Chapter Text
Sakura’s best friend is Ino Yamanaka and with that comes things that she’s not entirely prepared for. They met at a private school Sakura worked her ass off to get a scholarship to in the third grade, and while everyone else mocked her for being lower class or just plain ugly, Ino looked at her and saw something. Sakura’s just not sure if it was her potential or the way the girl in her head was screaming to cut out their tongues.
Ino grabs Sakura’s arm on the first day of school, dragging her into the cafeteria and down onto the bench of her table, kicking out some heiress or another in favor of a girl she has every reason to ridicule. Sakura looks up at Ino and sees a savior, a queen, and feels with everything in her the need to bow. Ino grabs her hand like only close friends ever do and holds her as she stands, holds her to her level, makes her an equal. Sakura promises herself to be worthy of it.
(There’s a phase where Sakura relays her mother’s advice to find a rich boy to take care of her and Ino sets them both on the path to Sasuke Uchiha, the most popular boy in their grade. It gets tense when they realize joint marriages like the one they had been planning aren’t technically legal, but after a few cursory fights they realize Sasuke isn’t that great of a person overall.)
By the sixth grade they’re more than that, more than equals, more than friends. Ino gives Sakura a lecture on sexuality and lets her make her own decisions, and Sakura does some vaguely embarrassing research to reach the conclusion that kissing Ino would be far more pleasant than kissing Sasuke, and Ino could probably set her up for the next three lifetimes anyway. She mumbles some of this out to Ino, nerves radiating out from her chest and making her curl in on herself. Ino wraps her arms around her, kisses her forehead, and they’re practically married from then on.
What’s problematic is when Ino decides to introduce Sakura to the business she’s planning on marrying her into, and she proposes it as Sakura having less than zero involvement. Unfortunately, things don’t quite work out that way.
It starts with Ino inviting her to one of their family parties during the summer of their freshman year, huge and lavish in a way that befits the house that Ino grew up in and that Sakura has never felt quite comfortable in. She’s at Ino’s side as she talks to the Nara and Akimichi heirs, as she networks through the two families, as she takes Sakura into the more secluded area of the gardens and starts explaining what roles the Families play.
There’s the Nara, who are full of Family lawyers and politicians, in it for the long con. Nearly everyone not in their employ owes them a favor or two, and they know when and where to pull them in. A Nara, Ino tells her, could shoot a man point blank in front of a million people and not suffer any consequences for it, but they’re too lazy to get their hands dirty on their own.
“That’s where,” Ino says, eying the biggest man Sakura has ever seen in her life, not just heavy but tall and obviously muscled,“the Akimichi come in.”
The Akimichi own all of the most prolific restaurants in the city, buying them once they reach their standards and paying the staff more to keep it up. For the most part, the businesses are still allowed to run themselves, but they make several Akimichi hires and tend to only purchase Akimichi meats. Butchery, as it turns out, is the Akimichi tradition.
Instead of the endless mind games and strategy the Nara employ, the Akimichi kill their hits in their shops and five-star restaurants, and wait for the Yamanaka to retrieve them.
Ino’s family makes their clean money in many avenues of Konoha’s economics, Ino’s favorites being fashion and the collection of beautiful things such as flowers (especially sakuras, she teases, which only serves to make Sakura match the color of her namesake) and art. They also have a reputation for their mental-health professionals, several Yamanaka being trailblazers in their fields.
The most significant of their investments, though, is sanitation. It’s this that allows them to be so prolific at body-disposal, though even more often it’s just transportation of the knocked-out victims of the Akimichi and Nara Families to a place where the Yamanaka can pry information out of them and make them regret being born.
“Is this okay?” Ino asks. “That this is the family you want to be a part of? That this is how we make our money?”
Sakura nods, clearly surprising Ino with her sincerity. The voice in her head scoffs, as if she’d be so much of a pussy as to shy away. “Of course, I’m with you ‘til the end.”
Ino smiles none-too kindly and kisses Sakura on the cheek. “We’ll take the world by storm.”
They do.
That night, Chōji and Shikamaru sleep over, not an uncommon thing for Ino, but a little less than comfortable for Sakura. However, Shikamaru is a dork and Chōji is probably the only tolerable boy Sakura has ever met, so it gets easier.
“Ino’s bringing you in, huh?” Shikamaru asks, calculating in a way that really doesn’t befit a fourteen year-old.
Sakura shrugs. “Is that bad?”
“For you, maybe,” he snorts. “You’re a civilian, you don’t know the risks of this kind of life.”
“Then teach me, asshole.” Sakura rolls her eyes, and they’re both more than surprised when he does.
Sakura gets coached on mafia politics by Shikamaru long after Ino and Chōji decide it’s too boring and fall asleep, and she studies them with the same single-minded fierceness that she does everything else.
Shikamaru laughs at her, which pisses her off more than she lets on. “You’ll certainly be a good mob wife, if anything. Try not to take any notes though.”
She’s this close to asking why, and when Shikamaru laughs again she knows he knows it. The embarrassment makes her almost homicidal, but she bottles it up like she does everything else, ignoring the voice in her head yelling kill him, hit him, hurt him, make him see .
Ino’s parents meet Sakura as Ino’s girlfriend a week or so after, with Sakura already neck-deep into Shikamaru’s brief but informative lessons. Inoichi smiles knowingly but sympathetically, as if he’s already seeing an end to this.
The girl in Sakura’s head wants to punch it off his face so bad Sakura can feel the urge in her own fist, but she very quietly does nothing about it.
“It’s a bit early for you to assume this is going to be forever,” Inoichi says, ever the reasonable one. Shikamaru told her that a Yamanaka can talk their way through a war zone, and as much as she didn’t need the warning it’s frustrating how true it is here.
“She’s it for me,” Ino insists, but Inoichi shakes his head.
“You’re both young, you start high school in a few weeks. Give it a break and come back in a year, then you can convince me.”
Sakura jumps out of her seat, the girl in her head becoming the girl in control, but Ino is already agreeing, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her back down.
Sakura goes home holding in tears, waiting for the moment that she can throw herself into her bed and muffle her cries into the mattress. She knows she loves Ino, loves her wholly and utterly, and all she gets for it is some half-assed reasoning and a “maybe he’s right, Sakura.”
Ino texts her lyrical apologies that she doesn’t dare buy into, deleting the hearts from Ino’s name in her contacts. She opens her text log with Shikamaru instead, anger moving her fingers.
cherry: apparently i’m not gonna be a yamanaka trophy wife after all
tired: O shyt
It’s a mess to explain, especially since she knows Ino is probably pleading her case to him as she types. At the very least she can trust Shikamaru to play both sides until she crashes from the rage and goes to Chōji.
tired: That's fucking shit
cherry: fucking yeah it is
tired: Idk man I’m not allowed to Not take Ino’s side but this is fucked
cherry: ik ik. can u still teach me?
tired: Ye dude
She puts down her phone and lets it sit, going to bed without the tell-tale buzz of Ino’s goodnight texts. Freshman year is going to fucking suck.