The bottle lands squarely between Sakura and Sasuke. The group hoots, teases, and laughs before arguing among themselves who could give the most controversial question.
The newly minted couple glances at each other in awkward shyness that only comes after announcing their relationship to their friends. Well, arriving together at a house party is as close as announcing.
“Who’s your first kiss?!” Kiba shouts amidst the chaotic exchange. The uproar gets replaced with an incessant grumbling of complaints.
Choji slaps the back of his head. “Are you stupid?”
“Yeah, are you stupid?” Naruto repeats. “I am Sasuke’s first kiss!”
“I think that shouldn’t count,” Shikamaru counters. “It’s accidental.”
Sai raises a finger. “Technically, a kiss means to touch someone or something with the lips especially as a mark of affection or greeting.”
“Were you greeting Sasuke good morning back then, Naruto?” Tenten asks in absurdity.
“Shut up Tenten. I was telling him how stupid and moronic he is!”
“I just think you and Sasuke really need to tap into your unresolved issues,” Lee adds to the foray.
“I think you all should shut up,” Shino says, “because we don’t know whose Sakura was.”
The group quiets down for a few seconds which stretch into a minute as they wait for her response. Sakura quickly averts her gaze from Sasuke and exchanges glances with Ino. Her blonde best friend, her trusted confidante, her ride-and-die, refuses to meet her eyes. That. Bitch. Sakura clears her throat to buy some time.
“It’s just Sasuke, guys.” Hinata, beautiful Hinata, comes to her rescue.
Kiba rubs his palms together. “Ooh, what if it’s not?”
Sakura can feel the tips of her ears rise to the temperature. She clears her throat, louder this time, and reaches for the glass of water behind Sasuke. Her throat becomes even dryer. Her boyfriend is not even looking at her.
“I’m sensing we should let Sakura have her privacy,” Lee interjects. He dramatically moves sideways from Sasuke just to give her a big thumbs up. “You can skip this one, Sakura!”
“No fair, we answered all questions.” Kiba waves his arms around, a big gesture of displeasure. “Even Shino had to reply to who was his first kiss and it was a frigging insect.”
“I, personally, think it’s on brand.” Sasuke speaks for the first time. Shino leans across the circle and gives him a high five which the former doesn’t meet. “A hercules beetle though. Really?”
“Ino is being awfully quiet.” Shikamaru the nosy really had to point it out! “You know something.”
She shrugs and scoots closer to Sai to hug his arm. “I’m so sorry, Sakura. Please invoke Katsuyu if you’re feeling up to it.”
Tenten laughs. “So you really know something!”
Choji hands over bills to Kiba and Naruto, a surefire sign that they are betting. Shikamaru looks at Naruto, dumfounded. “How do you not know this?”
Sakura’s other blonde best friend just scratches his head. “I’m pretty sure Sakura told me this, but I, well, I forgot!”
“Dumbass.”
“What about we settle for a true or false if it helps.” Hinata offers a lifeboat. Not really. Sakura senses she will still sink all the same after this.
“So Sakura, is Sasuke your first kiss? True or false?”
She hazards a glance his way, and sure enough, he is staring. His palm under his chin, observing her and all her tells. Sasuke is excellent in guarding his most vulnerable expressions in public. He’s doing it right now, and she can’t read him. And she gets tremendously anxious, not knowing which way this could go.
She chooses honesty at the end of it.
It isn’t bad, Sakura surmises after they left the party. They’re walking back to her apartment, and he’s holding her hand. Loose but held all the same. They stop at the riverbank, and he lets go. She chases his fingers but sees his expression that freezes her cold.
“Kirigakure?” he repeats.
Sakura shouldn’t have hoped for the best. Of course, this is something Sasuke would fixate on. She would very much like to bury this in the past and move on, but goddamn it is tiring to explain the specifics which she firmly chose to leave out earlier. “Fine, since you’re so stubborn.” Yes, she sounds annoyed as hell. “It was a post battle gathering of sorts. It’s the kind of moment where we just stopped an invasion from an Akatsuki member. Later that month, they will come back and ultimately destroy the village we protected. But the Land of Water knows how to celebrate their victories. They live in the present. So there is lots of booze, lots of dancing. I didn’t have Tsunade-sama’s tolerance yet.
“So there’s this guy, like an anbu counterpart of ours. He tells me I saved his life on the field. He was so….in awe. Pupils super dilated, his full focus on you, no care in the world that goes on behind him. When you’re green and so adamant to prove yourself—to exist outside of wanting to look for you and bring you back—to prove that I can be strong and when I am strong, I can definitely bring you back, you tend to bask in this attention. It’s unreal, being showered with graces when I was always the ordinary one out of our team. We danced. We talked. We drank. We held hands. Then he asks if he could kiss me. I said yes.”
Sasuke stands still and takes all of these in. He doesn’t move closer to her nor does he offer his hand to wipe away tears that have fallen on her cheeks.
“Do you wanna know why I said yes?” Sakura fights back another batch that threatens to escape her eyes. “Because I miss you. Because I’m lonely. Because the war is tough and it takes everything out of you, most of the time, you only become a shell. And I’m so consumed by grief, by loss and the unknowing, and I miss you so much and I wonder if we could go back again to the way it was before. Because underneath those dim lights and the rowdy band music and the crowd that anyone could melt into, I could pretend I was dancing with you, holding my hand, and asking me if you could kiss me. So sorry if you are not my first kiss.”
“Are you done?” he simply asks.
Sakura nods.
“I’m not angry.” He bridges the distance and gingerly wipes away the tear streaks. “I just wanted to know if that’s your preference.”
“Fuck you Sasuke,” Sakura laughs-sobs and lightly punches his chest. He pulls her in closer and inhales her shampoo, the fading summer in her hair, the smell of sake. “It is always, always a Konoha boy.”
“I’m not gonna wax poetic how I waited for you…let’s not count Naruto, okay,” he murmurs in her ear, “I couldn’t think of anything outside hate and anger back then. I was too busy trying to be the strongest, and most times, it made for dreamless nights. Funnily enough, despite all that, some came through.”
“Hmm?”
“A dream about you, in the Forest of Death. Somehow, in that version, I didn’t manage to get there on time, and you’re on the forest floor, asleep. You won’t wake up no matter what I do. Your breathing started to weaken, and I was shouting for Naruto, Kakashi, anyone, so that they could help me save you. It’s like an endless genjutsu. Then, I remembered the fairytale trick.”
“A true love’s kiss.” Sakura pulls away slightly to wander in his eyes. “Did I wake up?”
He smiles. “You did.” Only for her, he smiles.
“So you had a wet dream of me.”
Sasuke blushes beet red in the darkness. “That’s not—!”
“I’m just joking!” She laughs still, easing into his embrace, her ribs moving against his limbs.
His fingers trace her spine in the meantime. “I’d just like you to know, Sakura, that it doesn’t matter who the firsts were. Doesn’t matter at all.” He kisses her ear, her forehead, her now dry cheeks, her nose. “Let this one matter for both of us.”
She meets him halfway. A soft, lovely contact of lips, a mutual mark of affection. “Our second first kiss,” she jests in the aftermath.
He leans in again, captures her full on the mouth, a bit heavier. “Our third first kiss.”
And again in the next 200 meters. “Our fourth.” And again in the alley before her apartment. “Fifth.” and again in her house. “Sixth.” Again and again and again.
“Those were a lot of first kisses,” she says. “You’re never gonna stop?”
Hitsugaya stares at her as if she’s speaking in tongues. He turns his attention back to the more scenic sight, missing the look Hinamori gives him. She’ll describe it as longing, in a much later time when they’re all grown up. Today, as they finish dinner with his grandmother, she’ll break the news. It will be the first time that he'll become uncomfortable with winter. His seasons, previously enjoyed with performative nonchalance, will lose color and comparatively feel dull than any others before.
“Hurry!”
Hinamori can barely keep up with Hitsugaya’s strong, nimble limbs. She might be older (if we assume by height), but their ages might not be too far apart for her to be breathless like this.
It’s the cold, Her exhale immediately gets lost in the curtain of thick fog. She relies on her feet and muscle memory and the numerous indentations left by fellow dwellers to not veer off the trail. At the peak, there is a statue, and while West Rukongai does not necessarily worship, there is a belief that the stones molded into shape will grant your prayers, only that you have to climb it on the first day of snowfall.
Which turned out to be in the negatives today.
And yet, Hitsugaya is conquering the cotton killer fluff with a sleeveless undershirt and blind faith. He is warm where she is cold, and this natural affinity to adapt in harsh conditions stirs a foreign envy in her.
“Slowpoke!” His voice almost a howl. “We need to get back before my afternoon nap!”
“Shut up!” She yells back. It’s her folly, she guesses, to miss the crevice and slip against the crack. It’s a steep fall, her mind registers. I’ll probably die.
Calloused hand thrusts out from the icy veil to grab her wrist, followed by a grin so cheeky it can only be from someone indomitable.
