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Dear Sakura’s Diary,
Some of the only times I get to write in my diary is when everyone is asleep. It’s been a few months, and guess what? I graduated! I am officially a genin of Konoha, and the Hokage presented me with my own pretty little forehead headband. I got put on a team which consists of—
Sakura paused while writing when she heard a rustle through the bushes up ahead. She looked up. Her teammates were asleep below, and she’d taken up to the trees to keep watch, feet dangling and writing in her diary with a blanket draped over her head.
Sasuke opened his eyes. He stared around him in the dark and then back up at her. They both watched as a rabbit darted from bush to the other, and Sasuke glanced back at her.
He then closed his sharingan lit eyes, pulled up his blanket to his chin, and he curled up again in his warm blanket.
Sakura shivered in her thin qipao shirt, and she returned back to her diary.
"—consists of eyeball freak #1—”
She heard another rustle beneath her, and Neji shifted. He opened his translucent eyes, and he was looking in her general direction. She made a face at him and returned to her diary.
“ —and eyeball freak #2.” She paused again when she felt his eyes stay on her. She stared back at him.
“What?”
“What are you writing?”
“Nunya business.”
He then smirked at her.
“Alright,” he said.
Sakura rolled her eyes, and she glanced down at her diary. That’s when her brain caught up with her.
“Jerk!” she hissed. “Stop using your magic fucking eyeballs to read my diary.”
“Such uncouth language. Proper ladies don’t swear.”
“Proper gentlemen don’t read a lady’s diary, you absolute jerk!”
“Could you both just shut up for one night?” Sasuke growled from his pillow. “Sakura, can’t you do a proper job of guarding? With a voice like yours, you’ll alert everyone within 100 kilometres.”
“Yes mom,” Sakura groused. “What about Neji?”
“Why would I want to say anything about Hyuuga? We all know how the Hyuugas really use their eyes.”
“What the fuck are you saying, Uchiha?” Neji bolted upright, conveniently forgetting any polite manner of speech. “For the record, you couldn’t win a single match against me without the use of your sharingan.”
“Yeah?” Sasuke threw his blanket aside, and he glanced over. “Do you want to have a spar now?”
“Are you admitting to the fact that you haven’t won a single spar?”
Sakura looked heavenward for reprieve.
“I didn’t admit to anything, Hyuuga.”
“Is that denial?”
“It’s three in the morning,” Sakura hissed. “A voice like mine would alert anything within 100 kilometres? Have you heard the pair of you two bickering buffoons?”
Neji and Sasuke glared at each other before settling back into their respective sleeping bags.
They had decided that Sakura’s sleeping bag would be strategically placed right smack in the middle of the two boys incase they accidentally decided to kill each other. There was a third lump on the end. He seemed to be fast asleep. Sakura rolled her eyes when she heard a snore from him.
“ —and our teacher Kakashi, who’s the weirdest teacher ever. They say he’s supposed to be really good, but all I see is that he’s super late for practice, he reads porno and giggles in front of us. Ew! Why is this my life?”
“I don’t think I can sleep.”
“Neither can I.”
“Then don’t. ”
“I’m going to train,” Sasuke said. He kicked off his covers.
“So am I,” Neji said.
“Don’t let me stop you,” Sakura said without looking up. “Have fun breaking each other’s bones.”
They both ignored her.
There was no real reason to watch over Kakashi-sensei with the duo off to heaven knows where. It’s not like anyone would be dumb enough to attack a special jounin and former ANBU Captain. Sakura continued to write in her diary for the remainder of her watch.
In the distance, she could hear Neji and Sasuke training. She finished up the last bits of her diary entry.
“When I first ended up on a team with Sasuke and Neji, all the girls in the class were so jealous of me. But they are both seriously annoying. All they do is bicker and fight about which clan has the freakier eyeballs. To make matters funnier, each of the clans extended a formal invite to me and Kakashi for dinner. Both dinners were really really really awkward.”
She glanced over at Kakashi before writing.
“Did you know that the Uchiha don’t like Kakashi? Because he has one sharingan from a former dead friend from the Third Shinobi war? But he’s a war hero so they kind of have to bite their tongues. Did you know that Kakashi was also called the copy-nin because he's so good with the sharingan? I guess that adds insult to injury, doesn’t it?”
Sakura chewed the end of her pencil before she wrote again.
“You know, they aren’t all that bad. When they learn to get along, they actually end up alright. They can be mature. Sometimes.”
At some point, Neji and Sasuke had crawled back to the camp when it was Sasuke’s turn to take the shift. Sakura, as it appeared, had fallen asleep some point during her shift . There was not a peep out of her. She was sprawled across two sleeping bags, and her leg was on Neji’s sleeping bag.
Neji sighed. He shifted her foot over to her own sleeping bag.
“Gosh,” he grumbled. “Why are you so heavy?”
She tried to kick at him in her sleep, and he dodged her foot with a scowl. Her face pinched into a scowl before it relaxed.
“Crazy woman,” he muttered. He shifted her back onto her sleeping bag, and he settled himself down, arm stretched out near her face. He turned to watch as strands of hair idly fell over her face, and down her cheeks. Her warm breath fanned over his arm. He ripped his arm away as if it was scorching hot air, ears heating up, and he reddened.
He heard a snap of a twig, and he turned to see Sasuke glowering at the tree which Sakura had climbed.
Sasuke glanced at him. Neji found no snarky words to say about Sasuke’s failed attempt at climbing the tree. It just came naturally to people like Sakura, Kakashi had said.
Sasuke began to climb. Neji rolled over and slept.
Kakashi glanced over his shoulder at Sasuke and Neji.
“Did the two of you even sleep?”
They both glowered at him through prominent eye bags. He glanced past them at Sakura who was trailing behind. A rather large sword strapped to her back as she huffed after them.
“Need any help with that?” Kakashi asked her.
“I’m…” she huffed. “I’m fine. I can carry this.”
If it were up to Kakashi, he would have left the sword on Zabuza’s grave and be off on his merry way. But Sakura did get credit for the final blow, and Zabuza did say that she was worthy of the sword. So here she was, hauling the big hefty thing all the way back to Konoha like a trophy.
Kakashi sighed. Well, he had to teach her kenjutsu now. She was ironically progressing faster than her teammates. And to Kakashi's amusement, neither of them looked happy about that.
“I got this! I totally do. I don't need no man's help to carry this sword."
"Mhmm. Keep up."