…Where Sakura Reflects on Seina Uzumaki (Chapter 1 - 23)
The first time she met Seina Uzumaki wasn't at the academy. She had seen her from a distance in the village, walking next to her mother or father, but Seina never caught her attention beyond her striking appearance and the fact that, despite being the same age, she was always alone or accompanied by someone who seemed to be her twin brother. Sakura didn't give it much thought since, at that time, she was friends with another girl who also had a striking appearance, Ino Yamanaka.
Ino was going to be enrolled in the academy because she came from a great ninja clan, whereas Sakura, despite having ninja parents, they were only genins and had been the first ninjas in their respective families. When Sakura told her parents that Ino had started at the academy, they sat her down to talk about the pros and cons of being a ninja. At first, Sakura didn't want to be a ninja because, although her parents were ninjas, they had explained to her how hard it was to be a shinobi, especially if she wanted to rise through the ranks.
"You could be a genin, like us, and do a few well-paid D-rank missions while working part-time like we do."
"But you'll have to work hard and train every day," her mother said with a stern face. "Even though they are low-rank missions, there is always some risk."
At 5 years old, Sakura had no desire to train hard, let alone every day. Seeing her clear reluctance, her parents told her to think about it seriously before making any decision, and that was that. Or so she thought.
A few weeks later, Sakura met Sasuke Uchiha. He was the most handsome boy in the village. Just seeing him made her heart race, her breathing quicken, and her legs tremble. She desperately wanted to touch his hair, to have him look at her, to have him smile at her... but Sasuke never did. One time, she gathered the courage to approach him.
"H-hi. My name is Sakura. Do you want to play with me?"
Sasuke turned, as if only then realizing she was there. He blinked, surprised, in her direction.
"No. I have to train with my ni-chan," and he walked away.
Sasuke didn't seem interested in her, and that saddened her for a few days, until she met with Ino again, who, exuberant as always, told her about a boy at the academy that she liked.
"He's sooo handsome. He's tall, pale-skinned, with black hair and black eyes," Ino recited with bright eyes. "And he's so... cool. He's not like the other boys. And he's from a very powerful ninja clan! Even his name is cool. Sasuke Uchiha."
Sakura, who had recognized Sasuke as an Uchiha by his uniform, realized that Ino liked the same boy she did. The worst part was that Ino spent hours with Sasuke at the academy! Jealousy took over her, and she ended up pushing Ino.
"I saw him first, pig!" she shouted angrily.
"Hey! Watch it, big forehead!"
Ino, who was a bit stronger than her due to her genin training, pushed her back, sending her to the ground, but not without telling her that Sasuke didn't belong to her and that she could do whatever she wanted. Sakura ran home with her dress torn, tears in her eyes, and cheeks flushed with jealousy, humiliation, and anger.
"I want to enrol in the ninja academy!" she declared.
Her parents were truly surprised, but once they asked repeatedly if she was sure and she said yes, they didn't hesitate to enrol her the next day. When she walked through the door and saw the disgusted and irritated look on Ino's face, something inside her twisted with pleasure. She saw Sasuke sitting near the front row, but he wasn't looking at her. He was calmly reading a scroll, ignoring everyone around him, so focused on his reading.
"What are you doing here, big forehead?!"
"I enrolled in the academy, pig! Or can't you tell?" she replied maliciously, crossing her arms.
After that, her friendship with Ino soured and turned into a rivalry. Sometimes they argued over incredibly stupid things, but mostly, they fought for Sasuke Uchiha's affection. The only thing that kept their rivalry alive was the fact that Sasuke didn't seem to choose either of them.
A few weeks later, the Uchiha clan was massacred by Sasuke's older brother, and Sasuke changed. He wasn't just quiet and distant anymore; he avoided everyone equally. Sakura was convinced that he just needed friends. He needed her. She was sure that if she could just talk to him, even for an hour, she could make him see that he wasn't alone, that it was okay, that she would be his friend, and if he wanted, something more. Just the thought made her blush. She imagined the two of them sitting on a bench or under the shade of a tree, holding hands. His shy smile would return when he looked at her. Ah... her heart raced just thinking about it.
Shortly after that, the idiot Naruto and Seina Uzumaki enrolled in the academy. The moment Sakura saw Seina, she remembered her. It was her golden, extremely straight hair, soft as silk, gleaming along with her pale skin and almond-shaped violet eyes that made her extremely jealous. Her own pink hair frizzed, she had to take care of it every day, and she had to trim her split ends every month. Her green eyes, next to Seina's exotic violet ones, seemed so common, and her pink dress, compared to Seina's almost military-like black uniform, made her look like a little girl in everyone's eyes.
