Chapter Text
Under The Wisteria Tree: You and Me
Chapter 1: A Promise Takes Root
Tokyo, 2 May 1921
Taishō 10
The capital seemed determined to become two different cities at once. Electric lamps stood beside old stone lanterns, motorcars rattled past wooden carts, and young men in Western jackets hurried beneath telegraph wires while elderly samurai descendants still wore their family crests with solemn pride. Yet in the eastern quarter of Tokyo, where narrow streets curved between aging merchant houses and modest new homes, life moved at a gentler pace.
There, behind a low wooden gate, stood a humble clinic built by a legendary war medic, Senju Tsunade.
The building was neither grand nor fashionable. Its white plaster walls bore the faint discoloration of age, and several floorboards complained beneath the hurried steps of nurses. A white coat might be worn over a kimono, and Western medicines stored in rooms lined with tatami, but the clinic belonged as much to the old neighborhood as it did to the changing city.
Across the narrow street lay a small park, little more than a quiet patch of earth between the surrounding homes. At its center stood an old wisteria tree, its branches spread over a wooden trellis. In spring, purple blossoms hung so thickly that the timber nearly vanished beneath them. Their fragrance drifted through the clinic windows, while fallen petals gathered along the road and beneath the patients’ sandals.
As the clinic’s reputation grew, its waiting room could no longer hold everyone who came. On clear mornings, elderly patients rested on the broad benches beneath the wisteria while waiting for their names to be called. The benches had been built by a carpenter whose infected hand Tsunade had once treated without charge, during a time when he possessed neither money nor a successful workshop. When his business later prospered, he returned with timber and tools, insisting that every chair, desk, shelf, and repaired floorboard was merely the settlement of an old debt.
Others repaid the clinic in gentler ways. Elderly patients who could not afford treatment arrived with wrapped lunches, jars of pickled vegetables, or bundles of firewood. One old soldier swept the road each morning. Widows seated beneath the wisteria told every neighbor who would listen about the young doctor who treated the poor with the same care she offered wealthy families.
The clinic had little money and no grand investors. Its cabinets were not always full, and rain still found its way through the western roof. Yet it continued to grow, supported by the hands of those it had once helped.
Brick and timber had built the clinic. Gratitude kept it standing.
Kindness, Tsunade often taught, was rarely given only once. When received with gratitude, it passed from one pair of hands to another, becoming kindness anew. It was a lesson Haruno Sakura—her young apprentice and the clinic’s most promising physician—had carried close to her heart.
At twenty-two years of age, Sakura was considered unusually young to oversee such a respected establishment. Some patients had initially looked at her pink hair, tied neatly at the nape of her neck, and doubted that someone so delicate could possess the authority of a senior physician. Their doubts rarely survived the first examination. Sakura was precise, demanding, and exceptionally perceptive. She could detect the beginnings of pneumonia before the lungs deteriorated, identify internal injuries from subtle bruising, and perform complicated procedures with hands that never trembled. Her voice could be gentle enough to soothe a frightened child and sharp enough to silence a stubborn patient.
That morning, Sakura stood beside the bed of the most important patient she had ever been entrusted to treat: Uchiha Itachi, the eldest son and acknowledged heir of the Uchiha clan.
He rested against a stack of white pillows, his long black hair falling loose over his shoulders. Illness had thinned his face and weakened a body once trained to carry the responsibilities of his name, sharpening the elegant lines of his cheekbones and deepening the shadows beneath his eyes. Yet frailty had done little to diminish his presence. Even confined to bed, Itachi held himself with quiet composure, every measured glance and graceful movement bearing the discipline expected of the man destined to lead one of the country’s most honored samurai families.
The room was small and sparsely furnished, but beneath his calm authority, it seemed less like a sickroom than a private audience chamber.
“You are frowning again, Doctor Haruno,” Itachi observed.
Sakura looked up from her notes. “That is because you are attempting to distract me.”
“I would never.”
“You knew perfectly well how I would react when I discovered that you had refused half your breakfast.”
For the briefest moment, his composed expression betrayed him. “I ate most of it.”
“You ate three spoonfuls.”
“Three,” Itachi replied with quiet dignity, “is considerably more than none.”
