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Chapter 27
🕑 Added 2024-04-26 21:22:24 +0000 UTCThe group plans a prank, and Sakura talks to Iruka about something very important. I really liked this chapter, and I really like the next one as well. you guys can enjoy that on Sunday.
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This strangeness inside of her has gotten on her nerves for the last time. That conversation with her parents was incredibly embarrassing, and a little hurtful, but mostly it served to highlight just how different she views the world. In her mind, she did absolutely nothing wrong and feels less like a scolded girl and more like someone whose parents just turned against her out of nowhere.
She feels blindsided, scared, and stupid because she knows that’s not the case. She clearly did something really bad for them to threaten her like that, her father’s barely ever even raised his voice to her before. She once asked about moving out when she became a genin and he told her she couldn’t leave until she was twenty-five! She’s nowhere near twenty-five, and she knows it hurt him to threaten her like that because they still check in on her in her room every twenty minutes to make sure she hasn’t somehow been torn asunder by her chair or something. They’re feeling very overprotective right now, so to threaten her, well, it doesn’t make any sense as she currently views the world.
Swirling emotions flow through her as she takes the steps needed to get answers, but it’s not to Ino and her clan - a logical conclusion - that her feet take her. A hurt teenage girl would naturally seek out her bestie in most situations, that the clan is very good with mental states and her questions are related to that area would only serve to reinforce the assumption that she would seek out the Yamanaka when frustrated like this..
The actual place her steps take her is as familiar as her own home is. The stairs leading up deeper into the classroom, their desks, their chairs, it’s all as comforting as the smell of unwashed dummies. That shouldn’t be comforting, but it is, she blames spending years in tight confines with exercising brats who don’t understand what a shower is.
That and her own personally bad hygiene. She knows she’s clean now, that’s all that matters, “don’t get distracted Sakura.” She touches her hair despite her floundering, ensuring it’s still brushed and clean just like this morning when Haku sat outside the bathroom and threatened to come in if he didn’t hear the shower. Jerk… He’d probably do it too.
“Iruka-sensei.” She finally says, startling the young man enough he jumps in his seat. The scar on his face looks a little better than before, as does his complexion. She can’t help but wonder if the stress from Naruto and her - possibly even the fanclub - had made his health worse for a time. She’s relieved to see him in better health even if it was her fault, she can smile about improvements in people that are important to her. Iruka is important, very important, he made her feel normal when she got confused, and he made her understand things when she was struggling. He took time out of his day, every day, to ensure students like her weren’t left behind when they got stubbornly stuck on something. Getting stuck wasn’t exactly common for her, she’ll admit, but it happened. Mostly around topics that didn’t make a lot of sense, things like the Shinobi code. A lot of it only makes sense with outside context, and as a young girl she didn’t have the slightest clue what context really meant, let alone outside context.
“Sakura, I didn’t hear you approach. You’ve gotten stealthier.” He compliments her, giving her his tell-tale smile. Most expressions confuse her, even happy ones can mess her up, but she’s seen Iruka’s expressions so many times they make sense. At least she hopes they do and she’s not misinterpreting literally everything - thaaa’ts a panic attack waiting to happen.
She moves on.
“I’ve been told.” By Inari, mostly, she snuck up on him on accident constantly back in Wave. It became a little bit of a game for them, it’s a nice memory that brings a gentle smile to her lips.
“What brings you here? You know you don’t have to come to school anymore.” He says, scratching his cheek a little.
“What’s wrong with me.” She asks, staring into his darker eyes and watching them widen.
“Uh… you’re going to have to be a bit more specific.” She watches the man gulp as he answers.
“I can’t. I don’t understand.” She admits, holding her hips a little, and tilting to the side awkwardly. Nervously. Fidgety, her fingers play an instrument on her hips. This is so hard. “I’m just different. It hurts.”
“Okay, uh, few things that might lead to that.” Iruka begins, shaking his head to clear it, and possibly to avoid her eyes while he talks. She watches him rub his nose with his palm, and wonders what that means. She’s seen it before, but never with enough context to figure it out herself. “First, you probably don’t remember him, but one of your old teachers introduced you to lowered sensitivity training from a very, very young age, and at a much worse degree than is normal.”
