The Queen of Masks [Sakura Haruno Story]

89

A masked figure raced through the forest at a blinding speed, her short pink hair whipping in the wind. Sweat beaded her forehead under the mask, and her legs burned. She had received a message through a summoning bird and had immediately started racing towards the Leaf. 

She had to make it in time. She refused to be too late.

She sped up, going faster than she had in years. Her home village, Konoha, was getting closer and closer until Sakura skidded to a stop at the front gates. "Sakura Haruno, non affiliated nin, special grant from Hokage." She flashed the guards her papers, likely before they had time to process the fact that a girl was standing in front of them, and sped off.

She burst through the hospital doors, ignored the staff, and ran up the stairs to where she felt Rui's increasingly weak chakra. She was gasping for breath by then, both from physical exhaustion and panic.

Then she just stopped.

Rui's chakra was gone. He was gone.

It was only a few doors down from which Sakura felt Celia and Wylie's chakra signatures, so she, walking at a brisk pace, made her way there. She tried to hold back her tears, but by the time she burst through the door into a room filled with sniffles and a stale heart monitor, her vision was blurry with hot tears.

Her niece and nephew turning to look at their aunt with tear filled eyes, Lihn wasn't there, having already passed on many years ago. 

"Auntie Saku, dad's–" Celia's voice dissolved into sobs. She fell into her brother's arms, and he rubbed her shoulders as a blank look made its way into his eyes.

Sakura stepped further into the room, staring at the far corner where a bed lay, and on top of that bed, a body. Rui's hair had gotten considerably longer from the time she had last seen him, and was a stark white now. His cheeks were hollow looking and his eyes sunken in with age. 

The screech of the heart monitor still filling the room, Sakura walked over to the bed and kneeled down. She grabbed Rui's had and held it to her face as the nurses rushed into the room, but she new it was too late. 

Her brother was dead. 

>:)