“That reasoning may serve you in clan negotiations, Lord Itachi. It will not serve you here.”
Sakura set the chart aside and checked his pulse. His condition had improved greatly in recent months, but she refused to be careless. When Tsunade had first recommended her to the Uchiha family, Itachi had been suffering from recurring fevers, severe fatigue, coughing, and intermittent bleeding. Several physicians had already treated him. Some had prescribed rest. Others had blamed a weakness of the constitution. One had suggested that the illness was an unavoidable consequence of injuries sustained during the war.
Sakura had disagreed. Sakura believed the damage to his lungs had been worsened by an infection left untreated for too long, compounded by years of relentless overexertion. Under her care, his condition had begun to stabilize. The fevers came less often, his appetite gradually returned, and he could now walk through the estate gardens without his strength failing him. Yet Sakura knew better than to mistake improvement for recovery. Illness could retreat quietly, only to return the moment vigilance weakened.
“You are improving,” Sakura said, keeping two fingers against the pulse at Itachi’s wrist, “but improvement is not permission to behave recklessly.”
Itachi rested calmly against the pillows. “I have done nothing reckless.”
Sakura glanced at the second hand of her watch before answering. “You attended a military council last week.”
“For less than an hour,” he replied without hesitation.
“You remained for three.”
“The matter concerned the security of the eastern provinces.” Itachi’s voice remained measured, as though he were explaining something entirely reasonable. “As heir, my absence would have been noticed.”
Sakura released his wrist and reached for the notes beside his bed. “And as your physician, I am telling you that duty will be of little use to the Uchiha family if you force your lungs into another collapse.”
Itachi studied her in silence. Men of rank twice her age might have faltered beneath that calm, unreadable gaze. Sakura merely dipped her brush into the ink.
“You will not attend another council until I approve it,” she continued.
One of his dark eyebrows rose. “Are you forbidding me?”
“Yes,” Sakura answered, writing the instruction into his medical record.
“You are aware,” Itachi said, a quiet note of authority entering his voice, “that you are speaking to the future head of the Uchiha clan.”
Sakura continued writing, her brush moving steadily across the page. She had seen senior officers fall silent beneath that tone, but it stirred not the slightest unease in her.
“I am aware,” she replied calmly, “that I am speaking to a patient who ignored medical instruction and then attempted to conceal it from me.”
For the briefest moment, amusement disturbed Itachi’s composed expression.
“The council was necessary,” he insisted.
“Your recovery is necessary,” Sakura countered.
“And if the clan requires me?”
Sakura’s brush stilled above the unfinished line. She turned toward him, the firmness in her expression softened by quiet concern. “Then the clan must learn patience. It cannot ask you to sacrifice the very health you will need to lead it.”
Itachi lowered his gaze, wearing the mild expression of a man who recognized defeat but remained entirely unrepentant. “You are remarkably severe, Doctor Haruno.”
“Only with remarkably stubborn patients,” Sakura replied, turning back to the open record.
The door slid open behind her. “You should listen to her.”
The voice was low and even, edged with the familiar impatience of someone who had witnessed such arguments before. Sakura’s brush hovered over the paper. A small drop of ink gathered at its tip, spreading into the beginning of a word she could no longer remember.
Uchiha Sasuke entered in a dark indigo kimono beneath a formal haori, the red-and-white fan of his clan displayed across his back. Though public sword-bearing had largely faded with the changing age, a blade still rested at his side—a privilege retained by the Uchiha for their service during the war and their continued role in protecting the imperial government. As the younger son of Fugaku, head of the main household, Sasuke carried fewer obligations than Itachi, though no less pride in the family name.
Whenever he visited his brother’s room, he followed nearly the same ritual. His attention went first to Itachi, searching for signs of fever or fatigue, and then to the medicines arranged beside the bed. He asked about the latest examination, quietly committed every dosage to memory, and remained close whenever Itachi coughed, as though determined to reach him before anyone else could. Sasuke rarely admitted to worry, but Sakura had long since learned to recognize it in the details.
His presence still unsettled her in ways she preferred not to examine too closely. She could face the future head of the Uchiha clan without the slightest intimidation, yet the sound of Sasuke’s voice was enough to scatter her thoughts across an unfinished page.
