Hello. Here is a new chapter of A new goal-fanfiction. See you in the next chapter.
Natsuki stood on the sidewalk in front of the library on Sado Hill, waiting for Sasuke. It was almost 9:00.
Natsuki was wearing a purple blouse, and black pants, and black shoes, and white socks. She had a brown shoulder bag on her right shoulder. Natsuki then looked at the watch in her right hand.
The sun had risen a couple of hours ago.
There were people walking on the sidewalk, and cars driving on the road.
Finally, Natsuki saw a black motorcycle stop in front of her. The motorcycle rider took off his black helmet, and it was Sasuke.
"Morning," Natsuki said.
Sasuke was wearing a light blue sports t-shirt and black chinos, complemented by equally dark sneakers. He brought with him a duffel bag with all the necessary items for archery training, as well as two pairs of wristbands.
"Huh, you came just in time," Sasuke risked himself to say. He didn't eant to admit he was glad to see Natsuki.
"Of course! I'd never waste a chance to..." Natsuki almost blurted out her true feelings then and there. "To improve myself! Yeah..."
"Heh, good to hear that. Let's get going." Sasuke then handed Natsuki a black helmet with the symbol of the Uchiha family on its top.
"Ever hitched a ride on a motorcycle?" The young man asked.
"Uhh, not really... but I think I can handle it", Natsuki said.
"You either hold onto the side handles or..." Sasuke felt uncomfortable saying that Natsuki could also hold onto Sasuke herself by tying her arms around his waist. An awkward silence followed.
"Side handles it is!" Natsuki yelled as she hopped onto the backseat of Sasuke's bike. The strength of her sit down almost made the two of them fall together.
"It's gonna be a long, long day..." Sasuke lamented to himself.
"Your motorcycle is great," Natsuki said. "There's a cafe nearby where I can treat you to lunch later." Finally, Sasuke stopped his motorcycle in front of an archery hall. "It reminds me a bit of Orihime's archery hall," Natsuki said as she went inside the archery hall with Sasuke, and looked around. Natsuki went to the girls' locker room to change while Sasuke did the same in the boys' locker room. Natsuki later came out of the locker room wearing a black and white hakama, and archery gloves. She had tied her hair in a ponytail with a hair band.
The archery room was fairly wide, with varnished wood refinishing on its walls. On the floor were tatami mats with distance markers in front of each round target. Eight targets were placed in a row, each with circumferences that indicated how many points they could earn, increasing in number the closer they got to the center.
Natsuki and Sasuke placed themselves in the far-left corner of the room and readied their bow and arrows for the session.
Natsuki shot the first arrow, which hit the 6 mark on the target, as her right hand was shaking a little from nervousness when some people were staring at her.
"Too bad, how I get nervous sometimes about how some people stare at me. It's the result of that one thing I don't like to remember," Natsuki thought as she shot the second arrow, which hit the number 7. Natsuki continued her archery practice, but she was so nervous that the arrow she shot didn't hit the center of the target, but the arrow in question hit the 8 mark on the target.
"Luckily I didn't embarrass myself!" Natsuki thought, and was surprised to see Sasuke walking towards Natsuki.
Natsuki's tense expression made Sasuke somewhat pensive:
"Maybe she has her own reasons for that...But I can't just ask what happened to her like that."
For the first time in a long while, he thought, of what somebody else would think of him, if he did something. Something usually reserved for Itachi, and even then with his own doubts.
"I can, see, that you have a good stance, but have only some difficulty keeping your arms steady to hit the center of the target board. Let me help you with that", Sasuke said.
"Oh... Oh my, I feel nervous like this..." Natsuki blushed.
Hearing that, Sasuke stepped backward:
"Okay... Sorry about that. Then, watch me and try to do exactly as I tell you, alright?"
Natsuki nodded, and Sasuke drew forth his own bow to shoot at the adjacent target. His attempt was so quick, it was as if the arrow teleported from his hand to the board in the blink of an eye. With that, his shot hit number 9, a hair short of hitting the bullseye. It was the best result any other attendees had witnessed or managed to hit.
Natsuki seemed just as impressed, but as soon as their gazes met each other, the red-haired girl felt once more in the urgency of doing her duty, as if pressured by Sasuke.
Natsuki repeated the archery technique Sasuke had shown her, and now hit the number 9 on the target, and then looked at Sasuke: "Thank you, senpai. Sometimes I get nervous about how some people stare at me. There's a reason for that. I was rollerblading in a building earlier, but I fell on the rollerblading track, and as a result, some people laughed at me because they thought it was funny. It was embarrassing." Natsuki continued practicing archery, and finally managed to shoot an arrow at the number 10 in the middle of the target: "Thank you for your help, senpai."
"Well... It seems to me you got over your fear of being made fun of!" Sasuke told her with an unusually glad tone.
It then clicked into Natsuki's mind that Sasuke told her the truth. She managed to hit bulls-eye and not be bothered by the judging gazes of all the other people attending the archery practice room.
Gathering all the courage she had, the girl then asked the young man:
"Hey, umm... Is the proposal for lunch together at the place I gave you still up?"
