Warnings: dry attempt on humor.

Blame meliss-cake for being a cruel enabler.

This story is heavily influenced by her and the song em-pyei-n vari-fen jang. Yes, it's an actual title, yes you can look it up on YouTube, yes it has English lyrics translation.

Chapter 1: i will awaken you from your long sleep

She wakes with the tell-tale smell of antiseptic and various things she can only smell from hospitals or pharmacies alike greeting her nose.

Bleary eyes blink once, twice, before her sight focuses to see white walls. The bed she's lying on isn't like the comfortable mattress she has at home, and it smells different too—there is no lingering smell of lavender, and the sheets are different too, she notices—and with those small clues, she simply concludes she's in the hospital, somehow.

Which is strange, because Sakura is not someone who frequents the hospital, not at all. She ever rarely gets sick, and when she does, a small nap and medication are enough. None of her previous colds have ever gotten so bad she has to go to the hospital yet, and hopefully, never will.

That doesn't explain why she's here, though, and Sakura frowns, trying to remember if something has happened that requires her to be bedridden in the hospital. It's futile, however, because for all of Sakura's wild imaginations, she knows chasing mere Daimyo's wife's evil cat won't have her make a trip to the hospital. She got scratches at most, and almost got yelled at by Sasuke-kun—a part of her wilts a little bit at that thought—but certainly nothing serious enough! So why is she here?

A twitch of her finger touches something that is solid and warm, and Sakura belatedly realizes that her hand is being held by somebody.

(A small part of her chastises her, because she's a ninja now, why can't she notice that someone has been sleeping next to her holding her hand this entire time? That gets discarded of quickly enough, however.)

Jerking in surprise, she very nearly almost yelps when the person holding her hand twitches and jolts awake as if struck by lightning.

And isn't that another surprise, because it's Kakashi-sensei, she realizes, only without his crooked headband—and wow, isn't that a nasty scar on his left eye—and he's staring at her and he's—

Holding… Her hand…?

What.

"Sakura," Kakashi-sensei breathes out, relief palpable in his voice and eyes, and Sakura cannot help but to be confused and a bit overwhelmed at the emotions she can see stark clear in his eyes. Because Kakashi-sensei is aloof and a bit of a jerk, because Kakashi-sensei is always late and lies as easy as he's breathing and he is always so mysterious, so hard to read, which is infuriating but makes him cool sometimes. Sometimes.

And yet, here, Kakashi-sensei stares at her with what she can describe as goo-goo eyes—which actually makes her even more overwhelmed, because what even—and she can even guess he's smiling so widely, from how his mask seems to stretch.

If getting sent to the hospital—in which the reason still escapes her, much to her ire—means that she gets her sensei to be less of a jerk and more like a human being with actual feelings, then maybe she should've done so many days ago.

"Sakura," Kakashi-sensei says her name again, still gripping her hand, which is another level of strange, okay. As far as she's known, her sensei doesn't seem to be that much of a touchy feely person. "Sakura, are you alright?"

Sakura blinks, and thinks over that question for a little while. Aside from the uncomfortable feeling of her hand being held by her teacher and her confusion as well as a little headache that she can safely ignore, she is perfectly fine.

"I'm fine, sensei," she says, noticing how Kakashi-sensei's grip seems to tighten a little bit at her words. The kunoichi blinks as her sensei seems to be frozen, the once again unreadable grey eyes staring at her. Frowning, she tugs her hand.

"Sensei, why are you holding my hand? Let me go."

He does so, albeit hesitantly. The man is looking at her weird, as if he's assessing her of something, searching for something, which is very weird, okay, because Sakura doesn't feel like she's missing any limb or anything.

"Maa, Sakura-chan," the silver haired man says, slowly, as if afraid of spooking her, which is another brand of weird.

Actually, so many weird things happened after she woke up. It makes her wonder what actually happened to her.

"What's the last thing you remember?"

"Um," she starts helpfully, shrinking down a little bit at the intense gaze. Okay, so something clearly happened, she's sure of it now. Her sensei wouldn't have asked her that if nothing happened, after all.

The problem is that she doesn't know what.

"Catching Tora mission?" She whispers, because really, that's what she remembers. "Sasuke-kun was leading the mission, and we managed to find it around… five? Six? What happened? What's going on?"

Her sensei stills then, before he relaxes, though Sakura has a slight suspicion that it's forced, somehow.

"Well," Kakashi-sensei stands abruptly, the chair screeching in protest as it's forcefully pushed backward with his abrupt movements. "Can you hear that? The Hokage is calling for me, it seems. Yep. Definitely. I have to go, bye."

And he leaves, just like that.

Jaw open in disbelief, the pink haired girl resists the urge to scream. That little—! He's acting weird, something clearly happened, she doesn't know what happened, and he left her without telling her anything! The Hokage called him? The whole room was silent save for their conversation!

In her bout of frustration, her hands reach up to her hair—

And stops short when she can't feel her hair.

Scratch that, she can't feel her long hair.

The well taken care of long pink hair is gone, and instead, when she tugs her hair, she can feel the length is about around her ear.

What the—

Throwing off the blanket covering her, she sprints toward the nearby mirror and almost trips over herself in surprise.

Because not only her long hair is gone—she despairs inwardly, because not her hair!—but her face is different. It's older, somehow, the lingering baby fat having gone somewhere. She's definitely looks older, and there's a strange mark on her forehead. She rubs at it, and it doesn't fade away.

A tattoo? Someone tattooed her forehead? And she looks… older? What? What?

She looks down.

…Her babies down there are definitely bigger than the last time she's seen it.

No, no, no, no, no, wait, waiiiit—! That doesn't make any sense! What is going on? Why is her hair short? Why is she taller? Why does she have a tattoo on her forehead? Why is her boobs bigge—okay it's actually good that it's bigger but WHY IS HER HAIR SHORT? JDGIRGJKSGDJH?! She vowed to keep her hair long why is it short now?!

She thinks that she would've screamed in fear and frustration, if the door doesn't slam open.

Instead, she screams in absolute surprise.

"Sakura," a blonde woman barks at her, the strange mark also apparent on her forehead. "Report!"

"Wh-Wha-huh? What? Wait, who are you?"

The woman's eyes flashes in disbelief and other emotions she cannot decipher. She doesn't respond, instead gritting her teeth and stalks back out, slamming the door shut behind her. Faintly, she hears the woman screamingKakashi-sensei's last name in anger, but she doesn't heed it much and instead settles back into panicking over her appearance.

Because seriously, what.

Next chapter: the empty heart (that lacked your presence)