Chapter Text
I don’t even flinch when my alarm starts beeping. I didn’t even need it, because my eyes haven’t been able to stay shut for more than five minutes during the whole night. I pick up my phone and turn the alarm off, checking the date. March 28th. I sigh, setting my phone back on my nightstand and curl on my bed, snuggling under the covers once again. I lift my right hand and bring it to my chest, fingers brushing lightly over the soft skin right above my left breast. I can feel my heart beating loudly under my fingertips, so strong I swear it will tear open my ribs and jump out of my chest any given moment. It’s March 28th. My name is Sakura Haruno and today I’m turning eighteen years old, and a name has been scribbled in my skin overnight, right there over my heart. The name of my soulmate. I know it’s there. I felt a hot sting crawling over my chest as soon as the numbers in my phone screen changed from 23:59 to 00:00.
I close my eyes once again, trying to even my raged breathing and the loud thump of my heart. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s gonna be him. I get up, a chill running down my spine when my bare feet meet the cold floor of my room, and make my way to the bathroom. Slowly. Surely. I look at my reflection in the mirror. Pale skin and dark circles under my eyes and disheveled pink hair. I look like shit, really. How could I not, when I haven’t gotten an ounce of sleep? My hand is still over my heart, tugging lightly at the white oversized t-shirt that I always wear for sleeping. I pause and scoff. What am I nervous for? I already know whose name I got. Of course I know. I have always known that the day I turned eighteen, his name would be written on me, black and bold over my marble skin. And I have always revealed in that knowledge because I want It there. I don’t care if it’s not my name the one he gets once he turns eighteen too, I really don’t. I just want his name on me, a grim reminder that I will always be his.
But now, as I stare at my own Image in my bathroom mirror, I’m afraid. What if it isn’t his? It’s so random, all this soulmate thing. Some people get the name they expected, others get the name they had prayed with all their heart not to get and most get a name from someone they will never get to meet. It’s so random, and so fucking unfair. You see, your soulmate isn’t necessarily the person you will end up with and it’s such a burden, having a name from a complete stranger tattooed on your skin forever. My dad got my mom’s name over his chest, she didn’t get his. And she tells me she loves him, I know she does because love it’s something impossible to explain but so stupidly obvious to see, and I can see it. It’s there in her eyes when she looks at him, after all this years. And still I catch her sometimes, brushing the name over her chest with sad eyes, wondering how life with her soulmate would have been.
So I turn around and tumble towards my room as I let go from the spot of the t-shirt I was clutching. I let go and put on some clothes with my eyes tight shut because there is someone I love already and I won’t, for the life of me, give him up to some name inked over my skin. A name I didn’t ask for. I know I’ll have to look at it, I’m not stupid enough to think I can leave my whole life without looking at that spot in my body, but for today, I’ll pretend that I really got the name I wanted. Sasuke Uchiha.
* * *
I’m supposed to meet my friends at Ichiraku’s. It’s a really cheap fast food restaurant in the middle of the city center, but it’s got the most delicious food and I’m not precisely loaded. We always go there for birthday’s celebrations, it has become a kind of tradition among us and I figured there really wasn’t a better place to celebrate my step into adulthood. I know I’m late, and still I’m dragging my feet because something inside me doesn’t feel like celebrating anything. It’s most teenagers’ dream, to turn eighteen and finally be able to get into clubs and buy your own drinks without having to beg from your elder siblings to buy them for you. It was my dream for a long time, too. But here I am now. Eighteen years old and feeling the same I was feeling yesterday. Uncertainty. Anxiousness. Fear.
“Forehead!”
“Sakura-chan!”
I smile, and it feels so forced I want to slap myself, but it’s my birthday, and my friends are here, and I should be happy. Even if I’m not because I know exactly what they’re going to ask. I welcome Naruto’s warm hug and hold an insult back when Ino tugs my ear with more strength than it’s fucking necessary. Hinata is here now too, and, as I walk beside them to the table they were all occupying, she gives me a “happy birthday” with a voice so sweet I think I might melt. Sasuke is there too, black endless eyes piercing through me, and I can feel a tight knot forming in my stomach. It got his name. I got his name. Just for today, let me think I got his name.
