Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Kakashi's Research ❯ Faking it ( Chapter 4 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: Micaru 
Anime/Manga: Naruto Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai / Comedy | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 09.12.2007 | Pages: 5 | Words: 5.6K | Visits: 755 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: Naruto Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai / Comedy | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 09.12.2007 | Pages: 5 | Words: 5.6K | Visits: 755 | Status: Completed
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any of the characters in the series! I simply borrow them to do my bidding is all.
A/N: I’ve been a bit busy with school starting up and everything so I haven’t had as much time as I would have liked to work on KR. But, here’s the next chapter anyhow!
Oh and in case any of you were confused by this, Sakura isn’t a medic nin in here. For a bit I was still up in the air about this and whether or not to make her under Tsunade’s tutelage like she is later in the series, but I decided that that wouldn’t exactly tie in with the happenings of Ch. 2 if she was and it would be somewhat contradicting. XD; When I started this fanfic I didn’t intend it to be very long and thus didn’t think it through much. At this point, I’m simply typing on impulse!
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Kakashi’s Research
Chapter 4: Faking it
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“Sakura…”
“... Kaka…shi.”
“Sakura.”
“Mmmn… Kakashi.”
“Sakura!”
“Mngh… Wha…?”
“Get. Off. Me. Now. Forehead!”
The sexy man in Sakura’s dream shattered as consciousness smashed through her slumber like a wrecking ball. Materializing in his place was a very harassed looking blonde. “Ino..?” Sakura mumbled before a loud and squeaky yawn tumbled from her throat. She raised a hand to wipe the sleep from her squinty eyes before frowning. “What’re you doing in my bed?”
“Your bed??” Ino shrieked. “This is my bed!”
Sakura blinked dumbly, the words of her distressed friend taking a long moment to register in her fuzzy mind. “Mm? That’s crazy. Why would I be in your… ohmigawd! I’m-in-your-bed!”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you! Now get the hell off of me lesbian!” Sakura quickly scrambled off of her agitated friend(or was more or less shoved off), which until then she'd had one leg tossed over and her hand wrapped snuggly about her waist. “What the heck are you trying to do to me?” Ino hissed as she practically flew to the opposite end of the bed. “Molest me in my sleep?”
Sakura slowly sat up. “No… I wasn’t. It was just, uhm…” Sakura stared at the ceiling blinking twice before her memory caught up with her. “Last night, I just got scared.”
“You got scared? Of what? Don’t tell me you still think that there’s a monster in your closet! For crying out loud! You’re eighteen! I told you seven years ago when you last snuck into my bed that there’s no such th--”
“--No, it wasn’t anything like that, Ino!” Sakura growled. “Last night I heard a noise outside my window!”
“You're… serious?” Ino asked incredulously. Sakura merely nodded. “Did you see anyone? Like one of those peeping toms?” she said before adding unnecessarily under her breath, “Though I myself find it hard to believe any man in his right mind would be trying to sneak-a-peek at you in the first place…”
Sakura bristled. “Shut it, Pig!”
“Well, did you see someone?”
“No.” Sakura shook her head. “When I looked out, there was nothing there. It was probably just a cat or something, I know, but I couldn’t get to sleep after it. And so…” Sakura looked sheepish as she nodded towards Ino.
“And so you came running to me like the little wimp you are. Geez, Sakura, you’re still as much of a baby as the day I met you.”
“I am not!” Sakura retorted indignantly.
“Yeah, just don’t come crawling into my bed anymore, you got that Forehead?” Ino sad flatly, apparently unsympathetic towards her supposedly best friend. “Especially if you’re going to go off and cop a feel of me when I’m sleeping!”
“I was so not trying to ‘cop a feel’!” Sakura protested hotly, her cheeks burning red.
“Oh yes you were! When I woke up earlier, imagine how I felt when I found someone snuggling me and moaning ‘Takahashi , Takahashi!’? Which reminds me-- why were you so upset last night and who the hell is Takahashi ? Don‘t tell me that whoever this Takahashi guy is dumped you?”
“Taka..hashi?” Sakura repeated, confused. “But, I don’t know a Taka…” Sakura gasped.
Takahashi. Kakashi. Takahashi. Kakashi.
There were several similar syllables in the two names Sakura supposed and it was easy to see how Ino could have misinterpreted. But then, did that mean that she had been moaning her sensei’s name… in her sleep? Sakura groaned before she collapsed back onto the bed.
Now she remembered. She’d had a very wicked dream about herself and Kakashi. A dream that involved lotions and oils...
“Well, what happened?” Ino said loud enough to break through Sakura’s day dream. She narrowed her eyes at Sakura, obviously frustrated with her friend‘s silence.
“I uh…” Sakura said before feigning another yawn and then blinking sleepily. She grabbed one of those frilly pink pillows she’d always teased Ino about before slinging it over her head. “Nothing,” she finally muffled.
When faced with a nosy Ino, it was best to not make eye contact or to just play dead.
“Nothing? That’s what you said last night,” Ino scowled. “But I’m not buying it. What kind of fool do you take me for?”
Sakura’s only response was to roll onto her side as to where Ino could only see her back. There was a brief silence in which Sakura could almost feel Ino’s glare lasering a hole through her pillow and into the back of her skull... Finally, Ino huffed. A shift on the bed suggested that Ino had gotten up.
“Don’t think I’m going to drop this, Forehead. I’ll figure out what happened between you and this Takahashi-dude,” came Ino’s voice as she bustled around the room, presumably collecting her clothes for the day. “I don’t have any time so I’ll let you go for now. You’re lucky it’s almost seven forty-five and I have a breakfast date with a sexy ANBU boy at the teahouse before my mission today. Come to think of it, it’s probably about time for you to get up too. Choji told me yesterday about how Naruto was going on and on about how Kakashi-sensei was going to be teaching you guys a new jutsu. At nine, right? I wonder what type it will b--”
“Genjutsu. And I’m not going.”
Ino’s footsteps stopped just short of the bedroom door. “What do you mean ‘you’re not going?’”
“I’m not going,” Sakura repeated as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I don’t feel good.” Lie.
“It can’t be that time of the month already, Sakura! And even then you’ve never once stayed home just because of a few lousy cramps. Don't you have like a perfect attendance record or something you've been keeping up with?”
Even if that was true, Sakura knew one day wouldn’t make much of a difference. “I have a cold, Pig. So shaddup. You sound like my mother,” Sakura snapped from underneath her pillow, quick to force out a sniffle afterwards lest Ino see straight through her bogus act.
“A cold, huh?” Ino said ruminatively. “That’s funny. You seemed perfectly fine a minute ago.”