When they reached the top, his sight was first grabbed by the sea of clouds while hers was the statue. It was simply a pile of rocks stacked on top of one another in dubious balance, but it managed to weather the biting wind, as well as the gasping heat and the torrential rains that came seasons before. Hinamori held her head down and prayed to this resilient structure.
“What did you ask for?”
“Be like this statue,” she replies, a bit lost in thought, “despite the changes.”
Hitsugaya stares at her as if she’s speaking in tongues. “You should have asked for a good harvest and lots of watermelons!” He sticks out his tongue in usual childhood annoyance and turns his attention back to the more scenic sight, missing the look Hinamori gives him. She’ll describe it as longing, in a much later time when they’re all grown up.
But today, as they finish dinner with his grandmother, she’ll break the news. “I’m going to Soul Society.”
It will be the first time that Hitsugaya becomes uncomfortable with winter. His seasons, previously enjoyed with performative nonchalance, will lose color and comparatively feel dull than any others before.
When Rangiku, his future lieutenant and his would-be confidante, finally sniffs him out due to his uncontrollable reishi, Hitsugaya sets in plan his destiny in Seireitei. After all, Hinamori wasn’t the only one to make a wish to that statue on that day.
A childhood plea but a sincere intention all the same.
To be together, even for a little longer. Despite the changes.
—--------------------
“Do you have a gift for me, Captain Histugaya?” Rangiku plays up her doe eyes at him.
He closes the file on his desk. “No, I don’t believe in consumerism.”
“Oh come on, it’s Christmas in the human world. You should at least live a little.”
“Said someone who left me with a mountain of administrative tasks to be done. Because of you, I can’t live a little.”
Rangiku claps her hands together and leans towards the door for an unexisting sound. “Yeah? No, I’ll be out in like five seconds tops!” She turns her attention back to him, though one foot is already near the exit. “Captain, I forgot I have a very important appointment to go to. Bye!”
He rolls his eyes, partly annoyed, but mostly relieved he can finally enjoy some moment of silence. Seconds into that serene atmosphere, consecutive knocks arrive at his space.
“Matsumoto—!”
“—Shiro-kun! Oh, did I catch you at a bad time?” Hinamori steps out of the doorframe, her small frame accentuated by the absent Gotei regalia. Her hair, usually held in a low bun, is loose, silky black strands settling just below her shoulders. She wears clothes which his lieutenant might describe as cozy conservative, and carries a wicker basket as if the season outside is the tranquil spring. Against the stark rigidity of his bureaucratic office, she stands in contrast.
“No,” he manages to say. It takes him a minute but he reaches her side, a few inches short below her height, and takes the basket out of her hands. “Is this lunch? Don’t tell me you feel sorry for me?”
“Well, Rangiku passed by our division and asked me to give you a lending hand,” she chuckles.
“And you were able to prepare all this food in under ten minutes?”
She shrugs and pretends not to notice the absurd logistics of her excuse, but Hitsugaya lets it pass. It benefits him to not ask questions and simply revel in her presence.
It’s a spread of all his favorite things, most notably natto and watermelon slices, while she takes out a box of tuna onigiri, freshly baked cookies and green tea. Quintessential Momo.
Like the olden days, they eventually settle into that easy familiarity. With the basket emptied and thermos dried out, Momo pulls out another surprise.
It’s a miniature of the West Rukongai forest inside a glass ball.
“I had it customized.” She beams widely. “Go on, shake it.”
Hitsugaya smirks at the almost childlike gesture but indulges her anyway. Flurries of white envelopes all space, mimicking winter in the place they first called home. A snow globe.
“It’s—” he chokes up, “—it’s all right.”
“You should sound more awed, you know.”
“This is my best effort, Momo.”
He swears he hears Hyourinmaru laugh alongside Hinamori. It takes a lot of effort to stay unaffected even though his heart almost feels like leaping off the very same cliff he once saved her from. He takes several breaths, waiting until the snow settles on the bottom, before he takes out his gift.
“Here.” He pulls out a knitted red scarf from the bag and scoots closer to her. She must have sensed his hesitancy or he might have hallucinated the way she leaned closer to him so he could wrap the scarf around her neck. His fingers linger on both ends of the fabric. “Since you always have a cold bug.”
The scarf’s color bounces off Hinamori’s cheeks. In a quieter voice, “Th-Thanks, Shiro.”
Still holding on, he replies, “It’s Captain Hitsugaya to you.”
“—Hey Toshiro, I’m really sorry! I came back early to help—”
They scramble away to the farthest corner possible in the short time Rangiku shows up.
“Oh, am I interrupting something?” His lieutenant zeroes in on the bright color. “That’s a pretty nice scarf, Momo-chan. It perfectly suits you.”
Hinamori rushes to the door in haste without glancing at him. “No worries, I was just leaving. I only brought him a meal.” She stops just before the doorframe swallows her. “Thank you, Shiro-kun.”
He can hear the smile in that last word, and ever so deftly, his lieutenant catches it too, even the subtle lift of his lips in cognizance.
“I thought you didn’t believe in consumerism, huh?” Rangiku presses.
“You mentioned helping?”
—--------------------
“This is a character development,” Rangiku brandishes Hitsugaya as if he’s a centerpiece.
“The last time I invited him, he stayed holed up in my room,” Ichigo echoes. “It’s a good thing you could come, Hitsugaya.”
He could only grumble. He hates crowds, but even more so crowds during Christmas. Humans are so obsessed with ephemeral things like celebrations. His displeasure, however, does not dampen their rowdy party: Ichigo, Orihime, Chad, Uryuu, Rukia, Renji. Rangiku, Kira, Shinji, and Hinamori. A mismatched group but still whole, before the world crashes down on them the next few months.
He carefully side-eyes his childhood friend. She looks better, happier even, ever since Shinji arrived. In place of her long hair is a short bob underneath a dark plum beret. She doesn’t wear the scarf he gave ages ago, not after he stabbed her, not after that time when he thought he lost her. The snow globe is tucked in the first drawer of his table. He takes a peek every morning and watches that side of the world stuck in time.
“You’re gonna fall behind.” It’s Hinamori’s voice. They’ve kept their distance, described at best as amicable, recognizing each other’s presence only through a nod of a head, so this is her first direct reference to him with the many layers of conversation peeled back bare.
Hitsugaya freezes on his heels while the rest of the people move forward. Someone ahead of them shouts, spotting a celebrity, and the number triples in seconds. He wants to go to her.
“Captain—” Hinamori resists the surge of movement. “Shiro-kun, what are you doing?” She shoulders her way against bulky figures, but she’s too petite and she stumbles backward to be engulfed by the sea of motions.
His instinct kicks in and he catches her, his grip finding anchor on her waist. He pulls her to the curb where there’s enough space to breathe. “Shinji or Rukia must have noticed our reishi separating from their group. They’ll find us soon.”
He glances at her and finds her unshaken. In the chaos, she lost her beret, and all of her hair is now swaying in the night breeze. “That’s all right.”
“It’s my fault. I don’t know what came over me.”
“No worries. It’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“To be away from the crowd. It’s more peaceful in this corner.”
Hitsugaya nods. “It’s good that you could come.”
“Ah I was peer-pressured mostly by Renji and Rangiku,” she softly laughs. “Captain Shinji also said it would be nice to go out and have fun.”
He sighs, “Too bad you couldn’t have fun now.”
She lightly shoves him, still laughing against her mittens. “Don’t be silly. I’m having fun now. I’m with you.”
He hears his own sharp intake of breath and his eyes hyperfixate on the minute details of her face, the way her eyes remain on the streets, how the changing lights reflect on her irises, her lips chapped from the cold, the little braid behind her ear. “Momo, you should stop doing that.”
She turns to him slowly, and he realizes how red her cheeks are. “Doing what?” She must be so cold.
“Making my heart—”
“Hey you two!” Ichigo shouts across the street. Beside him is Chad who basically towers over everyone and ultimately serves as their beacon for direction.
“Oh they found us. You were right, Shiro.” She suddenly scrambles to get to them.
“Wait for me, Momo.” Hitsugaya grabs her hand just before she ventures into the moving cluster of humans. “I might get lost again.” He sees Shinji catching his act, smirking as he confirms his long thought out theories about the two of them.
He plans to let go of Hinamori before they reach the whole group, but the tower clock suddenly strikes twelve, followed by a clamoring of bells and fireworks. Squeezed against warm bodies, it registers to Hitsugaya and Hinamori that everyone is kissing.
Someone nudges him forward. “Yo dude, you should kiss your date. It’s tradition.”
He’s suddenly weightless, reeled in by some force of gravity. In hindsight, he should’ve let go of Momo, shoved her backwards, or redirected his body as if in battle. But this is human world, and he is riding on some ephemeral happiness, and so he stumbles against her, shoulder to shoulder, and his lips graze her cheek.
He waits for a slap, a reprimand, but Hinamori looks out of breath as well. He loosens his grip, gives her an out if she wants to, but it’s her fingers that wrap against his this time.
“They’re looking for us.”
