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Sakura stabbed at the crumbled daisy petal with a chakra scalpel in utter frustration. It was counterproductive, she knew that, since the diminishing supply of months-old flower petals was now all she could have for the indefinite future, but it was just so aggravating. An absolutely textbook case of the rare Hanahaki Disease just had to develop while she was out of the village on a mission. Not that anyone should have been surprised that the newly twenty-year-old Hinata developed a terrible case of flowers in her lungs on the very day of her Coming of Age Ceremony. Even Sakura had thought it would probably happen, but she’d thought it would keep until she got back from the emergency mission.
Instead, that stupid mutt Kiba just had to confess to Hinata that he was in love with his teammate, and then Naruto had awkwardly admitted that he and Gaara were currently dating (“although I’m really flattered Hinata -ttebayo!”), and by the time Sakura made it back to the village, Hinata’s lungs were botany-free, although the sweet girl had been kind and forward-thinking enough to collect all the coughed-out detritus for Sakura to examine.
It’s not that Sakura really wanted Hinata to be literally dying of her unrequited feelings, but understanding the mysterious Hanahaki Disease had been a goal of hers since she first read about the disease at age fourteen. She knew, without doubt, that if Sasuke-kun didn’t return her love by the time she was twenty, she would certainly develop the disease, leaving the morbid choice: die of her feelings, choked poetically to death on Sasuke-kun’s favourite flower; or choose to have the infection scraped out, a treatment which, the literature somberly warned, left the patient unable to love at all?
The idea of being found dead of love, surrounded in a sea of bloody petals—doubtless something very elegant like peony or fire lily… at fourteen, it had seemed like a glamourous fate. By twenty, however, quite a lot had happened. Sasuke had come back, fought with them, knocked out a goddess with them, then knocked Sakura out, lost to Naruto, and left again after a rather unsatisfactory poke to her broad forehead. In the four years since then, they had seen each other only briefly.
Sakura and Hinata had turned twenty the same year, and Sakura hadn’t thought Hinata’s possible infection would be a problem, because Sakura would surely also develop the disease, solve it with her medical genius, and return in plenty of time to cure Hinata as well.
But her Coming of Age Ceremony came and went without even a tickle in her throat.
How could she cure Hanahaki Disease without a patient to study?
She pulled off her lab coat in a huff and stormed over to T&I to drag Ino out for tea and dango.
“Am I a terrible woman?” she demanded as the waitress went away with their orders.
“Yes, that’s why we’re friends,” Ino replied, her bang swaying as she tilted her head.
“Be serious, Pig!”
“Well, I’m more serious than not,” Ino said, frowning. “You’re a goddamn force of nature, Forehead. You can level a battlefield, scoop up the wretched pieces left behind and put them back together more often than not. That’s terrible. And awesome. You’re the kunoichi I strive to be better than.”
“I mean about Sasuke-kun… if after all this time, I’ve given up on him… doesn’t that make me terrible? You know… fickle, and so on?”
“Is this about you not getting Hanahaki?”
“Yeah.”
Ino drummed her fingers on her arm. “Look. I wanted Sasuke-kun back then too, and I’m not coughing up camellias or whatever.”
“But you’re dating Kankurou.”
“Yeah, exactly. I moved on. Does that make me terrible? I used to want Sasuke, now I’m with Kankurou. Naruto used to want you, he’s happy now with Gaara. Maybe you should cut out Shikamaru and make a play for Temari, come to think of it.”
Sakura giggled. “You’ll sabotage your own teammate?”
“Sure, make his lazy ass work for it,” Ino winked. “Hey. I know that wanting Sasuke-kun was, like, a huge part of your identity for a while, but maybe there’s a reason why Hanahaki Disease only strikes starting after the Coming of Age Ceremony. You have to be an adult for feelings to be that serious. That’s why we don’t let twelve year olds vote or drink or get married.”
“We did let them go to war though.”
“Well, the minimum age for genin is sixteen now,” Ino said. “Maybe you should ask Kakashi-sama to raise it to twenty?”
Sakura hums. “Maybe I should bring it up to him. It’s not a bad point. I haven’t seen him for a while.”
