Sasuke's office is an illustration of his demeanor. The decor brims with minimalism, beige-painted walls boasting a few awards on the right, a cabinet overflowing with documents stands sentinel behind a plush leather chair tucked into the back of the room. Opposite the door, a spacious table occupies a quarter of the room, files neatly stacked on one corner, interspersed with a miscellany of objects—a small glass globe, a Rubik's cube, a penholder, a stamp pad, a bottle of water, a nameplate and more. A photo frame rests on the right corner, its back facing Sakura until she walks around the table to find Itachi and Sasuke standing proud inside the glass wall; Sasuke with his well-adorned scowl and Itachi with a gentle uplift of his lips. A framed certificated is held by both, Sakura notes, before finding said certificate on the wall.
"Sit," Sasuke requests, and Sakura gazes around, bewildered, seeing nothing to sit on in sight when she finds Sasuke pushing his seat around to face her. She regards him with wide eyes, making him sigh, before he gently nudges her shoulders to seat her down and himself walks away to crouch down before the cabinet, opening drawers and closing them, sifting through folders old and dusty, before settling on one and pulling it out, the sound of metal clanking before Sasuke shuffles over to her. A red folder in his hands, he extends it towards her and she accepts it, their fingers brushing at the tips.
"I'll be back," he says, before drifting out of her sight. Sakura leans back against the chair, a sigh on the brink of her lips, holding the folder open in her arms. The coarse feel of the folder, cold against her fingertips, and the rhythmic ticks of a clock previously unnoticed compel her to sit up straight and flip open the file. Loud headings and a family picture greet her and Sakura gently traces the outline of her parents' faces, the arc of her mother's smile and the lines around her father's eyes. Her smaller, younger face looks back at her and she finds her shoulders sagging at the weariness on the teenager's face, her smile around it like a plastic wrap. Letting her nails glide across the smooth veneer, she immerses herself in memories of the day her family posed for their last photo together, snapped on the day of her high school graduation. Her uniform-clad self seems like a long-lost friend she had hated and admired at the same time.
Sakura forces her eyes to skim over the more minute details. The blank space in the job field below her father's name feels like a spear down her throat, especially when her gaze falls on the three lines below hers. Long nails find the depths of her skin as she curves her fingers and swallows the lump in her throat. 'Businessman' was what her father used to call himself, and she understood, truly, that failure in the field was expected, that a fraud transaction, a ruined negotiation and a scam partner company were risks every businessman took. Yet, in retrospect, it all seems foolish to her now. Her father could have had the same epiphany, found a stable living and provided for the family he had chosen to create.
Except he didn't.
Sakura presses her thumb against the corner of her eyes.
Could-haves bring back pain. Pain which she wishes to relinquish, doesn't want to accept, that it was ever a part of her, as if it isn't the exact term for her relationship with her parents.
Sakura flips to the second and last page, her parents' educational details, close relations, debt history, and ties to the Uchiha family, all mentioned in brief. References mentioned include some old neighbors and family friends who she assumed disappeared, like old memories, over time. She lets her thumb roam over the span of the paper surface, mind everywhere but the letters printed on it, when her forehead meets a warm metal surface. Her eyes move up to find Sasuke, his entrance gone completely unnoticed by her, and a can in his hand.
The file lands on the table with a soft thud as Sakura curtains the gasp on her tongue with the tips of her fingers. The brand of coffee, from years back, gleams away before her eyes and her heart swells from a feeling so vast to contain and so hard to explain, as if words exist as nothing but congeries of notes and a snow-clad road and so much less, and so, so much more. She finds, in that single breath held back, staring back at her, eyes wider and jaw softer, the black of the irises darker and much more lost, in a muffler very out of style.
"I forgot to ask what you like."
She takes it from him, the small can as warm as she remembers, so like Sasuke to buy, and says, "This."
The man raises a questioning eyebrow.
"I like this."
Satisfied, Sasuke hums and leans over her shoulder from behind the chair, studying the page from the red file she has long forgotten and can't care to remember as the perimeter of his chest grazes briefly against her head, his fingers drumming against the head-rest behind her ears, his other arm beside her, palm firmly pressed on the armrest. She breathes in his scent, sandalwood and beer and something manly, and hopes he doesn't notice her lack, or rather, redirect of attention.
"Anything you found not to your liking?"
"No..." Sakura opens the can and takes a sip. It tastes bittersweet as it glides down her throat, and just the right amount of warm. "There's really nothing about me except my name, age and job."
Sasuke takes a swig of his own before letting an affirmative hum out.
"Didn't need much from you. Considering your schedule, you were too busy to plot anything shady."
He almost chuckles at the glare she throws his way.
"You must not be a good detective if that is how you make judgements."
"I don't know, Sakura. Was I right?"
Sakura can almost feel her taste buds dance around the opium on her tongue as Sasuke sounds her name in his voice, a pitch above a growl and as sweet as honey. She closes the file shut, choosing to tune out his teasing voice and the tickles in her stomach, before emptying the can of its last drop.
"Ah, right," he mumbles, making Sakura turn back to face him.
"Give me your socials."
"What?"
"Socials... Line or Insta..?"
Hesitantly, she fiddles her thumbs, flushed to her core, and very confused about his sudden request, as she barely whispers, "CouldaTonyAte... on both."
"Huh?"
"In English..." Seeing the puzzle etched on his face, she elaborates, words blurred into one another, "It's a wordplay on Kura28 translated to English. I-Ino was the one who asked me to put something fun—stop judging me!"
