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Chapter 35 - Melody of Hearts Pt: 4 - "I know"
🕑 Added 2024-05-17 03:49:29 +0000 UTCMelody of Hearts Pt: 4 should be the last part.
So the last chapter of the arc should be Sunday's chapter.
Melody of Hearts was so much shorter in my head.
Turns out I really love writing moments like this. Whoops.
Enjoy ya'll.
I loved hearing people wanted more Ino, knowing I had this entire mini-arc planned for her.
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Electrical, overwhelming, confusing?
It took Sakura more than one moment to realize what was happening, and she didn’t react immediately when reality did finally click with her. She held Ino against her, letting her lips strike fire into her friend’s heart, and outrage in many that looked on, for a solid twenty seconds. She let the world twist around them, and felt a flutter deep through their connection. Ino was alive, and she couldn’t take that away from her.
For Ino it felt like an eternity, for Sakura, it felt like an ethical dilemma.
She is definitely under the influence of magical affection points. What does she even do with this? This is public! People are watching!’ The issue isn’t just the lack of clarification, as she’s pretty sure she just got that, it’s that she feels… nothing. Nothing but guilt and shame. Shame at being so lost, and guilt at not seeing it sooner.
This is her best friend, someone more important to her than anyone in the world, baring her feelings to her in the most public way imaginable. There are love poems less blatant, songs less genuine, and romcoms with a less clear plot. Either her powers have somehow managed to go beyond her domain and enforce potent affections on her friend that are far, far stronger than she had initially guessed, or Ino’s secretly been in love with her for years.
She has no clue which. None. She’d have a better idea if she could remember anything but the soft touch of Ino’s love pouring into her and tingling her senses in a very similar way to Sasuke’s fire on her skin. She can’t. She doesn’t remember anything at this moment, can’t think, can’t feel, can’t care. At some point in their friendship the answer to the question sat on a pedestal and waited for her to pick it up, and she never did. She never cared enough to pay attention, and she didn’t even know she had to.
She can blame the system for many things, but her charm is a representation of her own efforts, her own abilities, her willingness to care and the attention she gave those around her. It’s not some mythical number made from nowhere, and every point she gains makes that all the more obvious.
Shouldn’t she be ashamed, to find her best friends searing hopes flowing into her, and find herself confused?
All she can do is hold Ino closer, let her take control for a long moment, and plead internally that she’s not somehow undoing years of work to make Ino feel better about something that she didn’t know she needed comfort for until just now. She has one friend that can truly stand her at her worst, and support her at her best, and here they stand confused and intertwined. All Sakura wants to do is flee, but she won’t abandon Ino, she’d fight an endless tournament just to see her smile, luckily nothing like that exists.
Ino does exist, and her wavering thoughts don’t distract her as much as she’d like. She has to part, she has to touch on this, she has to look her friend in the eyes and say ‘no.’ She pulls away, breathing heavily and grasping for ground that’s crumbling beneath her. “Haah-Ino, that was um…” She doesn’t even wait for the saliva trail between them to break before trying to say something, anything at all.
“I know.” Ino mumbles against her, burying her face in Sakura’s shoulder and holding onto both sides of her with greedy fingers without so much as waiting for her to finish her rotted convictions. Ino could press, she could push her back, take control and tell her what’s going to happen, and Sakura would have nothing. She’s not a push-over but when it comes to the girl in her arms, she’s made of paper. “Believe me, Sakura, I know.” Ino shakes a little in her grasp, seems so vulnerable and yet, resigned. “You’re not gay, I know that, I don’t think you’re straight either, you’re just, you, and it’s weird.”
“So then that kiss just now…” Sakura trails.
“I was a little overwhelmed in the moment.” Ino admits.
“So you don’t like me?” Sakura can’t help but feel a little relieved, even if it is odd if Ino is going around randomly kissing people just because the position is right.
“Wha-obviously I like you!” She feels Ino’s fist smack against her chest, bouncing off what little assets she has. Sakura can’t help but notice how little she notices the hit. Ino’s gotten weaker, no, it’s more fair to say she’s gotten a lot stronger, and Ino hasn’t changed much at all. They used to be so similar, if not equal, to think her powers would make that much of a gap in such a short time, and then turn around and try to fuck with her friends because what, it finds it funny? With every passing moment she begins to wish her powers are from a mortal origin, so she can one day punish it for its wicked whims.
Should she cancel the date and just accept the loss in charm?
Ino’s more important than that, and if she’s already feeling like this before she’s confirmed the numbers… But how strong are the numbers, what do they mean, how does she even think about this when her best friend’s tears are staining her dress? They’re not even at the festival yet!
