notes: Because of recent plagiarism cases, at the moment there's only the first part of the story up on this site. I might or might not reupload the whole thing. Move along, now, nothing to see here. :)

the pepsi theory
it takes two to whisper quietly.

.

"We'll make an impeccable pair."

Sasuke lowered the magazine and looked up, half-surprised, half-annoyed that his reading time was interrupted, and by a strange statement, no less. It was past school time, no one was supposed to be around. Standing in front of him was Sakura, her five-inch thick biology textbook held close to her chest, a can of Pepsi with a straw in her hand, nodding and smiling brightly as if she made perfect sense.

To Sasuke, however, she didn't, so he asked, "What?"

"We'll make an impeccable pair," she repeated simply, sitting down beside him.

Sasuke was bemused. "What makes you think that?"

Sakura pointed to the Pepsi can next to him, beaming. "The Pepsi theory," she explained, ignoring his silent stare, "says that for two people to be happy together, one of them must prefer Coke over Pepsi, and the other Pepsi over Coke."

"You're drinking Pepsi, too," he pointed out.

"They're out of Coke today," she shrugged dismissively, "And I don't like Fanta."

He had known she was different when none of Naruto's pranks worked or affected her in any way at all, and that she was probably crazy from the moment she tried to outsmart him in biology class and succeeded, but this was something he'd never heard before. Coming from a girl who knew the difference between monosaccharides, disaccharides and polysaccharides, it was kind of strange to hear something so… trivial.

"I… see," he said finally.

"Mm-hmm," she smiled brightly at him, taking his magazine and examining it, seemingly unaffected by his lack of coherent response, "So, you like Soulfly too?"

"What?"

"Soulfly," Sakura gestured at the front page, where a band was seemingly trying to rock their hearts out, the vocalist holding on to the microphone as if it was his lifeline and the drummer hitting the drum so hard his hair was flying all over the place, "I didn't know you liked it."

Considering they had just met merely one month ago, on the first day of school, her not knowing his likes and dislikes wasn't very strange at all, although Naruto invited her to eat with them every day at lunch and she always did. It wasn't like they actually talked about stuff like this, right?

He felt the need to correct her anyway. "I don't."

"Really?"

"I don't like alternative metal," he informed her, "Naruto does."

"Perfect!" she beamed, and then whipped out two tickets from her pink purse, "I've got two extra tickets for their concert Friday night, two weeks from now. It's a waste of money if they're not used, right?"

Sasuke eyed the tickets. They were VVIPs, and he knew what those meant: edible food, decent seats, and two hours of some fun. He didn't like alternative metal, but as Naruto said, he supposed he could "broaden his horizons" and give them another chance.

"We'll talk trash about them if they suck," Sakura promised, "It'll be fun." She wiggled the tickets in front of Sasuke's face and added, "And Naruto wouldn't bug you for at least two hours."

Her french-manicured, pink-polished nails matched her purse and shoes. Her wave sent a breeze to his direction, and his throat went dry.

"I'll pick you up at 6 PM," he said, and her smile was the widest yet.