Naruto Shippuden Fan Fiction ❯ Healing a pained heart ❯ Sandcastle ( Chapter 17 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

It was Gaara’s day off, but it was also Noriko’s day off. That’s why Gaara started making coffee by himself. He filled a cup with tap water, then poured it in the kettle before placing it on the fire from the stove. He was standing in front of the cooker and his reflection stared back at him from the water in the kettle. Sakura stood behind him. She pushed his shoulder down so she could jump happily. She bounced like a ball: up and down. She pulled at his ears, his cheeks, she played in his hair. Gaara wasn’t very joyful because tiredness had a say in this. He worked overtime the last few days because there were many things he had to prepare before his departure to the Land of Cloud. He needed silence to clear his thoughts and Sakura was anything but silent. He kept trying to tell her in a calm manner:

“Please, let me be. Enough already. Look at what you made me do. The spoon trembles in my hand and I sprinkle coffee powder everywhere on the table.”

He was so confused that he put sugar in the coffee jar instead of his cup.

“Look at what you made me do.” Gaara said resignedly without a tinge of reproach, though. It was more of an observation.

Sakura giggled and hugged him tightly to her chest. It was funny to her.

“Sakura, you don’t let me do my job. You’ll end up making me be late for the lesson with Shinki.”

Sakura continued to laugh wholeheartedly and kept buzzing him. A few minutes later, Gaara finally left the kitchen with half an empty cup of coffee. He stopped into the living room, where his son was already waiting for him at the desk. Great. Gaara thought in his head. Sakura remained in the kitchen because she craved some rice boiled in milk. She had to use camel milk because there were no cows in Suna. Noriko left them food in the fridge, but Sakura wanted to eat rice pudding for the day.

At some point, Sakura heard the child’s hurried steps leave the living room, so her head popped from behind the kitchen door. She looked at Gaara and saw him watching her through narrowed eyes. His irritation spoke loudly.

“Shinki poked my eyes for 10 minutes about how I was 2 minutes late. Then he went to the bathroom  to recover for 5 minutes.”

Sakura was shy and wry when she laughed at him with the index finger between her teeth and eyes half closed.

They both heard Shinki sing from the bathroom all of a sudden and both of them looked in that direction. Gaara started laughing in despair while shaking his head with his eyes closed.

“The competition ‘The nameless star’ has finally found the star with just one tusk.” Gaara said.

Sakura laughed wholeheartedly before hiding again in the kitchen when she heard the bathroom door open.

*Later that day*

Shinki was in the backyard playing with his buckets of sand. It was the same place Gaara played with his buckets when he was Shinki’s age. Shinki started working on the biggest sandcastle in Suna a week ago. Today he was continuing his work. Bucket after bucket, golden sand mixed with iron sand to create special shapes outlined in Shinki’s mind.

On the third day since he started working on it, Sakura became curious and asked the boy.

“How did you make it last for so long?”

“I mixed sand with glue and clay. My dad taught me.” Shinki answered without looking at her.

Tall houses behind small houses looked like grape beans from an upside down grape. Sakura had the urge to tell him ‘You built them wrong.’, but she stopped herself in time. She realized all houses in Suna had round roofs, like a hat on someone’s head, while Konoha houses had roofs in the shape of an open book.

A winding path traced a line between houses and in some places, the sand underneath the path fell leaving holes. They made the path look like a bridge placed on top of pillars. It looked as if a giant man walked among the houses with his big feet. There was one big house that stood out. It was overlaid with a long broad leaf from a traditional Suna tree. If this was a painting in colors, Sakura imagined how beautiful it would look. Still, the mixture between gold and black sand made it look rather morbid.

Each day, Shinki added more and more details which made his sculpture even more complicated. The domes of the houses were decorated with overlaid oblique stripes, like chocolate glaze on donuts. Other houses had meandering stairs on the outside of the walls. In order to go from the living room to the upper bedroom, you had to go up the exterior stairs. There were walls with small pointy ends between the houses. Sakura guessed they were meant to keep the enemies away. Gates were placed in patches, some with open doors; others only had the door frames. A small man made of sand could walk right through them. Small round doors decorated the houses on top of the hill, while tall rectangular windows decorated the houses at the base.

One house looked as if it had scales.

“That’s interesting. This house looks like a lizard. I have never seen a house with scales.” Sakura pointed towards it with her index finger.

Shinki furrowed his brows.

“They aren’t scales. They’re chakra detectors. Any stranger that approaches it turns into dust. Nobody will ever be able to attack us.”