“Come to think of it, I haven’t either,” Ino said. “Weird. Usually he’s in the flower shop at the very least weekly.”
Sakura scowled. “It had better not be that there’s a new issue of the Icha Icha fanzine again. I’ll definitely go and sort him out!”
———
Getting a meeting with the leader of the most powerful hidden village was very difficult. Even the daimyo had to wait nowadays.
Sakura was not the daimyo, and she waited for no one.
Genma and Raidou didn’t even bother to try to stop her as she thrust open the Hokage office door. “Kaka—whoa!”
The room absolutely reeked. There must have been some kind of odour-blocking seal to keep the stench from drifting into the corridor. And the odor was unmistakably emanating from the Hokage… or rather, the back of him, hunched over a basin and apparently puking into it.
“Kaka-sensei!” Sakura stifled her disgust with medical efficiency, hurriedly sealing her olfactory senses as she rushed over to give aid. “What’s happening? Why didn’t you summon help? Are you sick? Were you attacked? Were you poisoned?”
He weakly made a gesture for writing with a brush as she reached to chakra scan his system. She ignored him, biting her lip as she examined first his stomach and then—
“Your lungs!” she gasped. “This is an emergency! Kakashi-sensei, you have Hanahaki Disease and it’s really advanced!” Using her precise chakra control, she internally sliced the blockages into tiny pieces, enabling him to actually productively clear his lungs. Soon the basin was full of little pieces of spongy red-orange petal.
Although he was now breathing noticeably easier, she got him a scroll and brush anyway, since his throat was no doubt sore from the effort of getting rid of the flower. As she did so, she laughingly said, “You know, sensei, whoever you’re in love with has good taste. That looks a lot like a rafflesia, which is my favourite flower. They’re just… so weird and...”
Kakashi just looked at her with his sad, droopy eyes, sunken with exhaustion. Immediately, Sakura felt a horrible stab of guilt. How could she laugh when Kakashi was dying ?
“I’m sorry!” she said, “I don’t know what I was thinking. Don’t worry, sensei! I know I can cure you—”
She stopped because he was writing savagely onto the scroll.
I don’t want to lose the ability to love. I’ve lost so much—not that.
“No, of course not!” She bit her lip. “I mean… I really want to try to figure out a third way other than loss of ability to love and death . Are you sure you can’t be loved by this person in return?”
Kakashi shook his head miserably.
“Have you confessed?”
Kakashi looked away.
“Oh, come on now. You’re Hatake Kakashi, the hero, the Sixth Hokage? And you’re so in love that you’ve got physical proof of it! Who wouldn’t fall for that?”
He didn’t react for a moment, then he wrote on the scroll again.
Many people. What if it were you, for instance?
Sakura laughed. “Well, it’s not like you could possibly love me like that.”
Again, he looked away. The bottom dropped out of Sakura’s stomach and her heart leapt up into her throat. The last time she saw him was just before she left on her mission. It couldn’t be…
“Kakashi…?” she said, actually dropping the honourifics for the first time. He still didn’t look at her. “May I… examine your throat?”
He looked up slowly and peeled down his mask. It was the first time she’d ever seen his full face, yet she couldn’t take her eyes away from his sad, droopy eyes.
And the love in them.
A thousand memories flashed through her mind. She had never before consciously considered him in such a way, but now that she was, it seemed ludicrous that she had never realized it before. He was selfless, funny, loyal, willing to change himself, diligent… and, as she actually let herself take in his whole face, hot as fuck.
Could she… actually like Kakashi back?
Well… she was certainly willing to try.
“My treatment plan,” she said, in her best doctor voice, “is three kisses by mouth, as needed. And weekly dates—with no skipping out on your part of the bill. I’m not saying the man has to pay for me, but sticking me with the tab is just a little unromantic.”
The sad droopy eyes widened.
“Shall I start the first part of the treatment now?”
His adam’s apple bobbed as he nodded.
Sakura leaned forward and pressed a cute peck to his lips. “One—” Another cute peck. “Two—”
He suddenly grabbed her and laid a passionate kiss to her mouth, running his hands through her cherry-blossom locks fervently.
When they finally broke apart, he cleared his throat, thumped his chest a little, and said, with a hint of smugness, “Three.”