He still thinks back to the time he'd tried to deny everything after the Ichiraku incident.
It was that time of year again, and he was in his hospital bed.
On the day of the Rinne festival, nonetheless.
Kakashi Hatake sits upright in his bed, tired eyes straining to read the book in his hands as the sun begins to set outside his window.
It had been about six months since his feelings for Sakura had reared their ugly head (yes, he was ready to call them feelings now, but that was an admission that only he himself would know), and he had done everything in his power to shove them down into the depths of his unaffectionate heart where they belonged; and when that didn't work, to occupy himself otherwise so he could simply forget.
This proved useless, of course, as it ultimately led to him being in the hospital; S-ranked missions were among those that a shinobi should never choose to accept on a whim. And now, here he lie, tethered to his hospital bed by an IV pole with his ribs wrapped in medical dressing and various bruises and lacerations everywhere, a few broken bones. Oh, the joys of a ninja life.
The evening sun dips over the crest of a far-off hill, and just like that, his light source diminishes. Kakashi idly reaches over to flip on the lamp at his bedside, flinching from his torn rotator cuff. He'd already forgotten about the pain. Must be going senile.
He turns the page of his book, exhaling quietly through his nose as he waits for the throbbing in his shoulder to ease.
It was strange. This was a new volume - the latest in Jiraiya's long, long line of erotica novels - and yet he is struggling to finish it. Normally, he blazed through these things. But this one...hit a little too close to home. The main character is a silver-haired man with one eye and no family or kin, no place to call home, who wanders from land to land in search of purpose, of love. Kakashi himself knows better than to assume the author had pulled that one out of nowhere and slapped a fictional story around it, but he ultimately puts it aside in order to satisfy his boredom.
However, the more he reads, the angrier he gets; the main character had happened upon a village, buried deep within Mist, and collapsed at the doorstep of the Mizukage's daughter; their strawberry-haired daughter.
He has half a mind to slide out of his hospital bed and pay the Legendary Sanin a visit, but Kakashi has never been one to be brash or garish, and he would much rather die knowing the old perv was none the wiser than to have Sakura find out and the whole thing turn into a big ordeal.
And besides, it really isn't a big deal.
It's not.
...
...
...But why?
Because I say so, he thinks stubbornly, focusing a little too hard on the word 'the' on page 42. And because Sakura will never find out...
Silencing his brain, he focuses on the book and dives headfirst into the story, attempting to lose himself in it. But the longer he reads, the more he winds up circling right back around to the reality he is trying to escape. A few more minutes go by, a half hour tops before he turns out his light and gives up.
He sets the book down in his lap and lies back down to sleep; he can't finish it knowing the heroine has pink hair.