Sniffle. Sniff!
“Alright, alright. Just don‘t get any snot on my pillows,” Ino grumbled as she left the room. Sakura breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
Ino was always on her case and it drove her mad! That pig should learn to keep her nose out of Sakura’s business if she knew what was good for her! And besides, was it so unusual for Sakura to be sick once in a while? Yes… Even if she wasn’t even sick in the first place? Even if she was only pretending to have a cold just so she could worm her way out of class today?
“Gah, I’m so pathetic,” Sakura grumbled. Sakura wanted to smother herself with her pillow! She felt so miserable and she felt miserable because she was miserable.
She wanted to stay home because she was too much of a chicken shit to face Kakashi? And for what? For something he obviously didn’t take seriously? Sakura felt like a fool for making such a big deal about nothing.
But, it wasn’t nothing.
And as much as she tried willing herself to believe that it was, she couldn’t. If it was nothing, why did she feel as upset as she did? If it was nothing, why did she hate Kakashi for not thinking anything of what had happened that previous night?
It may have been just an empty kiss, but everything she put into it was genuine. And that was probably what upset her most. That she fell for it.
That, and the fact that the dick-mo had humiliated her!
Ooo. She could hear Inner Sakura warbling now. ‘He‘s going to pay for that one!,’ she was saying. 'If it's the last thing I'll do, I'm gonna get my revenge! Cha Cha Cha!'
Sakura fell back asleep with a smirk tugging at her mouth and with the evil rants for vengeance of her inner self ringing in her ears.
-
It only seemed like Sakura had just fallen asleep when she was again jerked awake by the sounds of someone hammering away at the apartment door. In reality, she probably had been sleeping for hours…
Bang! Bang! Bang! “Sakuraaa?” a familiar voice muffled through the front door so loudly she could hear it all the way from Ino’s bedroom. Bang! Bang! “Sakura?” Bang! Bang! Bang! “Sakura-chaaan!”
Sakura growled before rolling over onto her stomach and pulling her pillow over her ears. She had every intention in the world of ignoring whoever the hell that bastard turned out to be. If she didn’t answer the door, he would either go away thinking that she wasn’t home or he would get the idea that he wasn’t wanted and he’d leave anyways.
Unfortunately, that didn’t turn out to be the case here as this person continued to pound on her door relentlessly.
Bang! Bang! Bang! “Sakura! Sakura-chan!” Bang! Bang! Bangittybang! “Sakur--”
“What the hell do you want Naruto!?” Sakura snarled as she whipped the door open so fast that the said boy wheeled forward and plowed straight into Sakura… his face coincidentally meeting with her chest.
There was a loud smack, a red-faced Sakura, and then there was a sheepish blonde sprawled across the floor sporting a throbbing meat-bump at the top of his head.
Apparently Naruto was so used to physical beatings by Sakura now that over the years he had become virtually immune. “Sakura, you look terrible! Just terrible! I guess you really are sick!”
“Naruto…” Sakura ground out, her eye twitching dangerously. This boy was the last thing she needed!
“I suppose Ino really was telling the truth when she told us you had a cold!” Naruto exclaimed, jumping to his feet like one of those punching bags asking to be slugged again. “We ran into her and the rest of team ten earlier as they were leaving to go on their mission and she seemed really worried! Right Sasuke?”
The nonchalant Uchiha suddenly materialized in the doorway as if on cue. Sometimes Sakura wondered if the boy simply did that to weird everybody out.
“We figured it must have been really bad if it caused you to not show up. Then me and Sasuke got really concerned, ‘cuz like, you never miss out on training sessions and missions! Sasuke especially was worried! He wanted to come and see you right away to see if you were okay. I told him, ‘It’s probably just that time of the month for her. You know how weird girls are when they’re on their you-know-what’! But Sasuke wouldn’t hear of it! He practically dragged me over and--OW!” Naruto was now rubbing a second lump alongside the first and an agitated Sasuke stood next to him with his culprit hand balled into a fist.
“I swear you just like hearing yourself talk. You‘re such a moron,” Sasuke growled as he glared at Naruto. Naruto expectantly glared back. But as soon as Naruto opened his mouth to start one of those inevitable arguments, Sakura quickly cut in the manner of one who was used to intervening before he ever had the chance to.
“Well thanks for dropping by guys. But I’m fine, really!” Sakura said with a smile.
“But, Ino said you’re really sick!” Naruto shot at her. Both Naruto and Sasuke both were giving her pointed looks.
“Oh, right… I am!” Sniff. Sniffy. Sniff! “I just feel a lot better than I did earlier.” Sakura wasn’t a good liar and she knew it, but she was relieved when the boys seemed to get off her case anyhow.
“Too bad you missed out on training today, Sakura-chan. Kakashi-sensei actually did teach us that new jutsu!” Naruto chirped, ignorant of how Sakura’s cheeks pinkened and a frown tugged at her lips just when hearing the name.
“He did, did he? How did that go?” Sakura asked, schooling her tone to be light and nonchalant.
“Oh, it was awesome! Kakashi-sensei taught us the one where you focus your chakra on a tree and make it so that the roots or branches can bind your enemy! It was so neat, Sakura-chan! I wish you could’a been there! Oh, and guess what, guess what?” Naruto’s face lit up as he chanted like a child, “I got Sasuke! I got Sasuke!”
“Harrumph,” Sasuke scoffed. “Only because I let you.”
Of course he did. Just like he 'let' Naruto deck him the other day when he hadn't been paying attention.
“You didn’t let me! I got you on my own! Believe it!”
“Well, it sounded like it was fun,” Sakura cut in again, peering resolutely at the floor. “And, uhm… what about Kakashi-sensei?”
“Kakashi-sensei? He was only fifteen minutes late today if that's what you mean. He was a little bit surprised when you never showed, though. That’s when we met up with Sarutobi-sensei’s group as they were heading out. Ino took the chance to pounce on Sasuke with you not being there-- not that that would‘ve stopped her in the first place…”
“Typical,” Sakura injected.
"Yeah. But, that's when she told us that you were sick. And... lessee... oh! Kakashi-sensei still left early again, but when we went to Ichiraku’s he wasn’t there! Pervy Sage was though. He seemed a little teed off. Guess Kakashi-sensei’s even started ditching the old geezer too! Which reminds me-- I forgot to ask sensei again about why he was meeting up with him!”
“I wonder where Kakashi-sensei went this time?” Sakura growled a little too sourly, “He’s probably out trying to get those disgusting papers published or something.”
“Disgusting papers?” Naruto said, he and Sasuke blinking at her curiously.
