, then that's it. You can't run, you can't hide. They'll turn every rock upside down until they find you."
Sakura gulped.
Tsunade gave a half smile. "But in your case the Guardian is dangerous because of the legal power he has over you, because of the contract."
The little stack of papers seemed to glow in her hands. Inside it, the rules of her life listed. "Can I see it?" she tentatively asked.
Tsunade looked at the papers longingly before meeting her eyes. "No," she replied sternly. "It's for the better."
She swallowed.
"One of the clauses stipulates that you're not allowed to use chakra-based techniques that are higher than the level of an academy student. Do you know any?"
Sakura was a ninja of the fundamentals, that much was clear, and she hadn't really received training after the she graduated, except for one time.
"I can control chakra to my feet to walk on water and trees." The only thing that Kakashi had taught her…
"I see," she said. "Try your best to tone down this part. Don't start with it, don't end with it. The Guardian's going to ask you questions in such a way to get you trapped. Dodge as much as you can."
She lowered her head and asked, "Can't I just say I don't know? It's not like he can read my thoughts…"
Tsunade shook her head. "The Guardian responsible for you is a sensory type. He can read your chakra pattern and tell when you lie. Unless your chakra control is good enough to fool him, I suggest you act as if he can."
Great, just my luck. "Alright, what else?"
She placed the contract upside down on the couch. "Don't show any defiance towards Konoha. Don't give any hints that may make it seem like you'd betray it or harm it. They want signs of loyalty because it reassures them that you won't desert."
She gulped, the last time she was with Sasuke flashing in her head. Another lie to cover for.
"Prove to him that getting stronger, learning new jutsu isn't your priority. Prove that you have other goals, interests, dreams…"
Sakura finally got the underlying message. "I have to act like I'm a civilian, right?"
Tsunade shrugged. "In a way, but Sakura, you're not a civilian by any means. You graduated from the Academy and the Guardian knows that. Don't you think he'll realize you're hiding something if you don't mention the ninja part at all?"
This was a dance where every step mattered.
"Are there any other rules I have to follow?"
She flipped through the pages. "Nothing major you're not doing already."
"Does breaking any clause result in being taken away?"
Tsunade glanced out the window. "Right now, everything's being interpreted through the optics of changing that clause, which is one of the pillar ones in the contract." She sighed. "In a way, it's also testing us, our intentions… But no, in general, small deviations would be treated with a warning."
It seemed the ending of this confrontation would have a binary answer. She'd either prove she was doing her job as the next Kyuubi host, or she'd get taken away.
Tsunade dug into her pants' pocket and took out a folded piece of paper. "I wrote potential questions on this paper. Take it and write your best answers down. We'll improve from there."
She grabbed it and said, "Thank you, I will."
After getting up and to the door a few long steps, she paused and gave her a look. "Be here tomorrow at noon. And Sakura? The Guardian's coming this Friday."
Three days?! That was all she had?
They parted ways and she sprinted down the stairs, heaving the moment she stepped out of the tower, her palms cold and sweaty. She had put up a tough front before Tsunade, as she was still hoping she'd take her under her wing, but here she had no one to pretend to.
Sakura started walking towards her home, but the more her mind raced, the more her feet followed suite. Why hadn't she been told sooner? Naruto had had returned from the fight almost a month ago, why had they waited for so long to tell her? Why had Jiraiya-?
She cut herself off the moment her hand touched her bedroom door. Time was short, these why's wouldn't help her get ahead.
Her breathing calmed once she was at the desk, with a pencil in hand and a paper before her. Once she saw the first question and wrote the first word of the answer, her heartbeat slowed considerably.
In what felt like a long breath, she completed the assignement, all thirty questions of it. She exhaled loudly and made out what she had wrote through squinted eyes. There were improvements to be made, but the first draft was done.
She would have done that, but her stomach grumbled in protest, water not sufficing it anymore. When she walked out the door, her father's snores echoed from his bedroom all throughout the corridor, but their reassurance faded the moment she went downstairs.
Her mother was there.
This time she didn't look at her, busing herself with getting leftovers and milk from the fridge. Before the cutlery drawer, she almost debated eating standing up next to the counter.
"What are you doing?" her mother asked and once she tried answering 'getting dinner', she asked again, louder over her.
Sakura let the food be and turned in one full swipe. There she was, in that damned armchair with her feet tucked and her elbows on the armrests. But tonight, her eyes resembled more wet moss than a green pasture.
"I'm preparing for the interview, with the Hokage."
"Is that what you took from the meeting?" she asked. "Do you think they care about your well-being?"
