Chapter Text
“Team seven will be Uchiha Sasuke…”
Sakura drums her fingers against the table. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Ino sit up straight.
“… and Inuzuka Kiba!” Iruka-sensei finishes, speaking loudly over the groans of the female population of class 1-A.
“Everyone, please maintain silence! Team eight – Haruno Sakura –“
Her eyes snap to the front.
“- and Nara Shikamaru!”
The pinkette blinks, relaxing. She doesn’t know much about Nara Shikamaru save for that he usually sleeps his way through half of the classes. Turning around to find her partner, her eyes meet his from the back row. Flushing at the sudden eye contact, she nods and turns back around hastily.
He isn’t Ami or her friends at least, a voice whispers in her head. She ignores it.
Iruka-sensei finishes announcing all the teams. “You’ll be working for the rest of the year in these pairs for the assignments we give you. This is to prepare you for what’s next – all of you will be graduating to be proper shinobi of Konohagakure, and what does Konohagakure value in their teams?”
“Teamwork,” choruses Sakura along with her twenty-six classmates.
Sensei smiles approvingly, turning to the blackboard. “I expect 100% cooperation with your teammates. Now, back to our lesson…”
The ending bell rings and the class erupts in chatter. Sakura shoves her books into her bags hastily, meaning to catch up with Shikamaru and introduce herself before he leaves the classroom –
Oh. She had forgotten that she knew more than just one fact regarding the Nara heir.
The half-formed greeting dies on her lips as she watches Yamanaka Ino laugh at something the slouching Shikamaru says, slinging an arm around Akimichi Chouji.
How had she forgotten? She berates herself mentally, tightening her grip around the strap of her backpack, a bitter taste lingering in her mouth. After all, everyone knew of InoShikaCho.
InoShikaCho was the infamous term coined with the alliance of the Yamanaka, Nara and Akimichi clans – specifically with Yamanaka Inoichi, Nara Shikaku and Akimichi Chouza – Konohagakure’s best intel team and fathers to the next generation of the trio.
For a few seconds, she lets her eyes linger on Ino. She is as pretty as always. Her blue eyes gleam as she throws her head of blonde hair back and laughs. If there was one thing no one in their class could deny – it was that Yamanaka Ino was truly as brilliant as the midsummer sun.
Sakura’s shoulders slump and she turns to the exit, missing the sharp gaze following her.
The following morning, she walks to school with determination - rehearsing how the greeting would go. Who cares if he was Ino’s friend? They’ve been assigned this project by Iruka-sensei, so it would be perfectly natural of Sakura to introduce herself so that they can start working.
The classes end and Sakura looks towards the back row. Ino is already there, talking animatedly to Chouji while Shikamaru gets ready to leave.
She chickens out.
The recess bell rings. It’s been two days. Sakura can’t stall anymore – she knows other teams have started meeting up to practice already. She cannot possibly risk her perfect score, her rank one in the merit lists every month. ( It’s the only thing she has that the other girls don’t. )
The pinkette firms her resolve and turns around –
“Hi there,” greets Nara Shikamaru, a lazy hand raised in greeting.
Sakura squeaks, almost slipping from her chair. Her bag falls down with a bang, the books falling out of the overflowing canvas. Her cheeks warm in embarrassment as the pair of them survey the mess in silence. This is not how she wanted their first meeting to go!
“My bad, Haruno, I didn’t mean to surprise you.”
“It’s okay!” she manages to get out. “Um… I’ll just clean this up – wait, you don’t need to help – it’s fine – “
Shikamaru looks up at her from where he’s grabbing her books and shrugs. “Don’t worry about it.”
The invisible weight of the eyes around them presses on her and Sakura retreats under the curtain of her hair. She knows what they’re saying, knows what they’re thinking – the Nara heir kneeling and cleaning the civilian girl’s mess, how disgraceful –
She tugs the books out of his hand. The Nara watches her with surprised eyes. “I’ll handle it,” she says forcefully.
“Uh sure, whatever you want.” He stands, hands in his pockets. “Should we meet after school and talk about the assignment?”
All she can manage is a jerky nod in agreement.
“Alright. See ya, Haruno.”
Sakura gathers her books quietly after the boy leaves and then tugs out her lunchbox. Her seat is a window one today, and she peers out of the window at the Academy grounds. There’s barely anyone left in class now – almost everyone prefers to sit below the trees with their friends.
