Chapter Text
Sachiko wasn’t fond of how her day was going so far.
Well, she didn’t particularly like her days at the academy in general, if she were to be honest.
The necessity to socialize and the connections she eventually had to make were too significant for her to throw away merely because of her discomfort. But she hated the academy despite her reasoning, the cool air on her back only a reminder of her surroundings, the murmur of her classmates too loud.
The other kids didn’t like her all that much. She had tried her best to get along with them– She really had. Her parents seemed to think otherwise, but she knew Sadahiro believed her when she had told him they avoided her, animosity poorly hidden. It wasn’t her fault. Was she just supposed to let them pick on her?
Hitsuno often told her the village was too traditional. Sadahiro often argued with her. They were squabbles between oldest and the middle child over the dramatics of village politics. Sachiko thought it was stupid, really, that she was being picked on for not being from an established clan; For being different, even if it wasn’t by a lot. Maybe she did have issues with her chakra. So what?
Sachiko could feel herself getting worked up at the mere thought of it, and she quelled the brewing storm away. She decided she would focus on a different aspect of school she hated.
They were packed into stiff desks, made to sit and stare into the nothingness of a chalkboard for hours at a time. It was painful, really.
They read, on occassion. Sachiko liked that more, but the classrooms were still dull, quiet, and almost always either too hot or too cold. It seemed that most of her classmates thought the same, too, as they fidgeted for what she could say was… all of indoor classtime.
The windows had the most ineffective blinds to ever exist. Ever. She had been considering investing into a decent pair of sunglasses to at least try to put up a fight against the brightness.
She had requested to change her window seat a week ago, she remembered. The gaze of her teacher remained perplexed, even after she had explained her predicament. They had suggested maybe seeing a doctor for possibly sensitive skin.
She thought about it for maybe around a minute before deciding she definitely would not do as such. But she nodded, as if she were going to.
Sachiko’s seat had never been changed.
Maybe that was another thing that irked her: She wished they would just listen. It was far too loud in the classroom now. It seemed that Kenji had lost control of their students. She could hear the sharp tone of their voice behind her ears, like a faint memory.
Sachiko’s eyes glazed over, blank and fixating themselves onto the analog clock above the chalkboard. To her dismay, it still read a dull 11:16, and it had only been two minutes since she had last checked at the time.
Eagerness crumpled, she tried to tune back into their sensei’s lesson, to no avail. Static, background noise lingered in her ears as she shifted uncomfortably in the stiff benches that served as their desks. with her chin in her hands, not retaining a single word spilled from the teacher’s lips.
She was beginning to feel bad for her sensei. Even a little guilty. She was typically more attentive. Sachiko let her brows furrow; huffed from her nose and regrettably thought that she was off her game today.
Any other day, she would have been relatively attentive, especially so early in the day. She prided herself in her grades, but, it wasn't like that this time. It was like she wasn’t really there, like her drowsiness had consumed the rest of her senses and dulled her nerves.
She checked the time again. 11:18. Another two minutes.
Bitterly, Sachiko noted that the school day truly felt neverending, as if time had slowed just to torment her. Her limbs ached in her seat, sore from the mysteriously poor sleep she had gotten the night before, spent thrashing about her bed.
Thinking back on it, the moment she had stepped into the school building, she had immediately become glum. If only she could skip, she mused, woozy, drained, heavy with exhaustion. It was hard to pry her eyes back open every time they mistakenly fluttered shut.
The rest of the students around her were at their typical energy levels, hyper and distinctively loud, ten-years-old and bright and cheery. A couple stand out classmates were remaining serious –she tried not to wonder if she was one of the ‘stand out’– but as the lesson dragged on, the light buzz of conversation soon died out. It was nearly lunch, and as the time approached, Sachiko couldn't find it in her to be excited.
She just really, really wanted to go home.
But unfortunately, the dreadful school day was only around halfway done.
Sachiko hung her head and sighed, taking a moment to just close her eyes, let her shoulders relax. The darkness of her eyelids soothed her sight for just a moment from the perpetually shining sun. Definitely needed some sunglasses. Maybe she would ask an Aburame about where they–
A rush of pain, a jolt that had gone through her skull, behind her eyes. She winced at the sudden overwhelming sting, shaking her head as if to dispel the hot flash.
A moment passed, the pain slowly began to subside, leaving a burning ache on her temples as she pried her eyes open. There was a moment of stillness, where she gathered her thoughts and sat there perplexed. She could see her desk mate staring at her as if she were some sort of alien, but she paid him no mind.
She blinked. Slowly.
These things had happened before. Well, they had been happening, since three months after her third birthday– The day the sky turned black and dirt turned red and the clouds were cut by nine blurs of orange. The tenth of October, she recalled, was the day she began to have sudden pains. She had told Sadahiro, and as the oldest, she supposed, he had told their parents. Although perturbed by having her secret tattled so quickly, she was glad to visit their doctor. He was a nice man, by the name of Miyo and belonging to the Uchiha family.
Yet as skilled as he was, he could only conclude that there was nothing wrong.
So Sachiko had been living like this, with these strange migraine episodes.
For the past seven years.
Her eyes lingered on the blank notebook beneath her, just as empty as the last time she had checked. What just happened? She blinked. Static blurred her vision, a buzz filled her chest. A hive.