Recalling her meeting with Jiraiya, she wasn't sure what to say. "It doesn't matter…"
"If it weren't for them, I would have never said anything," she declared. "I did this to protect you. And make no mistake, telling you the truth is still about protecting you. What impresses me is that you have no reflex to protect yourself."
She gasped, half wanting to burst into tears. No remorse, no hesitation. There were a a dozen why's on her tongue, but she hadn't let even one go. Instead, she pressed on, "Naruto needs to get strong. He has to."
"Naruto this, Naruto that. What about you, Sakura? You're in danger too." She gathered her hands in her lap.
How many times had her teammates risked their lives for her? That year, the answer was all but one. And now that'd be two.
"It's always been about me."
"Thinking about yourself is selfless," she declared, before standing up, her body seeming more slender in the darkness of the living room. "You can't be of use to others without your needs met."
Sakura stood tall in response. "I won't abandon him."
She walked around the sofa, towards the stairs. "How are you going to save Sasuke if the Guardian takes you away? How are you going to protect Naruto from the Akatsuki?"
Silence. No answer. Because there was none. There was no guarantee she'd win against him.
At the bottom of the stairs, Mebuki half turned towards her before going up. Only half her face was illuminated by the light from the kitchen, its eye like a leaf on fire.
"There's a way out. This dangerous charade can end once and for all if you can convince Naruto he can't leave the village without you."
Her absence left a void, each of her steps echoing throughout the house. Each one a mirror to her thoughts: the danger, the uncertainty, how she would be better off with Naruto next to her, the strength of her opponent, the short time frame, the worst and best outcome.
Both stopped at the same time.
And Sakura still had no answer.
—O—
Sasuke had three grown men in his vision, their burly bodies twice his size ready to launch at him.
At least one of mornings of the week was spent like this, in the clearing of the forest next to the hideout. Hand to hand combat, without chakra, weapons or the Sharingan. No stepping outside the designated area. The one knocked down for three seconds would lose.
The men weren't trained in the ninja arts, they were merely mercenaries that Orochimaru seemed to have laying around. He had beat each one in a one-to-one fight before, but as of this day, he had never managed to win against multiple of them in a group.
The man in the middle ran to him and the other two followed. He grabbed his punch in his hand, but he twisted and uppercut him with his foot, making him tumble backwards into one of the other men. The last one was tall and skinny, his strength no match to his, making him get knocked out quickly.
They continued exchanging blows until a branch snapped in the forest behind him.
Two more men entered into the ring behind him as he jump-kicked the two men into the head. They both fell.
The new men were stronger fighters, with better stance and harder blows. He stood them off in the middle of the ring, knocking one of them out by making him trip.
The last man pushed Sasuke towards the edge with each blow. He resisted him well, captured his right wrist with his hand and hit him in the jaw with his left punch. Only that before the contact, his muscles cramped.
The blow wasn't strong enough. He pushed him on the forest floor and the game was over.
Goddamit. It had been three weeks, and he still had the twitching in his left arm.
"You lost," Kabuto said, with a smirk on his face.
In the times Orochimaru wasn't available to train, he had designated the job to him. It seemed like physical conditioning didn't interest him that much, but his lack of seemed to amuse Kabuto too much.
This was the last round for the day. He dusted himself off and went to groom himself before getting lunch at the cafeteria. Whatever, he thought, just a poor excuse of trickster fox.
After lunch, Sasuke went straight to his room and once the door was locked behind him, he exhaled. There was no denying it anymore, that fight had damaged his body. Was it the spar or the second form of the cursed mark or the clash? He couldn't tell. But he had the truth in his hand, and he had to act.
There was nothing broken, he had been told. It was just a long recovery process.
He opened one of the drawers on his nightstand. It was filled with scrolls he had brought from the Uchiha compound. One of them had traditional remedies that dated generations ago even before the warring states era. He flipped through it until he found one that could help with chakra soreness.
The ointment seemed easy to make, but he lacked some of the ingredients.
"Goddamit," he said.
On the first day Sasuke arrived, it had been made clear that he wasn't allowed to leave the hideout and its surroundings.
Sasuke threw on a satchel at his hip and a black cloak. Sneaking out seemed too soon and too risky, he needed to do it another way.
He went into the laboratory in the west wing. Kabuto was already there, at a desk, dog earring one of his books.
"Sensitive to cold?" he asked not looking up.
"I need to go to the market; I want you to take me."
"Orochimaru-sama said no access to the outside," he responded, highlighting a paragraph.
"Alone," Sasuke corrected. "I need to get something for my arm." He perked up, looking at him for the first time. "He wants his new vessel to be as strong as possible, don't stand in the way."
Kabuto dropped his pen on his book. "Don't give yourself titles you haven't earned. There's still four years before that decision."