Sasuke nodded finally.
After changing clothes, Natsuki led Sasuke to a nearby cafe, and bought a sandwich and tea, and then sat down on a chair at one of the tables:
"Senpai, what's Hokkaido like?"
Natsuki was feeling a little better now that she no longer cared that some people stared at her from time to time.
"Wow... No one's ever asked that me!" Sasuke was impressed by the question, and was as surprised as he would be if someone asked him about his family or his life. "Well, imagine our area, but colder and windier."
Natsuki was also impressed by what Sasuke had just revealed:
"I can't imagine anything colder than here..."
Sasuke chuckled a little:
"That coldness... also reflects in how people approach their lives. I always thought that's how you should approach life, but..."
"But?" Natsuki asked.
"...Nothing. It's just wandering around in my mind," Sasuke said.
Deep down, Sasuke wanted to tell the redhead that her contagious interest and cheerfulness were somehow rubbing Sasuke's gloom off. But if he said that, she would get the wrong idea, or so Sasuke concluded.
"Well, I sometimes go skating at the ice rink here, so in that sense, the cold is nothing new to me. I sometimes read manga, and in one manga I read that in Hokkaido they refer to the day after tomorrow by saying tomorrow the day after tomorrow," Natsuki said. "The theme for the Autumn Festival hasn't been decided yet."
Natsuki wanted to tell Sasuke that Natsuki dreamed of opening her own bakery at some point, but she didn't want to seem intrusive.
"Of course, everyone can suggest different themes for the Autumn Festival, and then the best theme will be chosen," Natsuki said. "I've heard that from my friends. I haven't yet thought of what I would suggest for the Autumn Festival theme, but have you already thought of what you would suggest for the Autumn Festival theme?"
After drinking her tea and eating her sandwich, Natsuki placed the teacup on the table, and then looked at Sasuke.
Natsuki blushed a little, but tried to appear calm:
"The manga that talked about the way of speaking in Hokkaido was Detective Conan."
Natsuki dug out a piece of paper from her pants pocket and handed it to Sasuke:
"Here's my phone number. If we're friends now, it would be nice if we had each other's phone numbers. What do you think about that?"
That action caught Sasuke by surprise to the point he was left absolutely speechless and paralyzed.
"Oh... I think I shouldn't have come out like that?"
An embarrassed Natsuki blurted out.
"Well, well, that's not it... It's just... Nobody has even given me their number for contact," Sasuke said.
"Really?" Natsuki asked as her eyes widened in anticipation.
Sasuke nodded:
"And I... I would love to give you my own contact, but I have no cellphone, and I don't know my household's phone number by memory."
Both felt a flush of warmth, and emotions wash through their blood streams. Both knew, what Sasuke meant by revealing this.
"Well, thank you for everything today," Natsuki said sweetly. "For the company, and for the tips in how to handle the bow and arrows. I feel much more confident to tackle Iruka-sensei's archery classes!"
"I'm glad to hear that," Sasuke told her.
"So, see you on Monday?" The red-haired girl asked.
"See you on Monday, yeah," Sasuke answered while giving her the most honest smile he could muster. Both then went their own way, and the young man was left wondering, what he was going to do now, that he had the contact of a girl that came onto him by her own volition.
"Damn... I should have thanked her too," Sasuke remembered, as he walked back home while staring at the piece of paper that contained Natsuki's personal phone number. At those moments, nothing else mattered to him than that piece of information in his hands.
Natsuki arrived home, left her shoes in the hall, put on her slippers, and went to her room, the door of which was the back door on the right side of the hallway.
The room had a light brown floor with a blue and white checkered carpet. The walls were light yellow, the ceiling was white, and there was a white ceiling lamp with a light switch on the wall to the left of the door. The bed was in front of the wall on the right side of the room, and in front of the bed were brown slippers. On the bed was a blue blanket, a white sheet, and a white pillow. The window was on the back wall of the room, and in front of the window was a white blind curtain. In front of the window was a brown desk with drawers, and in front of it was a brown chair. Between the desk and the bed was a small bedside table with a white alarm clock on top, and a blue and white reading lamp. In front of the wall on the left side of the room was a bookshelf, with a sliding door on the left side, behind which was a wardrobe. Natsuki opened the wardrobe door, and took out a white bunny stuffed toy, pulled open the zipper on its back, and from it she took out a white book with a violet flower, which was her diary.
Natsuki put the diary on the table, and then sat on a chair, and then began to write in her diary:
"10/8/2024.
"Sasuke-senpai instructed me in archery today, and as a result, I'm no longer nervous about how some people stare at me. I'm really happy about that. Besides, I'm really happy about how I'm Sasuke-senpai's friend now. I managed to give senpai my phone number. However, I would like to tell him something, but I don't want to seem too intrusive. My bad side, and at the same time my weakness, is that I care too much".
Natsuki put her diary back inside the bunny toy, zipped it up, and put it on the shelf in the closet, and closed the closet door, and opened her laptop on the table, and then started playing an online game.