Kikaichu.
Aburame.
Sachiko snapped her hand eyes back open, quickly placing a hand to her chest. Something was missing.
There was no buzzing, no presence. Just an ache along with an unusual absence. Sachiko took her hand from her chest and let her head hang.
There was something off about today. She just knew it.
Forty minutes later, and the bell had rang. Sachiko grumbled beneath her breath, slipping out of her seat to allow her desk mate to wander off wherever they pleased. It was noon.
Most of her classmates had scrambled to leave the classroom. The few that remained were quiet. She liked it; the quiet.
Kenji had reached up to the high windows, as Sachiko had been their devoted observer, and popped open the glass panes. A comfortable breeze settled into the classroom, now empty, besides Sachiko and a handful of other kids whose names she cannot bear to remember.
They all minded to their own business, busied within their own thoughts. Sachiko reveled in the feeling of being invisible, even if it wasn’t a particularly rare occurrence.
She reached beneath her to pull her bento from the dark of the shadow of her seat. No classmate batted an eye. Her chest swelled with unusual warmth at the feeling of being simply ignored, being in the background. She could vaguely remember a time of when she wasn’t— But the thought entered her head, and pain swarmed her like a cloud of bees.
Her bento clattered to her desk. Some classmates were looking her way now, and her hand shot up to clutch at her burning scalp, brain seizing and pounding within her skull. Dark spots began to cloud her vision, and she fought for sight, pressing her palms into her eyelids as if it would calm the withering hurt.
Her throat felt like it was closing up in its most dire time of need. She gasped. She could hear her classmates now, murmuring voices behind her ears, calling for their teacher.
Light peeked through her fingers. Sachiko pried her eyes open, allowed her irises to be greeted with her fringe and blurry vision.
Dark hair oozed away and revealed a sickening blonde. She choked, blinked rapidly.
Her mind slipping into the shell of someone else— Was this what it felt like to be a Yamanaka?
A snake, blinding white. A man sharing its eyes. A man in robes, broken promises.
Blonde.
A voice murmured, too close for comfort, too dark for someone she knew now, but too familiar to be a stranger.
Big, blue eyes. She is looking at her own brain inside of a glass jar.
Sachiko pried her eyes back open, tore her fingers from around her eyes, her struggle accompanied by a dull, numbing pain protruding through her limbs. Her hair— Dark, a thick, mouse-y tangle of deep brown. Eyes— Last time she had checked, black, or dark enough to look so.
Sachiko Sasaki.
Sachiko is…
Sachiko had experienced strange bouts of pain before. But never had she felt a buzzing in her chest, never had she heard the voice of serpent.
Sachiko is not blonde.
Sensei stood in front of her, fingers digging painfully into her shoulders, thrashing her back and forth. Their voice fades into her ears, trailed by a never-ending ringing, a buzz that seemed to haunt her. It was never truly silent.
“Sachiko?”
Sachiko woke up to the sound of murmuring, a buzzing behind her ears instead of where it should be within her chest. She kept her eyes closed, a gentle plea to the world to let her relish in the quiet, a guilty admission of her ever so present desire to be anywhere else but… here?
Where was she?
It was dark. She wished she could sense anything outside of the enveloping fastness of black.
It was quiet for a long while. Maybe she wasn’t as fond of the quiet as she thought she was.
In an instant, light flooded her vision. Memories flickered decisively, and she remembered being in fourth grade, watching a blonde boy on a big screen. Her mother was at her side, tucked beneath the same blanket over her lap. Sachiko looked up from the cloth, the moment inexplicably surreal.
The blonde boy was a ninja.
…She was a ninja. Wasn’t she?
No, no. She wasn’t. But the blonde girl was a ninja. The Aburame girl was a ninja. Sachiko is a ninja. Was? Where was she?
Sachiko thought that she might throw up. She could feel sunlight behind her eyelids, and could hear faint voices in a place behind her ears, somewhere far beneath her skull. Was that a breeze?
Naruto. A name flooded her thoughts, suddenly and violently. A vision of a fox, orange tails swishing around it in a ring of flaming destruction.
She could fear quiet murmurs, which slowly began to fade, growing more urgent as her fingers twitched, muscles spasmed lightly.
She had to be dead. She had to be. She was not ten-years-old. Her name was not Sachiko. Konohagakure was not real.
Panic settled into her bones. The whispers were loud, racing constant of where she really was: A place that truly, honestly, wasn’t home.
Her tongue was dry, her throat was tight, her chest was shot with pain. An excruciating headache, as if someone had bashed their fists against her skull.
This was not real.
Suffocating. She was suffocating.
The voices stopped.
She was in silence, and then it was over. She was… Dead. She had to be.
She had never been so cold.
Sachiko’s head shot up from her notebook at the sharp call of her name. It took a moment for her to remember where she was, where she really was. Kenji stood at the front of the classroom. The other students giggled, and she could feel a hot flash of embarrassment travel up to her cheeks as she wiped the drool from the corner of her mouth.
“Sasaki? Are you listening to me?” they sighed.
It took a moment for Sachiko to drag her gaze up to meet their own.
“Yes, sensei. Continue with the lesson?”