"This was our deal."
"Sasuke, you're here as a candidate, nothing more. If you want to be chosen, you have to figure out how to become the stronger vessel you're talking about."
Kabuto pushed his seat back, the sound echoing off the stone walls, closed the book and stored it in one of the drawers.
Sasuke clenched his teeth. "A favour, then. Do this for me and I'll give you a favour back."
He scrached his chin and eyed him with a long look. "Deal. But we won't be there for long."
They met at the entrance. A wind had picked up, a lot colder than what he was used to at that time of year. He zipped his cloak up to his chin. After the usual threats if he attempted to leave, they set out on the journey. First, they went through the pine and oak trees woods until they crossed a dirt road. It had indents on the sides, as if a carriage had passed by.
At least Kabuto was the silent type. They didn't bother talking the hour it had taken them to reach the nearby town.
Whoosh!
He eyed the foliage at the edge of the forest. In the bushes he caught sight of yellow eyes that looked back at him. It was just a fox, its reddish fur visible in the gap between the leaves, its mouth full with a brown bag.
Tsk. He turned around and caught up to Kabuto.
Why do you always have a way to find me, Naruto? he thought, annoyed even though it wasn't real. Or maybe, if it wasn't so real, that the boy was the fox, Sasuke wouldn't be stuck with a dysfunctionnal arm.
He couldn't have guessed he had it inside him, and he wouldn't have believed it, had he not seen it with his eyes. The demonic power he displayed wasn't of his making.
Naruto, the orphan who had nothing, was the keeper of the demon who attacked the village. What a soulless job, he thought. You get ostracized for it while the man who entrusted it to you is celebrated in glory.
In the first few months after the massacre, even he had thoughts about The Forth Hokage. He day-dreamed about how he would have stopped Itachi, sometimes before the massacre, sometimes after or during. They were fantasy scenarios of a little child that he now scoffed at.
The market was on the outskirts of the town, with many wooden tables stuck one to the next. It was quite busy. He caught glimpses of the contents of the tables in peaks between huddled bodies.
At least, Kabuto kept his end of the deal, giving him enough time to get everything he needed. At the end, Sasuke circled around the food tables. Normally, he didn't like sweets, but at this time of year, he usually had the caramel-covered crispy apple slices with crumble.
There were none at the market. They didn't even have apples. He scoffed and ended up getting two pears and some caramel separatedly, to pretend to satisfy his craving.
The road back was uneventful. After they entered the hideout, Kabuto said, "They don't crisp up fruit in these parts like they do at home, do they?" and then left with a smirk on his face.
—O—
Her pencil glided over the paper with long strokes that followed one another, while her left hand was stuck in a ball of tangled crimson yarn. She used to twirl it around her index fingers when she was pondering a difficult problem, but for now one hand was taken.
Sakura had polished up the answers from yesterday and reported them to Tsunade this morning. Thirty percent needed to be changed, twelve new ones needed to be answered and all of them had to be voice trained.
However, the clock beckoned her, taunting her with each click.
In less than an hour, she'd be with Naruto. There would be no more lack of answers.
Sakura willed herself to let the pencil drop and she tried to twirl the yarn, but it was too tangled. There was no point. She dropped it on the papers on the desk, threw on a beige jacket and went to get ramen.
Even though she was taking her time, the moments rushed by her and in about two blinks only, she was on the grey gravel road, in the shadow of the lightpost that had gone out. This time she was strong on her feet as she stared at the staircase, leaving two indents in the pebbles once she moved.
Who was the boy that waited for her?
I'm the girl that always loses when it's most important, her mind echoed before she could stop herself. Whether it was adversaries like Zaku, evil forces like Orochimaru and Gaara or even allies like Sasuke, she still stood in the same place.
Sakura sighed and knocked at the door, his skipping steps like needles poking in her heart. When it opened, she half expected to be seeing red, but instead it was just light and orange.
Dressed in his usual tracksuit but without the handband so his hair fell on his forehead, Naruto crossed his arms and said, "You're late!"
She smiled weakly. "The line at Ichiraku was longer than I expected." She lifted the packaged food. "It's Wednesday's special with extra egg."
His eyes lit up and he smiled, his whiskers raising on top of his puffed cheeks. Just for the prospect of his favourite food.
They settled at the dinning table in his kitchen, just like a few days ago. He yapped about so many things, going from food to the Hokage to the chunnin exams in a stream of consciousness typical only to him.
Spontaneous and sincere, and yet, there was not one thing hinting about the Fox. Naruto, you big mouth, even you managed to keep a secret from us.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve and blew his runny nose into a napkin, long enough to look at her bowl. "You're not hungry?"