“Momo.”
“Hmm?”
“I— Someone pushed me—”
“I know. I saw.”
“Huh?
“I saw it, Shiro-kun,” she smiles, “so please don’t say sorry.”
She saw, Hitsugaya thought, which meant she had every chance to move. “Huh?” This won’t be the last time he’ll be out of words in front of her.
“Merry Christmas, Captain Hitsugaya.” Then she lets go of his hand.
—--------------------
“Humans are sure fond of merrymaking.”
They find themselves in the same place many years after, when the worst was finally over and the aftermath of the battles have become simply a memory, navigating the maps of human bodies and still finding a place beside each other. Hinamori thinks it’s nothing short of a miracle—to come out of the wreckage and remain unchanged (in whatever this is, she adds in her head).
They decided, on a whim, to visit the human world. Spontaneity is a foreign concept, both of them so used to rigidity of routines and structures, but somehow there has always been an exception in moments where it concerns the other. The group they went with before is leading their separate lives. They are busy making memories and seizing the present, heightened from the cusp of losing the privilege of existing.
It is this sentiment that they are riding tonight—the possibility of missing a chance—though this, they may never admit out loud.
“Are you regretting it now, Shiro-kun?”
“The crowd, yes,” he replies in all honesty, brows furrowed, lips in a tight line. Then he glances at her and everything softens with a rare smile. “That doesn’t include you.”
“Good, I really wanted to see the fireworks,” she reasons.
“Haven’t Shinji taken you several times?”
“They’re always different. They change colors, sometimes they have patterns too.”
He chuckles beside her, and something behind him catches her attention. Stragglers hang thin strips of paper with their handwriting on the bare branches of a large tree. Hinamori tugs on Hitsugaya’s sleeve, and he catches her off guard by holding her hand and pulling her to the activity area.
“I might lose you,” he says under his breath. (Did you know, Momo, it was the same words he uttered when he faced Aizen and when he battled without Hyourinmaru? He could never lose you.)
She looks at the writings holding the people’s many wishes into the universe for the coming year. Human lives are short compared to those like them who could live out centuries. The intentions varied from simple (‘I want a boyfriend!’) to more complex ones (‘I want to be finally happy’). Hinamori considers how happiness is subjective across souls, and how, right at this moment, she could describe herself as happy.
“What are you writing?” Hitsugaya asks her. “I already put mine up.”
“Huh?” She surveys the papers in front of them. “That’s unfair, I didn’t get to see it.”
“I don’t think you need to see it.” He turns a shade of red. “It’s personal.”
She relents with a sigh. “You probably wrote longer nap times.” She turns her back on him as she quickly scribbles the first thought that comes. Hitsugaya tries to appear uninterested but she can see him in her periphery stealing glances over her shoulder. It’s a good thing that she remains taller than him.
“Ha! Done!”
“Well, that’s unfair,” he echoes.
Their banter gets interrupted by a loud trumpet, followed by a clock ticking down to midnight.
“Oh, it’s happening!”
The lights on the ground turn off to emphasize the dark night sky.
“Ten…night…eight…seven…”
Hitsugaya chooses to set his gaze on her. “Did you remember that tradition..?”
“Six…five…four…”
“Yeah, I remember.” Hinamori tears her eyes from the sky and stares back at him against the darkness.
“Two…one… Happy New Year!”
“Can I kiss you?”
She sees Hitsugaya’s face lean in just as the fireworks start their ephemeral performance. The air is crisp with winter air and firecracker smoke, and she’s combusting when his lips find hers underneath the bursts of light.
He pulls away in mere seconds, and she can see the gears of his mind work towards an overdrive. He is second guessing and wondering if it was enough, if he could ever be enough, and she wants to tell him—
“Yes.” And she pulls him to her again and kisses him back with certainty. When it’s all over, the people have scattered, the sky has retreated to its shadows, and she’s still in his arms.
“Happy New Year, Momo.”
—--------------------
Hinamori finds it’s the afterparty she looks forward to the most. Long after all the plates have been washed, the cups flipped to dry, and the doors locked, the silence basks in the traces left from the evening’s friendly noise.
They managed to clear majority of the clutter, but strips and pieces of litter remain scattered about—ribbons, gift wraps, firecracker ashes—a nice chore best reserved for the first day of the new year.
“Our dear hostess must be tired.” Hitsugaya’s hands ease on her shoulders and massage the tight knots that have accumulated over the day.
“Come on Shiro. I know the kids drained your energy today.” She stifles the bubbling laughter from a recent memory of when Renji’s and Ichigo’s respective toddlers ran amok across the courtyard and Hitsugaya had to chase them off his rock installations.
“They’re not toddlers.”
“And they’re also still kids.”
The winter breeze lands on her skin and she shivers at the contact. Her husband pulls her to the kotatsu, entangling her legs with his underneath, a fairly good excuse to just snuggle and burrow and pretend to hibernate (at least until the weekend’s over).
They’re sitting across the wide windows where they’re afforded a rare view of a perfect night sky, a blank charcoal slate after being painted with bursts of colors from earlier festivities. The moon and stars are cruising in a silent voyage to an audience of two.
Well, three.
Hotaru manages to crawl on Hitsugaya’s lap and juts out his nose for a boop. He brings with him Hinamori’s red scarf, frayed from several wears, and is now his favorite blanket. She reaches over and indulges their blind, snow-colored cat. Seemingly happy, his paws start making biscuits while his purrs lull them into a much awaited slumber.
Soon enough, the heavens open up to a muted shower of snow. It is a familiar sight, a nostalgic picture of their childhood home, a picture contained in a glass globe from a long ago gift.
Hinamori almost falls asleep with her head on his shoulder, but her eyes quickly catch the stroke of bright light across the sky.
“Momo, make a wish,” Hitsugaya whispers against her hair.
A moment passes. “Done.”
“So, what did you wish for?”
She looks at him, baffled. “You always ask for that!”
“I can’t help it if I’m curious.”
“No.”
He changes tactics. “Okay, I’ll offer you an olive branch. One wish of mine to one of yours.”
“That’s unfair. I always wish for the same thing.”
“Since when?”
“Since we went on that mountain.” Hinamori considers the length of time she knows him, the gravity of memories and circumstance, and the very privilege of having that prayer answered. “I asked for the very same thing I’m wishing for right now.”
She sees how he recalls the moment, watches how the playfulness of his features soften into that of understanding and gratefulness. It had been that long.
“To let us stay in each other’s lives, not for a while, but longer, maybe forever-kind-of-long.”
To be together, even for a little longer. Despite the changes.
“Hmm.” He smiles and then chuckles. “Did you know I asked whatever god there was that day to let me stay with you? It was selfish and unreasonable, especially knowing you really wanted to go. After you left, it sought out many other mountains. I looked for the rest of the shrines, all the genuine and the makeshift, and prayed the same prayer. It turned out I managed to get through to at least one god.”
She could only stare in disbelief. “Wow.”
“What—you never thought I had it in me?”
She shakes her head and laughs. “You were always so tenacious, Shiro.”
“We have this year.” He leans in and places a soft kiss on her lips. “And the next and next and next and next.”
for sasusaku shoujo week 2023. prompts: high school, festivals, love confessions, accidental kiss, kabedon, wallflower. sasuke first person pov
here's an accompaniment to your reading
I, Uchiha Sasuke, seventeen years of age, only want nothing but peace in the last year of my high school life. So far, I have been successful ducking away from high-energy (like Uzumaki Naruto who I think takes five energy drinks in a day the way he’s always loud-mouthed and laughing and screaming in the hallways), and high-activity people (like Haruno Sakura, student council member since freshman and is now the current president. She probably has magical time management skills because I don’t know how she can fit everything in her schedule).
I am simply content in acing the expectations set by my family name.
Excellent grades.
First place in exams.
Official representative in academic competitions.
The successor of the alumnus with distinction, Uchiha Itachi.
The official top rank nobody in Konoha High, in other words.
Except I’m not.
Not really.
Not when President Sakura is always near second to me, short only by one point or two. And maybe it’s because she’s juggling everything in those two dainty hands of hers that she can’t be perfect all the time.
It’s not that I pay attention. It’s just that her hands are tiny.
And soft.
She grabbed my arm when classes broke for lunch one time and told me to go to the clinic.
“You’re hot.”
I wouldn’t know how to respond if I wasn’t running a 40 degree. “Gee, thanks,” I sloppily replied.
“No, but really. You need to go to the doctor.” Her face was painted with concern. There was nothing different about it; she dons this exact same expression to all her constituents.
It was the fact that she saw me, in the midst of class, battling a fever I thought I perfectly hid.
She didn’t wait for my response then. She dragged me towards the room, and pulled me into her orbit.
There’s a phenomenon called Zero Shadow Day when the sun is at the zenith and its rays fall perpendicular to an object. The shadow, usually cast behind it, falls directly under. Being skin-close to her is exactly that kind of phenomenon; I become engulfed in her.
