The sun hadn't started bleeding into sunset yet, but the warmth had that thick, late-afternoon weight. The clouds slide over Konoha's skyline, lazy and slow, like they have time to waste.
I realized my feet were dragging toward the Academy when I was halfway there.
It was maybe an hour until classes ended, four or five in the afternoon, give or take.
I didn't need to go back. The mission acceptance sealed everything with paperwork barely worth a signature, logged, filed, and processed by the nice little administrative swamp above me in the chain of command.
I was technically already deployed, just not physically gone yet. Chalk it up to nostalgia or masochism, same thing in my book.
Three years of herding pre-genin brats... hell, that place was probably quieter without me. It certainly was quiet in my mind. But part of me wanted to walk the halls one more time while it still felt like mine….. I don't know.
Konoha was still in full swing. Market stalls called out — overripe peaches, sharp steel, perfume made from something vaguely floral and definitely suspicious.
Hands in pocket, I kept walking, letting the noise bleed into the background, while my mind wandered straight back to pink hair and unsanctioned outbursts.
Sakura.
What a delightful little mess she was. A high-strung, self-important brat bubbling over with contradictions and homophones. The kind of girl who thought yelling louder made her right. Loud, proud, mouthy as hell — and, turned out deliciously easy to break. Not physically. It didn't take that.
Just one slap. One curious, entirely-too-satisfying impulse.
I hadn't planned it. I hadn't walked into that conversation thinking today's the day I'm gonna put a hand on her cheek. She earned it. Riled up, shouting, and being overall annoying.
To be fair, some of that annoyance accompanied me from the other world.
So I slapped her. Open palm, fast enough to startle, not hard enough to bruise. She snapped quiet in a funny way, like someone yanked the plug out of her outlets. From full-volume righteous fury to stunned goddamn silence. Her pretty green eyes grappled with it, trying to put the pieces together through a fog of insecurity and pride and fizzling anger.
And that pride, that was where I put my money. Sakura couldn't tell anyone. She's the tough girl, Kunoichi's future. Pride like that won't lean on anyone, won't confess to weakness. She saw me fuck her mother, heard it all through paper-thin walls, probably jerked off in some tortured spiral of shame and rage — my fucked up mind hoped she did — and now I slapped her... and she took it.
And the way she took it... I could feel my shaft waking up again.
The dumb way she looked at me when I used disrespecting her mother as an excuse, like she couldn't decide if I was cruel or right. Like I was being unfair. The brittle stare of someone who didn't know what it meant to be corrected.
I did it again later, just to make sure it wasn't a fluke — and because I could.
It wasn't.
She melted more easily the second time. No shouting then. No righteous fury. Just twitchy body language, eyes that wouldn't meet mine, and a whole lot of confusion she didn't have the maturity to untangle.
That's all it took. Two slaps. One excuse. And a door swung open in her that she'd kept bolted for years.
That fragility had been so tempted.
There was a part of me—louder than most—that had wanted to push her in that alley and take her virginity with zero ceremony. In that narrow and dark, and filthy alley.
But I held back.
Was it restraint? Wisdom? Tactical foresight?
Technically, sure, I could blame the mission. No use complicating logistics when I was forty-eight hours from long-term field deployment and already one mistake deep in the Haruno family.
I didn't go through with it... because she didn't deserve that kind of shortcut.
Sakura Haruno needs to be tamed, trained, and owned in every meaningful and humiliating sense of the word. She wasn't ready for the alley. Not yet.
If I caved too quickly, I'd crack her the wrong way. Fray the threads instead of weaving them tightly. And with her, it was not about the act. It was about the aftermath.
If I took her like that, just snapped my fingers and ruined her in a garbage-slick alley, she'd never look at me the same, and not in the obedient way. That would burn the bridge, collapse the whole carefully-constructed house of cards I'd started stacking the moment I noticed her little insecurities curling up open like petals around punishment.
No. That wasn't the play.
Because Sakura, for all her barking, was already mostly alone. Most of my work had already been done for me, courtesy of her and the people around her.
Civilian parents too outclassed to understand her, much less guide her. Her mother spent more time sighing or criticizing or screaming than supporting, and her father might as well have been a goofy ghost. And much like her mother, she clearly held no respect for him.
Whatever faith she had in adults had already rotted. I just stepped into the vacuum. And the best part, she couldn't talk about me without shaming herself. I was her unspoken, her unspeakable.
Friend-wise, Ino was gone. Still sulking or furious or both over the Sasuke storm that vacuumed up all reason in their little genin circle. And Sasuke... well, Sasuke didn't see her in her best days. At the worst, she was a mosquito to him. A seasonal pest. Worse than irrelevant.
And Tsunade was not in the picture. Not in this version of the world.
Which left Naruto. Well-intentioned, guileless Naruto. Oblivious, powerful, honest Naruto. The only real wild card on the board. But even a wild card can't play face-up if he doesn't know the game.
Don't get me wrong—I don't underestimate him. But he was so oblivious that it became a strategic advantage. He wouldn't notice Sakura's shift unless she screamed it. And if he ever did pick up on it, asked her the wrong question, in the wrong tone... she'd simply punch him. Maybe cry afterward. Either way, it wouldn't undo what I was building.
She was isolated. Untethered. A kite with a snapped string, spinning somewhere between fury and longing. Alone in every way that mattered.
And ripe for the plucking. Her mom had been right; Sakura needed a strong hand and someone to shape.
Turned out, for all her flaws, Mebuki was an attentive mother.