“Happy birthday.” His voice is serious, low, as it always is, but there’s an edge on it that makes my heart stutter. I slide in the seat next to him and he brushes his knee against mine. A small act of affection that no one else can see because its for me, only for me.
“So…” Ino sits in front of me, a devilish smirk on her lips. “Show us.”
My breath hitches and I try to calm myself, but I can already feel my heart beating wildly once again.
“What?”
“Oh, don’t play dumb, Forehead! Show us the name!”
I muster all the hate I can find in my small body and shoot it to her with a quiet glare. You see, Ino is my best friend, and she’s the only one I ever told about how Sasuke and I are getting somewhere. Now, I love Sasuke. I know that’s a really big word —love— but I do. I always have, ever since I can remember. But he’s always been distant towards me. A friend, but nothing more. It’s changing lately, I don’t know why, and I don’t know exactly how, but it’s changing. He texts me almost everyday, and walks me home after school, and he even bought a chocolate bar for me in the school cafeteria last week, after I had a shitty day because of period cramps. Small things that every friend is supposed to do, but that are not at all like Uchiha Sasuke. It’s thrilling, and it makes my heart throb with so much happiness sometimes I think I might explode.
So, knowing all this, you might think Ino would be sensible to know it wouldn’t be fucking comfortable to show the name I got in front of him, even if it was his.
“No.”
“Why not, Sakura-chan?!?” Is it mine?”
I feel my brow lift unconsciously and look at Hinata, who’s got her big blue sincere eyes pinned on me. What if it’s Naruto’s? Naruto has always been there for me, in the good and, specially, in the bad. He’s loud and obnoxious and has a heart so big sometimes I wonder how can it fit in his chest. I love Naruto, too, but not the way I love Sasuke. I love him the way I figure I’d love my little brother if had ever had one.
“No, Naruto, it’s not you.”
“Then who is it?”
My heart stops. Because that question comes from the person I least expected to be interested in this. You see, I’ve know Sasuke for ages, same as Naruto, Ino and Hinata, and he’s never once shown any respect for all this whole soulmate thing. He says is bullshit. I think it’s a good word to describe it. I turn my head to look at him, and he’s sitting there, crossed arms over his chest and a bored look on his eyes. But there’s something. Something about how his shoulders seem stiff and his right left is bouncing, lightly but restless.
“I…” I take a deep breath and look down. “I don’t know.”
Everyone’s got their eyes locked on me and, suddenly, the room feels so incredibly small.
“So, is it a stranger’s?” Hinata’s voice is soft, tentative.
“That’s cool! It’s more exciting that way! You never know when you might meet him!”
I can feel Sasuke going rigid beside me and it’s hard to believe it’s because of Naruto’s words.
“No… That’s not it.”
“Huh? Stop with the secretiveness, Sakura!”
I sigh and look up. Ino looks annoyed, Hinata is just quiet, waiting, and Naruto has a frown on his face, like he’s trying to figure out a hard math problem. Sasuke… I don’t know, because I don’t want to look at him right now.
“I don’t know which name I got. I haven’t looked at it.”
The restaurant is crowded, stifled and not-so-stifled conversation filling its walls. It feels awfully quiet now, though. They’re all looking at me now, wide eyed, surprised. Because how could they not be surprised? It doesn’t really matter if you look forward to the name on your chest or not, if you’re eager to know or just don’t care, if you despise this whole soulmate thing. It doesn’t matter because in the end, the fact is that a name will appear there no matter what, and it’s foolish to try and ignore it. It’s like catching the flu. Even if you try to rub it off, say it’s nothing, it will eventually go to worse if you don’t treat it. I’m not foolish, and I know that trying to avoid looking at what’s written on my chest will only make me anxious, and in the end, more than just a little disappointed if it’s not the name I wanted. I’m not foolish, but I’m scared.
