Chapter 167: Twenty Years Is Too Long — Seize the Day
Sakura lay in bed and watched the moon through the window beside her.
Pale silver light fell across her face. She stared at it, thoughts drifting.
Technically this world shouldn't have had a moon at all. The one hanging up there was the Six Paths Sage's Chibaku Tensei — a constructed body, not a natural satellite. If that was really the work of a Six Paths-level existence, was it the same size as the moon from her previous life?
And if it was — just how strong did you have to be to do that?
Or maybe the fights in canon had been scaled back considerably from what Six Paths power actually looked like.
"Why aren't you asleep?"
Sakura asked without looking away from the window.
"Heh heh... this is the first time anyone's ever stayed over at my place. Makes me kind of happy."
Naruto's voice came from somewhere near the floor beside the bed.
She'd ended up here after all. Naruto's apartment had one bedroom and no couch, so after giving her the bed he'd laid out a floor mat with complete and unquestioned willingness — no argument, no negotiating.
"When you got back just now," Sakura said, "did you happen to see Hinata?"
A pause.
"Hinata?" Naruto's voice carried genuine confusion. "What does she have to do with anything?"
"Didn't Hinata go to the front with you?"
His sleep-hatted head appeared over the edge of the bed as he peered up at her.
"Hinata doesn't go to the front lines."
Sakura looked at him. The full depth of his obliviousness sat there in front of her and she had no words for it.
I genuinely cannot tell if this boy is emotionally dense or just running on a completely different frequency.
A girl that good had been quietly carrying a torch for him for seven or eight years, and he had absolutely no idea. In the original story it took the original Sakura — in the gentlest possible tone, with the most unambiguous possible words — to finally make him give up, before he could turn around and actually see the person who'd been right behind him the whole time.
Have I been too easy on him? Or did I just not say it clearly enough last time?
Sakura glanced down at the gold-haired idiot grinning up at her from the floor.
"What are you staring at?"
"Staring at you, so what."
Naruto said it almost reflexively, like the words came out before his brain caught up.
"Say that again and find out."
Sakura's eyes sharpened.
"Try me and di—"
The next morning arrived.
Naruto swam up out of a foggy, heavy sleep, head thick and dull. He sat up from his floor mat, shook himself, and immediately looked toward the bed.
Neatly folded covers. No one there.
She was already gone.
Something small and quiet sank in his chest.
"You're up."
A familiar voice came from the doorway.
Naruto turned. There she was — fully dressed, arms crossed, leaning in the frame with an expression of profound mild irritation.
Huh? Why was she looking at him like that?
"I'm heading out. I boiled two eggs and left them in the kitchen — eat them."
"See you."
Sakura turned and left without ceremony.
Direct approach isn't working. Fine. Indirect route it is.
What she needed was to get Naruto to actually look at Hinata. Create the right conditions, put them in the same space, and let Hinata do what Hinata was clearly capable of doing. Seven or eight years of quiet, steady devotion — that was more than enough to move someone, once he was actually paying attention.
The question is just getting his eyes off me long enough.
"I'll walk you out!"
Naruto scrambled off the floor.
"By the way," Sakura said, already heading for the door, "everyone's in the village right now for once. We should set up a group dinner while we actually can."
She made it sound like a passing thought.
"Yeah, definitely!"
Naruto was constitutionally incapable of turning down the prospect of a group gathering. He agreed before she even finished the sentence.
"Where are we going?"
He followed her to the entrance, lacing up his sandals.
"Sasuke's place. His house is big enough for everyone." Sakura kept her voice easy. "Plus he skipped the last one. If we show up at his house, he can't exactly refuse."
And while everyone's together, I can quietly maneuver Naruto and Hinata into the same orbit.
She was already running the list: Shikamaru, Ino, TenTen, Shino, Sasuke. The reliable ones. People she could brief in advance.
Shino and Sasuke weren't exactly love-connection specialists, but they were smart enough to execute simple instructions.
Lee, Kiba, and Choji, on the other hand—
No. They're not getting briefed. That information would not be safe.
Neji was reliable, but this particular operation needed to stay off his radar too.
Codename: Plan A.
Short name. Elegant. A short name indicated a tight, elegant plan.
Naruto, completely unaware that he was about to be delivered into someone else's hands, waved her off with a cheerful grin.
"Stop here. You're in your pajamas, you'll catch a cold."
