Chapter Text
Exactly one month has passed since the last time she saw him when Sarada opens the contact list on her cell phone and stops on his name.
At first, she just looks at the set of numbers on the screen. One by one, she checks each little digit, making sure it matches the number that is tattooed in her memory. And it does, she knows. Just like every other time, it's not the number that's wrong but....
She drops the phone to the side of the bed, and trying not to fall into the spiral her thoughts are dragging her into, she gets up and walks towards the kitchen.
The apartment is in complete silence as it always is at those hours when her mother has the night shift and her father is away, and the uninterrupted peace begins to suffocate her, so she keeps her mind busy preparing a coffee. She pours the water into the cup and embraces it with both hands, letting its warmth wash over her and keep her company for a moment as she sits there.
She doesn't mind, she reminds herself as she looks at the hands of the clock. After all, a month with no answers sends a clear message. She knows that, too.
And yet, she just sits there, watching the time pass and waiting for the clock to strike twelve o'clock and the day to change to the twenty-seventh of March, to finally get up and go back to her room.
She sits on the edge of her bed with the now iced mug still in her hands, and looks at her cell phone hesitantly. For an entire decade they had a tradition of calling each other past midnight to congratulate on their birthdays without exception, and now, it might be the first time they would break it. If she callls and he doesn't answer, it' sover. If she doesn't call, it's over too. Regardless of what she chooses to do the ending is the same so there is really no reason to doubt it so much, but she does, and after a few minutes debating internally, she takes the cell phone in her hands and dials his number.
The instant her ear meets the device, she freezes in panic. The ringtone beeps once, twice, three times, raising the hairs on the back of her neck in anticipation, reminding her that even after all this time she had refrained from just texting and had never mustered the courage to call him, and convincing her that, maybe, it could make a difference now.
But then more beeps sound, and before she can be able to process it, the monotone voice of a machine sends her to voicemail.
She is stunned for a few seconds, and then, fury hits her.
"You're an asshole," she hisses through her teeth, pressing the cell phone against her face. "You promised me you'd keep in touch. You promised. And now you won't even answer my texts. It's been a month, Boruto. What's your problem?! If you wanted to stop talking you could have just said so, you didn't need to move across the country to start ignoring me. You coward."
The last word comes out haltingly from her throat, breaking down from the tears beginning to pool in her eyes.
Nothing that had happened was fair. Not the fact that Boruto had to move because of his father's job, not the fact that he had decided not to tell them until the last moment, not the promise at the airport, not that.
"Do you even care?"
As soon as she finishes the sentence, her chest squeezes. Pathetic. She's being pathetic now. He didn't even answer her call and she's there, alone, yelling at the phone and leaving a message she's sure he'll never hear because even when he was there he didn't check the voicemail.
A half-tired half-crying sigh escapes her lips involuntarily as she dries her tears and stands in her place, trying to compose herself and come back to her senses.
"You know what? Just forget it," she says, somehow managing to set a flat tone. "Happy birthday."
And then she hangs up.
Her head falls to the nearest pillow and she stays that way for what feels like hours on end until her mind stops scheming and her eyes give way to sleep.
The next few days pass too slowly, and when her birthday finally arrives, he doesn't call her back.
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She doesn't know what makes her do it, but she calls him again.
She is walking in the park, passing by the place they used to go after school to hang out, when she picks up her cell phone and dials his number. This time she doesn't expect an answer so when it's forwarded to voicemail, she just accepts it.
"Hey," she greets out of habit, and after a long pause, notices that she doesn't know what to say to lighten the mood. There's no chance of small talk in a one-sided conversation, so she decides to get to the point. "Sorry. The other message was a bit much. I was angry and got carried away. I know it's not easy for you either, I just... miss you."
It feels weird to say that. First of all, because she never said anything like that to him in person. All the years she was by his side, she showed her affection in different ways whether it was supporting him, believing in his word or just staying by his side. They never needed words because they understood each other just by looking at each other. And secondly, because she really feels it. In every free space of her day, in every afternoon she spends alone, in every thing she wants to tell him and remembers that he is no longer there, she feels every particle of her body missing him.
"Things feel a little bad if you're not here. Shikadai is sad and Mitsuki doesn't know what to do to comfort him. They've spent weeks on end looking for some number of your family in old phone books and on the internet because they say you don't answer them either. We are worried. Did you arrive safely? Did something happen?"
Her steps lead her to the end of the park where sitting on a blanket on the grass in the distance, Chouchou is unpacking things from a picnic basket. Her amber eyes leave the food for a second to raise in her direction, and when she notices it's her, she waves her arms excitedly.
Sarada smiles at her and waves back before returning her attention to the call.
"Whatever it is, please call, okay?" she asks.
And the rest of her goodbye is cut off when Chouchou yells her to join.
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The third time she calls, she has nothing particular to say to him. She tries all day to find a reasonable excuse, some urgent forgotten issue, but fails horribly.
