Ball and chain|| Sasusaku

Chapter 5

The beating against her chest bars the air out of her lungs, her skin tingling as if from the after-effects from an electric shock and her toes numb. It’s already April but her veins feel frigid, the red of her skin turning blue-black. Sakura takes a gulp, but it feels like a thorn stuck in her throat. She is mindful of Sasuke’s gaze burning into her but she hardly has the soul to look back and face him, to meet those judgemental eyes, served with an emotion quite similar to betrayal as if there was any trust between them in the first place. She has been in this position before, with her parents, when they found a pamphlet of Todai hidden in her desk and the trauma comes rushing in—the blurred faces, the swirling background and voices resounding as if coming from a distance, and she feels like throwing up before she hears Sasuke.

“I asked something?” The rage-filled clamour saves Sakura from something awfully dreadful. She feels as if she was pulled out of death and right now, nothing fazes her, no emotions in hindsight as her sweat-glazed face seems stagnant.

Without a single thought, she picks the wallet up, eyeing the image quietly, now unaware of the pressure of Sasuke’s stare and barely says in a whisper.

“Is she the one?”

“Huh?” Sasuke raises an eye, trying to study Sakura’s face but finds nothing to betray what was in sight, except the immense exhaustion, that he could sense with just a look. He has always seen her hesitant, as in anxious about something. He can tell she keeps everything to herself and is burdened under a load of her own thoughts, but today she seems exempt from any thought or emotion. And it scares him.
Sasuke holds as Sakura scrutinizes the photo with no judgement in her eyes, though she had none in the first place, before he hears her say something he never foresaw.

“She’s beautiful.” Sakura is slightly stunned at her own words, but there’s no lie to it. The woman in the picture is beautiful, even if the picture itself seems too stale and the person in it is just a teenager, but Sakura can tell that she must be gorgeous, even more so when seen in real. The shiny red locks, which seem slightly faded with the crust of the photograph, down her shoulders and a shade brighter and more luminous crimson eyes, over pale skin and pretty smile, with a teenage Sasuke beside her, his ears and neck red, the picture paints such a breathtaking image that Sakura feels, this is what the world calls meant to be. This is what Sakura can never be. She looks at the teenage Sasuke. She remembers him exactly the same, just without the hidden smile.

Sakura feels calm and bends behind to face Sasuke until what she sees makes her heart almost halt. Sasuke leans against the door, tears covering his eyes and cheeks, which he tries his best to hide with his arm, the drops gliding down to the bitten lip. He poses such a childlike image, Sakura’s first instinct is to pull him into her chest and nuzzle him, but she holds back—the emotion she feels locked too deep inside to put it to action.

“Sasuke...”

Sasuke dabs his face with the collar of his shirt, and Sakura feels his bedraggled self is his true self, what he has been withholding under the mask of an impassive, dutiful man. He is a ravishing chaos, deranged to the depths of the emotions Sakura can never unravel, like a glass art in pieces that the world enjoys admiring broken. His red, swollen eyes, the snot and tear-stained face and trembling lips, Sakura is torn between wanting to embrace him and wanting to see him break even further, to bare him before her, every inch of his tousled emotion naked before her eyes. She does nothing.

“Yes, she is,” Sasuke says, his eyes trying to find a place before landing on the empty incense stand with no pictures near it.

Sakura still feels void, even after everything she is carrying inside her. She wonders how her parents are doing, unaware of how she’s doing, how she is half-dead inside as they enjoy a peaceful life with Sasuke’s money. She also thinks of the family outside her door, not her own—Sasuke’s family, who might also be heedless of the situation in their neighbouring room.