There was no sense in denying it. Uchiha Sasuke was the first man she had ever loved.
Perhaps it had begun before she even knew what to call the feeling—on the first day she entered the Uchiha estate.
She had arrived beneath a relentless winter rain.
The Uchiha compound stood behind tall stone walls in one of Tokyo’s most prestigious districts, its tiled roofs barely visible through the grey curtain of water. Sakura had been cold, nervous, and painfully conscious of the mud staining the hem of her modest kimono. Her fingers had tightened around her medical case as the great entrance gate opened.
The young man waiting beneath the shelter of the eaves was tall even then, lean and disciplined in posture, with the unmistakable features of the Uchiha—dark hair falling in damp strands around a face far too composed for his age, and strikingly handsome in a way that made her briefly forget the rain still clinging to her lashes.
He regarded her with dark, assessing eyes before stepping forward.
“You are the physician Lady Tsunade sent?”
Physician.
Not Lady Tsunade’s assistant. Not an inexperienced student who required supervision. Certainly not a maid carrying her teacher’s belongings.
“Yes, I am Haruno Sakura. Tsunade-sama asked me to tend to Lord Itachi,” she had introduced herself quietly, bowing despite the rain soaking through her sleeves.
Sasuke gave a brief nod in acknowledgment. “Uchiha Sasuke.”
Without further comment, he gestured for her to follow.
When she hesitated with the weight of her medical case, he stepped forward and took it from her hand as though it were the most natural thing in the world, then turned and led her into the estate without once remarking upon her age, her clothing, or the uncertainty she had failed to hide. It had been a small courtesy, perhaps one Sasuke himself had forgotten before the evening was over.
Sakura had not.
Love came later—or perhaps the feeling had only deepened into something she could no longer misname. It grew through brief conversations beside Itachi’s bed, through the rare moments when concern disturbed Sasuke’s reserved expression, and through the unwavering attention he gave whenever Sakura explained his brother’s condition. He never dismissed her judgment or made her repeat herself. With every quiet exchange, the small kindness of their first meeting became something far more dangerous.
Yet Sakura understood the distance between them.
The Uchiha had been powerful long before the war. For generations, their ancestors had served regional lords as warriors and advisers. Their forces had defended the capital during the rebellion, earning the family influence within military, political, and aristocratic circles. The Uchiha name did not merely command respect; it carried history, expectation, and alliances carefully preserved across generations.
Sakura, by contrast, was the daughter of ordinary townspeople. Her father had worked in a modest accounting office, while her mother accepted sewing from neighboring households to supplement their income. Both had died shortly after Sakura began her medical education, leaving her with grief, unpaid tuition, and every reason to abandon the future she had worked toward.
She might have done so had Tsunade not recognized her talent and taken responsibility for her education.
That generosity had given Sakura a profession, a purpose, and a place within rooms she might otherwise never have entered. It had not, however, changed the family into which she had been born.
A faint, sad smile touched her lips.
Love could cross the distance between two hearts. It could not erase the distance of lineage.
“Your brother refuses to follow instructions,” Sakura told Sasuke, as though it were a familiar report.
Sasuke glanced toward the bed, entirely unsurprised. “That sounds like him.”
Itachi raised one eyebrow. “You are hardly an authority on obedience.”
“I am not the one confined to bed.”
“You once continued training with a fractured rib.”
Sasuke’s expression remained perfectly composed. “I did not know it was fractured.”
“You knew it was injured.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“It became the same thing when you collapsed.”
The accusation and defense passed between them with the practiced rhythm of an argument repeated many times before. Sakura lowered her eyes to Itachi’s medical record, concealing the smile that threatened to appear.
When she looked up again, she found Sasuke watching her.
For the briefest moment, the severity left his expression. The faint softness in his eyes sent an unwelcome warmth into her cheeks, and Sakura quickly returned her attention to the page.
“I will adjust the medicine once more,” she said, grateful for the steadiness of her professional voice. “The coughing has diminished, but your lungs remain vulnerable. You must avoid cold air, prolonged exertion, and anything else you might attempt to redefine as necessary duty.”
“Understood,” Itachi replied with admirable solemnity.
Sakura dipped her brush into the ink. “And you must finish your meals.”