And yet, she calls him one more time.
"The news says it's raining there," she says as soon as she's shunted to the voicemail. "It's forecast that way for the rest of the week. It must suck for you. You never liked storms."
Unable to help herself, she dips into old memories. Ever since they were little, it was always something they differed on—Boruto hated storms and cold weather. He used to say that the gray colors of the sky and the thousands of layers of clothes made him feel old and put him grumpy. And Sarada, for her part, always loved it. The comfort of being at home with the sound of the rain in the background, covered up and in company had always been her ultimate idea of comfort.
"Maybe we should swap, don't you think? Like that movie you love so much. I go over there and enjoy the cold and you come over here and enjoy the warmth for a while," she joked, though her voice didn't come out as steady as she would have liked. "Anyway, I... How are you there? Is the house as big as it looked in the pictures you showed me? What's the school like?"
For a brief moment, she waits for a response.
"Oh, right. It's not like you can answer me. So... uh... I'll do the talking, if that's okay. I mean, it is, right? You don't answer so—" she forces herself to stop her babbling. She's sounding like, and from afar probably looks like, a lunatic. "It's okay. After all, you can choose not to listen to this if you don't want to. So... if that's the case, if you don't want to listen anymore, you have three seconds to hang up."
She inhales, holding the air in her lungs for a count of three, then exhales.
"Well, if you're still here, make yourself comfortable. You missed a lot," she says.
And then she starts telling him everything.
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It quickly becomes habit.
No matter what happens, big or small, she calls him to tell him about it. She keeps him updated on things that herself interested on: his friends, the school soccer team, the new comics brought to his favorite store, the people who moved into what used to be his house. And she tells him about her life, too. She tells him about the craziness of Chou-Chou's week, about casual fights with her mother, about the stress of senior year, about the books she's reading, about how strange it is not to have him there.
She talks for minutes on end—sometimes on the way to school, sometimes alone at home, when she finds a gap in her routine or when she wants to make one—and gets used to it until it loses its oddness. She gets good at it, she dares to say.
Once her monologues stop being babbling disasters and take shape, they're interesting. Distance forces her to leave behind her need for physical presence to convey her feelings making her reconciled to words, and suddenly, she finds herself calling a spade a spade. She stops excusing her calls with boredom and recognizes them as nostalgia. She stops calling him friend and recognizes him as best friend. She stops calling her feelings affection and recognizes them as love.
But regardless of that, the best part is always at the end, when the topics of conversation run out, exhaustion makes her fall into ramblings and her words escape her mouth involuntarily.
"I should have asked you to stay, shouldn't I? That's why you were looking at me like that at the airport. You were waiting for me to say something..." she understands once.
And like that one, she finds many other buried thoughts. Confessions, loose reflections, memories of the past, regrets. Each time she searches through her memories she manages to find something that went unnoticed before or that she intentionally wanted to ignore.
"Remember when you called me a liar because you said you left a hoodie at my house and I told you it wasn't here? You were right. I did lie. It's in my closet. I never wore it, I don't know why I kept it."
"I'm always going back to the places you used to be."
"I miss you."
"I haven't watched a single episode of the show since you left. I don't think I ever really liked it. I just liked watching it with you."
"Do you even get these messages?"
"I wish I'd said something."
And eventually, in the tide of thoughts, confessions and regrets, she finds revelations, too.
"I think I'm in love with you."
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Two months fly by, and although everything has changed, she finds herself in the same position as a month ago.
The house is empty again, her cell phone is back in her hands, and again she is plagued by hesitation as she runs her eyes over the digits of his contact.
She did everything she could, really. She spent every spare second trying to contact him, ignoring the clear end in front of her, burying her thoughts in activities she never thought she'd do before—impulsively cutting her hair, piercing her ears, starting to write, meditating—but nothing works.
And she's tired, exhausted even. She can't stand the way Chou-Chou suddenly evades proposing outings to the places he used to visit, or how her mother seems to have completely taken his name out of her vocabulary, or the sidelong glances loaded with helplessness at not being able to comfort her from her father. She knows it's time to let him go.
However, her actions differ from her logic because while her head is telling her that she has to end it, her body hugs the piece of clothing she is wearing, which was once his, and becomes small inside it as if she is trying to hide there from those facts.
And for a split second, it works. A glitch sends warmth to her body long enough to make her feel better, but as the minutes continue to pass, the plunge on her skin begins to feel icy, lifeless, and she can no longer stop it.
Her fingers rest on the screen and she dials for the last time.
The tone rings in her ears like white noise after so many times in the same situation and she thinks nothing of it. Fixing her attention on the ceiling above her, she directs her free hand to her forehead and wobbles her fingers nervously along with the beep. One, two three, her hairs don't bristle with anticipation this time because she's sure there's no chance it could make a difference now, and when the call finally connects, the words escape her mouth automatically.
"I'm not going to—" she begins.
And for the first time in two months, she is interrupted.
"Hey."