Somehow, every time she looks at him, her heart shrinks just a little. A lurching choking feeling that sways in her stomach every time he turns away to drench his face in shadows.

It's a silly premonition, but she can't push it away; the feeling pressing tight against her lungs, dreadful: we can't be children forever…

She's afraid of what they'll become.

She refuses to listen, though; at this age she's still stubborn and the world hasn't quite broken through the shell of naivety or the cardboard shield she's built precariously around her heart. (When it breaks, though, the pieces will shatter, glass-like and painful.) As long as Naruto can smile, she tells herself, so can she. And maybe Sasuke won't be sucked away into the black hole that's forming in front of their eyes, growing infinitesimally larger as each day passes into night, and the fever burns scarlet.

She tells herself it isn't there, and blots out its existence with a cheery morning greeting.

"No," he says, for the millionth (trillionth) time.

She tightens her lips and fingers the hem of her red dress and looks away and around at the ground.

So he won't walk her home. So she'll go home alone.

But Naruto has to jump in: "Sakura-chan, I'll walk you home!"

And she has to go and launch her fist and break his jaw just because Sasuke-kun has broken her heart. It's a cruel triangle, but that's the way the three ends meet.

His face is so dark now, with the shadows, and the long shaggy bangs hanging stark in the evening orange. For some reason he doesn't quite look like himself (she'll recall this later with stinging realization), but then again, people change. Her smile isn't as resilient as it once was, but she still manages.

That's what girls do; smile for their broken boys. Or so she's been told. At least, that's what she's always done, and the conditioning of the heart isn't something easily altered.

So she ends up walking to the ramen stand with Naruto, which really isn't all that bad. Naruto's a nice boy; she just makes him out to be worse than he really is, because he's her friend and friends understand each other.

She tells herself that Sasuke is her friend too, but she isn't quite sure the sentiment is reciprocated. But that's the only shaky piece of evidence she has left to carry, and proving it false will only unravel her further. She has no desire to find out the truth. Her only hope is in hope itself, and if that breaks, then—

She'll go home alone.

"Thank you," he says.

She should blow that bench to shreds.

Another old piece I decided to upload. yeeup...