At least the clown Naruto was different. She was disappointed when he ditched the orange tracksuit to dress more like his sister because now she had one less thing to mock him about. However, even without his horrible tracksuit, she could still laugh at how he was constantly getting scolded, losing his bento, or forgetting his academy books.
The first time she mocked him in front of his sister was also the last.
"You're such an idiot, Naruto! You can't even keep track of your own lunch!" she hissed.
Seina, who had been examining the locker where they kept their things, including the bento, slowly turned in her direction. Violet eyes locked onto green ones, and suddenly, Sakura was very scared. She didn't need to read Seina's mind to know she would hurt her if she kept laughing at Naruto. She lowered her gaze without being able to help it and left. Once she was far away and no longer felt so much fear, she started to feel humiliated because Seina had driven her away without even saying a word. Just a look. She clenched her fists but didn't turn back to face her. Seina wasn't Ino. She had a feeling that a push and an insult wouldn't be enough.
The only good thing was that Seina didn't like Sasuke. She didn't even look at him. Weeks after the Uzumaki siblings started at the academy, Sakura no longer had any reason to mock them. They hadn't lost a single bento since the first day, always had their books and homework done, and were never punished. A part of her was furious because she had no excuse to keep despising them after being humiliated like that.
Another part, a larger one, remained terrified of what Seina might do. Because she knew that many of the things that happened to those who mocked or tried to bully her brother, or her, were her doing. She had no proof, but something told her she was right. One day, Sakura forgot her fear. It was that day of the taijutsu matches in the courtyard. When it was Sasuke's turn to fight the idiot Naruto, Sakura cheered for Sasuke as much as she could, but unfortunately, the fight ended in a tie. Sakura couldn't believe Naruto had tied with the top student in the class.
"He must have cheated! Naruto isn't as strong as Sasuke!" she yelled from the crowd.
It was Seina's turn to fight Ino, and to Sakura's delight, Ino was utterly defeated by the other girl. At that moment, she didn't care about being afraid of Seina because Ino was getting what she deserved. She hadn't even realized that Seina had heard her mocking her brother because she thought that, in the crowd, she was safe, that Seina couldn't do anything. But a few days later, her hair started to fall out little by little.
"Mom!" she screamed one night when she went to shower and came out with a handful of hair, staring at her scalp in the mirror.
No matter how hard she tried to stop it, it happened. She lost all her hair. For an entire month, she wore a scarf on her head, thankful to at least have kept her eyebrows and able to lie about why her hair was now covered. She was so embarrassed that she only went to the academy and then straight home afterward. Fortunately, after a month, her hair began to grow back, and within four months, her mane reached her shoulders again. Ino mocked her "haircut," humiliating her even more, and Sakura had to clench her fists again.
The only thing that lifted her spirits was that Ino accepted her defeat and gave her a clear path to go out with Sasuke alone. Though she didn't like that after that moment, Ino started sitting with Seina, Hinata, and the other clowns of the class. It wasn't that she wanted to keep competing with Ino, but a part of her felt replaced by those people. Wasn't she her friend from before the academy? Bah! As soon as she saw Sasuke again, her resentment temporarily faded, but Sasuke kept distancing himself from everyone.
"Tomorrow is the big day, right?" her mother smiled the day before they were assigned their genin teams.
"Yes. I can't wait to find out who my teammates are."
She only cared about hearing Sasuke's name alongside Sakura's. Nothing else mattered. She was so convinced they'd be put together that when Team 1 was called, and she was paired with two idiots she barely knew, she nearly had a heart attack. Impossible!
"WHAT!?" she screamed. "THIS CAN'T BE!"
"Sakura! Stop yelling like a little girl! You're a genin now! Act like it!"
"Team 1. Come with me," said a sickly-looking jonin.
Sakura held back her tears, looking toward Sasuke. A lump formed in her throat so large from the loss of Sasuke, the disappointment, and her shattered dreams, that she couldn't stop crying as she left the academy with her team. She didn't even know any of them. She was in shock for several days. She didn't understand why she had assumed it was fate that would lead her to be the kunoichi on Sasuke's team. All her plans to get close to him, to fight by his side, to be his friend, his girlfriend... were crushed.
The worst part? Seina Uzumaki was the kunoichi who had stolen her spot! How she hated her! The only reason she didn't hate her more was because, even though she wasn't on his team, she still had a chance to win Sasuke, as everyone knew Seina wasn't interested in him. It took her mother's, father's, jonin sensei's, and grandparents' words before she realized that, despite being on different teams, they were still both ninjas of Konoha. She would still see Sasuke around the village. Yes, that was it! Not everything was lost!
