"Is it my kind, beautiful, lovely, and adorable Miss Yamanaka?"
Sakura, wearing a white coat, tilted her head and twirled the pen in her hand.
"Smooth talker. If you were a boy, who knows how many people you'd have fooled."
The hands covering Sakura's eyes were released. A figure clad in a short, purple crop top and a net-like bodysuit accentuating a lovely physique entered her view.
"But I finally caught you! Sakura-chan!"
Ino, with her yellow long hair, opened her arms and enveloped Sakura's head in her already developing ample bosom.
"Don't make me sound like some rare summon, Ino."
Inhaling the faint chrysanthemum scent from her friend, Sakura wrapped her arms around Ino's waist with its soft curves.
Her mischievous hands playfully pinched her friend's soft little belly, eliciting a cute protest.
"Mou, do you know how hard it is to see you even once?"
Ino, releasing Sakura, clung to her arm, stubbornly planting herself beside her.
Judging by her travel-worn appearance, she must have come straight to find her after returning to the village from a mission.
They had missed each other when Sakura returned from the border. By the time Ino hurried back, Sakura had already left for the Sunagakure mission.
As if toyed with by fate, every time Ino wanted to find her friend, she would be neatly scheduled to be away.
– It's like being caught in an Infinite Tsukuyomi!
"Alright, alright. After I get off work, I'll treat the lovely Miss Yamanaka to something good. Would you grace me with your presence?"
Sakura reached out and booped the girl's high nose bridge, making her head jerk back.
"Hmph, that's more like it. But it'll have to wait for next time."
Ino said, "This time when I returned from my mission, my mother decided to invite my teammates for a meal. And she happened to hear about a certain poor soul keeping an empty house, so she specially told me to invite you."
Clearly, the well-informed Mrs. Yamanaka must have known about those two unreliable parents of Sakura's abandoning their daughter for their own romantic getaway. Feeling sorry for her, she had her daughter Ino extend the invitation.
"Are you kidding me? 'Keeping an empty house'? I call this being a happy single aristocrat!"
Sakura put her hands on her hips, her beautiful emerald-green eyes glaring straight at Ino.
So what if there was no one at home to cook? During this time, Sakura had practically eaten her way through every restaurant in Konoha. She couldn't be happier!
"Just tell me, are you coming or not!"
Ino tilted her head with youthful charm, her blue eyes full of teasing, the meaning just as clear.
– You can fool your friends, but don't fool yourself.
"... I'm coming!"
After a moment's silence, Sakura accepted Ino's invitation amidst the latter's light laughter.
After sending Ino away and staying until Konoha Hospital closed, Sakura finally took off her white coat and headed for the Yamanaka Flower Shop.
The girl knocked on the door, handed a gift to Inoichi, made a round in the kitchen to greet Mrs. Yamanaka, then nonchalantly picked up a mandarin orange in the living room to eat, even snatching the remote from Shikamaru on the sofa to change the channel, not acting like an outsider at all.
"By the way, you guys have been so busy."
Sakura looked at Shikamaru with some emotion. "When I returned from the border, I stayed in the village for a whole month and couldn't even meet Ino."
"Ah, it's because we all got promoted to Chunin."
Shikamaru shook his head, sighing ruefully.
In the Chunin Exams destroyed two and a half years ago, only Sakura, Sasuke, and Shikamaru among their graduating class were promoted to Chunin during that exam.
However, the following year's exams held in Sunagakure released a large number of passing slots. Ino and Choji became Chunin then.
"If Asuma-sensei hadn't been summoned by the Daimyo of the Land of Fire, we'd probably be busy for another four or five months."
Choji shook his head helplessly, a look of distress on his face as he grabbed chips and tossed them into his mouth.
As the Ino-Shika-Cho of Konoha's new generation, he, along with Ino and Shikamaru, had been targeted by a nearly maniacally short-staffed Tsunade, who exploited their labor in every possible way.