The thought made me bite down on the inside of my cheek. She was so close now. Reassigned—officially—to my squad for this next mission.
It would be fun watching her unravel inch by inch over every moment she spent too close to me, hating herself for the way she stiffens when I step behind her, or how she can't stop remembering the slap but still can't find the nerve to look me in the eye.
She's a puzzle already halfway solved. And I'm the only one who bothered to study the edge pieces.
Still… that was a risk.
And I wasn't blind to it.
All I had to do was fuck up once—let my dick make the decision instead of my brain—and the whole thing could collapse in blood, shame, and irreparable fallout. One slip. One impulse in the wrong moment out in the field, and she dies. Or I do. Or worse, Naruto dies.
I couldn't let that happen.
The Academy grounds hadn't changed.
Same scuffed dirt paths and uneven stone walls. The same rows of low hedges, pruned poorly by overworked shinobi janitors and blooming too early for the season. A breeze moved through the courtyard with the lazy indifference of early spring—a sliver of warmth chased by a colder gust that still smelled like frost.
Students were trickling out in loose groups, streaming toward waiting parents or clustering in awkward clumps of chatter and bravado.
I found myself veering off-track before I even realized it, feet skidding slightly over a patch of worn earth near one corner of the courtyard.
The swing.
It was still here.
A damn relic of emotion framed in rust and rope. The same one the Naruto of that other world had clung to like it was the last seat in existence. Always empty, always shifting slightly in the wind. I remembered how the camera always lingered on it. That little shot of loneliness.
It was still a long swing, tied higher than necessary, the frayed ropes dyed slightly gray from years of weather. The wooden plank was worn down smooth by hundreds of backsides, now sanded by time and absence.
Only this world's Naruto didn't need it.
He had parents here.
Not like us.
I reached out and touched one of the cords.
Naruto might've escaped that particular flavor of sadness... but that didn't mean his path was clean. Responsibility still loomed, expectations still mounted. I doubted he knew one moment anymore that didn't belong to someone else.
I sat down, putting my weight on my knees, yet the swing groan beneath me once more.
It was almost humorous.
The swing was here, but there was no child on it anymore. Only a grown man. My thoughts went adrift. Tumbling aimlessly through the haze of memory.
After a while, a footstep, gentle, like someone carefully adjusting for wind pressure before approaching, pulled me back.
I looked up and smiled. Or at least produced the expression I used in place of it.
"How's my favorite Hyuga doing?" I said, slipping the mask back on as I rose to my feet, voice smooth and friendly.
Her brows rose with wariness and cool amusement. She didn't smile, not with her lips, she was too cool for that, but her captivating, milky white, pupil-less eyes held a glint.
"I must say," Natsu began, her voice like snowfall on tiles, "there's something quietly tragic about a grown man occupying a swing. It evokes a certain… aesthetic of arrested development, wouldn't you agree, Eishin-sensei?"
I turned fully toward her, suppressing a smirk.
Natsu Hyūga was tradition made flesh. Polished. Prim. Every inch of her wrapped in modest dark robes and that frilly white apron. Headband tight against her straight-cut hair, always watching with that glassy-eyed calm only a Hyūga could pull off.
"You wound me," I murmured, tousling my hair as though processing deep emotional harm. "That swing is a symbol, Natsu-chan. A historic monument. I was merely communing with the ghosts of narrative sadness."
She arched a brow.
The disdain that flickered across her features was exquisite.
"I suppose reverence for outdated structures is common among men past the apex of their shinobi prime. It's only natural to return to sites more stable than your future."
My grin broke then.
"You really know how to praise a man's ego, huh?" I said. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you missed me."
"I assure you," she replied coolly, narrowing her pale eyes just slightly, "I exist in a constant state of barely tolerating your presence. But I manage. With grace."
"Grace is admirable. and quit fitting for you, Natsu-chan," I tilted my head thoughtfully. "But I find contempt far more charming when it rides beneath a smile. Don't waste such pretty lips on disdain. Lie to me. Say you're happy to see me."
"Your attempts at disarming me lack the necessary precision, Eishin-sensei. If we were sparring, you'd have botched the angle of every strike."
"Lucky for me, I prefer horizontal combat," I replied smoothly, without missing breath. "Much easier to win when your opponent's too distracted to block."
That, finally, earned a flicker at the corner of her lips. But she shook her head almost imperceptibly.
"I see the teaching hasn't dulled your appetite for theatrics," she said calmly, "or for preying on your own students."
"Oh, Natsu-chan," I breathed out, feigning a wounded sigh as I pressed a hand loosely to my chest. "You should know by now—I've never had a taste for students. Too much... inexperience. Too much noise."
I let my eyes trace her deliberately.
Her body wasn't built for combat, not in the way kunoichi usually were. She had the kind of shape that filled out a kimono just right—soft where it counted, tight where it teased. Not flashy. Nothing obvious. But there was a quiet allure in the way her hips moved beneath all that fabric, how her hands folded in front of her with rehearsed submission.
"I've always preferred the quiet confidence of women who wear responsibility like a uniform." I tilted my head, eyes dancing in mock-innocence. "Maid outfits, caretakers, headstrong clan handlers… anything with an apron and an attitude really."
I watched her face closely. But Natsu was a woman carved from duty, not one to blush or look startled.
"Ah," she said at last, voice like iced sake. "So your preference lies with those who exist to clean up after you. How….. appropriate."
Yeah…. she's definitely into me.