Take Her Home

Chapter 06

Sakura's feet softly strides the empty yet familiar street. Her footwear casually leaving marks on the ground as she stroll down memory lane. Her surroundings filled with wooden fences as she remembers the place where she, Sasuke, and Naruto would wait for their tardy sensei during gennin days.

She smiled on the inside remembering how the three would complain and Kakashi would arrive as if he didn't cause inconveniences in their mornings, all while he blabbers excuses to which they don't even know if it's true.

But nonetheless, she missed those days. She walked this road for the purpose of reminiscing the good, old days where trouble didn't seem to cross their young minds as they're too focused on becoming stronger for each other and for the village.

But now they reached the point where they're stronger and they'll be even more stronger in the future. Yet Sakura gloomed. She realized how Sasuke and Naruto grew stronger together, and she on the other hand gained her strength with Itachi; someone dead and was seen as a traitor, whose truth of abandonment is yet to be discovered.

She turned the corner still lost in her own reveries that she was unable to notice the figure that walked towards her way.

"Sakura?"

A deep, husky voice sounded. Sakura looked up and saw Sasuke. He has always had a deep voice, but as years passed, it only grew deeper, almost alluring with its huskiness that Sakura—inevitably—finds sexy. She remembers her puppy crush for him again and she wondered, if she didn't went missing, would something evolve between them?

Shaking her thoughts away, she recalled how Sasuke was in a mission for a week with Naruto so she wasn't able to see her teammates after she came back and settled.

"Welcome back." she plainly said. Her eyes empty as a pair of onyx stared at her.

Sakura took this time to observe him. She realized that he's probably a jounin now. He was wearing a bone white shirt underneath his black vest which was commonly green in their village. An Uchiha crest was stitched on the right sleeve while his hitai-ite is on the left.

"Anything wrong?" Sasuke asked, noticing how she looked at him.

"Nothing. Just wondering why your jounin outfit is different from the usual I've seen so far." she answered, trying to convince him that she's confused with their village system.

"Just a preference. Just like how others prefer to not wear their vests even though they're chunins already."

Sakura hummed, "Where's Naruto?"

"Probably in Ichiraku. Wanna go too?"

"Sure."

The two walked in silence to head to the infamous ramen shop that their teammate worshipped. The silence wasn't awkward, but Sasuke felt uneasy. He isn't used to Sakura being quiet since she was the talkative one in their team.

"What are you doing out and about?" Sasuke asked after a while, sparing a glance at the kunoichi, as he couldn't take her silence.

"Just walking around, hoping to remember something." she half-lied since she is just walking around but reminiscing instead of trying to remember.

This was her routine since she came back and while her teammates were sent out. She would aimlessly walk around the village with the thought of seeing how her past was and how different the village is now.

There are times she would bump onto someone familiar faces and one was Ino. The blonde girl squealed her lungs out, giving her the tightest hug then leading her to a café that wasn't there before.