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Looking into the mirror grew more difficult with the years. The reflection of what had been in the past, when her smooth, unwrinkled face still expressed genuine happiness, haunted her in her dreams as well as in front of that object which returned an image that felt foreign to her. The lines etching themselves beside her eyes and lips grew unnoticed in the day-to-day. After several years, however, they had begun to visibly deepen on her face.
On mornings like this, Sakura ran the hardened pads of her fingers over her own skin. She watched in the mirror as her cheeks began to sag and, feeling the wrinkles that had settled into her skin, she closed her eyes. Exhaling slowly, she moved her hand to her hair. The strands that slid through her fingers brought back memories of days when the pink color of her hair had shone in the sun. Both her friends and some strangers had complimented that element of her appearance, praising its thickness and shine, sometimes uttering words of envy.
Her husband, Sasuke, had also commented on it, back when they were still young and newly freed from the war, and had decided to travel across the country:
That afternoon, the sun was setting slowly. The dance the water performed before them, using the sea as its stage, reached the surface as a slow, uneven melody, the rocks and waves becoming acclaimed artists. Sakura had insisted on wanting to see the sea, smiling at the idea of the breeze gliding over their faces. Upon reaching the edge of the beach, the wind had taken charge of fulfilling her wish, ruffling her cloak and hair. The magical sensation was soon replaced by the annoyance of her hair whipping against her face and, as she untangled it, Sasuke broke the silence that had fallen between them:
“The color is nice,” he spoke, his voice fighting against the sea's melody and the wind’s insistence.
Sakura turned her face toward him then, but by the time she managed to calm her initial surprise and dared to face the man who had said that, Sasuke had already turned his face back toward the sea, fixing his gaze on something distant and immersing his expression in his usual mask of impassivity. Sakura's green eyes, large and illuminated by the sun's rays reflecting the same color as the water before them, settled on Sasuke’s profile. She waited for the young man to return her gaze, to turn and confirm that the earlier compliment hadn't been an invention of her mind, and yet, after minutes passed, she surrendered to the irrationality of that hope.
She turned her own face toward the sea, stroking one of her pink locks, whose color resembled the blush that had settled on her cheeks.
“Do you like long hair, Sasuke?” she suddenly asked. The young woman had let it grow, incited by a rumor from years ago and because, deep down, she still hoped to be recognized for what she had long considered one of her most attractive qualities.
“I don't know,” the young man replied, unfazed by the gaze Sakura had returned to fix on him.
“You don't have, I don't know… preferences?” the girl questioned, playing with one of the long locks, noting how the contrast of the breeze accentuated the heat that began to spread down to her neck.
“I suppose short hair seems more practical to me,” the young man stated. Turning toward Sakura, who thought something more would come from the young man’s mouth, Sasuke pointed to the moon in the distance, frowning. “It's getting dark; we have to go,” he informed her.
Sakura followed his gaze. She watched the moon that had begun to draw itself in the sky and, by the time she wanted to say something more, she realized that Sasuke’s silhouette had disappeared from her side, finding him already on his way toward their next stop.
Sakura had cut her hair a few days later, keeping it that way into her adulthood, trying to make peace with how thin it had become as well as with its irrelevance in her daily life. The length she had discarded had failed to change anything in her life, just as her initiative to give Sasuke space had. She had been waiting for him on the nights when she still believed in the magic of a marriage. She had done the most practical and necessary thing of all, having conceived a daughter who had inherited Sasuke's eyes, his dark hair, and his face, sometimes just as impassive as that afternoon on the beach.
Sakura sighed at the memory of the resemblance Sasuke maintained with their daughter, wondering if he would ever get to see it for himself, or if one afternoon Sakura would enter her house to find Naruto with a tense expression and Sasuke’s cloak in his hands. Sakura scolded herself for even imagining such a thing. She could clearly picture the face Naruto would make. She could evoke her daughter’s reaction, perhaps a silent acceptance of the end of the existence of someone she could only know through conversations and others’ memories. However, Sakura was incapable of predicting her own reaction to having to face a hypothetical death of her husband.
She wanted to believe she would cry, or that she would sink into the guilt of knowing Sasuke died while protecting the village and his daughter's peace.
A small part of her mind, however—the part that carried the image of the Uchiha in her day-to-day, waiting for the man as much as for a liberation from him—opposed the sadness at the loss of her husband. With or without Sasuke’s presence, with or without a ring, and with guilt or without the false hope of his return, Sakura’s reality wouldn't change much from what she was currently living.
Ino, her friend since childhood, married to a man who would set aside his paintings to attend to her explanations about flowers and their meanings, had pointed this out to her one morning. The sun had been high, and the breeze had wandered through the village, embracing the unprotected skin of its inhabitants.
"The new guy in the analysis department has his eye on you, you know? He asked about you," said the woman with long, blonde hair, the same color as the sun rising above their heads. Both were sitting on the terrace of the hospital where Sakura worked, enjoying the warmth the rays provided in contrast with the light wind. "He has good taste," she insinuated again. She looked at Sakura when met with the woman's silence, observing her gaze fixed on something distant that passed through the buildings rising in front of them and, with a resigned sigh, shook her head at the lack of reaction to her words.
Ino had watched Sakura, the woman whose merits extended to filling pages and whose presence commanded order and generated hope in the medical wards, go from smiling at all patients to observing with nostalgia the couples who came to check on their children's health. She had witnessed the light in the woman's eyes gradually fade, while her expression, increasingly tired, deepened with each passing day.
The woman, admired by so many and yearned for by many, seemed to have been reduced to the title of a mother, the will and strength that had characterized her in her day having been exchanged for the labor of raising and maintaining the daughter of her husband, hero and traitor alike.
"Ino, you know I’m married, right?" Sakura attempted a smile, her lips moving barely, as if the vital strength she had left was just enough to generate an attempt at a smile.
"It doesn't look like it," the blonde bellowed, instantly receiving a sharp look, which only inflamed her face and the words that had settled within her even more. "Oh, come on. I'm married! I go on dates, we spend time together, we talk about flowers, he tells me about his paintbrushes and…" she interrupted herself, measuring her words, though the movement of her hands betrayed her exasperation. "You're not married. You have a daughter, a last name that isn't yours, but… That doesn't mean you have a husband, even if it's on some paper somewhere. Come on, I'm sure if you wrote him saying you were filing for divorce, even that wouldn't make him return to the village and try…"
"Ino, stop it, seriously. You’re going too far," Sakura murmured, frowning and lowering her shoulders. She crossed her arms, returning her gaze to the buildings. "We're still married, and he’s away because he has to," she said in an attempt to convince both of them of that statement.
"Honestly, you…" she trailed off, understanding the wall she would run into, whether she said what she truly believed about her friend's husband or not. "Whatever you say, but know that that guy doesn't seem like a bad person, he lives around here, and he has a good reputation and, before you interrupt me…" she motioned, seeing Sakura open her mouth, ready to defend herself. "You deserve more than a last name and a daughter who doesn't even know her father's face," she declared, the determination visible both in her tone of voice and the expression on her face.
Sakura remained silent, letting the words pass her by, churning her thoughts just as the breeze did with her hair, pink and short, shining under the morning sun.