Sakura giggled weirdly, too nonchalant to truly be nonchalant. “Disgusting papers? What papers? I don‘t know about any disgusting papers!” she shrilled. Sasuke and Naruto both threw her a worried glance, probably doubting her sanity in her ‘weakened state’ at this point. Sakura was a bit relieved when Naruto started to complain, taking the spotlight off of herself.
“Man, am I hungry!” Naruto cried, giving his stomach a gesturing pat. “I tried getting the Ichiraku folks to give us free ramen, but they said that I wasn't getting away with any more freebies. Crap! Now I’m gonna starve for sure. I don't have anything in my fridge that isn't starting to get furry and possibly having it's own heartbeat and the only thing Sasuke-bastard has in his fridge is tea. Well, you got anything to eat in there, Sakura-chan?" Naruto next asked, not even awaiting an answer before he zoomed right on past her and set out to raid her kitchen.
“Naruto!” Sakura cried, only to watch Sasuke strut on past her as well.
“Oo! Ice cream!” came Naruto’s voice for all in the world as if he’d just found a piece of gold. “It’s not ramen, but I do love my veggies as well!”
“Ice cream isn’t a vegetable, idiot.”
“Naruto! Sasuke! Get out of m--”
“--Jackpot! Check it out, Sasuke! I found pocky!”
“Hm. I didn’t know Sakura had mint tea…”
Sakura growled. She did not feel like dealing with these two at the moment. She didn’t feel like dealing with anyone-- let alone the little terrors of Konoha. The pair of them were a walking migraine. She simply wanted to stay home all day and sleep and relax and forget all about the mishaps of the night before. Was that too much to ask? Naruto and Sasuke both had effectively destroyed her plans of peaceful relaxation within the course of five minutes! “Naruto! Sasuke! Get out, get out, get out!”
After a couple moments of clambering and screeching, ten shadow clones of Naruto scurried on out the front door with over half of the food contents of her kitchen in thier greedy hands, each one chiming curtly as they past Sakura by, “Later Sakura-chan!”
Sasuke took his time as he exited behind the stampede of orange and black blurs. As he passed her he stopped, his hands in his pockets as he turned slightly to regard her with a speculative glance. Sakura blinked. “You’re not sick, are you?” he asked. Sakura was quiet, almost shrinking under his gaze. Apparently the brief silence that ensued was more than enough of an answer for the Uchiha. “Didn’t think so,” he murmured coolly as he walked out the door leaving Sakura to gape at him until he and the multiple blondes disappeared behind a corner.
As Sakura closed and locked her door, she rubbed at her temple. The pair of them had come and gone, one of them nabbing almost the entire stock of her kitchen in the blink of an eye and the other one easily seeing through her little white lie even without the use of his Sharigan!
What gave her away? Was she not going through the motions right? To her credit, she did sniff every now and then! Surely that was at least a tad bit convincing? Well, apparently when it came to Sasuke’s all-seeing eyes, it hadn’t been. Sakura frowned. And Naruto had the nerve to say that she looked terrible? Did she really?
Sakura pulled a self-conscious hand to her face and touched her cheek thoughtfully. She supposed her skin was kind of oily and her hair was a little bit greasy from not washing it yet and maybe she could have done with rinsing off her mascara before she went to bed last night…
That’s it. She was taking a bath. And she’d only come out when she felt that she was the human equivalent to a prune!
Sakura shuffled through the living room and into the bathroom, turning on the faucet of the tub until the water ran piping hot. Next she plucked up the little box of bath beads to tip a small bit into her bath but accidentally ended up tipping over half it’s contents. This earned a grumbled ‘crap!’ from Sakura of course.
While the bathwater and sweet-smelling bubbles slowly began to rise, Sakura took her time to undress. As she slipped out of her decidedly lime green boxers( the ones with little cherry imprints on them) and wiggled out of her white nighty shirt and tossed the clothe articles to the floor, Sakura paused to stare at the partially nude figure that stood before her in the mirror.
She turned slightly, green eyes taking in her mediocre chest, made even more unimpressive when wrapped and smushed down within the confines of her chest bindings. She frowned at the way that when she stretched her arms over her head, her ribs were clearly visible. The way her slim hips barely flared out and were nonexistent if compared to perhaps Ino or even Hinata! And her forehead… Sakura’s eyes narrowed. Don’t even get her started on that thing.
This daily scrutiny was a routine. A force of habit, really, that she'd picked up over the years. Sakura had her insecurities just like every other human female on the planet. And just like other girls, when she discovered something that she found particularly unattractive, she had that nasty habit of becoming dreadfully self-conscious about it.
Sakura divested her remaindering undergarments before proceeding to turn off the running faucet. Dipping one foot into the water, before slowly sinking in completely, Sakura hissed, “Oh…ah… hot-hot-hot!” It took a few moments for her body to adjust but when it did, Sakura instantly relaxed. “Aaah…” she purred, leaning back and resting her head against the edge of the tub, “Now this… is a bath!”
Sakura for the first time in the past couple days was able to unwind. She felt as if all the tension that heaped onto her shoulders was just melting away. She stewed in the hot bathwater for a good five minutes before she carried on shampooing her hair and shaving her legs.
She was halfway through the process of rinsing the strawberry scented suds out of her hair when she heard someone knocking at the front door…again. Sakura growled. “Naruto…”
Was he back to snatch whatever food left of her kitchen that he and his dumb clones hadn’t managed to earlier? The little shit! He didn’t give up earlier when she ignored him at the door and now that he knew for sure that she was home Sakura doubted Naruto would leave this time without at least being acknowledged.
Begrudgingly, Sakura climbed out of her bath, dripping and soap still amusingly clinging to her. She didn’t often make habits of greeting people at the door butt naked so Sakura clumsily shrugged back into her pajama tee and boxers as she toddled to the front of the apartment. Plucking out a wedgie, Sakura glowered. She might as well have been dipped in glue as her clothes would have done as much! Throwing open the door, she screeched, “What the hell do you want this time Naru…” Sakura blinked. “…to?”
Instead of a blonde-haired idiot, she found herself being stared into the face by a… chicken?
“Delivery for Sakura-kun,” it said. Or rather, the person behind holding up the delicious-smelling container with the said chicken illustration on it’s front.
Sakura peered around it to see an orange novel and an explosion of gravity-defying silver hair hovering above it. “Kakashi-sensei?” she peeped, bewildered.
“Mm,” was her expected reply.
“What are you doing here?” she asked with a grimace, glancing around suspiciously as if expecting something like a surprise attack or something else equally sneaky.
Sakura did not want to see him. Him of all people! She’d rather fifty of Naruto’s shadow clones than face the object of her most recent misery.
