@deaf-sakura
Ok my turn! Hyperfixation time!!!
Sakura's first hyperfixation is books! All books! If it has words and smells like knowledge, she wanted to read it, even if she was. Very small.
And, like, her parents..didn't really get it. They thought she was too young to like reading, and they wanted her to get out more and make friends and do regular kid things. So she went outside and tried talking to other kids instead of reading sometimes to make her parents happy, and she learned about Ninja.
And she thought they were the *coolest fucking thing*, and her hyperfixation shifted from 'reading everything' to 'reading everything about shinobi', to 'learning everything about shinobi'.
It starts as something that interests her- something she could read and hear and talk about it about forever. She makes friends with civilian kids who think it's cool she knows so much and low-brow clan kids that think she's 'pretty alright for a clanless nobody'.
So she sucks up information. She learns. She thrives.
*and then she runs out of stuff to know*
There really isn't much available for civilians, especially civilian children, to know about the shinobi system. She's 7ish years old, and knows about as much about shinobi as any about civilian, because there's not a lot for her to learn. It *felt* like a lot when she was a toddler that knew *nothing*, but now she can read books with 100 pages! For all her curiosity and investigation, she can sum up everything she knows about ninja in half that!
So, after much debate and many a meltdown, she is enrolled in The Academy, because really even her parents can see it's the only thing that can hold her interest for longer then a month. They figure she'll learn everything she wants to within a year or two, get bored, drop out, and learn a trade.
They're wrong.
Sakura *thrives* in the academy. Or, at least, she feels like she does. She learns everything she's ever wanted too, has tangible goals for learning more, has access to *textbooks*. She becomes more reclusive and goes back to spending every minute of everyday that she isn't learning something new from a teacher with her nose in a book.
And her social development falls behind. She can't quite connect with kids here- on the playground, she was popular because she knew more then any of her civilian peers about ninja, and the kids she was playing with were kids. They love cools stuff.
But now she's surrounded by *students*. Soldiers in training. The civilians aren't just kids in awe of her knowledge- they're bitter competitors that are jealous of her. The lower clan kids aren't relieved that she at least kind of knows what she's talking about- they're threatened by the thought of a civilian being better then them.
Sakura becomes an outcast, and she doesn't even notice until she *does*. And when she does, RSD hits her like a truck. She starts getting bullied, and only has her familiar books and facts and notes to comfort her.
Then she meets Ino, and adores her. Admires her. *copies her.* hopes that doing everything Ino does will make Ino not stop talking to her. She NEVER wants Ino to stop talking to her.
So she does the thing most kids with ADHD do at some point- she starts trying to hide her hyperfixation, so she doesn't stand out. It almost physically aches at first, not reading a chapter ahead during lunch and following along with the lessons at such a *slow* speed and rarely if ever staying after class just to grill the teachers, but it's bearable with Ino, and soon the pain grows familiar. She still reads more then other kids and gets called a 'paper nin' and 'bookworm' every day, but it works. Ino stays. Sakura slowly makes friends with the other girls.
And then Sasuke happens.
//I. I really don't have the energy to go into Sasuke rn? I'm gonna cut this here for now, sorry. Ur move!!