A frown creases Sakura's forehead as Sasuke's lips twitch in the effort to stifle his chuckle, his eyes twinkling with mirth as he hands his phone for her to type in. It is then Sakura realizes the boundary they have just crossed, the unadulterated trust he puts in her when he lets her have something as personal about him as his phone. It's as bare as she expects; a transparent cover clean over its length, which doesn't surprise her in the least, given the Apple logo on its back.
Rich people, she broods.
"Good humor. Who's Tony?"
"The One Piece character..."
"You've watched it?"
"No..." She wonders if he'll judge. "I just find it cute. Have you?"
"No. Too long."
Sasuke takes his phone when she passes it to him, a subtle scoff for a reply earning her a roll of his eyes, and presses 'Add', before typing her username in the Instagram search bar.
"Sent you a request."
The phone tings and lights up immediately and she finds a small icon of a black cat beside his username.
"Sassuke?" She points it out to him and he grimaces, forehead creased and lips drawn down in obvious discomfort.
"My name wasn't available."
And Sakura delights in the stupid assumption that the small smile on Sasuke's face is a result of the laugh she lets out, a mirthful melody in the evening peace. She wipes a tear away, satisfied, when her cheeks start to hurt from the smile on her face, and accepts his request before following him back.
He must immediately accept, lest she soon come across Sasuke's nearly empty profile, save for that same black cat from the profile picture only in a different photo.
"You..." Sakura sounds out, lifting her head and sees Sasuke studying her account like a child, suddenly feeling self-consciousness before resuming her query, "The cat?"
"Lives in our street. It's usually not friendly with people." A hearty chuckle makes its way out. Cats love Sasuke, it seems.
Sakura's account, bare for a few pictures of sunsets and flowers, is surprisingly empty. Sasuke had expected her to be someone who would post a lot, but her profile is almost as bleak as his.
"You don't post a lot?"
"Don't usually find anything to..." She tucks a lock behind her ear and informs him, her voice a sweet hush, "You can find a few things in the tagged posts. Ino posts me all the time." Pondering, she continues, "Why suddenly ask for socials?"
A breath gets caught in his throat when she looks up at him with those atypically wide and round eyes, the depths of green catching flecks of gold as the light in his office hits them at just the right angle. Shy in his mannerism, unlike how he likes to carry himself, he answers her question, "I figured I could start learning about you..."
"Through social media?"
Sakura laughs at his pointy glare and he can't help the flutter in his chest at the sound. Sasuke tries to dismiss it, clicking on the tagged posts and being met with a hoard of Sakura's pictures with her blonde friend: selfies and candid pictures at their hospital or late at night below street lamps. Sasuke scrolls through them, taking each in, the way her lips lift up in smiles or her petal-pink lips grow into a pout when she frowns, blurry pictures capturing her unguarded and pictures where every feature, from the curve of her fingers to the tips of her hair, is unmistakably hers.
"This?" He taps open a post and levels the phone towards her.
Sakura frowns in concentration and he can't help but fixate on how the green peeks from behind the full lashes or how she unknowingly juts her lower lips out slightly. Or on how her nose is almost always flush at the tip. On nothing and everything.
"Ah!" She jumps in her seat, her index finger pointed up. "Ino came to pick me up once. After my convenience store shift."
Sasuke shifts where he stands. The photo is dark and he can only make out her silhouette, and he knows it already, how she used to work till midnights and past but it still makes his blood boil like it didn't a few weeks ago, even when his sympathy for her situation had been the same. Sakura didn't deserve to go through all of it. She also doesn't deserve to put up with him, his family, and everything else he carries on him with no pride or qualms about it.
Eyes as dark as the shadows of twilight seep over her form—so hurt and yet so posed, the floridity of her pastel pink in contrast to the tranquility in her foam green, her small, dainty fingers and wrists; how her soft sweet voice pales when her fierce eyes scream and how her small smile is all he needs to illuminate his desolate room and equally desolate life.
She is beautiful.
In pain and in strength.
When she is all he has, and she is all he sees.
Beautiful when she bleeds from the same scars that cripple him.
And his hands have a mind of their own when he slowly maneuvers his phone towards her, still engrossed in his profile, and opens his camera, the shutter sound switched off. A small secret from her, one only he will know and only he will need to, a gentle reminder of what he has now. Of what he cannot lose.
A loud rumble brings him out of his stupor and he smirks when Sakura immediately covers her stomach, face as red as sunset, and half obscured by her cascading hair.
"I'm hungry."
"I can tell." It surprises him again. Sasuke never knew he was a tease. And from the narrowing of her eyes, he judges, neither did Sakura.
"When did you have lunch?" He asks, not wanting to upset her further, and sees her flinch, avoiding his eyes as she sighs.
"I didn't."
A scowl paints his face as he crosses his arms, a stab to his heart when he registers the cause. He rakes his fingers through his hair and flips his wrist, eyes on his watch before gazing out of the window and noticing the fall of night and the gleam of the moon.
"Let's have dinner. I know a place."
Somewhere, in the back of his mind, a word surfaces before he immediately pushes it out and chides himself with a clench of his fist.
A date.
Hello everyone!
I've finally shifted and settles and things have again gotten hectic with college. It's my placement year so I honestly wonder if I'll be able to find time but I'll try my best to. We have college fest coming up and this is the first and last one I'll be able to attend.
How did you like the chapter? Tell me your thoughts in the comments. I always appreciate each and every comment you guys write. However, recently, there's one person who has been spamming my stories with unnecessary hate comments.
Hating and loving a character is your own freedom but my space should be a community for people to have healthy discussions. You may hate Karin but I don't, and I have full freedom to incorporate her into my stories. If you don't like it, you're free to not read. But please don't spam unnecessary hate comments on my books regarding any character except Danzo.
Thank you for reading. See you in the next chapter
—🌸Saku-chan🌸