Not to mention, Kakashi never paid Sakura visits like this. He’d once given her a piggyback ride home a couple years back when she had sprained her ankle after a pretty intense C-ranked mission, but that was about it. For him to drop by so unexpectedly Sakura figured something just had to be up.
Either that or somebody died.
“Can’t a teacher visit his favorite student without there being a specific reason behind it?” Kakashi said as if reading her mind, though not even lowering his book to regard her. “Besides, when my perfect attendance pupil gets ill, am I not entitled to be at least a little bit worried?”
Any anger that Sakura had felt for this man seemed to have evaporated with that one question. At the moment she couldn't remember why she had ever been mad at him... “You were worried about me, Kakashi-sensei?”
“Of course, Sakura-chan. Without you to separate Sasuke and Naruto, I was hardly able to get any reading done without the pair of them bickering every two seconds.”
Oh, now she remembered why. He was a dick-mo.
“I’m so sorry I wasn't there today to help you better neglect your duties as our teacher,” Sakura said dryly as she narrowed her eyes, resisting the ever tempting urge to slam the door on his face at that very moment. There had to be some compassion in his statement somewhere.
“Apology accepted. So I take it Naruto and Sasuke have already come?” Kakashi asked and when hearing Sakura’s tell tale sigh, he continued, “Asuma’s group swung by earlier. I heard one of his students, the annoying loudmouthed one, saying something about you having caught a cold.”
“Oh, that was probably Ino,” Sakura said, scratching the back of her damp head.
“Naruto was nonstop about coming to see you after that. He probably had to drag Sasuke kicking and screaming.”
That’s not the way Sakura had heard it. But then again, anything detailed from Naruto’s gob was probably beyond exaggerated to the point were it bordered being a complete fib. This being a perfect example.
“Anyways, I thought I’d bring you some hot chicken soup to help you feel better. I was going to get miso soup for you, but I don’t like miso…”
Sakura liked miso.
“There was leek soup also, but I don‘t like the smell of leeks.”
Sakura loved the smell of leek soup.
“… not to mention that the chicken was a whole lot cheaper.”
So that was it.
“In any case, I figured a nice cup of broth plus a good night’s rest and you‘ll be feeling better in time for tomorrow,” he said evenly, not even batting an eye in her direction as he flipped to the next page of his Icha Icha Paradise.
“Tomorrow?” Sakura echoed dumbly as she hesitantly accepted the proffered cup of chicken soup.
“Mmhm. You weren’t at today’s training. I have to teach you the genjutsu that you missed, don’t I?” Kakashi said simply, managing to tear his gaze off of his book long enough to throw her a bemused look. “Why Sakura, you’re soaked to the bone,” Kakashi commented, ignorant of the ‘no-shit-Sherlock!’ glare she launched his direction.
“Well, I was having a bath before you came along,” she said flatly, tugging a foamed rosy lock before her eyes for inspection. She probably looked a mess.
Sure, Sakura looked more than just a little bit humorous, but even so, to Kakashi she was just as cute as ever.
“Mm,” Kakashi hummed, his lone eye giving her a ruminative once over. His gaze wandered up her feet, along her slim ankles and softly defined calves to slender legs and then up to her wonderfully round hips where her green boxers were hiked up exposing a bit of thigh, still glistening almost comically with soap suds. And then his eye traveled to her white cotton tee that had laminated to her like a second skin, the damp(almost see-through) fabric of which molding against her perfectly sculpted chest and portraying incredible detail. Kakashi’s eyebrow gave an involuntary quirk. It was safe to assume that Sakura… was cold. He blinked.
Bad-train-of-thought.
Kakashi quickly pried his gaze from her and forced his attention back to his novel, if not a little bit reluctant. “You… smell nice,” he murmured. “Like strawberries.”
Sakura smiled sheepishly, a vague blush on her cheeks.
A brief silence lapsed between them consisting of Sakura standing there awkwardly and Kakashi reading.
Or rather, pretending to.
He found that he couldn’t concentrate. It was a rare thing when Kakashi discovered that he couldn’t focus on his Icha Icha, but for some reason with Sakura standing there looking so damn… exposed and distracting, he could not read for the life of him.
Usually Sakura would have probably offered him to come inside, but under the circumstances Sakura didn’t entirely find that that would be appropriate. “Well, erm…” Sakura mumbled, “I guess I’d better go now…”
“Right. Me too. I've got a cat that needs walking,” Kakashi said.
Sakura's eye twitched. Ino wasn't kidding when she said that she thought Sakura had been picking up Kakashi's lame excuses.
“I er… am feeling a lot better since this morning. But, thanks anyways for the soup,” she said.
“No problem. Just make sure to get well, Sakura-chan.”
“Yeah. That’s right… training’s tomorrow, huh?”
“Mm.”
“What time?”
“Nine.”
“At the oak tree?”
“Mmhm.”
“Alright. Later, Kakashi-sensei,” Sakura said, closing the door.
“Sakura?”
The said girl stopped midway, only to swing it open again to regard him blankly. “What is it?” she asked, frowning at the sudden crestfallen manner her sensei seemed to be gazing at her with.
“About last night…” Kakashi began, scratching the back of his head awkwardly as he looked off somewhere to the side. Man. He really sucked at saying his sorrys. It was hard for Kakashi to apologize and sound truly sincere as anything and everything he ever said, if not sounding insensible, always sounded either sarcastic or just plain malicious. “Well, I--”
“--Really, don't worry about it. It's alright.”
No. It wasn't.
“Sakura, I really think we should talk about--”
“--I said it’s alright, Kakashi-sensei, it’s fine,” Sakura persisted, evidently trying her damnedest to dodge the subject. She didn’t want to talk about it, that much was obvious. “See you tomorrow then?” she said, schooling her expression to be light when inwardly, she wanted to go and stick her head in the oven.
“But, Saku--”
Slam!
Kakashi realized then that Sakura had an affinity for slamming doors. He sighed. “See you tomorrow, then…”
-
Sakura stood there with her back pressed to the door for a moment, clutching the plastic cup of soup and feeling decidedly immature. And if it was one thing Sakura hated most, it was feeling like a child.
There was her chance to talk things out and clear the air between Kakashi and herself and she cut him off, too embarrassed to even talk to him about it. And here he came all this way to see if she was alright. Bringing her chicken soup( even of she would have preferred miso…) and even trying to be the more mature of the two to come straighten things out face-to-face. And she blew him off.
The reality of it was that Sakura wasn’t at all ready to forgive him. Not yet she wasn’t.