Outside, Shikamaru’s small figure joins a group near the far-end of the grounds. The pinkette wrenches her eyes away and stuffs an onigiri in her mouth.
The rest of the day passes by in a blur and at the end, Sakura has ten full pages of scribbled notes but not a clue as to the contents. She lingers now, taking her time to close her notebooks, even sharpen a pencil – finally mustering the courage to peek backwards. Nara is looking right at her.
He aims a crooked sort of smile at her and Sakura fiddles with her bag till he comes to a stop in front of her. Aburame Shino sits in front of her and he’s already left, so Shikamaru drags his chair to her table and sprawls.
He seems to notice her stiffness then, raising an eyebrow. “Haruno, you good?”
Sakura blinks, consciously loosening the tension in her shoulders. “Yeah, sorry.” She takes out the assignment sheet and spreads it on the table.
Shikamaru instantly leans forward to examine it. “Five pages on chakra theory, and two pages each in standard Konohagakure field mission format about how you find out about your elemental chakra affinity and what it implies.”
“The chakra theory part shouldn’t be too hard,” Sakura taps the sheet with a pencil thoughtfully. “I’ve only been to the shinobi library once before, though.”
“I’ve been there a few times myself. We can’t check out chakra theory scrolls, since they’re genin level. But we can sit there and take notes in the library.”
She can’t help but stare at him agape. She knows logically that the Nara clan were known for their prodigal intelligence, but she’s never talked to this Nara before and it’s hard reconciling the image of a sleepy black-haired boy who skives classes with Naruto and Kiba with the image of an Academy student who’s been to the library.
“Uh… yeah, yeah, that sounds good. About this next part though, I don’t know what elemental affinity even means, much less how to find out about it.” She confesses, and isn’t that a bitter pill to swallow. It’s hard for her to get the words out, her pride as the top kunoichi is all she has. The fact that Iruka-sensei has assigned something she hasn’t even heard of…
The other girls – Ami, giggles a voice in her mind – would rip her apart for this.
Shikamaru doesn’t seem to realize or care what she’s admitting to. In fact, he looks superbly unconcerned and waves a hand. “Ah, you have to use chakra paper for it. There are five main affinities,” he explains. “Fire, water, wind, earth, lightning. When we become genin, we can learn jutsu with our chakra’s element.”
She drinks it all in eagerly with wide eyes. Chakra had elements? Elements they could use in jutsu? This was good for her, she decides. A sort of… reaffirming of why a civilian girl like her had chosen this path.
At the hazy forefront of her mind travel images – hitai ate, with the metal glinting in the sun. A crimson-haired kunoichi waving at her before disappearing in a whirlwind of leaves. The easy camaraderie of teams on their way to the Hokage Tower. Teams. And that was really the catch, wasn’t it? A team to call her own…
Sakura is so lost in her thoughts that she doesn’t see Shikamaru looking at her.
( Shikamaru sees pink hair, a pale oval face, deep-set eyes the shade of emerald. He sees chapped lips, half-bitten fingernails, dark circles extended under dusky eyelashes. )
He stands abruptly, startling Sakura out of her thoughts. She looks up at him, puzzled. He’s slouched over, his bag over one shoulder and his hands in his pockets. “Let’s go get some dango,” comes the off-handed proposal, “We can discuss a bit more there, what do you think?”
She’s off-kilter, more than she had anticipated. But this wasn’t a malicious request. It was… a genuine one, no duplicity visible in his open gaze. So she nods, grabs her bag. She gets dango with someone the same age as her for the first time in her life – mitarashi dango is superior, no matter what Shikamaru argues – and a small smile slips unbidden on her face.
Nara Shikamaru views all this with the boundless pride of a twelve-year-old who’s succeeded in a mission.
“Tadaima.”
Nara Yoshino pokes her head out of the kitchen. “Shikamaru, you’re back! How was your day? You better have gotten started on that team assignment.” She waves the kitchen knife in her hand threateningly.
The boy slumps with a groan. “Yes mum, we started the assignment. In fact,” he kicks his shoes off. “We just had dango and discussed it.”
Yoshino is clearly distracted now that she’s affirmed her son isn’t going to flunk out of the Academy. “That’s great dear, what dango did you get?”
His lips quirk a bit. “Botchan, mum.”
“And here I thought mitarashi was your favorite.”
Shikamaru plods upstairs. “I changed my mind!”
( There was really no reason for Haruno to find out that mitarashi happened to be his favorite too. )