Worst, date, ever! “I love you, Sakura, I’ve loved you for so long and, and, you showed up to ask me out and, we haven’t talked in so long it just made me feel like maybe something during your time away made you realize how much I mattered and maybe, just maybe, you’d realized you were secretly gay and… Mixed messages, Sakura, do you have any idea how much mixed messages suck when you can literally read minds?” Ino’s eyes glare into hers fiercely, tears brimming at the corners of such lovely baby blue eyes. She lacks pupils, Yamanaka just don’t have them, and somehow it just makes them look all the more gem-like when stained with pain.
“No, I don’t think so.” Sakura admits awkwardly. She wants so much to sheepishly scratch her cheek, but she dares not let go of her friend for even the slightest moment lest she disappear into a mist she’ll never get back. “I can’t read minds so I wouldn’t have the slightest clue… Kinda wish I did though, since um, I would have been more clear if I knew this was a possibility…”
That’s not actually true, she would have gone with someone else entirely.
Ino’s Ino to her, nothing different. Ino is, well she’s her Ino.
There’s probably plenty of girls named Ino throughout the Elemental Nations, this one’s hers, and she’s in pain, and she wishes nothing more than that it was her.
“Do you still want to go on this date?” Sakura asks. “People are staring.”
“Yes!” Ino shouts, smacking Sakura’s chest again, before finally breaking her hold on her- well, she tries. “Sakura, let me go.” She finds Sakura’s in control, and she has other plans.
“You can’t break out?” Sakura teases her, she’s not even holding her that hard just, firmly enough that she wouldn’t fall backwards if she’d somehow gotten surprised by her own kiss and tried to jump away. She’s rather protective of her friends, even when they’re being weird.
“No! I can’t, and you’re so warm and, damn-it.” Once again, she finds the girl resting against her, her heartbeat fast and her breathing synced with Sakura’s own. Ino smiles blissfully, wishing this moment didn’t ever have to end.
“Well, I can’t say the things you want me to say.” Sakura admits, “I want to, as that’d make you smile, but I can’t.”
“I know…”
“But because this is a date, I can at least play into it for you a little, would you like that?” Sakura asks, wracking her head for tropes she can use, if only for today. Like hell she knows the right thing to do here, but Ino opened up to her, and it’s been so long since they’ve been vulnerable together, and they’re in public so it’s not like they can just pretend this didn’t happen. Everyone and their mom will know what the clan heiress of the Yamanaka clan had done come an hour from now.
“Yeah…” Ino trails, looking anywhere but at her.
“Thought so.” Without a moment’s pause, Sakura breaks her hold on the girl, crouching a little low, so she can grab her in a very different way.
One hand under her knees, the other behind her back, she tilts, fixes her footwork and pivots, and before Ino knows it she’s lifted into the air by two strong arms. “You said play into it not carry me bridal style!” Ino hisses to her, covering her face with both hands, while Sakura holds her close to her chest.
“This is playing into it. We’re on a fancy festival date and you just kissed me and we’re gonna be late.” Sakura points out. “This is what any protagonist would do.”
“Our lives are not a sim-date!” Ino groans, with the world’s biggest smile revealing her true feelings better than even that cherry tomato complexion.
“I dunno, I get the feeling at the moment, they kind of are.” Sakura grins down at her similarly sized friend, and then takes off, eager to get to the festival and leave all the probing eyes around them.
Besides, once they’re actually at the festival, no one will find this weird. Sakura and Ino doing crazy things is normal, that’s the way they’ve always been.
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Arriving at the festival, she can’t help but be taken aback by the signage.
She thought ‘Melody of Hearts’ was the name of the event, but it seems there’s an actual festival named that going on here and, well… “I owe you an apology, these really are some mixed messages I was sending.”
“Right?!” Ino can’t help but laugh. She’s in such a good mood, resting in her arms. She wriggled to get comfortable at first but, before long she settled in and now she lives there.
The name signage has rosy hearts painted alongside it, and every single attraction she can see is couple based. There’s a boating love tunnel she can see from here, a Ferris wheel, with heart shaped seating, there’s a drink and food shop over there with nothing but couples shareable meals which has a firm and bold signage saying it won’t serve groups of one, three, or more, just two.
A part of her wonders why this festival is being so rude to groups of three but, well, she’ll never get romance and she has to accept that.
“What do you want to do first?” Sakura asks, realizing she fits in really well here like this. They’re not even the only girl-only couple around, though they’re definitely rarer than all the guy and girl pairings, a lot rarer. Everyone’s going to think they’re for real… Except Ino, who seems to understand her in ways she doesn’t understand herself.
Who pulls away from a kiss and says ‘I know?’
There’s something wrong with her, with both of them, and if having a fun date where she lets Ino have her fantasy for a bit will save her friendship… She’s ready to have fun.
She just hopes she’s doing the right thing and this isn’t going to make everything so much worse.
Poor Ino… If only the enemy between them was something she could stab.
She’d stab a lot of things for Ino.
Comments
Dopplerdee
Sakura is such a mood. That feeling of understanding you don't understand but you can't fix the issue is painful. Ino is a treasure.