My brother never fell in love in high school, but I did with Haruno Sakura.
xxxx
“Sasuke, you still don’t have a role.” The teacher taps his pen on the bound script. “Naruto beat you in signing up for the tree.”
“We have district finals!” screams the blonde baseball captain.
I clear my throat, but it just attracts even more unwanted attention. “What’s left?”
A beat passes which is more suffocating than the irritated throat I have now. “An understudy.”
“Great—”
“—of the princess.”
I could hear the blonde stifle his laughter behind me.
“Okay,” I sigh, “so long as the real princess shows up.”
After rehearsals, the prince comes up to me and taps my shoulder. I wish she wouldn’t untether me from the ground.
“I know you’re only doing this because they made it mandatory for graduation, but I’m still glad you’re with us,” Sakura says with a grin.
“Yeah, sure.”
Shouldn’t I have more words in my arsenal?
“Do you want some bread with mulberry jam? I finished half of it already.”
“That’s a lot.”
“I tend to devour food when I’m nervous.”
“Nice.”
That’s a horrible reply, Uchiha Sasuke.
xxxx
It’s a slow rehearsal, but I’m privileged to endure the multiple ‘back-to-the-start’ behind the curtains, against the wall, mindlessly scrolling through pages of dialogue. A big figure surprises me out of my musings—and oh my God, why is Sakura so close?
“I need my personal space,” I manage to croak out, but that made me sound more like a douchebag than a guy panicking over his crush standing a few inches away from him. It’s hard to breathe but I somehow manage to smell the faint jasmine in her hair and the strawberry on her lips.
Sakura complies in good spirit, rather too quickly for my liking (aren’t you panicking @/self?!). “Just practicing for the last scene.”
“I’m a spare.”
“You never know when it’ll come in handy, Sasuke. Besides, familiarizing this proximity lessens the ick-factor for you eventually.”
I’m pretty flexible when her mouth curls up in corners. The bound papers fall to my side, as a prop, as it should be, and I retrace the steps she took earlier. In my hazy vision, she wavers in her stance when in fact she stays rooted on the floor. It’s me who’s losing footing.
I reach her, approximately three inches away, and I breathe her in again uninhibited, along with her verdant eyes that learned not to look away. It’s a role I’m supposed to play. “This close?”
Her green eyes capture me in still frame. My mind makes up the vision of her throat closing up and her breath hitching. “Closer.”
My foot feels like lead. It’s just one step, I tell myself.
“—Break time’s over everyone!”
xxxx
My luck strikes on the day of the cultural festival wherein our little production happens to be the culminating activity in the gala night. This is so much fun (sarcastic).
Normally, I wouldn’t get too hung up about this, considering I am only an understudy, but lo and behold, the teacher informs me thirty minutes before the second act that the princess is sick.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“What do you mean by 'the princess is sick'?”
“Her stomach pain has become unbearable so you need to do what you are tasked to do, Uchiha.”
“I am an understudy.”
“Of the princess.”
“....”
“The princess is just lying down most of the time for this act, Sasuke. Your dialogue is literally on the last part.”
Which I didn’t know by heart.
I swear.
“Okay fine.”
The story is one you are already familiar with. The princess tries to escape her fate by going on an adventure but somehow gets cursed to fall asleep indefinitely until she is awakened by the true love’s kiss. We don’t know anything about the prince, but we know that it’s the person the princess loves the most.
It’s the opposite in my case, as I lie rigid and stoic against the greatest battle waged in the princess’ journey. No one knows who I am, but I know who I love the most.
Sakura is cool, judging by the cheers and almost-fanchant screams in the audience. I keep my eyes shut (I don’t think I’ll ever recover when I find her hovering above me, inches away), and all sounds fall mute to my drowning ears.
I hear the strings of words I’ve memorized from behind the stage, even the liminal pauses in between where her breath rests. I think of the patterns in her footsteps—ten until she gets to my deathbed on the center of the stage. What I’m not prepared for is the graze of her stray strands against my cheek. I take my fill of her scent and all her emotions suspended in the silence she closes the distance in.
There’s a slight shift in the background. A raucous scraping against the wooden stage, and I zero in on Naruto moving a little earlier than expected, and one of his very very long branches hit Sakura on the back.
A yelp becomes the next line.
I open my eyes the exact moment I taste strawberry.
xxxx
The cultural festival ends with the traditional dance around the bonfire.
It’s momentous in the sense that anyone can get a free pass to spill their guts in the dancing flames to their person of affections and expertly hide their pained expressions in the shadows.
I choose the bright lit classroom on the fourth floor where President Sakura spends the last hour of the night as my tragedy milieu.
For some weird reason, I kept the costume on, minus the hair in case this Ancient Greek montage goes either way. I am Snow White with the same ebony hair and pale skin. I offer an apple sans the poison and apologize.
“The great Uchiha Sasuke saying sorry!” She shrugs and bites down on the apple. “Shouldn’t you be the one who’s angry?”
“The student body thinks I defiled the perfect prince.”
She shakes her head, breaking in a chuckle, “It was theater, and they were just overreacting.”
“Still, I don’t think it’s proper.” I brace for the truth. “It might have been your first kiss and I took it away.”
“It’s all right. Maybe it’s the same for you? Aren’t you bothered by it?”
It’s hard to focus and stay serious when Sakura is ahead of me in her nonchalant grace, eating my attention away in every bite. “I’m all right with you as my first kiss.” Maybe if I tell the truth, she wouldn’t hear it over the mulch.
She wipes the juice from her lips as they transform into a smile. “Then that makes the two of us.”
I’m the one who chokes on the imaginary fruit. “What?”
“I said that makes the two of us.” No more munching this time.
I think I’m having problem swallowing. No way. All those people, and she likes me?
And I think I said my thoughts out loud.
She laughs, and the melody turns her redder than the almost fully consumed apple in her hand.
“Are you still playing along?” I seldom have my heart on my sleeve, but I’m wearing mine on the roses embroidered on the chest.
“It’s not part of the script, Sasuke.” The pale core of the apple makes a stark contrast against her cheeks.
“I like you.” I tell her the lines I rehearsed over and over again this past year. “It’s not part of the dialogue.”
“You look so silly saying that in a princess dress.” She laughs again, and this time she couldn’t stop. I’m not sure if this is going the right way. “You know, I’m not sure if you’d notice, but that only means I did a good job hiding it.”
What’s the proper response for that? “My head hurts.”
My disconnected reply does not deter her own confession. “I like you, Sasuke.” Her gaze lands on anywhere but me. “For a long time now. How else would I know you have a fever that day?”
Actors get stuck on lines. They forget the next words. Some people depend on off-stage prompters, others improvise. I’m not an actor, no matter how much I practice and make up scenarios which I would rather describe as overthinking, but I choose the latter.
My steps are still too heavy for all the nervousness that holds me down, but I reach her soon enough. “I think the student council president deserves a last dance for her last cultural festival.”
She quickly finds her spaces within the expanse of my arms. Maybe that’s what happens when I’ve carved out the place for her.
“This is not part of the play,” I whisper.
“It is,” she replies, “The teacher just cut it out because of the runtime.”
She steps on the hem of my dress, and the resulting sidestepping makes her double down in another fit of laughter. She’s closer to me now, much closer than the three inches we practiced.
“Oh Sasuke, I have another confession.”
I don’t think I’m ready—
“It wasn’t Naruto’s fault.” She’s breathless. “It wasn’t an accident.”
“Oh.”
I make a step, an attempt at fumbling. She holds me steady at my waist. I learn that my hands can cradle her entire face while hers seep cold against the fabric of my dress. This time, I taste apples as I bend down. “This one isn’t too.”
I, Uchiha Sasuke, want nothing but peace in the last year of my high school life. So far, I managed to find and keep it.
I have said I love you. You have said I love you too. The grand climax is over. The tumultuous journey is past and we have arrived in calm waters. It's mundane, ordinary, and silent. But between us, each day, in silent, smallest declarations, we still say, I love you. I love you. I love you.
(in which Hitsugaya and Hinamori are married)
gift for @ryomaunnie 🎁🎄 | @hitsuhina-week
a/n: sorry this got delayed so much!!! i hope i gave justice to your prompt of hh married/domestic life 🥺 belated happy holidays to the community. may you thrive and heal and live gently this 2023 🤍
Hinamori Momo was a winter bride.
One would think it was an inadequate choice; she was always bright and sunny, the very manifestation of a summer’s day.
But warmth has always been indispensable to the cold.
Like her to him. The love of his life. The fire to his ice. His red thread of fate.
She said I do to him under the curtain of snow, and Hitsugaya kissed his wife’s red button nose.
He kisses it all the same on slow mornings when the sun creeps on the Seiretei horizon, limbs all splayed out on the cotton covers, chasing shadows in the crook of each other’s embrace.
He touches it on nights he captures her lips and lets himself melt all over. Momo is my wife, he tells himself as she settles against his chest. Momo is my wife, he repeats again when he wakes up with her hair on his cheeks. Momo is my wife, like a prayer that came true.