“Aaa, so it is our house.” Sakura nodded in understanding.

Shinki remained silent.

“Will it protect me, too?”

Shinki nodded without looking at her and continued to work on his sand. Sakura tried to kiss his cheek, but Shinki ducked so she left him alone with a grin plastered on her face.

When Shinki found out his father was bound to leave to the Land of Cloud, he was convinced they would both go together.

“When are we leaving?” Shinki asked calmly. He already imagined himself packing his things for the trip.

“I am leaving. You will stay here with Sakura.”

The kid’s face changed completely in a second.

“But, dad. I want to come, too. I will stay behind you. I won’t bother you at all.”

“Shinki, I said no. It’s too dangerous. Besides, who will protect Sakura? You are the man of the house while I am away.”

Shinki wasn’t happy at all. Why would he stay with Sakura when he would rather join his father?

The boy's anger made the sand crack and not even glue could hold together a few houses situated at the base of his huge sandcastle. The path had some holes that weren’t there before and some steps crumbled to dust.

Sakura saw Shinki in his room when he left his door open. She stopped in her tracks and asked him:

“Why are you upset, little one?”

She noticed the boy was more apathetic and grumpy lately. She sometimes saw him with tears in his eyes. Whenever she tried to comfort him, he pushed her away. Thus Sakura decided she won’t insist.

“I hate Konoha! I hate all the other countries. Dad always goes there without me. I want to come, too.”

Sakura sighed from the bottom of her soul. She knew she couldn’t give a reasonable explanation to the kid as to why his father can’t possibly take the boy with him. She would end up turning the boy into her enemy. She cared a lot about him and she didn’t want to do or say anything that would estrange him from her. That’s why Sakura decided to encourage the boy in convincing his father to leave together, even though she knew there was nothing that could be done on this issue. The plans have already been made.

The roof of the top houses fell. The scales from the outside walls of the lizard house turned into spikes before they fell, too. The one sand house that was overshadowed by the sand tree remained out in the sun.

The day of Gaara’s departure was close and so, Shinki’s health deteriorated gradually. The feeling of being left behind, that his father will never return, created heartache in the little boy. His hand gripped the shirt on top of his heart when he was alone, making the fabric wrinkle under his fingers. The stress kept him agitated and he looked for any reason to convince his father to change his mind about leaving.

“Look, dad. I mastered a new jutsu.” Shinki moved his sand to prove his point. He turned around to face his dad with hopeful eyes.

“Well, done!”

“It’s going to help us on the road. If some enemy attacks us....”

“Shinki”

“Dad, I can protect myself. You don’t have to protect me. If it gets to fights, I can handle it...”

“No.”

Half of the sandcastle construction turned into dust before wind blew it away. The remains of the huge structure looked like a big clay ball that the wind punched with its invisible fists.

A day before the departure, Shinki started coughing and accused stomach pain. Every time the boy heard a small sound from the outside, he ran to the window to check if his dad came home. Considering his health, Sakura stayed home looking after him. She sent the bird to bring her small cloths that she could soak to try and bring the fever down because stress got to the kid.

Shinki was in the bathroom vomiting.

“I want my dad.” The boy said through tears.

Sakura rubbed her fingers in worry and she often went to check if Gaara arrived home.

“Gaara, Shinki is in the bathroom. He is crying and vomiting. He asked for you.”

Sakura’s alarmed voice made him serious, so he ran to Shinki’s bathroom. He closed the bathroom door, so Sakura was left out. Father and son needed some time alone.

Sakura moved to sit in the kitchen. It felt as if she sat on thorns. Shinki’s state affected her, too. It was natural that a boy who has been abandoned by everyone to be terrorized by the fear of everyone around him leaving for good. Sakura was also stressed for Gaara because he was not good at handling this kind of situations. It would be better if he just let her help him.

Gaara’s heart ached to see his son like this. If Rasa would have seen Gaara crying like Shinki, he would have yelled at him to man up and turned his back on him. Gaara couldn’t be so heartless; instead he caressed his child and held him close to his chest in a tight embrace. The fever was nothing serious. It was just because of stress. He held the boy in his arms and rocked him until he fell asleep.

Gaara looked at his reflection in the mirror with the child’s arms around his neck. It seemed unnatural, as if they were 2 pieces from 2 different puzzles.

It was then that Sakura realized by looking out the window that Shinki’s sandcastle disappeared for good. There were no traces of it anymore.