COTE x Naruto: New Beginnings

Chapter 8: Rock Bottom

For Sakura, the next month of school was heaven. That sounded a bit like an oxymoron; what high schooler actually enjoyed going to school?

Well, Sakura did! The ANHS was great. There were positives, like her friend group and the generous allowance they received, and negatives, like the idiots named Ike and Yamauchi who never failed to sexually harass just about any girl in class 1-D.

Okay, Sakura herself was spared as she apparently wasn't "blessed enough" according to Yamauchi (yes, she'd actually overheard him telling that to his friend group consisting of Ike, Sudo, and a quiet kid named Ayanokouji during their swimming class), but the boys did occasionally make some very sexist comments.

Once, she'd heard them dismissing Kei as a dating option because she was too "cheap" and "easy" just because she'd started dating so soon (Kei and Hirata made the cutest couple in Sakura's opinion).

But this negative was far outweighed by the positives. Some of the classes were downright fun. Like swimming for example - if she ignored many of the boys ogling her friends like pigs - and she enjoyed racing with the other girls.

She'd even spoken to Onodera, a girl in class 1-D who was excellent at swimming. Sakura had even gotten some swimming tips from her, which made her very happy.

And although she was going to the Judo club with Hatake, they hadn't spoken at all actually. He was in the advanced group, while she was a beginner.

Without seeing much of him there, Sakura was enjoying Judo quite a lot, and she was good at it too. In no time, she'd become the best in the beginner group, and she was looking forward to moving up to the intermediates.

Ignoring a few exceptions such as Horikita; a quiet and very academically-inclined girl, and Kouenji; well, he was just weird and seemed too arrogant to get along with, most of the class D's students were friendly, and Sakura had no problem talking with them at all.

Even the other classes were great (well, only class 1-B, the others were a bit weird...). After meeting Ichinose at the fair, they met up to talk a few more times after that.

Since Ichinose was always flunked by her classmates, Sakura had naturally made friends with a few class 1-B students as well.

She should've realized that something would go wrong.

It went like this.

It was the very first day of class in May when Chabashira-sensei casually strode into the room, her expression different than usual.

Ike, being stupid, thought it would be peak comedy to make a sexist comment once again: "Hey, sensei, did you start menopause or something?"

Miraculously, Chabashira-sensei ignored him and asked the class if they had any questions. A weird thing to ask, but something was troubling Sakura. She was about to raise her hand and ask, but Hondou beat her to it.

"Um, I checked my point balance this morning, but I didn't see any deposits. Points are given on the first day of every month, aren't they? I couldn't buy juice this morning."

When Chabashira-sensei only repeated what she'd already said about the point system and them receiving points every month, and also said that they'd all received the amount of points they were supposed to, more students began to look uneasy.

"Um, but... nothing was deposited into my account, though," Hondou said again, but this time, Chabashira-sensei's response wasn't nearly as calm as it had been before.

"Are you kids really that dumb?"

Now, Sakura knew for sure something was very wrong. Never before had Chabashira-sensei spoken to them like that, nor had any other teacher for that matter.