After all, Inner Sakura still had some revenge to get…
-
A/N: This chapter was a bit redundant I know, but it helped me to get over my brainfart and mild case of writer’s block! Don’t worry, I'll make it up with the next chapter. Let's just say, you wont be too disappointed… xP
A/N: I’ve been a bit busy with school starting up and everything so I haven’t had as much time as I would have liked to work on KR. But, here’s the next chapter anyhow!
Oh and in case any of you were confused by this, Sakura isn’t a medic nin in here. For a bit I was still up in the air about this and whether or not to make her under Tsunade’s tutelage like she is later in the series, but I decided that that wouldn’t exactly tie in with the happenings of Ch. 2 if she was and it would be somewhat contradicting. XD; When I started this fanfic I didn’t intend it to be very long and thus didn’t think it through much. At this point, I’m simply typing on impulse!
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Kakashi’s Research
Chapter 4: Faking it
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“Sakura…”
“... Kaka…shi.”
“Sakura.”
“Mmmn… Kakashi.”
“Sakura!”
“Mngh… Wha…?”
“Get. Off. Me. Now. Forehead!”
The sexy man in Sakura’s dream shattered as consciousness smashed through her slumber like a wrecking ball. Materializing in his place was a very harassed looking blonde. “Ino..?” Sakura mumbled before a loud and squeaky yawn tumbled from her throat. She raised a hand to wipe the sleep from her squinty eyes before frowning. “What’re you doing in my bed?”
“Your bed??” Ino shrieked. “This is my bed!”
Sakura blinked dumbly, the words of her distressed friend taking a long moment to register in her fuzzy mind. “Mm? That’s crazy. Why would I be in your… ohmigawd! I’m-in-your-bed!”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you! Now get the hell off of me lesbian!” Sakura quickly scrambled off of her agitated friend(or was more or less shoved off), which until then she'd had one leg tossed over and her hand wrapped snuggly about her waist. “What the heck are you trying to do to me?” Ino hissed as she practically flew to the opposite end of the bed. “Molest me in my sleep?”
Sakura slowly sat up. “No… I wasn’t. It was just, uhm…” Sakura stared at the ceiling blinking twice before her memory caught up with her. “Last night, I just got scared.”
“You got scared? Of what? Don’t tell me you still think that there’s a monster in your closet! For crying out loud! You’re eighteen! I told you seven years ago when you last snuck into my bed that there’s no such th--”
“--No, it wasn’t anything like that, Ino!” Sakura growled. “Last night I heard a noise outside my window!”
“You're… serious?” Ino asked incredulously. Sakura merely nodded. “Did you see anyone? Like one of those peeping toms?” she said before adding unnecessarily under her breath, “Though I myself find it hard to believe any man in his right mind would be trying to sneak-a-peek at you in the first place…”
Sakura bristled. “Shut it, Pig!”
“Well, did you see someone?”
“No.” Sakura shook her head. “When I looked out, there was nothing there. It was probably just a cat or something, I know, but I couldn’t get to sleep after it. And so…” Sakura looked sheepish as she nodded towards Ino.
“And so you came running to me like the little wimp you are. Geez, Sakura, you’re still as much of a baby as the day I met you.”
“I am not!” Sakura retorted indignantly.
“Yeah, just don’t come crawling into my bed anymore, you got that Forehead?” Ino sad flatly, apparently unsympathetic towards her supposedly best friend. “Especially if you’re going to go off and cop a feel of me when I’m sleeping!”
“I was so not trying to ‘cop a feel’!” Sakura protested hotly, her cheeks burning red.
“Oh yes you were! When I woke up earlier, imagine how I felt when I found someone snuggling me and moaning ‘Takahashi , Takahashi!’? Which reminds me-- why were you so upset last night and who the hell is Takahashi ? Don‘t tell me that whoever this Takahashi guy is dumped you?”
“Taka..hashi?” Sakura repeated, confused. “But, I don’t know a Taka…” Sakura gasped.
Takahashi. Kakashi. Takahashi. Kakashi.
There were several similar syllables in the two names Sakura supposed and it was easy to see how Ino could have misinterpreted. But then, did that mean that she had been moaning her sensei’s name… in her sleep? Sakura groaned before she collapsed back onto the bed.
Now she remembered. She’d had a very wicked dream about herself and Kakashi. A dream that involved lotions and oils...
“Well, what happened?” Ino said loud enough to break through Sakura’s day dream. She narrowed her eyes at Sakura, obviously frustrated with her friend‘s silence.
“I uh…” Sakura said before feigning another yawn and then blinking sleepily. She grabbed one of those frilly pink pillows she’d always teased Ino about before slinging it over her head. “Nothing,” she finally muffled.
When faced with a nosy Ino, it was best to not make eye contact or to just play dead.
“Nothing? That’s what you said last night,” Ino scowled. “But I’m not buying it. What kind of fool do you take me for?”
Sakura’s only response was to roll onto her side as to where Ino could only see her back. There was a brief silence in which Sakura could almost feel Ino’s glare lasering a hole through her pillow and into the back of her skull... Finally, Ino huffed. A shift on the bed suggested that Ino had gotten up.
“Don’t think I’m going to drop this, Forehead. I’ll figure out what happened between you and this Takahashi-dude,” came Ino’s voice as she bustled around the room, presumably collecting her clothes for the day. “I don’t have any time so I’ll let you go for now. You’re lucky it’s almost seven forty-five and I have a breakfast date with a sexy ANBU boy at the teahouse before my mission today. Come to think of it, it’s probably about time for you to get up too. Choji told me yesterday about how Naruto was going on and on about how Kakashi-sensei was going to be teaching you guys a new jutsu. At nine, right? I wonder what type it will b--”
“Genjutsu. And I’m not going.”
Ino’s footsteps stopped just short of the bedroom door. “What do you mean ‘you’re not going?’”
“I’m not going,” Sakura repeated as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I don’t feel good.” Lie.
“It can’t be that time of the month already, Sakura! And even then you’ve never once stayed home just because of a few lousy cramps. Don't you have like a perfect attendance record or something you've been keeping up with?”
Even if that was true, Sakura knew one day wouldn’t make much of a difference. “I have a cold, Pig. So shaddup. You sound like my mother,” Sakura snapped from underneath her pillow, quick to force out a sniffle afterwards lest Ino see straight through her bogus act.
“A cold, huh?” Ino said ruminatively. “That’s funny. You seemed perfectly fine a minute ago.”
Sniffle. Sniff!
