[BOOK 1 OF THE SHARING SERIES]
Two different worlds meet. Two existences collide. On the one hand, an orphan learns what love, friendship, and devotion mean. On the other, a young girl realizes the implication of being a civilian kunoichi in a worl...
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𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓻𝓸𝓸𝓶 𝓲𝓼 𝓭𝓪𝓻𝓴, quiet, and through drawn curtains, the moonlight creates eerie patterns on the floor and walls. In this gloomy atmosphere, Kakashi listens, his hands clasped together on his knees, to the steady breathing of an unconscious girl. He doesn't have the strength to look up. Instead, his dark eye stays riveted to his white knuckles.
To anyone, the slumped form of the man in his chair would be misleading. With his silver hair poking in every direction and the dark circles under his eye dropping deep behind his mask, Kakashi looks nothing like his age. And for good reasons: the twenty-six-year-old man feels like he's been through life—again and again. He cannot escape this loop, is forced to relive these nightmares every ten years. Or at least, that's what the events of the previous days taught him.
Kakashi lets loose the sigh of an old man and leans back in his chair with a creaking sound. He hasn't even taken the time to shower or change into clean clothes. The fabric of his shirt feels stiff, caked with dry blood. He lifts his right arm and stares at his hand and the red tint of its skin, the only remnants of Haku's past existence.
Kakashi doesn't know what reminded him most of Rin. Was it how Haku's small body tensed when his Raikiri pierced him? Or was it the sight of Sakura, bleeding out, tucked in Sasuke's desperate embrace? He cannot say. Everything was so similar, Haku's sacrifice, Sasuke's expression of guilt, that for a moment there, he thought he had killed her again, the girl he loved.
But even though he's used to losing people, Kakashi finds himself rooted to that chair, to that room. And knowing he is at fault, again, doesn't help in the matter. The famous Copy Ninja has been as reckless as only an ex-Anbu can be—again. All his choices of the past few days led Team Seven to its fall, and, in retrospect, he could have prevented it. Perhaps Kakashi should get back to playing shogi after this mission. More strategic training wouldn't hurt.
A moan interrupts his train of thought, and as he looks up, Kakashi also lifts his headband out of his second eye. Ignoring the throbbing pain in his sharingan, he settles his mismatched eyes on the pink-haired girl before him. Since Sakura's arrival on this bed, Kakashi has been trying to solve the mystery of her predicament. But he cannot find anything different. And, now that he's learned more about hers and Sasuke's fight, Kakashi realizes he's gambled with the life of a sweet girl, a girl willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of others. At this uncomfortable thought, Kakashi pushes himself up and walks to the bed, unable to detach his eyes from her agitated form.
He leans closer upon hearing another moan and notices her frown of pain. He wants nothing more than to soothe the creases on her sweaty forehead but refrains from doing so. It wouldn't be professional. She isn't Rin, Kakashi reminds himself. And he still needs to conduct his interrogation.