Slowly, she emerged from the depression she had fallen into and began interacting with her genin team, realizing that with a smile, her teammates would go out of their way for her. Hayate-sensei silently disapproved and "punished" her with more exercises that left her panting on the grass. She had to admit she had no endurance, and she didn't want to keep exercising and sweating, but she kept trying.
"I've put you forward as candidates for the chunin exam," Hayate-sensei told them one day. "The other genin teams from your class have been signed up too, so you'll be able to compete with them, and with candidates from other villages. If you don't want to take the exam this year, that's fine, just don't fill out the forms."
"Are all the Konoha genin attending?" she asked again with interest. She saw him nod. "Then I want to participate."
The others looked at her in surprise but agreed to sign up.
When the day of the exam arrived, Sakura showed up with her team quite early to avoid surprises and, of course, to see Sasuke, but he wasn't there. Fortunately, with her chakra control and intelligence, she quickly spotted the test genjutsu on the second floor, and they left. Not without first encountering a boy dressed in a horrible green spandex jumpsuit, orange leg warmers matching a belt of the same colour, and hair shaped like a ramen bowl with huge eyebrows that grossed her out.
"THOSE BROWS MAKE ME SICK!" she yelled when the guy tried to blow her a kiss.
"Get away from Sakura!"
Sakura removed her hands from her face just in time to see Team 7, who had witnessed the whole thing, walking away in boredom. She was so embarrassed she couldn't bring herself to call out to Sasuke when a jonin who looked exactly like Lee appeared.
"We need to get to the exam room!" she told her team, grabbing them by the arms and rushing out of there like a flash.
All she wanted was to finally reunite with Sasuke. Everything else was irrelevant. As soon as she opened the door, she saw him. Standing next to Seina, hands in his pockets, looking at Hinata.
"SASUKE!" she screamed, unable to contain herself. "I finally found you!"
Sakura rushed to hug him, completely forgetting about her own team. She saw Sasuke's eyes fixed on her, but just as she was about to make contact, he stepped aside, and she fell flat on her face. Her nose hurt from hitting the concrete floor, but what hurt more was Sasuke's rejection. She was so humiliated that a ringing in her ears drowned out the sound of multiple eyes on her.
"Please, someone kill me," she heard Ino say, horrified.
She got up as best as she could, keeping her head down so no one would see her face, now completely red. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Team 7's backs as they walked away toward a corner. It saddened her to think that Sasuke didn't care about her, as he didn't even glance back while walking away.
"Hey. How about you all quiet down? This isn't a game," a boy scolded them.
Sakura took advantage of the distraction to leave. She stood next to her team, grateful that the ninja who had interrupted them was now taking all the attention with his informative cards. She sniffled and wiped away the tears that had started to appear. Luckily, her genin teammates seemed uninterested in asking her about what had just happened, so Sakura calmed down. She glanced again at Sasuke's back, who had been seated in the front rows, and then sat at the desk she was given.
When the exam started, she mentally wished Sasuke luck and prayed that Seina and he could carry the dead weight of Naruto. Sakura focused on the exam questions, forgetting about her crush for a while. To her surprise, her team passed the first test without much trouble, as did Team 7 and the other teams from her class.
She wanted to approach the others at the entrance to the Forest of Death, but Mamoru grabbed her arm with an angry look.
"Could you stop chasing after Sasuke while we're in the middle of this exam? Or do you want us to die?" he snapped at her for the first time.
"Don't you talk to me like that!"
"I'll talk to you however I want as long as my life, and Hakuto's, are in danger because of you."
Hakuto nodded with a guilty expression. It was clear he didn't want to fight with her, but he was siding with Mamoru. Sakura, seeing how serious the other teams were, crossed her arms and stayed in place. She couldn't believe her own teammate had called her out in public. She silently watched the backs of Team 7, one of the first to be called, and mentally said goodbye to Sasuke for the next five days.
If the first part of the exam had been a breeze, the second part was a complete disaster. They spent the first day wandering, trying to find a place to set up camp, but unfortunately, they were attacked before they could hide. They escaped unscathed by a miracle. Her stomach growled as they tried to catch some animal, while Mamoru picked edible plants. Fortunately, they found a stream and were able to drink water after purifying it, just in case.
On the second and third days, they searched for a team to steal a scroll from, without success. Sakura had no tracking skills, and neither Hakuto nor Mamoru had any special abilities like Hinata, Shino, or Kiba.