“Alright, alright. Just don‘t get any snot on my pillows,” Ino grumbled as she left the room. Sakura breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
Ino was always on her case and it drove her mad! That pig should learn to keep her nose out of Sakura’s business if she knew what was good for her! And besides, was it so unusual for Sakura to be sick once in a while? Yes… Even if she wasn’t even sick in the first place? Even if she was only pretending to have a cold just so she could worm her way out of class today?
“Gah, I’m so pathetic,” Sakura grumbled. Sakura wanted to smother herself with her pillow! She felt so miserable and she felt miserable because she was miserable.
She wanted to stay home because she was too much of a chicken shit to face Kakashi? And for what? For something he obviously didn’t take seriously? Sakura felt like a fool for making such a big deal about nothing.
But, it wasn’t nothing.
And as much as she tried willing herself to believe that it was, she couldn’t. If it was nothing, why did she feel as upset as she did? If it was nothing, why did she hate Kakashi for not thinking anything of what had happened that previous night?
It may have been just an empty kiss, but everything she put into it was genuine. And that was probably what upset her most. That she fell for it.
That, and the fact that the dick-mo had humiliated her!
Ooo. She could hear Inner Sakura warbling now. ‘He‘s going to pay for that one!,’ she was saying. 'If it's the last thing I'll do, I'm gonna get my revenge! Cha Cha Cha!'
Sakura fell back asleep with a smirk tugging at her mouth and with the evil rants for vengeance of her inner self ringing in her ears.
-
It only seemed like Sakura had just fallen asleep when she was again jerked awake by the sounds of someone hammering away at the apartment door. In reality, she probably had been sleeping for hours…
Bang! Bang! Bang! “Sakuraaa?” a familiar voice muffled through the front door so loudly she could hear it all the way from Ino’s bedroom. Bang! Bang! “Sakura?” Bang! Bang! Bang! “Sakura-chaaan!”
Sakura growled before rolling over onto her stomach and pulling her pillow over her ears. She had every intention in the world of ignoring whoever the hell that bastard turned out to be. If she didn’t answer the door, he would either go away thinking that she wasn’t home or he would get the idea that he wasn’t wanted and he’d leave anyways.
Unfortunately, that didn’t turn out to be the case here as this person continued to pound on her door relentlessly.
Bang! Bang! Bang! “Sakura! Sakura-chan!” Bang! Bang! Bangittybang! “Sakur--”
“What the hell do you want Naruto!?” Sakura snarled as she whipped the door open so fast that the said boy wheeled forward and plowed straight into Sakura… his face coincidentally meeting with her chest.
There was a loud smack, a red-faced Sakura, and then there was a sheepish blonde sprawled across the floor sporting a throbbing meat-bump at the top of his head.
Apparently Naruto was so used to physical beatings by Sakura now that over the years he had become virtually immune. “Sakura, you look terrible! Just terrible! I guess you really are sick!”
“Naruto…” Sakura ground out, her eye twitching dangerously. This boy was the last thing she needed!
“I suppose Ino really was telling the truth when she told us you had a cold!” Naruto exclaimed, jumping to his feet like one of those punching bags asking to be slugged again. “We ran into her and the rest of team ten earlier as they were leaving to go on their mission and she seemed really worried! Right Sasuke?”
The nonchalant Uchiha suddenly materialized in the doorway as if on cue. Sometimes Sakura wondered if the boy simply did that to weird everybody out.
“We figured it must have been really bad if it caused you to not show up. Then me and Sasuke got really concerned, ‘cuz like, you never miss out on training sessions and missions! Sasuke especially was worried! He wanted to come and see you right away to see if you were okay. I told him, ‘It’s probably just that time of the month for her. You know how weird girls are when they’re on their you-know-what’! But Sasuke wouldn’t hear of it! He practically dragged me over and--OW!” Naruto was now rubbing a second lump alongside the first and an agitated Sasuke stood next to him with his culprit hand balled into a fist.
“I swear you just like hearing yourself talk. You‘re such a moron,” Sasuke growled as he glared at Naruto. Naruto expectantly glared back. But as soon as Naruto opened his mouth to start one of those inevitable arguments, Sakura quickly cut in the manner of one who was used to intervening before he ever had the chance to.
“Well thanks for dropping by guys. But I’m fine, really!” Sakura said with a smile.
“But, Ino said you’re really sick!” Naruto shot at her. Both Naruto and Sasuke both were giving her pointed looks.
“Oh, right… I am!” Sniff. Sniffy. Sniff! “I just feel a lot better than I did earlier.” Sakura wasn’t a good liar and she knew it, but she was relieved when the boys seemed to get off her case anyhow.
“Too bad you missed out on training today, Sakura-chan. Kakashi-sensei actually did teach us that new jutsu!” Naruto chirped, ignorant of how Sakura’s cheeks pinkened and a frown tugged at her lips just when hearing the name.
“He did, did he? How did that go?” Sakura asked, schooling her tone to be light and nonchalant.
“Oh, it was awesome! Kakashi-sensei taught us the one where you focus your chakra on a tree and make it so that the roots or branches can bind your enemy! It was so neat, Sakura-chan! I wish you could’a been there! Oh, and guess what, guess what?” Naruto’s face lit up as he chanted like a child, “I got Sasuke! I got Sasuke!”
“Harrumph,” Sasuke scoffed. “Only because I let you.”
Of course he did. Just like he 'let' Naruto deck him the other day when he hadn't been paying attention.
“You didn’t let me! I got you on my own! Believe it!”
“Well, it sounded like it was fun,” Sakura cut in again, peering resolutely at the floor. “And, uhm… what about Kakashi-sensei?”
“Kakashi-sensei? He was only fifteen minutes late today if that's what you mean. He was a little bit surprised when you never showed, though. That’s when we met up with Sarutobi-sensei’s group as they were heading out. Ino took the chance to pounce on Sasuke with you not being there-- not that that would‘ve stopped her in the first place…”
“Typical,” Sakura injected.
"Yeah. But, that's when she told us that you were sick. And... lessee... oh! Kakashi-sensei still left early again, but when we went to Ichiraku’s he wasn’t there! Pervy Sage was though. He seemed a little teed off. Guess Kakashi-sensei’s even started ditching the old geezer too! Which reminds me-- I forgot to ask sensei again about why he was meeting up with him!”
“I wonder where Kakashi-sensei went this time?” Sakura growled a little too sourly, “He’s probably out trying to get those disgusting papers published or something.”
“Disgusting papers?” Naruto said, he and Sasuke blinking at her curiously.
Sakura giggled weirdly, too nonchalant to truly be nonchalant. “Disgusting papers? What papers? I don‘t know about any disgusting papers!” she shrilled. Sasuke and Naruto both threw her a worried glance, probably doubting her sanity in her ‘weakened state’ at this point. Sakura was a bit relieved when Naruto started to complain, taking the spotlight off of herself.
