Chapter Text
Sakura glared at the halfway unwrapped present lying open on her bed. She was ten, not five. A beautiful, strong kunoichi, not a little girl!
Well, not yet. She hadn’t graduated. And she was still pretty weak. But she was going to be one!
It was the same thing, really! Inner Sakura insisted, and Sakura completely agreed.
What would Ino say if she found out Sakura still played with dolls?! There would be no way she would ever be able to win over her dear Sasuke-kun if that occurred. Sakura wouldn’t just be Forehead Girl anymore, she’d be considered a baby. It wouldn’t even matter that Sakura hadn’t picked out the gift herself, or the fact her parents didn’t seem to get she was in training to be a shinobi, not a civilian like them, and had bought her a doll instead of new training supplies.
If they wanted to buy us something boring and civilian, they could have at least bought us a new dress, Inner suggested. Pretty and practical.
Or lip gloss, to keep up the competition with Ino, Sakura thought sulkily. That was girly, too, but it was grown up. Not at all like dolls, which were only babyish.
But when Sakura had asked, begging pretty-please for pink cherry lip gloss and sparkly blush, her parents said that she was “too young” for “things like that,” which was ridiculous. Ino wore lip gloss (although it wasn’t cherry flavored, even though cherry was obviously the best), and no one told her that she was too young to wear it.
Still, Sakura’s birthday present was none of the things she might have hoped for. It wasn’t a set of new kunai, nor a scroll on awesome, super strong kunoichi throughout history. It wasn’t even a new dress nor pink cherry lip gloss.
No, it was a doll, remaining half buried in pale green and pink tissue paper. It felt like it was laying there just to spite her, instead of vanishing from Sakura’s sight. It was stupid and childish and she hated it.
“What do you think of your present, Sakura-chan?” Kizashi asked. “I found it on my last business trip out of Konoha, and once I saw —” he coughed lightly. “Well, you’ll see when you look at it later. There's a reason I knew I just had to get it for you. Why don’t you take it all the way out of its package?”
Clearly, he didn’t notice his darling daughter’s growing irritation. Although, it was possible he was simply unaware of the extent of her displeasure and hoped seeing the present in its entirety would serve to mollify her.
Sakura’s mother, on the other hand, placed her hand on her husband’s arm. “Dear, Sakura doesn’t have to look at it now if she doesn’t want to. I’m sure she’s very tired after everything today. We’ve been all over Konoha with her all day, and it’s the start of the new school year at that Academy of hers too, you know how much that always takes out of her. Sakura-chan deserves some rest on her birthday as well, not just excitement! Right, honey?”
Based on the way she was maneuvering the conversation away from the gift and more towards going to bed, Mebuki was obviously beginning to pick up on Sakura’s mood.
Or, more accurately, she was picking up on the extremely low levels of killing intent leaking out of Sakura and aimed at the offending object in front of her. Even civilians not at all in tune with their chakra (namely, Sakura’s parents, sitting nearby and watching as Sakura opened their gift) would be hard pressed to miss the rising level of danger present in the room. It was surprising that Kizashi so obviously had.
Still, Sakura begrudgingly pulled the doll all the way out of its wrapping, if only to get it over with. She could look at it once, satisfy her parents’ desire to see her appreciative of their stupid gift, and then shove it to the back of her closet where she would never, ever have to look at it again.
It was even more babyish in its entirety.
The doll was dressed in a delicate white sundress with matching white sandals, the civilian kind and not the kind shinobi (or shinobi in training) were supposed to wear. It was a good thing Sakura never planned to touch the doll again, because its outfit was not anything that would ever stay clean anywhere other than on a shelf. Sakura ignored the fact she herself sometimes wore such outfits. So what? Suzume-sensei always said that a kunoichi should always look her best, and that meant looking cute!
It just wasn’t cute on ugly, boring dolls that certainly weren’t fit for a beautiful future kunoichi like Sakura. The doll might have been much larger and more detailed than she had expected, with carefully articulated joints and a painted face with wide glass eyes that even blinked, but those features didn’t make it any better. All it meant was her parents would be even more disappointed if they found out just how deeply she detested it.
Everything about it, from its white sandals to its blinking glass eyes, made Sakura angry. Inner clenched her fists inside Sakura’s mind, their whole being imagining shoving the doll roughly back into the same box that had seemed so exciting at the end of dinner. She wanted to yell, to shout. But neither young ladies (“Sakura, use your words, for goodness’ sake! You’re a young lady, act like one!” ) or, or, beautiful kunoichi were supposed to do that. (“Calm, composed, and always focused on the mission,” Suzume-sensei had told them, describing the ideal that each of the girls in the class were expected to strive towards.)
Or maybe, instead of being angry, Sakura was sad, by the way tears seemed to prickle at her eyes and itch at the back of her throat. That made her angry, too. There wasn’t anything to be sad about at all! Shinobi didn’t cry. (Shinobi Rule #25: “A shinobi must never show their tears…”) Inner had scoffed at that one when Iruka-sensei had taught it to them in class, but it was true, wasn’t it? Only babies and civilian girls cried. Civilian girls with big foreheads who needed to hide behind Ino and could never, ever be her rival in love —
Look at its hair, Inner loudly suggested. Her snickers pushed away all the other thoughts at the back of Sakura’s mind. I bet that’s what Dad meant, when he said he “just had to get it for us.” He might have been trying to find a doll that looked like us, but it’s nowhere near as pretty! All it looks like is sour, wrinkly umeboshi. Not gorgeous cherry blossoms like ourself!
It really did. It was clear someone had been going for a pastel floral shade on the doll's hair. All it had ended up with was limp curls dyed a washed out and muddled shade that somehow managed to be both reddish and orangey-pink instead of a bright, soft color. Just like umeboshi. No matter how much her mother assured Sakura she would like the pickled plums when she was older, they always tasted sour, disappointing, and much too salty, even when placed in the middle of otherwise delicious rice balls.
“It can be called Ume-chan,” Sakura unenthusiastically told her parents. And then, she thought, it can go far, far away.
Forever, Inner agreed.