Preventing The Inevitable

Chapter 22

Sakura decided to burn the book.

It wouldn't do any good to keep it, and leaving it at the Uchiha compound gates was out of the question. It was very unlikely for anyone alive to know of the existence of the book; it had gathered a lot of dust by the time she found it.

Presumably, the last person to have seen that book was Tobirama Senju—which she had yet to come to terms with, because what the fuck, she knew that he hadn't been a fan of the Uchiha clan, but this wasn't just 'not a fan'—and after annotating it with a shit ton of curses directed towards the clan they had forged an alliance with, he had left it in a cardboard box in a hidden corner behind a curtain. Why he would put it back, she didn't know. This tome sounded exactly like the type of book that would be stored away in the Senju compound's library. Or at the very least the Second Hokage's personal library.

Hypothetically, if she was a passionate Uchiha-hater who had angrily commented a book, she'd quietly sneak it into a less well-known library and wait for someone who hasn't yet formed a clear opinion on the Uchiha clan to read it, be converted into the hate club, and hopefully even tell others about their opinion, eventually leading to a steadily growing number of fellow angry people that resent the Uchiha. And all that would happen without anyone knowing that it was her who had first put this movement in motion by annotating the book and leaving it at a place where the laws on book taboos weren't reinforced very strictly.

Because, first and foremost, she wouldn't write down her fucking initials.

And, secondly, she wouldn't hide the book in the top floor of the biggest library in Konoha, a place only Shinobi of high rank had access to. Shinobi, who were likely to have met Uchiha and who would be smart enough to deduce that most of the book was discriminating bullshit.

Really, was the Second actually as smart as they say? If anyone else had found this just a few decades prior—when Tobirama was still alive—this would have turned into a huge problem.

Personally, she wouldn't have done that—

"I'm getting off track. Stay focused, Sakura. You're playing with fire." She murmured to herself.

Literally 'playing with fire.' Sakura finally lowered the match that had almost completely burned off by now and liberated her fingers from the searing heat they had been exposed to while she had been lost in thought. She watched the small hill of flammable materials she had gathered go up in flames. There was a bit of firewood, sticks from the ground, incense sticks she had found on the kitchen shelf—her cover story in case anyone saw her doing this in her backyard was a 'failed attempt at creating a lavender-smell campfire'—all the notes she had planned to burn, because they held too dangerous information—

...and at the bottom of the 'campfire' was the book.

'The Land of Wind—Three: Flora and Fauna' glared up at her as she watched the deceiving title be consumed by hungry flames.

Serves you right, bastard. She didn't even know who she was directing those words at. The author—for writing a shitty book with a shitty main point, but somehow still managing to include tons of classified information—Tobirama Senju—for not stashing the book away after venting out his resentment—or was it the book itself—for existing and interfering with her plans?

Or maybe it was all of them. This whole ordeal was causing her so much stress, it wasn't even funny.

But now she had burned it. Finally, she was done with that problem.

—

The next few days flew by in a blur. Well, not really. Sakura continued her usual routine of training every day in the forest—on the other side of the Village though, Shisui wasn't supposed to know about her secret training. She mostly focused on becoming familiar with her body and training in medical Ninjustu and, consecutively, her chakra control. Later on, it'd help her in storing up chakra for the Byakugō.