— — —
“Which side of the bed do you want, Shiro?” Momo asks as she surveys the bare room. On one side, the window shares the view of the overgrowth. Rose vines and yellow bells fight for space on sparse earth while poison ivy rests comfortably on the concrete walls of the house. It will take some time to tame their backdoor wilderness, but Hitsugaya can see that it would be a beautiful garden in the care of her hands.
“I’ll take the one facing the wall Momo.”
A smile grows from his statement. “Are you sure?”
“Of course.”
"No take backs."
He smirks. "I don't do that."
"You'll roll me over!"
He holds up a pinky. She always made him do this when they were younger. "Promise. Stop being so insufferable. You're so cute when you're adamant."
"Ugh, so sappy all of a sudden." She giggles — that's all he wants to hear really — and laughter fills the crevices of the old house.
Under the futon that night, surrounded with boxes both closed and halfway open, Momo stares out the curtainless window to the unobstructed view of the full moon. She falls asleep after the fifth shooting star.
Meanwhile, Hitsugaya has the perfect perspective of her face; how she surrenders to the drowse, how her breathing evens out, and how she smiles in her dreams. Not all nights are like this.
Sometimes, the dreams are nightmares.
And he refuses to touch her in the aftermath.
He can vividly feel his hand — Hyourinmaru — go through her chest. His quickening pulse matches the spewing blood from her body. When it's emptied, there's a hollow instead of where her heart should be.
He goes frigid, his own pulse also frozen in shock, despair, some kind of indescribable grief. Then he jolts out of that plane when he feels her, the present her, draw his arm around her body. Calm and steady, her . In between the void and wakefulness, she forgives him.
Figures lost in crowd, that's what they look like on market days. She reaches out to him in the sea of bodies, intertwining his fingers with hers. It's a mindless gesture for Momo, but Hitsugaya feels tethered.
His hand in her. His soul is anchored.
———
"Tadaima."
10:07. Hitsugaya left Karakura around that time. Ichigo is boisterous, the usual, but even more so with the second addition to their family.
They broke the news over Orihime's okonamiyaki. A hefty dash of Ichigo's tears made it into the cooking. She made sure to pack portions for Hinamori.
Who happens to be burning her own okonamiyaki in the kitchen.
"Ah. I messed it up." She's near tears. "Did you have dinner yet, Shiro?"
He places the package on the counter and wounds his arm around her waist. She curls further into herself, sobs on the verge of escaping every limb, but he holds her close and whispers into her ear. "Yeah you burned it but I think it's still edible."
Still entangled with her, he samples a small part from the smoking brown concoction on the stove. Placid reaction gives way to strong grimace. "See, edible."
Momo groans. "I hate you Shiro."
"I love you Momo." His laughter resounds against her untangled hair. Smooth, flowing strands shaking as sobs transform into fits of amusement.
She faces him after a while. "Did you bring earth food?"
He nods. "It's not your favorite pizza, but Orihime's cooking is better than most."
"What did she cook?"
"Okonomiyaki." Her face falls flat from the sudden reminder of her failure. It disappears from his view when he pulls her in for a tight embrace.
Like earlier, his voice travels through her strands, wind to the leaves, water to sand, "Listen. You may not perfect every dish. You may mess up some things. You may not know how to repair the heater. Or keep planks straight when you hammer them in. Dogs may not like you. But you brew the best tea and coffee. You knit the warmest scarves. You sow the most beautiful flowers. The cats love to rub against you. You are my wife and I love you for all that you are."
"You talk so much," she groans against his shoulder. "I'm just hungry."
They laugh again, just as easily.
———
"Good... morning, taichou."
Normally, it would be Matsumoto slumped against Hitsugaya's shoulders, but on rare occasions that he would go drinking with Shinji (forced really) and his circle, Hitsugaya would always, always, return home intoxicated beyond his limits.
And her captain would always, always, bring this drunken stupor to her doorstep.
Even when they were still branding themselves as childhood best friends ("Of course, we would look out for each other.") When they were sidestepping the line that separates friendly concern to affection. A series of drunken declarations when he thought she was asleep, forgotten in the wake of the mornings as he casually slipped, unaffected, nonchalant, almost stoic from her quarters. ("Do you know, Momo, that I like you? I like you. I like you very, very, very much. I don't know what to do with these feelings. Momo, how do I tell you?") When they thought it was their best, well-kept secret in Soul Society. ("Way to announce you're mine, Shiro, banging on my door like that at 2 AM, calling me your darling?!") It was the best, well-shared secret.
"Hirako, you dumbassss. Why did you bring me to Momo? I'm a mess, look at me," Hitsugaya drawls over his words.
"Don't puke on her when you kiss, all right." Shinji winks at his lieutenant and bids adieu effectively in the dead silence of the night.
"I'm not gonna kisssss yew." Hitsugaya raises his palm and slaps it across his chest. "I am a good sssenpai. And a taichou. And I will not take advantage of yew."
"Shut up and go inside already."
He spots the gold band when she pulls his arm. He's sniffling by the time he makes it to their kitchen.
"Why did I wait so long?"
"Wait to come home?" Hinamori patiently goes through the same motions he does when she's drunk. Boil water. Brew some tea. Sober up.
"Wait to tell you I love you." His sniffles are louder, close to sobbing. "I've always wanted you to be my wife. Gods, I'm so stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid."
"I won't disagree with you on this." This happens every time, and each repeat just makes her fonder of him.
And yes, more annoyed.
But he's endearing when he's moping so he gets a pass.
He clutches her hand tightly. "Is he a good man? Does he love you more than I do? Are you happy?"
Hinamori leans in closer to his space. From this distance, she can smell the alcohol mingling with fresh pine and snow she associates him with. Her palms cup his drooping, tear-stricken face.
"He is a good man that loves me so much and makes me happy every day. I wouldn't have it any other way."
Then she kisses him as he does on nights she doubts his love. A seal of sorts, a magic touch that dispels the stormy clouds, a kiss.
"Momo, you're a married woman."
"And you're my husband, Hitsugaya-taichou."
———
The snipping of scissors molds with the hummingbirds perched on the blossoming dogwood.
Silver specks litter the hardwood floor. Momo's barefoot protrudes through the strands, his shoulders as her balance.
Her tongue peeks out in concentration as she trims the lengthened threads. It's easy to fall asleep on this cool, spring day while her fingers conduct an orchestra with his hair.
"Do you want an undercut?"
"Please don't make me look like Ichigo or Renji."
"Kira and Yumichika said it's fashionable."
"So why don't they say that to Byakuya?"
"Byakuya has a distinct style."
"And I don't? I'm offended."
"I think you look good in any hair."
"That's what wives say."
She brandishes a mirror in front of him. A relieved sigh leaves him when he sees no noticeable changes. "Great job, Ms. Hinamori. I'll give you a tip."
She kneels in front of him and rests her head on his lap. Her hair falls like waves on the side of his leg. Untangled in her braid, it's a shiny mane. They slip when he twirls his finger around them. "Cut my hair too, Shiro."
"Rukia-style? Or Yumichika?"
"Just don't shave me."
Cut hairs all gone and away and napes exposed to the blossom breeze, they spend the fading afternoon in the awning of the garden. Momo is asleep in his arms, her face dotted with pink petals, and the leaves playing across her features.
Hitsugaya mindlessly traces circles on her arm, navigating to her stomach where a shawl is splayed over. She knitted this some shinigami years ago and the fabric seems to call for his touch. To trace the same shape over and over until he feels the indentation. The slight slope he might miss in passing.
Adrift petals lay their rest right where his hand stopped orbiting.
"Momo?"
She only smiles and places her hand over his, flowers blooming in between the spaces of their fingertips.
"Shiro?"
His throat is heavy. "I'm gonna be a good father." He kisses the crown of her head, and they snuggle closer until twilight takes over the sky.
———
Fireflies are luminescent under the bridge. The river murmurs in the dark, continuing their voyage to the sea with the green attraction fading in their reflection, a memory drowned.
Momo wanted to rest. Rukia warned her about sore feet and wonky legs in the last few months of the pregnancy.
Hitsugaya would have wanted to carry her back home, if she let him. He's sulking from her stubbornness.
"It's peaceful tonight." Momo breathes in the changing summer air. Autumn has started to dispel its first notes.
"It's peaceful," Hitsugaya echoes. He embraces her from behind, his hands crossed like a prayer over her stomach. "I'm glad it's peaceful."
"But what if there's war again?"
It's not as if Hitsugaya hadn't thought of this already. It haunted his nights. It's a possibility on the back of his head when he attends council meetings, signs paperworks, reads reports. Always on the lookout for the first triggers.
It's a hard thing to keep — peace.
"Then there's another reason to fight for." But sometimes, it comes by easy. "For now, this is peace to me."
The fireflies steer towards their direction. Alight and luminous, their reflections are carried by the currents, a memory in voyage.
———
"Cold!!!!" Hanami bolts through the door. A child around five with brown hair covered in snow and teal irises that are so honest and bare and earnest. There's unbridled happiness in her eyes.