“Man, am I hungry!” Naruto cried, giving his stomach a gesturing pat. “I tried getting the Ichiraku folks to give us free ramen, but they said that I wasn't getting away with any more freebies. Crap! Now I’m gonna starve for sure. I don't have anything in my fridge that isn't starting to get furry and possibly having it's own heartbeat and the only thing Sasuke-bastard has in his fridge is tea. Well, you got anything to eat in there, Sakura-chan?" Naruto next asked, not even awaiting an answer before he zoomed right on past her and set out to raid her kitchen.
“Naruto!” Sakura cried, only to watch Sasuke strut on past her as well.
“Oo! Ice cream!” came Naruto’s voice for all in the world as if he’d just found a piece of gold. “It’s not ramen, but I do love my veggies as well!”
“Ice cream isn’t a vegetable, idiot.”
“Naruto! Sasuke! Get out of m--”
“--Jackpot! Check it out, Sasuke! I found pocky!”
“Hm. I didn’t know Sakura had mint tea…”
Sakura growled. She did not feel like dealing with these two at the moment. She didn’t feel like dealing with anyone-- let alone the little terrors of Konoha. The pair of them were a walking migraine. She simply wanted to stay home all day and sleep and relax and forget all about the mishaps of the night before. Was that too much to ask? Naruto and Sasuke both had effectively destroyed her plans of peaceful relaxation within the course of five minutes! “Naruto! Sasuke! Get out, get out, get out!”
After a couple moments of clambering and screeching, ten shadow clones of Naruto scurried on out the front door with over half of the food contents of her kitchen in thier greedy hands, each one chiming curtly as they past Sakura by, “Later Sakura-chan!”
Sasuke took his time as he exited behind the stampede of orange and black blurs. As he passed her he stopped, his hands in his pockets as he turned slightly to regard her with a speculative glance. Sakura blinked. “You’re not sick, are you?” he asked. Sakura was quiet, almost shrinking under his gaze. Apparently the brief silence that ensued was more than enough of an answer for the Uchiha. “Didn’t think so,” he murmured coolly as he walked out the door leaving Sakura to gape at him until he and the multiple blondes disappeared behind a corner.
As Sakura closed and locked her door, she rubbed at her temple. The pair of them had come and gone, one of them nabbing almost the entire stock of her kitchen in the blink of an eye and the other one easily seeing through her little white lie even without the use of his Sharigan!
What gave her away? Was she not going through the motions right? To her credit, she did sniff every now and then! Surely that was at least a tad bit convincing? Well, apparently when it came to Sasuke’s all-seeing eyes, it hadn’t been. Sakura frowned. And Naruto had the nerve to say that she looked terrible? Did she really?
Sakura pulled a self-conscious hand to her face and touched her cheek thoughtfully. She supposed her skin was kind of oily and her hair was a little bit greasy from not washing it yet and maybe she could have done with rinsing off her mascara before she went to bed last night…
That’s it. She was taking a bath. And she’d only come out when she felt that she was the human equivalent to a prune!
Sakura shuffled through the living room and into the bathroom, turning on the faucet of the tub until the water ran piping hot. Next she plucked up the little box of bath beads to tip a small bit into her bath but accidentally ended up tipping over half it’s contents. This earned a grumbled ‘crap!’ from Sakura of course.
While the bathwater and sweet-smelling bubbles slowly began to rise, Sakura took her time to undress. As she slipped out of her decidedly lime green boxers( the ones with little cherry imprints on them) and wiggled out of her white nighty shirt and tossed the clothe articles to the floor, Sakura paused to stare at the partially nude figure that stood before her in the mirror.
She turned slightly, green eyes taking in her mediocre chest, made even more unimpressive when wrapped and smushed down within the confines of her chest bindings. She frowned at the way that when she stretched her arms over her head, her ribs were clearly visible. The way her slim hips barely flared out and were nonexistent if compared to perhaps Ino or even Hinata! And her forehead… Sakura’s eyes narrowed. Don’t even get her started on that thing.
This daily scrutiny was a routine. A force of habit, really, that she'd picked up over the years. Sakura had her insecurities just like every other human female on the planet. And just like other girls, when she discovered something that she found particularly unattractive, she had that nasty habit of becoming dreadfully self-conscious about it.
Sakura divested her remaindering undergarments before proceeding to turn off the running faucet. Dipping one foot into the water, before slowly sinking in completely, Sakura hissed, “Oh…ah… hot-hot-hot!” It took a few moments for her body to adjust but when it did, Sakura instantly relaxed. “Aaah…” she purred, leaning back and resting her head against the edge of the tub, “Now this… is a bath!”
Sakura for the first time in the past couple days was able to unwind. She felt as if all the tension that heaped onto her shoulders was just melting away. She stewed in the hot bathwater for a good five minutes before she carried on shampooing her hair and shaving her legs.
She was halfway through the process of rinsing the strawberry scented suds out of her hair when she heard someone knocking at the front door…again. Sakura growled. “Naruto…”
Was he back to snatch whatever food left of her kitchen that he and his dumb clones hadn’t managed to earlier? The little shit! He didn’t give up earlier when she ignored him at the door and now that he knew for sure that she was home Sakura doubted Naruto would leave this time without at least being acknowledged.
Begrudgingly, Sakura climbed out of her bath, dripping and soap still amusingly clinging to her. She didn’t often make habits of greeting people at the door butt naked so Sakura clumsily shrugged back into her pajama tee and boxers as she toddled to the front of the apartment. Plucking out a wedgie, Sakura glowered. She might as well have been dipped in glue as her clothes would have done as much! Throwing open the door, she screeched, “What the hell do you want this time Naru…” Sakura blinked. “…to?”
Instead of a blonde-haired idiot, she found herself being stared into the face by a… chicken?
“Delivery for Sakura-kun,” it said. Or rather, the person behind holding up the delicious-smelling container with the said chicken illustration on it’s front.
Sakura peered around it to see an orange novel and an explosion of gravity-defying silver hair hovering above it. “Kakashi-sensei?” she peeped, bewildered.
“Mm,” was her expected reply.
“What are you doing here?” she asked with a grimace, glancing around suspiciously as if expecting something like a surprise attack or something else equally sneaky.
Sakura did not want to see him. Him of all people! She’d rather fifty of Naruto’s shadow clones than face the object of her most recent misery.
Not to mention, Kakashi never paid Sakura visits like this. He’d once given her a piggyback ride home a couple years back when she had sprained her ankle after a pretty intense C-ranked mission, but that was about it. For him to drop by so unexpectedly Sakura figured something just had to be up.