She waved him off. "All that running to get here in time kind of scared off my appetite."
"You know, ramen's the secret to my power," he said flexing his bicep.
Do you not think of the Fox as being a part of yourself? "And I guess it's my secret weakness then."
"Maybe your secret weakness will one day become your secret power!"
She furrowed her brow. Do you think it's a power or a weakness? "I doubt that…"
"I'm sure Tsunade will train it out of you!"
Sakura scratched the back of her head. "She still hasn't given me her answer."
"She spends most of her time drunk anyway. Don't worry, I'm sure she's late for a reason," he said and chuckled. "Oi, Sakura, don't become like that!"
"Well, actually…" She's waiting to see how many pieces are left after the Guardian is done with me. The words caught at the tip of her tongue. Sharp inhale. "You're the one who should watch out. I'm sure she can drink Jiraiya under the table and that he must be trying to change that."
He laughed out loud. "Yeah, he doesn't hold it well at all! It's too bad you haven't met yet. I'm sure you'd get along, you both love books too much."
A half smile. "We'd be a good duo." Maybe he could train us both.
Naruto just shruggged and stretched his legs under the table and arms over his head, then leaned back in his chair. "You know, the only thing that doesn't suck about being on house arrest is that you get to bring me food."
What was the rest like? He had more energy, but was he still worrying about Sasuke? At home, she had many things to distract her from it: her parents, the family store, her neighbours, Tsunade and the Guardian. But his house felt so incredibly empty in the pauses where they didn't say anything, that its walls could only bounce back whatever he was thinking.
Naruto glanced longingly out the window, with his hands in his pockets. He seemed so… vulnerable, stuck at home because of an injury from a failed mission he went on for a promise, as if he wasn't the Host of the Beast who killed the Forth Hokage.
The boy with the Tailed Beast, the boy with the promise. Both something he had, neither a part of who he was.
Before she thought it over, she asked, "Do you want to go outside?"
"Clearly," he said not taking his eyes off it. "But I crossed Granny-chan enough times to know she'd kill me for it."
"Well, we won't go far, we'll just get some air. I'm here if anything happens," she prompted, voice soft.
"You don't have to tell me twice. Let's go," he said in a chirpy voice as he jumped out of his seat.
Sakura clenched her fists together, almost breaking apart her chopsticks. "You-" she stuttered, and he chuckled back.
Before they left, he handed her an empty brown bag from one of the kitchen drawers. "Take this and go to the gravel road downstairs. Fill it up with pebbles and come back."
Ridiculous and a bit illegal but said with the conviction of someone who had done it before. She obliged, sneaking around in the dark sections of the road so they could get away with it.
The bag heavy in her arms, she returned to find him before the door, waiting for her. They went the length of the corridor, coming up on a community door at the end. It opened onto a cement balcony with no railing.
They sat on the edge, their feet dangling over it. It was reasonably high, overlooking a dry lawn with a few lonely trees between the appartament buildings. In the distance, they could make out the tops of buildings illuminated by the starlight from the clear sky.
"Show me the goods," he said rubbing his hands together.
She emptied the bag behind them, and he grabbed a pebble while pointing with his other hand.
"You see the rainwater system of the house with the brown roof?" She nodded in response. "The game is that you have to throw the pebble in such a way that it lands down the hole and slides all the way to the bottom."
Just how many chances were there of back firing? Blasting through a window, hitting someone, getting the drainage system stuck, to count a few. But his energy was so lively, too strong for her to pull away.
"You land in the system, two points. You do that and back it all the way down, three points. If you miss the house, you lose two points. Oh, and every window hit counts for one point. The people living there are jerks."
She laughed. "Alright. How are we going to track the score?"
Naruto shrugged with hunched shoulders. "I dunno. I never played it with anybody…"
It was as if she had been struck by one of the pebbles. She narrowed her eyes and playfully said, "Well you have challenger now."
Sakura handed him a pebble and when he grabbed it out of her hand, she gave it a light squeeze before letting go. Its warmth traveled through his body, easing his muscles and breaking him up into a sweet smile.
Every one of the arguments in her mind were but mere dry leaves trying to move the pans of the scales, but they were outweighed by one sentiment.
Naruto, that smile of yours, I don't want it to be crushed! If this means letting you believe we came into Team 7 of our own, then I will.
Both had their own enemy, closer or further away, but for tonight, they were just Naruto and Sakura, hanging off the balcony as if they were at the edge of the world. Their silhouetttes were etched into the clear dark blue sky, the stars that shined between them exactly forty-seven of number.
A/N: Welp, she decided not to tell him to truth. Was she in the right? What would you have done?