“Does it still hurt?”
Kohana raised an eyebrow at Sakura. “What are you talking about? The only thing that hurts is my irritation…”
The pinkette sighed, crossing her arms as she looked down at Kohana, who sat on the floor. The girl was lazily looking at a lock of her hair, a pout on her lips. Sakura wasn’t very confident that Kohana was going to listen to what she was about to say, but with that red head, she wasn’t quite sure about that either.
“Listen, Kohana; we’re a team. Weren’t you the only one who figured that out during the test?”
“I didn’t ‘figure it out’! I just went by instinct…” Kohana trailed off at the sight of Sakura’s victorious smile.
“Get rid of that shit-eating grin; it doesn’t fit you, ya know?”
Sakura breathed in deeply, trying to keep her anger in check.
“Either way, you’re the one who trusted all of us. Believe it or not, even me. I mean, I was knocked out… but Kakashi-sensei did mention the fact that you came looking for me.”
Kohana looked away, dropping the lock of hair. A sudden bitter look took over her features.
“That’s not something I want to talk about.”
Sakura’s eye twitched. ‘This girl,’ she thought in sync with Kohana’s mental statement of, ‘Ah, I’m being cowardly again…’
Before she could let the silence continue, Koahan took the initiative to speak. “Why did we stop, anyway?”
Sakura, arms still crossed, turned around and narrowed her eyes at Yamato and Naruto’s direction.
“They’re discussing something.”
Kohana sighed. “They must be talking about me.”
Sakura glanced at the red head, causing her to laugh.
“Don’t worry; I’m not being narcissistic about it.”
“It’s not like you have much of an ego to be close to narcissistic.”
“That’s actually true…”
Just as Kohana moved her hand to her head, she hit something and out from Sai’s bag came his picture book.
“Hey… this… do you think we should…” she was rendered speechless the second she’d opened the book to a certain page.
“The two pages in the center are different from the rest,” she muttered, flipping through the book once again and promptly returning to the center.
“There’s something that’s just creepy about that…” said Naruto.
Kohana stared at the faceless Sai and the blank page next to the illustration of himself.
“The point of this…” she muttered, catching the rest of Team 7’s attention. Kohana looked at all of them before pointing to Sai’s missing hand. “Look, this arm’s not by his side like the other one. Maybe the blank page was meant for someone… someone whom Sai will be willing to show camaraderie… with… or… something…” Kohana shrunk at their wide-eyed gazes.
“I mean, it’s just a guess… so it might not be right…!”
Yamato nodded. “You may be on to something—let’s look at the other pages… it might say something more about Sai… and it might confirm what Kohana said.”
“Yeah, whether it’s right or wrong, there’s definitely something that could reveal Sai’s intentions,” Sakura agreed. “There’s something that’s been bothering me though.”