Often, while on missions outside, new missions would arrive via messenger hawks. Later, with Ino contracting Katsuyu, the real-time communication slug became a mission dispatch center, using the three of them like workhorses.
It drove even Choji himself to sigh that he should have just gone back to selling barbecue. At least barbecue wouldn't call you in the middle of the night to assign tasks.
"Everyone's having a hard time, huh."
Sakura went along with Choji's words, agreeing.
Everyone in this room was at least Chunin-level. Even in a great village like Konoha, they were considered the backbone.
Looking on the bright side, their busyness was at least a sign of the village's good operational condition.
"The busiest one is probably you, Sakura, being at the border and all!"
Ino leaned over and patted Sakura's only slightly developed chest. "Supplies must have been really scarce there, right? You haven't grown much at all."
"Ino, you!"
Sakura's hair practically bristled. Gnashing her teeth, she pounced on Ino, pinning her on the sofa.
After playing around for a bit, a call from Mrs. Yamanaka in the dining room reached them, and Sakura and Ino finally stopped.
…
The style of meals at the Yamanaka household was quite different from Mikoto's and Sakura's own mother's.
As the only oil-producing region among the Five Great Nations, coupled with its rich and fresh local ingredients, the dietary habits of people in the Land of Fire mostly leaned towards salty fried foods.
Mrs. Yamanaka's cooking skills were also excellent, but her flavor choices went against tradition.
Cheese stew, cheese-fried shrimp balls, braised mandarin fish, candied apples... Her ingredient choices often involved fermented products and pickles, with flavors leaning towards sweet and rich.
This attempt was quite novel, making Sakura, who had been eating street food for two months straight, light up with excitement. She competed with Ino, Shikamaru, and Choji for the dishes.
The dinner was enjoyed by hosts and guests alike.
After the meal, the Yamanaka couple cleaned up in the kitchen, while Shikamaru and Choji sprawled on the engawa, rubbing their bellies.
The evening breeze squeezed through the flower shop below into the second-floor living room, bringing wafts of floral fragrance.
Sakura and Ino sat facing each other, playing a game of Othello.
"So, how is training with Tsunade-sensei? Strict?"
Sakura asked her friend casually, picking up a piece and placing it right where Ino wanted to move.
A certain mischievous pirate cheated by using future sight to see Ino's moves in advance, setting traps for her.
"Not just strict, it's severe!"
Ino's already furrowed brows, upon recalling Tsunade's instruction, relaxed.
Setting aside the tyrannosaur-like teaching methods, as one of the Sannin famed throughout the Ninja World, Tsunade's legacy wasn't so easily inherited.
Not everyone could be like the original Sakura, mastering Medical Ninjutsu basics and even learning Chakra-Enhanced Strength in just two and a half years of training.
While training her Yamanaka Clan's secret techniques, Ino also had to balance Medical Ninjutsu. Being able to use the Mystical Palm Technique was already her limit.
"By the way, when I used my merits to exchange for Ninjutsu from the village, I found two new A-Rank Ninjutsu on the Scroll of Seals!" The yellow-haired girl touched her fingertips together, blinking at Sakura.
"So, you exchanged for them?"
Sakura placed her final piece, capturing all of Ino's white pieces.
The recently added A-Rank Ninjutsu were only the Haki techniques personally classified and recorded into the Scroll of Seals by Tsunade.
The reason for rating them as A-Rank Forbidden Techniques was mainly considering the fragile bodies of Ninja being prone to injury during Haki training, combined with a comprehensive assessment of their power.
"Not yet, because I saw the developer's name..."
Her lively blue eyes carefully glanced at Sakura through the corner.
"You sly girl, you're really cunning."
Sakura shook her head in amusement, teasing, "Don't tell me inviting me to eat was also for this."
"How could it be! It was my mother who invited you!"
Ino pouted, putting on a 'how could you wrong me like this, I won't be happy without a new technique' act.
"Alright, I assume you've learned about the cost of the Forbidden Techniques. Let me teach you then!"
"Yay, Sakura's the best! Mwah~"