"We should move closer to the exit and set traps," Mamoru finally said. "We don't have the time or resources to comb the entire area for a team."
"And even if we did find a team, they might not have the right scroll, and we'd have to start all over again."
So, they used a clearing to set up traps. They hid up in a tree to wait. To their great luck, a couple of teams appeared out of nowhere a few hours later. Sakura triumphantly pulled out a kunai, waiting for her moment, but that moment never came. She stayed frozen on her branch, watching in absolute terror as a genin from the Grass Village slaughtered the other team, taking great pleasure in doing so. He seemed very angry for some reason. She tried to stay unnoticed, but she failed. The ninja vanished in a blur of speed.
"Trash," said a voice behind her.
Sakura turned, her heart racing. As soon as she saw the face, and that long tongue, she screamed like never before, out of pure fear. Mamoru jumped between them, trying to protect her, but the other ninja simply raised an arm, from which several enormous snakes emerged. They wrapped around him like a mummy. Mamoru howled in pain while she was petrified with terror, unable to move.
"You're not even worth killing."
Miraculously, the ninja left. Sakura and Hakuto, mute since that moment, carried Mamoru's broken body for the rest of the days. They obviously didn't pass to the next round of the exam but were sent to the hospital instead.
Shortly after that, the invasion of Oto took place, the Hokage died, and the village began its reconstruction. Sakura spent those days in the hospital, recovering from her injuries and psychological trauma. When she got out, she found out about the results of the other genins in the chunin exams.
A part of her was still jealous about being left behind, being the only one who didn't make it to the next round, losing in the second part of the exam when Ino had managed to move forward despite having the fat Choji and the lazy Shikamaru on her team. Even Hinata had made it, though she lost to her far more skilled cousin during the preliminary matches.
"And what about Team 7?"
"I knew you'd ask about them," Ino rolled her eyes. "Do you really think that, with Sasuke, Seina, and Naruto on the team, they wouldn't make it to the final round?"
Sakura's stomach churned at how she said it, as if just because Seina and Naruto were there, it was unthinkable that they would lose. She wanted to believe Ino was exaggerating, that they weren't that impressive, that all the credit should go to Sasuke, but Ino quickly shattered her fantasy without even realizing it.
"You should've seen Seina beat that guy from Oto like it was nothing. She made a fool out of him, and she didn't even realize it," Ino chuckled at the memory. "If she doesn't get promoted to chunin, I'll shave my head."
Sakura stood up suddenly, surprising Ino. She made a quick excuse and left, clenching her fists in jealousy. Why did everything always come back to Seina? If she hadn't taken the number one spot at the academy, Sakura would've been placed on Sasuke's team. It was all her fault! It infuriated her to hear how smart she was, how good a ninja she was, how great a sister she was, how close she was to Sasuke. And now she would have to see her walking around the village wearing the chunin vest while she hadn't even made it past the second round of the exam.
Then she received an invitation to join the cryptanalysis squad. That offer lifted her spirits for weeks, as she was the only one to have received such an honour. Her parents were very impressed.
"Think about it, Sakura. You won't need to work part-time as a civilian if you take this job. You'll earn a ninja salary and spend 95% of your time in Konoha, completely safe."
She consulted Ino about it again. Ino agreed with her parents. It was a stable, well-paid, prestigious, and very safe job. The only thing that held her back was knowing she wouldn't be a normal ninja like the others, and she wouldn't be able to go on missions with Sasuke. What finally convinced her to accept the job offer was learning that Mamoru would need extensive medical help before he could walk again and that Hakuto didn't plan on returning to work as a ninja due to the trauma he had developed. So, did she really want to risk her life outside the village when she had nearly died in her own village just taking an exam? She accepted the offer.
Her immense happiness lasted exactly a couple of weeks. Until she saw Seina by chance walking through the village with the finalists of the exams and realized that both Seina and Shikamaru had been promoted to chunin on their first attempt at only 12 years old. Something inside her twisted when she realized that now Seina was her superior in the military ranks. She had decided not to advance, not to put herself in danger, but that meant Sakura was still a ninja, and therefore, still part of the military hierarchy within the Land of Fire.
She turned around, grinding her teeth when she saw that no one had noticed her, maybe because she wasn't that important to them now that she was just a genin. She remembered how Sasuke walked beside Seina, talking and giving her a slight smile, just the way Sakura had always wanted him to look at her. At that precise moment, she hated Seina Uzumaki more than ever before, but the worst part of all was that, judging by Seina's neutral, indifferent glances, she didn't even care about Sakura.