“Mizuki-sensei.” She ponders that. “I know he tried to murder Ino but, I don’t remember training…” That was a whole fiasco, she still wonders how Ino managed to pull off a prank that crazy. That sounds more like something Naruto would do, now that she thinks of it. Maybe that’s why all of Naruto’s pranks are harmless. Maybe he saw Ino go way too far once and was like ‘I don’t wanna get murdered.’ She could believe that.
“You wouldn’t, the Academy starts extremely young, most of what we teach you at that point is muscle memory, not memorization,” Iruka explains, “if you’re noticing a lack of sensitivity to pain that is abnormal, it might be related to that. It’s suspected he was abusing students for his own sick pleasures, but that’s never been proven. He could have genuinely believed he was helping. Nothing he did wasn’t normal during wartime.”
“Okay, yeah, that is a part of my issue.” She admits. “My team keeps getting weirded out by my lack of self-preservation.”
“Yeah, see, uh… I really wish I wasn’t put on the spot like this.” Iruka rubs both cheeks, groaning to himself. “You’re also, nuts?”
“... What?” She deadpans at her favorite teacher.
“I think that’s the word.” He nods to himself, “We don’t have strict criteria for how we figure out students are different from each other, but students are undeniably different from each-other. Naruto’s overly energetic to the point getting him to take anything seriously was a nightmare, Sasuke’s got serious trust issues making it a nightmare to get him to take me seriously, Ino’s an incredibly brilliant girl who’d rather use her smarts for literally anything but what’s useful, and you? You’re absolutely deranged, just, out of your mind.” He puts his hands on his head and then pulls them away into the air making a blowing sound with his lips.
“Really? That’s, not what I was hoping to hear.” Sakura admits, one hand raising from her hip to her other arm, rubbing her elbow. “That’s, a bit disheartening to hear.”
“Good, because that’s nonsense.” He says with a roll of his eyes that would make Ino happy to see, it’s just so damn diva. “Sakura, the fact that you just believed me is your problem. You took everything we said to heart, everything. Some people respect authority, you worship it. There’s nothing wrong with you, if there was we would have pulled you from the ninja program back when we started screening for future Itachi’s, at least for a year or two to make sure…”
“I don’t remember that.” Sakura admits, “was that really a thing you did?”
“Yeah, we didn’t actually remove anyone, we just had to check to make the Hokage happy.” Iruka admits. “But you didn’t set it off, you’re fine. You just took war phrases that haven’t been removed from the curriculum, way, way too seriously. You want to talk to someone about fixing yourself, talk to Kakashi. That guy’s spent years getting over the exact problem you currently have.”
“I don’t want to talk to Kakashi though.” She admits, frowning gently at the thought, “Kakashi’s a dick.”
“Yeah, but if you don’t talk to Kakashi, you’re gonna be a dick.” Iruka’s always been blunt with her, he’s one of the few teachers that realized she needed that, possibly because Naruto also needed blunt.
“Aww man, I don’t wanna be a dick.” She whines lowly.
“Then talk to Kakashi!”
“I don’t wanna talk to Kakashi-” Legend says they went in this loop for days.
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“Hehe, it’s gonna be so great.” Naruto rubs his hands together, helping Sakura fill in details on a piece of paper. “You really think we should spend some of our money like this though? Isn’t it um, irresponsible, I think was the word you used?”
“Sometimes irresponsible is best.” Sakura throws her hands up to about chest level, palms up, and shrugs with both her shoulders and hands. She’s trying to learn new body language, she’s not sure about this one. “Pranks are irresponsible in general, if we’re throwing a prank, we’re being irresponsible.”
“So it’s okay when you do it?” Sasuke asks, staring blandly at the two of them while scribbling on his own piece of paper.
“Yes, no, err, it’s okay when we do it, like as a group.” Sakura lands on, after a moment of quick-witted thought. “He’s gonna be so mad, hehehe~!”
Sasuke is silent and stoic, but she can see that subtle smirk on his lips. Naruto seems excited to be alive right now, and she, well, she couldn’t think of a better use for their pocket change if she tried.
[You have gained one Charm.]
Comments
Dopplerdee
The "I know somthing is wrong with me but I don't know what and no one will tell me and it hurts" vibes are on point.