"Can you at least tone down that blush whenever you come home from Byakuya's estate?" Hitsugaya sighs.
"That's because of cold, Shiro," Momo reasons out from the kitchen.
"He made me tea, Papa!"
"As he does to all his guests?"
"No! It's the special tea!" She sticks out her tongue at her father while she quickly shrugs off her outerwear. Then her little feet urgently pad off to settle beside him in the kotetsu. "When I grow up, I'm gonna marry Uncle Byakuya!"
"He's old, Hana-chan."
"No, he's not! He's still handsome!"
"You have poor taste in men, my silly girl."
Momo sweeps into the room with a tray of tea. "That's too bad. You don't have room for Mama's special tea?"
"I have, Mama. The snow outside evaporated the tea earlier." She pats the little space beside her. "Sit Mama! It's cold!"
Lulled in drowse by tea, the family lies side by side on the floor, legs all tangled up under the kotatsu, as the snowstorm builds to a precipice outside.
"Did you enjoy painting with Byakuya?" Hitsugaya asks the growing babe on his shoulder.
Hanami nods. "He was worried I'd get snowed in."
Momo blows raspberries on Hanami's hair. "Was it cold, Hana-chan?"
"Very! He made me wear another coat. It was difficult to walk." She mimics shaking terribly but only ends up laughing. It's contagious, feeling the giggles travel the course of her skin and limbs, and unto her parents.
"Papa never gets cold, right Mama?" Hanami places her hand over their entangled fingers on her stomach.
"No, he never does."
"Are you cold right now, Hana-chan? Do you want me to move away?" Hitsugaya almost shifts out of their hold, but his daughter plants him to his side.
"Silly Papa! You're always so warm." Her button nose red from the cold, and her cheeks flushed pink, Hanami pulls her parents closer to her. "This is the warmest place in the world."
Summary: Strong smell of tobacco cuts through the petrichor. The smoke comes from the branches above her.
He’s tall, around nine feet, or probably more than that when he stands upright. Stories say they enjoy making people walk in circles. The only way to end it is to reverse one’s clothes. “You’re a kapre.”
“And I heard you would like a smoke.”
Rating: Teens and up
For Kakasaku Halloween Week 2022 @kkskevents | AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42752997
Sakura gives up lighting the candle. The wind is strong, and the rain seems to have no intention of letting up. It’s a good thing she deferred on buying flowers. She only had enough until next week. She tightens her hold on her umbrella as she feels the gusts come her way. No use; it bends upwards, drenching her from head to toe.
Time and elements have eaten away the letters on the stone on the fifth floor of a grave apartment. To a stranger, it’s unmarked. To her, it’s a brief interlude of sunshine. How cruel — to have someone’s life be remembered through a bunch of lines.
Sakura waits for the tears. It’s always better to cry when it’s raining.
Most funerals fall on rainy days. She wished it was like that when her parents died, but the actual forecast was sunny. Not too humid, not too hot. The perfect summer day on a beach. No rain fell that day so she couldn’t cry.
When she went home, she tried to make a meal for herself. There was leftover rice on the rice cooker. She heated a pan to fry an egg, the last one in the fridge. She cracked it just fine. She watched as the edges made small bubbles before turning brown and crisp, waited until all but the yolk cooked (she liked her eggs runny), then she tried to scoop it onto her plate. The bottom stuck, and the yellow spilled over.
Right, it was still food.
She turned off the gas, assumed her position at the table for the last 13 years, and ate. Fat teardrops slid on her cheek. The rice went bad and the egg was unseasoned. She missed her parents.
Present day Sakura pats the wet blades of grass off her clothes and finds shelter under the thick canopy of balete, a strangler tree. A line of them has taken residence along the walls of the cemetery. Stories about them are plentiful across places, from cities to mountains. No one dares to cut them down lest they invoke the wrath of its otherworldly residents.
She only sees them as trees. Good for the environment but parasitic. Eats up non-balete species easily. Might also eat up the graves in less than a century. Some part of her is grateful for them; they’re one of the reasons why lots at the back are cheap. But if she doesn’t pay the next installment next month, Mebuki and Kizahi’s bones will be replaced by someone else. (She hopes the balete grows overnight and takes over the whole place.)
Ironic considering how no one is visiting the dead when it’s All Souls Day. People pay for space and markers as grand tributes and never come back again. Some bullshit.
“I would kill for a smoke right now.”
Strong smell of tobacco cuts through the petrichor. It’s distinct from normal nicotine sticks or the trendy vape tools. The sharp scent brings her back to her auntie’s house in the province, stringing fresh tobacco leaves and hanging them up to dry. When the leaves roll up nicely, that’s when she knows she did a good job.
The smoke comes from the branches above her. She follows the trail of the roots and its draping limbs until she sees the rorschach blots of orange and red before they could disperse in ash gray wisps.
He’s tall, around nine feet, or probably more than that when he stands upright. Sakura sucks at metrics. His hairy legs dangle loose over the branch — it’s a wonder how the wood can hold its weight.
“I’m pretty sure I’m not lost,” Sakura says out loud.
“Yes, I can see you.” She’s expecting a more guttural noise but his is flowy and clear, almost like how a violin would sound. “And yes, I haven’t played a prank on you yet although the desire is tempting.”
Stories say they enjoy making people walk in circles. The only way to end it is to reverse one’s clothes. “You’re a kapre.” A pervy one at that.
“And I heard you would like a smoke.”
He jumps down from his position with a loud thud and settles on the cradle of the humongous balete roots. Pretty sure his landing would have carved out a hole in the earth. Oddly enough, being at arm’s breadth from this supernatural creature doesn’t ignite fear in her. Paralysis, anxiety, cold, desperation, fight or flight — all of these abandoned her psyche.
She’s simply tired.
And she needs a smoke so bad.
The kapre opens his metal tin the size of her torso. She gingerly picks the one in the middle and cuts a third out of it; no way is she gonna smoke an arm-sized roll. That would be like contracting lung cancer in just two long drags.
She sits beside him, much more conscious of their size difference, and asks for a light. He leans in towards her roll, and that’s the only time she feels scared.
Because he doesn’t look like a kapre. He looks beautiful.
Oh, she underestimated her cockiness.
She coughs when the nicotine hits her lungs. His laughter is a rumble, quite a nice companion to the pitter-patter of rain, if only she isn’t fighting for her life being cool and unaffected. Sakura always had walls to build, but seconds only with him, and she’s a mess. Absurd.
“It had been a long time,” she says as an excuse.
“So you say.” He takes another long drag. That tobacco roll seems to never run out.
“You look more of a mix.”
“Please don’t loop me with the kinds of tikbalang - part horse, part human. They look horrendous.”
"True. The proportions don't match with them." Smoking gets easier. Familiarity, with something you hate and love, makes it difficult to forget. It's always in the back of one's head. "So what are you? An albino?"
The kapre considers the word for a moment and shrugs. "Probably."
Sakura sharply turns to his side. "Wait — your engkanto mom probably had an affair with a kapre!"
The creature smirks at her. "Hmm. Perceptive. You're right." He crosses his arms behind his head, and she finds it difficult to look away from the bulging veins of his biceps.
"I bet your whole kingdom is envious of you."
He laughs. "Oh it's the best of both worlds."
"I know I'm right. You look —"
Beautiful.
"— so out of place."
Sakura stares at him like he has grown two heads. How?
"The perfectionist engkantos think my height is an anomaly, and being five shades revokes your kapre citizenry."
"Oh."
He takes a long drag again and puffs out circles. "Yes oh."
The end of her roll is succumbing to the cold, diffusing in wisps that join the fog of the rain. Sakura pulls her knees closer to her chest. "Is that why you're here?"
"To project my misery on people?" He scoffs. "Of course, you're right."
"What's the worst prank you did?"
"I killed one."
She waits for her blood to run cold at the casual confession.
And waits and waits and waits. It doesn’t come. She remains the same nonchalant lady who entered the cemetery an hour ago.
Life, she realized, has numbed her to this point.
"Why?"
“Why?”
The creature looks at her incredulously, probably in awe why she hasn’t bolted yet. He licks his lips and rests one side of his chin to his palm. Sakura realizes this is how he recalls things.
He describes a long object with his arms and swings it horizontally. “He wanted to take down my tree.”
“Can’t you transfer somewhere else? It’s easy to grow a balete tree. You just leave it be.”
“My father’s side sticks strictly to one. It’s hard to find empty lots right now where I’m at.”
“Your house literally grows through concrete.”
“It’s much of a hassle when you wake up every other day with your house cut down. You understand we operate on two different time frames? Your life expectancy is only a few years to us.”
Sakura nods. “So the roadworks also affect you?”
“This is why you never progress.”
“Says someone with backward filial beliefs.”
“Excuse you, we have a different worldview.”
“You’re weird.” Sakura’s shift in topic is jarring. “You’re easy to converse with.”
“The gravediggers don’t talk to me anymore.” He resumes his attention on his tobacco.