His solemnity faltered. Itachi turned toward his brother, as though expecting support. Sasuke folded his arms across his chest.
“Do not involve me,” he said. “She is right.”
“A cruel younger brother.”
“A troublesome older one.”
A quiet fondness rested beneath the insults, so familiar that neither seemed to notice it. Sakura did. She had rarely seen either brother display affection openly, but it appeared in moments such as this—in Sasuke’s vigilance, in Itachi’s gentle provocation, and in the ease with which they understood what the other would never say aloud.
She finished her notation and began returning her instruments to their case. “I will come again tomorrow morning.”
“You are leaving already?” Itachi asked.
“I have patients waiting at the clinic.”
Sakura reached for her medical case, but Sasuke stepped forward and lifted it before her fingers could close around the handle.
She blinked. “I can carry that.”
“I know,” Sasuke replied, already turning away with her medical case in hand.
Sakura frowned slightly. “Then why are you carrying it?”
“I will escort you.”
That made her pause. “Today is Thursday. You are supposed to be at the Imperial Palace after this.”
“There is no need for concern,” he said evenly, as if that alone resolved the matter.
She extended her hand for the case, but Sasuke made no move to return it.
His gaze shifted toward the grey sky beyond the veranda. “It will rain.”
“That is not a reason to miss your duties,” Sakura said, glancing toward the distant horizon. “The clinic is not far, and I brought an—”
Thunder rolled across the estate before she could finish. Silence followed.
From the bed, Itachi regarded them with unmistakable amusement. “It appears my brother has defeated you, Doctor Haruno.”
Sakura looked from the darkening sky to Sasuke, who stood waiting with her medical case already in hand.
Only in argument, she thought.
In every matter that truly counted, she had surrendered months ago.
Sasuke walked beside her beneath a black umbrella. Beyond the Uchiha estate, the streets were broad and orderly, bordered by the stone walls of noble residences and the homes of government officials. Rain whispered against the tiled roofs before gathering strength, gradually veiling the road in silver.
Sakura lifted the hem of her kimono away from the damp ground. Sasuke carried her medical case in one hand and the umbrella in the other, forcing them closer than propriety ordinarily allowed.
They did not touch.
They came dangerously close.
Beneath the umbrella, the world narrowed to the space between their shoulders. The rain blurred the distant houses, leaving only the muted rhythm of their footsteps and the water streaming along the road. Whenever the wind shifted, Sasuke angled the umbrella farther toward Sakura. Before long, the sleeve of his haori had darkened with rain.
She noticed. She also pretended not to.
To ask him to protect himself would mean acknowledging how carefully he was protecting her, and neither of them seemed prepared for that conversation.
“You do not have to escort me whenever the weather changes,” Sakura said.
“You nearly fell on the estate steps last month,” Sasuke said, his gaze still fixed ahead, though his grip on the umbrella tightened slightly as he recalled it.
“There was ice,” Sakura replied at once, lifting her chin in mild protest, though the memory made her fingers unconsciously flex around the edge of her sleeve.
“You were carrying too much.”
“I am a physician,” she said, glancing sideways at him now, brows faintly drawn. “Carrying medical supplies is generally expected of me.”
“You could allow someone to assist you.” Sasuke’s tone remained even, but his eyes shifted briefly toward her—quick, assessing, as if checking whether she would actually agree.
Sakura let out a small breath through her nose, somewhere between a sigh and a scoff. “And acquire a reputation as a helpless woman?”
At that, her mouth curved faintly, though she tried to hide it by looking away toward the rain.
“No one who has met you would make that mistake.”
Sasuke said it without hesitation. His expression did not change, but his hand adjusted the umbrella again—subtly angling it further toward her side, as if the words themselves had been an unspoken reassurance.
The answer came so simply that she nearly missed its meaning.
Sakura looked at him more fully, but Sasuke continued facing the road, apparently unaware that he had said anything unusual. Warmth rose beneath her cheeks despite the chill in the air.
“You are improving,” she remarked, a faint smile tugging at her lips as she glanced up from the path.
His eyes shifted briefly toward her, sharp and questioning. “At what?”
“Conversation,” Sakura said lightly.
“Was I poor at it before?”
“Terrible.”
