It Continues

Chapter Two: It Begins

Chapter Two: It Begins

Word count: 1241 (longer than the last one, yay!)

~Haruno Sakura~

A tap on the forehead. That's the closest we've ever been. It's all he left me with.

It's ridiculous; how I could still be hung up on him. But I was.

His midnight blue hair, such a contrast to my own, dominated my memory. His powerful frame danced behind my eyelids. And his voice, the perfect melody to sing me to sleep each night.

This is insane.

I need to move on.

I haven't, though.

I need help.

But help didn't find me just because I sought it. It took a while. A long while.

~

The room was too big for just one person. It'd always been full to the brim, three people climbing the walls for their own space. I never found it. Not until now.

It was empty of everything, the furniture removed, the floor scrubbed and the walls bear of pictures. It was all gone.

We were moving.

'Sakura-chan! Where are you?' Naruto called, entering my family home.

'Up here!' It took him a good minute and several loud noises to climb the stairs to the top floor.

'There are so many boxes, dattebayo! How are you ever gonna move them all?'

'You're here, aren't you? You can help.' I stood from behind a medium pile of boxes, our towels and futons folded neatly inside. 'Start by taking these down, my otō-san should have the cart by now.'

'Hai.' Naruto began exiting the room, but was haltered, hearing my curse.

'Crap, ouch!' A splinter, almost a centimetre long, had found itself imbedded within my left forefinger, the childhood toy I'd been sorting the culprit.

'What happened?'

'Splinter. It, uh, it's from this piece of wood. I tried making a bird house when I was little. Never went anywhere, well, went in my finger, but nowhere else.' I moved to the large garbage bag my mother had placed in the centre of the room. Naruto followed.

'Don't need this anymore.' I dropped the bird house into the trash.

'You need a hand getting that out?' Naruto asked, gesturing to my finger.

'Nah - hang on - you didn't move anything in the bathroom yet, right?'

'No, why?'

'There should be some tweezers in there, hopefully a needle too.' I moved down the hall and opened the brown door, entering the bathroom which was scarcely big enough for one, let alone two with Naruto and me.

'Why not use medical ninjutsu? It'd get it out really quickly.' He asked from the entrance, having recognised the cramped space.

'I think it's good to use normal procedures, sometimes. It's practice in case I run out of chakra.' I began rummaging through the three boxes within the room.

'Cutting out a splinter will help you on the battle field?'

'I don't know, but,' there was a pregnant pause as I thought over my answer, 'it's the little things, and then you work your way up, right? Ah-ha!' I reached the last few millimetres I needed and wrapped my fingers around a box of needles. 'Here it is.'