Meanwhile, Sakura’s is wet from the rain. The half-consumed roll rests on the soil, crushed by muddy rivulets.
“So what’s your story, pinky?”
Sakura rests her back on the large trunk. “I’m visiting my parents.”
“At the height of a storm?”
In her soaked bag, a phone rings. Three rounds of alarm, standard disaster notice. The automated voice reads, Warning. Red rainfall warning and signal number four in Konoha. Evacuate now. Another three rounds and then it falls silent.
Sakura nods. “It’s my last goodbye.”
“Going away?”
“You could put it like that. Our house is on mortgage, and some local officials want to demolish it for a right of way.”
“Roadworks?”
“Roadworks. It would have been done and sealed if they gave me money.” Sakura starts to chip off the sides of her nails. “But they said I’m the one who owes them. It turned into a screaming match, and then I got a blotter.”
“Rough life. So you’re wanted right now.”
She side-eyes him. “What? Afraid of me?”
The kapre laughs. “No, you’re cool. That’s a word you use, right?”
“My parents don’t know though so be a good kapre and keep mum.”
He puts out his tobacco against the trunk and scoots closer to her. Sakura is silently grateful for the warmth. She’s drenched and the cold is sinking into her bones. A little more and she’s sure to contract pneumonia.
But this creature, this man, is like a campfire on a beach in the middle of December. If someone would cover her with a blanket, she would instantly fall asleep.
“Don’t you have someone?”
She thinks of all the people she slept with. Her best friend turned stranger. The school librarian and the expulsion after the discovery. Random Tinder matches. The bakery boy who always gave her one extra pandesal. The man she thought of as the one but hid her from his family.
She has memories of heartbreak, of crying and thrashing and cursing, but the pain has left her for good.
“No. I’m the first one to always leave.”
“That’s a shame. You’re pretty.” A finger lifts the end of her ponytail. “But this makes everything easier.”
“Are you hitting on me?” She flicks his large hand away.
His mouth curves upwards. A sneer. Menacing one. “Ah you’ve reached bottom rock if you think a kapre is a good prospect.”
Sakura drops the cool act and grunts. “I don’t think I’ll get married in this lifetime. Love is just too taxing.”
“But you’ve slept around.”
“Are you actually following me?”
“No, it’s a human thing to do. Sleep around. Some people do it on top of tombs.”
Sakura winces in disgust. “You’re such a voyeur.”
He holds up both of his hands. “Against my own will.”
The rain mercilessly keeps on, and the winds start to pick up speed. It’s chaos all over, but in her mind, Sakura is busy fondling sensations. Her fingers unconsciously trace the outline of her lips. “I miss kissing. Being kissed.”
“Is that a request?”
She snaps as if waking from a trance. The giant is teasing her, but the question piqued her curiosity. While he trained his gaze elsewhere, she slipped her small body near his frame, using the roots as her leverage. She quickly captures his face with her small hands.
He’s surprised. Or he went into shock. Either way, he’s not moving.
“What would it be like,” she stares deep into his eyes, “to kiss you?”
It’s a litmus test.
This creature’s actually intelligent so he must have known by now why Sakura wants to be riled up. All that she has felt lately is emptiness. She’s not expecting much. It might be just like other kisses before him — mechanical, numb, unfeeling.
Under all of these, she’s just scared to admit she lost the capacity for emotions.
What would it be like to kiss you? A horrendous folklore creature? Will it give me disgust or fear?
Sakura’s lips are only a fraction of his mouth.
Something ignites — from him or her, she doesn’t know. It feels like she grew several feet tall, and his face somehow perfectly fits the cradle of her hands. And his mouth which tastes of nicotine and rain and mint is accurately slotted against hers.
She shudders at the goosebumps that prick her skin. Figuring it’s just the cold, she inches closer until her hands reach his hairy chest. Those large hands find their way on her back and push her tighter against him.
She moans at the growing friction, inadvertently opening her mouth to his access. Tongue meets tongue and from there on out, everything is lost under the canopy of the straggler tree.
“You can shapeshift,” she notes after a long while.
The giant hums in agreement. “I’m a bit of everything, Sakura.”
She stills at the mention of her name. “How did you —”
The guilt on his face is an afterthought. “I told you. I’ll come back for you.”
Recollection comes to her in sweeping moments.
She remembers him.
She knows him.
These memories finally move to the forefront.
“Kakashi.”
Sakura utters the same name he gave so many years ago. A distant memory of her getting lost in a sea of legs. Grasping a hairy ankle. She held onto the hairs as the man walked and walked and walked. She woke up in a room bathed in blinding sunlight. She squinted a lot before finding focus on the giant man in front of her.
Silver hair, grey eyes, and a kind smile.
“Pretty.” She reached out with her short arms, and he crouched down to her level. Fingers squeezed the skin of his cheeks, making her giggle. “Pretty pretty pretty!” she kept repeating.
In retrospect, this must have been the first time he was described like that. The man cried when he heard the word. Sakura didn't think much of it back then. She was too hungry to think straight.
Seeing her expression, he quickly led her to a table filled with food, and she took her favorite — a sweetened milk powder one ate through a straw called mikmik.
She also grabbed a Chuckie, a chocolate drink. Her classmates had this for snacks while she was stuck with diluted milk.
"Thank you!" She minded her manners. Her mom says they can get you through life. "You have a nice house!"
The creature kept smiling. "What's your name?"
"Sakura!"
"That's a rare name."
"Father says it matches my hair!" She points to another carton of chuckie. "Can I bring some for my parents, mister giant?"
He nods. "Call me Kakashi."
“When I grow up, I’m gonna marry you Kakashi!” She indulged in every treat at the table, and he let her.
“Why?”
Sakura counted the reasons on her stubby fingers. “You’re pretty. You have food. You have a nice house.”
He laughed, and she felt the whole room rumble.
“I cannot keep you here. You should go home,” he said with fondness in his voice. “For now.”
Once again, she was wrapped around his ankle. When he stopped walking after a while, she knew it was goodbye.
“Will I see you again?” she asked him. “Thank you for feeding me, Kakashi!”
“Do you want to go back?”
Sakura didn’t know her answer would matter much.
“Yes!”
“Then I’ll come back for you.”
He dropped her off at the entrance of the cemetery from where she traced her steps back to their house. Haruno Sakura had been missing for a week.
x x x
Sakura still made no move to go away. She sits still on the damp root system and watches every microexpression on his face.
“Your parents made it hard to see you again. Had you visit a folk doctor and gave you some charm to ward me off.”
“Did you kill them?”
Kakashi twirls his finger in the air. “No. Road accidents aren’t my thing. Can’t say I wasn’t happy. That made it easier to see you from time to time.”
She weighs his words carefully. “Are you gonna kidnap me now?”
“Hmm, no need for that. You already took a puff out of my tobacco roll, and you kissed me.” He sounds so proud of himself. “I don’t think you need any more convincing.”
She feels an eerie pounding in her chest. The way she went from extreme butterflies (after a long drought) to desperation is whiplash. “Are there any more machinations in my life courtesy of you?”
“None really. I was merely a bystander, patiently waiting for the right time.”
“And now is?”
He smiles again but doesn’t answer. “I guess I need to give you the courtesy to choose. Come back to my home and I’ll make you stay missing.”
The courtesy to choose does not exist. She knows she has sold her soul to him the moment she grabbed food on his table. It’s a common warning — never accept any food or drink from these types of creatures. Once you do, you become one of them.
Kakashi only extended her grace period on earth.
Sakura closes her eyes in frustration.
“What happens if I say no?”
“You’ll just have to visit me every other day to keep me company.” She won’t get rid of him. She’s not entirely sure if she wants to get rid of him.
She thinks about their house along the railway tracks. Most furniture was already sold. The mountain of bills she stuffed in the trash can (tomorrow’s the collection day). Five disconnection notices. Three eggs past the expiration date. A rejection email for a job application. The crumpled recommendation slip inside her pocket. The bottle of pills she swiped at the public health office.
She has prayed long and hard for this opportunity.
To disappear.
Sakura grabs Kakashi’s wrist and stares at him. “Come on then.”
She expects atmospheric pressure, the kind where you feel all sorts of weight push towards you and propel you in another dimension. It turns out to be as easy as stepping into a bridge and walking the whole way through.
She should have done this sooner.
Kakashi’s world is bathed in sunlight. Sakura immediately feels warmth travel the inches of her skin. A modest spire gate and a room that’s carved out from her memory.
It’s the bedroom she draws on the back of her notebook. Queen-sized bed with pastel green sheets, fluffy pillows, and a duvet. A bedside table with fresh chrysanthemums on a vase. A desk on the corner. A reading nook with built-in shelves around it.
“You’ve been preparing,” Sakura notes.
“I wanted to make you comfortable,” Kakashi replies. He takes her hand and leads her into the dining area. It’s exactly how she remembers it, filled to the brim with not a space uncovered with a dish. “This is now your world Sakura.”
