Fashionably Late

~ 2

"Wait– so, when did you 'wake up'?", Naruto asked her while leaning over a particularly large mountain of trash, beginning to fill his fifth trash bag. Sakura was grateful for Naruto being at least somewhat aware now of what hygiene meant, though that was only limited to 'actual trash' as he called it. For him, anything that didn't belong in the bin had no need to be cleaned up or picked up off the ground, which was, to be fair, reasonable, so she didn't comment on it too much.

"Me? I regained my memories Yesterday morning." Sakura said from her spot at the kitchen counter, washing juice off one of the four cups he owned. Somehow, they'd ended up in this situation, cleaning up Naruto's apartment.

Being energetic people, they both prefered to have an activity to keep their hands busy. And there was also the matter of having lived through war – the silence and peacefulness of the past she had once longed for was almost eery now –, having something fill those long moments of silence was much appreciated.

"Yesterday? I thought it'd be longer. You're way too chill for having gone through that just a day ago, 'ttebayo.", Naruto shivered at the thought of his earlier experience, the feeling of going from knowing only the here and now, to suddenly being aware of a whole different life had not really left his body yet.

Sakura put a cup on the counter, upside down, grabbing for a pair of chopsticks. "Yeah, it is pretty intense. But you know, I kind of felt it coming." She thoughtfully hummed. "I think... about three weeks ago, it started. Scars started to appear at random places on my body. It really freaked me out. I was beginning to think that my whole body would be covered by them soon – it was getting faster –, when the memories came back. The scars were the ones my other body had."

Naruto whipped his head around. "Scars?"

"Yeah. Did you not notice them?" Then again, Naruto hadn't noticed anything at this age.

"I didn't know a part of our – or at least your – physical appearance would come back." Naruto tied a knot into his trash bag, coming to stand next to Sakura and starting to wipe the tableware with a towel. "But why only scars...?"

"Oh, it wasn't just scars." Sakura added once she heard Naruto's confusion. "My hair was short, too. But I grew it back."

She let her hands flash green for a moment to imply the meaning that Naruto was just a bit too dense to get on his own. "It'd have raised too much attention. Couldn’t have that when I was still looking for signs of you two coming back."

"Signs?"

"Like the scars. I spent yesterday's class studying you guys' backs. That's how I predicted you would regain your memories – wake up – today."

"Waitwaitwait– I'm not following, Sakura. How did you predict it?"

"The scar around your neck." She pointed a foam-covered finger at his throat. "Right there."

"Huh?!" Naruto ran into the bathroom. Sakura heard another loud exclamation from there shortly after. "It's really there, 'ttebayo!"

"Why'd I lie, huh?" She yelled into his general direction.

"I don't know?!" Naruto slided though the door, nearly crashing into the mountain of filled trash bags he had accumulated over the past hour.

A thin line spanned around his throat, all the way around. It was from the late stages of the war, Kaguya almost having killed Naruto, only pieced back together by Sakura's Iryōninjutsu and the Byakugō.

Back then, it was another reminder of their weakness and their powerlessness against Kaguya, but now it was how she had known Naruto was close to fully awaking. The scars seemed to track a chronological order, with the newest once appearing last.