Either that or somebody died.
“Can’t a teacher visit his favorite student without there being a specific reason behind it?” Kakashi said as if reading her mind, though not even lowering his book to regard her. “Besides, when my perfect attendance pupil gets ill, am I not entitled to be at least a little bit worried?”
Any anger that Sakura had felt for this man seemed to have evaporated with that one question. At the moment she couldn't remember why she had ever been mad at him... “You were worried about me, Kakashi-sensei?”
“Of course, Sakura-chan. Without you to separate Sasuke and Naruto, I was hardly able to get any reading done without the pair of them bickering every two seconds.”
Oh, now she remembered why. He was a dick-mo.
“I’m so sorry I wasn't there today to help you better neglect your duties as our teacher,” Sakura said dryly as she narrowed her eyes, resisting the ever tempting urge to slam the door on his face at that very moment. There had to be some compassion in his statement somewhere.
“Apology accepted. So I take it Naruto and Sasuke have already come?” Kakashi asked and when hearing Sakura’s tell tale sigh, he continued, “Asuma’s group swung by earlier. I heard one of his students, the annoying loudmouthed one, saying something about you having caught a cold.”
“Oh, that was probably Ino,” Sakura said, scratching the back of her damp head.
“Naruto was nonstop about coming to see you after that. He probably had to drag Sasuke kicking and screaming.”
That’s not the way Sakura had heard it. But then again, anything detailed from Naruto’s gob was probably beyond exaggerated to the point were it bordered being a complete fib. This being a perfect example.
“Anyways, I thought I’d bring you some hot chicken soup to help you feel better. I was going to get miso soup for you, but I don’t like miso…”
Sakura liked miso.
“There was leek soup also, but I don‘t like the smell of leeks.”
Sakura loved the smell of leek soup.
“… not to mention that the chicken was a whole lot cheaper.”
So that was it.
“In any case, I figured a nice cup of broth plus a good night’s rest and you‘ll be feeling better in time for tomorrow,” he said evenly, not even batting an eye in her direction as he flipped to the next page of his Icha Icha Paradise.
“Tomorrow?” Sakura echoed dumbly as she hesitantly accepted the proffered cup of chicken soup.
“Mmhm. You weren’t at today’s training. I have to teach you the genjutsu that you missed, don’t I?” Kakashi said simply, managing to tear his gaze off of his book long enough to throw her a bemused look. “Why Sakura, you’re soaked to the bone,” Kakashi commented, ignorant of the ‘no-shit-Sherlock!’ glare she launched his direction.
“Well, I was having a bath before you came along,” she said flatly, tugging a foamed rosy lock before her eyes for inspection. She probably looked a mess.
Sure, Sakura looked more than just a little bit humorous, but even so, to Kakashi she was just as cute as ever.
“Mm,” Kakashi hummed, his lone eye giving her a ruminative once over. His gaze wandered up her feet, along her slim ankles and softly defined calves to slender legs and then up to her wonderfully round hips where her green boxers were hiked up exposing a bit of thigh, still glistening almost comically with soap suds. And then his eye traveled to her white cotton tee that had laminated to her like a second skin, the damp(almost see-through) fabric of which molding against her perfectly sculpted chest and portraying incredible detail. Kakashi’s eyebrow gave an involuntary quirk. It was safe to assume that Sakura… was cold. He blinked.
Bad-train-of-thought.
Kakashi quickly pried his gaze from her and forced his attention back to his novel, if not a little bit reluctant. “You… smell nice,” he murmured. “Like strawberries.”
Sakura smiled sheepishly, a vague blush on her cheeks.
A brief silence lapsed between them consisting of Sakura standing there awkwardly and Kakashi reading.
Or rather, pretending to.
He found that he couldn’t concentrate. It was a rare thing when Kakashi discovered that he couldn’t focus on his Icha Icha, but for some reason with Sakura standing there looking so damn… exposed and distracting, he could not read for the life of him.
Usually Sakura would have probably offered him to come inside, but under the circumstances Sakura didn’t entirely find that that would be appropriate. “Well, erm…” Sakura mumbled, “I guess I’d better go now…”
“Right. Me too. I've got a cat that needs walking,” Kakashi said.
Sakura's eye twitched. Ino wasn't kidding when she said that she thought Sakura had been picking up Kakashi's lame excuses.
“I er… am feeling a lot better since this morning. But, thanks anyways for the soup,” she said.
“No problem. Just make sure to get well, Sakura-chan.”
“Yeah. That’s right… training’s tomorrow, huh?”
“Mm.”
“What time?”
“Nine.”
“At the oak tree?”
“Mmhm.”
“Alright. Later, Kakashi-sensei,” Sakura said, closing the door.
“Sakura?”
The said girl stopped midway, only to swing it open again to regard him blankly. “What is it?” she asked, frowning at the sudden crestfallen manner her sensei seemed to be gazing at her with.
“About last night…” Kakashi began, scratching the back of his head awkwardly as he looked off somewhere to the side. Man. He really sucked at saying his sorrys. It was hard for Kakashi to apologize and sound truly sincere as anything and everything he ever said, if not sounding insensible, always sounded either sarcastic or just plain malicious. “Well, I--”
“--Really, don't worry about it. It's alright.”
No. It wasn't.
“Sakura, I really think we should talk about--”
“--I said it’s alright, Kakashi-sensei, it’s fine,” Sakura persisted, evidently trying her damnedest to dodge the subject. She didn’t want to talk about it, that much was obvious. “See you tomorrow then?” she said, schooling her expression to be light when inwardly, she wanted to go and stick her head in the oven.
“But, Saku--”
Slam!
Kakashi realized then that Sakura had an affinity for slamming doors. He sighed. “See you tomorrow, then…”
-
Sakura stood there with her back pressed to the door for a moment, clutching the plastic cup of soup and feeling decidedly immature. And if it was one thing Sakura hated most, it was feeling like a child.
There was her chance to talk things out and clear the air between Kakashi and herself and she cut him off, too embarrassed to even talk to him about it. And here he came all this way to see if she was alright. Bringing her chicken soup( even of she would have preferred miso…) and even trying to be the more mature of the two to come straighten things out face-to-face. And she blew him off.
The reality of it was that Sakura wasn’t at all ready to forgive him. Not yet she wasn’t.
After all, Inner Sakura still had some revenge to get…
-
A/N: This chapter was a bit redundant I know, but it helped me to get over my brainfart and mild case of writer’s block! Don’t worry, I'll make it up with the next chapter. Let's just say, you wont be too disappointed… xP