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I, Uchiha Sasuke, seventeen years of age, only want nothing but peace in the last year of my high school life. So far, I have been successful ducking away from high-energy (like Uzumaki Naruto who I think takes five energy drinks in a day the way he’s always loud-mouthed and laughing and screaming in the hallways), and high-activity people (like Haruno Sakura, student council member since freshman and is now the current president. She probably has magical time management skills because I don’t know how she can fit everything in her schedule).
I am simply content in acing the expectations set by my family name.
Excellent grades.
First place in exams.
Official representative in academic competitions.
The successor of the alumnus with distinction, Uchiha Itachi.
The official top rank nobody in Konoha High, in other words.
Except I’m not.
Not really.
Not when President Sakura is always near second to me, short only by one point or two. And maybe it’s because she’s juggling everything in those two dainty hands of hers that she can’t be perfect all the time.
It’s not that I pay attention. It’s just that her hands are tiny.
And soft.
She grabbed my arm when classes broke for lunch one time and told me to go to the clinic.
“You’re hot.”
I wouldn’t know how to respond if I wasn’t running a 40 degree. “Gee, thanks,” I sloppily replied.
“No, but really. You need to go to the doctor.” Her face was painted with concern. There was nothing different about it; she dons this exact same expression to all her constituents.
It was the fact that she saw me, in the midst of class, battling a fever I thought I perfectly hid.
She didn’t wait for my response then. She dragged me towards the room, and pulled me into her orbit.
There’s a phenomenon called Zero Shadow Day when the sun is at the zenith and its rays fall perpendicular to the object. The shadow, usually cast behind the object, falls directly under it. Being skin-close to her is exactly that kind of phenomenon; I become engulfed in her.
My brother never fell in love in high school, but I did with Haruno Sakura.
“Sasuke, you still don’t have a role.” The teacher taps his pen on the bound script. “Naruto beat you in signing up for the tree.”
“We have district finals!” screams the blonde baseball captain.
I clear my throat, but it just attracts even more unwanted attention. “What’s left?”
A beat passes which is more suffocating than the irritated throat I have now. “An understudy.”
“Great—”
“—of the princess.”
I could hear the blonde stifle his laughter behind me.
“Okay,” I sigh, “so long as the real princess shows up.”
After rehearsals, the prince comes up to me and taps my shoulder. I wish she wouldn’t untether me from the ground.
“I know you’re only doing this because they made it mandatory for graduation, but I’m still glad you’re with us,” Sakura says with a grin.
“Yeah, sure.”
Shouldn’t I have more words in my arsenal?
“Do you want some bread with mulberry jam? I finished half of it already.”
“That’s a lot.”
“I tend to devour food when I’m nervous.”
“Nice.”
That’s a horrible reply, Uchiha Sasuke.
It’s a slow rehearsal, but I’m privileged to endure the multiple ‘back-to-the-start’ behind the curtains, against the wall, mindlessly scrolling through pages of dialogue. A big figure surprises me out of my musings—and oh my God, why is Sakura so close?
“I need my personal space,” I manage to croak out, but that made me sound more like a douchebag than a guy panicking over his crush standing a few inches away from him. It’s hard to breathe but I somehow manage to smell the faint jasmine in her hair and the strawberry on her lips.
Sakura complies in good spirit, rather too quickly for my liking (aren’t you panicking @/self?!). “Just practicing for the last scene.”
“I’m a spare.”
“You never know when it’ll come in handy, Sasuke. Besides, familiarizing this proximity lessens the ick-factor for you eventually.”
I’m pretty flexible when her mouth curls up in corners. The bound papers fall to my side, as a prop, as it should be, and I retrace the steps she took earlier. In my hazy vision, she wavers in her stance when in fact she stays rooted on the floor. It’s me who’s losing footing.
I reach her, approximately three inches away, and I breathe her in again uninhibited, along with her verdant eyes that learned not to look away. It’s a role I’m supposed to play. “This close?”
Her green eyes capture me in still frame. My mind makes up the vision of her throat closing up and her breath hitching. “Closer.”
My foot feels like lead. It’s just one step, I tell myself.
“—Break time’s over everyone!”
My luck strikes on the day of the cultural festival wherein our little production happens to be the culminating activity in the gala night. This is so much fun (sarcastic).
Normally, I wouldn’t get too hung up about this, considering I am only an understudy, but lo and behold, the teacher informs me thirty minutes before the second act that the princess is sick .
“No.”
“Yes.”
“What do you mean by 'the princess is sick'?”
“Her stomach pain has become unbearable so you need to do what you are tasked to do, Uchiha.”
“I am an understudy.”
“Of the princess.”
“....”
“The princess is just lying down most of the time for this act, Sasuke. Your dialogue is literally on the last part.”
Which I didn’t know by heart.