* * *
I had expected some more pushing, specially from Naruto and Ino, but there must’ve been something in my eyes that told them it was better not to. Ino ended up changing the conversation drastically, and even though she can be a pain sometimes, I have to admit she’s really good at making others forget their problems. For a little while, it was almost as if I was seventeen again, no name on my skin and no pain on my chest.
I’m walking home now, and I know I should be excited because Sasuke is here too, matching his steps with my own so I don’t fall behind, but something feels so awfully off that excitement is the last of my feelings right now. Sasuke is not the most talkative person, but he’s not shy either, and he usually strikes a conversation whenever he walks me home, but he’s alarmingly quiet now and it’s making me feel restless.
I can see my home now and we still haven’t exchanged a single word, so I halt and grab his wrist, and his eyes flutter from the ground to my face. It feels so good, when all his attention is directed towards me that it seems like a wave of warmth just washed over me.
“What is it?”
He doesn’t answer and for a moment I really think he will just turn around and keep walking.
“That’s what I want to know.” He finally says.
“Huh?”
“You’ve been acting weird all day.”
“I haven’t.”
“You have.”
I tear my gaze away from him because right now it really hurts to look into his black eyes. It’s always like this when he looks at me. I feel happy, but vulnerable, because he seems to see through me, to read me like an open book. Everything that Uchiha Sasuke provokes in me is a storm of contradictions.
“It’s nothing.”
“Why haven’t you looked at the name?”
My heart leaps and I look up once again.
“Why should I?”
“Well, because it’s there.”
“I thought you said all of this was bullshit.”
“Yeah, but… I don’t know, aren’t you curious?”
“Are you?”
The words escape my mouth before I can stop them. I don’t know what got into me because, why would he be curious, when he despises all this soulmate thing? Why, when it wasn’t even his chest the one that had been marked? I really don’t know, but there has been something off about him and Sasuke is not usually shouting his feelings into the wind, but I know him too well, and he’s been nervous all day. Yes, Uchiha Sasuke is acting nervous, and there’s something terribly wrong about that.
“Yeah.”
My mind freezes when I hear his words because not in a thousand years would I have thought he would say that.
“Why?”
He shrugs and lifts his hand, bringing it slowly to brush away the hair that’s falling over my shoulder. His fingers are grazing over my chest, just above my left breast and I feel a soft heat crawl up my cheeks because I’m so sure he can feel the wild thumping of my heart. For a moment I think he’s going to pull at my shirt’s neck and look at the name written over my skin and, for a moment, I want him to do it. Because, yeah, I don’t want to look at it and see that it’s not his name there, but I’m really fucking curious and it’s killing me not to know. That’s a thing about me. I hate not knowing. I’m always striving to learn something new, hungry for knowledge, even if it’s the most trivial of things, like that my math’s teacher has a crush on the principal or that Ino is hooking up with some sassy boy he met at the gym.
But his fingers don’t tug on the neck of my shirt, they just crawl up my neck and settle lightly in my nape. And the next thing I know is that he’s leaning in and, oh my god, he’s so close, he’s so close. I feel something warm brushing my lips and it takes me three seconds to realize that it’s his mouth on mine. Then I can’t see anything else, probably because my eyes shut close, I don’t really know and, honestly, I don’t care, because it feels so good. The only thing I can feel is his lips on mine, soft as I never though Sasuke Uchiha could be, and his fingers digging slowly in my hair. He has to be hearing my heart, it’s impossible that he isn’t because it’s pounding so wildly against my ribcage that I’m afraid it might break. His lips finally leave mine and even if the kiss has been short, I feel breathless, like he’s taken all the oxygen from my lungs with a brush of his lips.
“That’s why.”
I’m too dumbfounded to register his words and I look at him, with what I’m sure must be really wide eyes.
“Huh?”
“That’s why I’m curious.”
That’s his answer. That’s all I need to know.