She picks up a Chuckie carton. “Thank you, Kakashi.” And then she starts to cry.
Hinamori Momo struggles to transition into a life after war. Sleepless for most nights and burdened with survivor’s guilt, her feet lead her to the person that could give her comfort, but she wouldn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t. It’ll only take a few nights before her walls of pretense start to crumble, and she’ll be left to face the remains of her ghosts.
In an era of peace, the peacekeepers are restless.
Hinamori Momo struggles to transition into a life after war. Sleepless for most nights and burdened with survivor’s guilt, her feet lead her to the person that could give her comfort, but she wouldn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t. It’ll only take a few nights before her walls of pretense start to crumble, and she’ll be left to face the remains of her ghosts.
For @soybeanprophecy 💛💐
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
There’s always bound to be a moment that changes the trajectory of an elaborate sidestepping of the truth, and that finally comes for Hitsugaya and Hinamori through a drunken almost-one-night-stand, office confrontations, and the unbecoming that feels like drowning.
She latches on to him like leaves rising to the dapple of rays - he is her sunshine, and she is his world. She is okay to be stuck in this constant, but alas the sun needs to set.
hidlaw [hid.law.] :
yearn (v.), to long, have a strong desire (for something) to long for something in the past with melancholy, nostalgically.
“I think I made you up.” She rolls right into the crook of his neck where she can smell the remnants of her scent. A privilege in itself, for how many in a million does one get to have skin pressed onto skin and leave a trail fresh for but a few hours?
Does he smell himself in her hair too?
“Good morning.” Sasuke’s smiles are only hers alone, a secret she holds dear but a secret she wishes to let out to the awaiting crowds. What a blessing to be under the curve of his lips, exuding happiness with each syllable, his fingers spinning into her rose spun strands. “You’re gonna be late.”
Sakura grumbles, nestling closer into his nook, her sanctuary. “Ten minutes.”
He smells her hair again, inhaling her own remnants into the pores of his soul, and maybe they all mix up to form some sort of a whole - his and hers, forever mingling inside their organs until they dissipate into the miniscule hairs of their skin, forever smelling like each other, unable to tell whose scent ends where.
“I don’t wanna leave you,” she says to the silence in the room.
“I’m good at being alone.” His honesty is straightforward yet subtle. She doesn’t know if it’s meant to be a jab or simply self-awareness, but amidst the chaos in her mind, she chooses to believe the latter.
“I’ll always come home to you.” It’s a promise she will never break.
Sasuke smiles. What a blessing.
x x x x
“You need a pet.” He always eats dinner first. It couldn’t be helped, not with her graveyard shift at the hospital.
“But I already have you?” He doesn’t laugh. Uchiha Sasuke never laughs out loud, but his eyes crinkle and that’s more than enough. She’s glad that he finds this amusing, but deep down she knows she couldn’t take care of another human being besides herself.
“Get a cat. A black one. They’re lucky.”
He likes cats, but he never takes in one. She saw him feed strays behind their apartment before. She wonders how they’re doing now. Maybe she can do the feeding sometime. The kibble jar is just under the sink.
She nods and proceeds to tell him about the mundane life of a doctor. In a peaceful era, the oddities now come in forms of freak accidents - nothing too extreme to handle. They both have seen too much. Maybe this is their punishment for having tainted their hands in the war, a boring, mundane life.
But isn’t that what she wants? To live out a boring, mundane life.
With Sasuke, of course. “Why don’t I marry you?” The curve ball doesn’t catch him off guard.
He places a finger on her scroll and quietly demands that she look at him. Her tool of detachment leaves her sight, and she is now looking at him completely. Has he always been this hazy?
“Don’t be silly,” he replies.
x x x x
She rushes into the rain despite Kakashi’s insistent scream. No, she doesn’t want to wait out the storm. She can handle lightning. She survived a chidori to the chest after all. Even when the thunder drowns the loud voices, she picks out Shizune’s. No, she doesn’t want to stay at the hospital. A 19-hour surgery was enough. No, she doesn’t want to sleep in her quarters. She has a home.
And that home is him.
He’s supposed to be here.
She opens all the lights, curses when she realizes the power’s down, and runs amock through the complex’ halls to find him, even a bit of his shadow. His scent, oh his scent. It’s drifting away, she feels it, wisps of his smell escaping her body.
She punches herself. In the gut. Forgets to gauge her strength and she pukes everything she ate two days ago onto the wet puddle gathering around her. She curses.
One hour has passed. She’s afraid to open the door of her own apartment. Afraid to see his clothes strewn around, his things scattered along with her scrolls, but worthless in his absence. She tumbles on the carpet of his shirts, the same blue shades alternating with gray or deep muted shades of violet, and she tries, oh she tries to sniff whatever he has left for her to take.
She cries in muffled gasps. She knows the science; it has always been proven that one can die of a broken heart. How many minutes then will it ask for her life force to give up?
His hand reels her back from the vortex of inescapable grief. She ends her journey short in the cradle of his arms.
“I thought you left.” It’s more of an admonition than regret. You could never leave me, that’s what she’s trying to say.
“I just ran into a problem. The window was open.” Her hand travels along his good arm, his only arm, and her fingers traverse each crack like water to its tributaries.
Her chakra is warm against his skin. He glows in the dark, her sunshine in the night, and she is warm, dappled by his light.
“You can’t heal that.” He states the obvious.
“I know.” But she continues anyway.
x x x x
“I think I made you up.” Days melt into nights. She doesn’t know - doesn’t care - when the sun sets. She drifts in time under his eyes, against his comfortable weight beside her, and stays in the same safe space, on the crook of his neck, her sanctuary, her nook, with his fingers spinning roses with her hair.
“I have to go.” His whisper fades into her strands.
“You can’t.”
She begged in the past. Begged for his attention, for his love. When she stopped, it came to her, overflowing. She didn’t know how to contain it, where to put these foreign affections, how to compartmentalize these with the Sasuke she once knew. But she didn’t need to. There is never enough space for a love that’s more than enough.
He once said she filled his lonely existence up. Maybe hers was like a shower of cherry blossoms, littering the ground until there was no inch left to cover. He refuted, told her it was spring, continuously in bloom where it was perpetual in winter. So she stopped begging and started accepting.
“Please. You can’t.” She holds him close. Maybe she can melt into him.
“You have to.” Again, his whisper fades into her strands.
x x x x
Sakura wakes up alone. She doesn’t want to remember the exact moment he left her embrace, this bed, his clothes, this world. She cries. In muffled gasps. Maybe heartbreak will come sooner this way.
It doesn’t. His hand doesn’t even reappear.
On the fifth day, she finds the kibble jar on top of the counter. Half full, half empty. She struggles to open her door, struggles to walk the stairs, struggles against the twilight. Pretty, perfect shades of blue and purple and gray, blending into this image of Sasuke in her head and she slips on the curb, gasping in pain, the kibble jar open for feast for the hungry stray cats.
She runs upstairs. He should be back. He should be.
But he doesn’t.
She lives in contradictions and expectations, fading away at each instance. This isn’t so bad after all - to be stuck in this limbo.
When morning comes yet again, proof that the world continues on turning, and the peeking sunlight hits her on the face, she cries. It’s visceral, the chasm he left. It’s true how they say grief is inescapable. But it isn’t as harsh as she thought it would be. She imagines the kind of grief that sucks you right in when it comes, a vortex, a blackhole of emotions.
But this grief is gentle in its torture.
The sunshine creeps on her whole body, but she never feels the warmth. It ends up falling on the cracked urn, the ashes spilling out and traveling with the gentle breeze.
On the tenth day, Sakura takes a bath. She combs her hair and puts on his blue shirt.
“Just this one time.”
His voice doesn’t respond. He’d tell her she’s beautiful in his clothes but better without.
“Okay, just one shirt.” Instead it’s Ino who rouses her from slipping in.
She is flanked by her blonde best friends, one on each side, hands supporting the cracked urn. They ask her his favorite place, and before she could answer, it rains. It soaks them, even the ashes. He becomes mud.
Through her muffled hearing and blurred sight, she makes out Ino and Naruto yelling at her to take cover. But she doesn’t move. She’s stuck.
But maybe it’s all right. Grief is gentle. She stands under the downpour, still flanked by her best friends, wanting to move but unable to leave her unsteady. She opens the lid of the urn, and Sasuke spills out onto the ground as mud, seeping into the cracks on the soil, becoming one with the earth.
With that, he transforms into spring.
Sakura smiled on that day, under the rain, where the water from the skies washed away her pain, but never his scent.
Maybe there will be sudden strokes of loneliness, of yearning, of reaching for something that isn’t there anymore. Sakura knows this. These moments will come unguarded, and she will be at their mercy. But she promises to come home to him. To see every spring, to smell his scent with every node of a leaf, with every bloom of a flower, and every breeze that trails through her hair.
AO3 version
Late entry to SS Angst Day and Valentines Day! I'm opening commissions next week! Just going over the details and then I'll post the guidelines. Yay thanks for reading!