A faint crease appeared between his brows, as though he were genuinely considering the assessment. “Hn.”
Sakura’s smile widened, amused despite herself. “Perhaps you still require treatment.”
“I am not your patient,” he replied at once, his tone flat, though there was no real edge to it.
“No,” she agreed softly, her gaze lingering on him for a moment longer than necessary. “You are not.”
Something in her voice made him glance at her again, but Sakura had already turned her attention toward the road.
By the time they reached the eastern quarter, the rain had strengthened into a steady downpour. Sasuke stopped beneath the trellis across from the clinic, where the wisteria vines offered another layer of shelter, and held out her medical case.
“Thank you.” Sakura accepted it from him. “For the escort as well."
He did not leave. Sakura waited, one hand resting upon the handle of her case. Rain gathered along the edge of the trellis and fell in a silver curtain around them.
“Will you return to the estate tomorrow?” Sasuke asked.
“At nine,” Sakura replied, giving a small nod to reassure him.
He gave a slight nod, but the tension in his expression did not ease.
Sakura had come to recognize the many shapes of his concern: the questions repeated beneath the guise of practicality, the medicines he memorized, the way his attention sharpened at the smallest change in Itachi’s breathing. Yet now he stood unusually still, his gaze fixed upon the rain beyond her shoulder.
“Sasuke?” she prompted gently.
His jaw tightened. “Will he recover?”
The question was spoken quietly, almost lost beneath the rain. Sakura’s fingers curled around the handle of her case.
Sasuke finally looked at her, and the carefully guarded expression she knew so well had disappeared. For the first time, he was not the proud son of the Uchiha household or the disciplined swordsman who never allowed uncertainty to show.
He was only a younger brother frightened of losing someone he loved.
“You have told us that he is improving,” Sasuke continued. “I need to know that it is not merely false hope.”
The vulnerability in his voice struck somewhere painfully familiar. Sakura remembered waiting beside her own parents, searching every physician’s face for the smallest reassurance and fearing what their silences meant. She remembered how desperately she had wanted someone to promise that the people she loved would remain with her.
She would not offer Sasuke a promise built upon kindness alone.
“A physician should never guarantee what the body may refuse to give,” she said carefully. “Itachi’s condition is serious, and his recovery will not be quick. There may be setbacks.”
Sasuke’s expression hardened, though she could see the fear beneath it.
Sakura stepped closer.
“But his condition is not hopeless,” she continued. “He is responding to the treatment. His strength is returning, and every day he follows my instructions gives us another advantage.”
“He does not always follow them.”
Despite herself, Sakura’s mouth curved faintly. “Then you must help me make certain that he does.”
The brief warmth between them faded as she met his eyes again.
“I cannot promise you an easy recovery,” she said. “But I can promise that I will not abandon him. I will give him everything I possess—every measure of my knowledge, every skill Lady Tsunade has taught me, and every effort I am capable of making.”
Sasuke watched her in silence.
Many physicians had entered the Uchiha estate eager for its wealth, influence, or recommendation. Sakura had asked for none of them. She had spent sleepless nights studying Itachi’s symptoms, altered medicines when progress faltered, and challenged the future head of the clan without hesitation whenever he endangered his health.
There was no ambition in her expression now. Only conviction.
Sasuke lowered his head, not quite a bow, but something more vulnerable than Sakura had ever received from him.
“Thank you, Sakura,” he said quietly, his voice softened in a way she rarely heard from him.
Her breath caught—only then did she realize he had addressed her by her given name again.
“For coming to us,” he continued. His voice remained steady, though his eyes revealed what pride would not permit him to say. “Please save my brother.”
Sakura held his gaze beneath the flowering wisteria.
“I will do everything within my power.”
It was not a promise of certainty. Neither medicine nor life allowed such promises. It was a promise of trust—offered by a nobleman who had finally surrendered his fear into another person’s hands, and accepted by the humble physician who would carry it as carefully as a life.
Sakura bowed and crossed the rain-darkened road toward the clinic. Only after the door had closed behind her did she press one hand against her chest. Her heart was still beating too quickly, but the softness in her expression had given way to fierce determination.
She would save Uchiha Itachi.
Not only for the family who had entrusted him to her.
But also for Sasuke.