I swear.
“Okay fine.”
The story is one you are already familiar with. The princess tries to escape her fate by going on an adventure but somehow gets cursed to fall asleep indefinitely until she is awakened by the true love’s kiss. We don’t know anything about the prince, but we know that it’s the person the princess loves the most.
It’s the opposite in my case, as I lie rigid and stoic against the greatest battle waged in the princess’ journey. No one knows who I am, but I know who I love the most.
Sakura is cool, judging by the cheers and almost-fanchant screams in the audience. I keep my eyes shut (I don’t think I’ll ever recover when I find her hovering above me, inches away), and all sounds fall mute to my drowning ears.
I hear the strings of words I’ve memorized from behind the stage, even the liminal pauses in between where her breath rests. I think of the patterns in her footsteps—ten until she gets to my deathbed on the center of the stage. What I’m not prepared for is the graze of her stray strands against my cheek. I take my fill of her scent and all her emotions suspended in the silence she closes the distance in.
There’s a slight shift in the background. A raucous scraping against the wooden stage, and I zero in on Naruto moving a little earlier than expected, and one of his very very long branches hit Sakura on the back.
A yelp becomes the next line.
I open my eyes the exact moment I taste strawberry.
The cultural festival ends with the traditional dance around the bonfire.
It’s momentous in the sense that anyone can get a free pass to spill their guts in the dancing flames to their person of affections and expertly hide their pained expressions in the shadows.
I choose the bright lit classroom on the fourth floor where President Sakura spends the last hour of the night as my tragedy milieu.
For some weird reason, I kept the costume on, minus the hair in case this Ancient Greek montage goes either way. I am Snow White with the same ebony hair and pale skin. I offer an apple sans the poison and say sorry.
“The great Uchiha Sasuke saying sorry!” She shrugs and bites down on the apple. “Shouldn’t you be the one who’s angry?”
“The student body thinks I defiled the perfect prince.”
She shakes her head, breaking in a chuckle, “It was theater, and they were just overreacting.”
“Still, I don’t think it’s proper.” I brace for the truth. “It might have been your first kiss and I took it away.”
“It’s all right. Maybe it’s the same for you? Aren’t you bothered by it?”
It’s hard to focus and stay serious when Sakura is ahead of me in her nonchalant grace, eating my attention away in every bite. “I’m all right with you as my first kiss.” Maybe if I tell the truth, she wouldn’t hear it over the mulch.
She wipes the juice from her lips as they transform into a smile. “Then that makes the two of us.”
I’m the one who chokes on the imaginary fruit. “What?”
“I said that makes the two of us.” No more munching this time.
I think I’m having problem swallowing. No way. All those people, and she likes me?
And I think I said my thoughts out loud.
She laughs, and the melody turns her redder than the almost fully consumed apple in her hand.
“Are you still playing along?” I seldom have my heart on my sleeve, but I’m wearing mine on the roses embroidered on the chest.
“It’s not part of the script, Sasuke.” The pale core of the apple makes a stark contrast against her cheeks.
“I like you.” I tell her the lines I rehearsed over and over again this past year. “It’s not part of the dialogue.”
“You look so silly saying that in a princess dress.” She laughs again, and this time she couldn’t stop laughing. I’m not sure if this is going the right way. “You know, I’m not sure if you’d notice, but that only means I did a good job hiding it.”
What’s the proper response for that? “My head hurts.”
That absurd response does not deter her own confession. “I like you, Sasuke.” Her gaze lands on anywhere but me. “For a long time now. How else would I know you have a fever that day?”
Actors get stuck on lines. They forget the next words. Some people depend on off-stage prompters, others improvise. I’m not an actor, no matter how much I practice and make up scenarios which I would rather describe as overthinking, but I choose the latter.
My steps are still too heavy for all the nervousness that holds me down, but I reach her soon enough. “I think the student council president deserves a last dance for her last cultural festival.”
She quickly finds her spaces within the expanse of my arms. Maybe that’s what happens when I’ve carved out the place for her.
“This is not part of the play,” I whisper.
“It is,” she replies, “The teacher just cut it out because of the runtime.”
She steps on the hem of my dress, and the resulting sidestepping makes her double down in another fit of laughter. She’s closer to me now, much closer than the three inches we practiced.
“Oh Sasuke, I have another confession.”
I don’t think I’m ready—
“It wasn’t Naruto’s fault.” She’s breathless. “It wasn’t an accident.”
“Oh.”
I make a step, an attempt at fumbling. She holds me steady at my waist. I learn that my hands can cradle her entire face while hers seep cold against the fabric of my dress. This time, I taste apples as I bend down. “This one isn’t too.”
I, Uchiha Sasuke, want nothing but peace in the last year of my high school life. So far, I managed to find and keep it.