Sakura waved without looking back and kept walking.
Step one: find Shikamaru.
Behind her, in the shadowed gap between buildings off the side street — Sasuke.
He'd learned last night from Neji, by chance, that Naruto was back. He'd come by early to find him for training.
He had not expected this.
Sakura walking out of Naruto's building in the early morning. That was what he'd found instead.
His Sharingan activated without conscious decision — three tomoe spinning, then pulling together into sharp angles, petals, the new pattern that had emerged that night on the battlefield.
Mangekyo.
The storm in his chest was not something he had a clean name for. He watched the pink figure until it turned the corner.
Above, on the landing, Naruto had gone back inside.
Naruto.
Sasuke's fist connected with the wall.
The skin split. Blood welled. He didn't notice.
A sound on the walkway above — Naruto's head appeared over the railing, looking toward the alley. Sasuke was already gone.
Naruto landed in the alley. Looked around. Nothing.
Did I imagine someone?
He scratched his head and went back upstairs.
Deep in the sewer-dark cage beneath the surface, two enormous red eyes opened.
The mouth that could swallow a dozen people whole curved into something that should not have been called a smile.
Interesting. Humans are so very interesting.
The laughter that followed was the kind that made the dark feel colder.
"Sakura!"
Ino's flying tackle arrived right on schedule.
Sakura had learned to just open her arms. The familiar purple blur hit her squarely in the chest a half-second later.
Ino immediately assessed the situation with her cheek and found the usual state of affairs.
Flat as ever. Somehow still comforting.
Whatever accumulated misery the Yamanaka flower shop's five AM start had produced evaporated on contact.
Ino: fully restored, ready to operate.
Sakura patted the girl clinging to her with an expression of resigned patience.
This one might actually be in love with me. I refuse to think about that.
She can't act on it anyway. No use dwelling on it.
"Auntie Keiko, I'm borrowing Ino for a bit."
She'd come straight here from Naruto's place. Time was a factor — the longer this went on, the more unpredictable the variables got.
Naruto had his eyes on the wrong person. Sasuke was developing complications she didn't like the look of. And Kushina and Ino both had a habit of falling asleep on her arms.
Is this "Sakura's Love Story: The Fanfic"? Because someone needs to fix the routing on all of these.
I just want to be a ninja. A quiet, unremarkable ninja. Why is everyone magnetized to me? What am I, the village succubus?
And if this doesn't get resolved, Boruto Uzumaki and Inojin Yamanaka won't exist. Those are two human beings who need to exist.
Sarada... okay, Sarada can potentially not exist. I've said my piece on that subject.
"Of course, any time Sakura asks." Ino's mother smiled from behind the counter — a warm, easy woman who made everything look effortless.
"Yes! Freedom!"
Ino ripped off her apron and threw it like she was discarding a burden she'd been waiting all morning to shed.
She wasn't wrong. She'd been up since five — because of an order for a wedding the previous day, a full bulk delivery of roses, each one needing to be individually unwrapped and coaxed open by hand so the petals wouldn't be crushed in transit. Her fingers had been doing that for three hours straight.
"This girl..." Mrs. Yamanaka retrieved the abandoned apron from the floor and watched her daughter latch back onto the pink-haired girl with a long, quiet exhale.
That child has it bad.
Sakura was exceptional, certainly. But perhaps a gentle, oblique word to the wise wouldn't go amiss.
"So where are we going?" Ino fell into step beside her, arm looped through Sakura's as naturally as breathing.
"I was thinking, since everyone's in the village for once, we should do a proper group dinner."
"A dinner? Yes! Absolutely yes!"
Same response as Naruto. Ino had the same instincts when it came to social occasions — immediate enthusiasm, no deliberation.
"There's also a secondary objective."
Sakura glanced around, confirmed no one was paying attention, and leaned close to Ino's ear.
The cheerful animation on Ino's face gradually settled into something less certain. By the end she was visibly uncomfortable.
"Sakura. You want to get Naruto together with Hinata?"
She looked at her friend with an expression somewhere between baffled and pained.
"Yes." Sakura nodded as though this were straightforward.
Ino looked at her for a moment like she was checking for a fever.
"Sakura. Hinata is the Hyuga heir."
"And Naruto is..."
She hesitated.
Sakura came back to earth.
Right.
Hinata Hyuga — heiress to one of Konoha's oldest clans, a lineage with the Byakugan running through every branch, with history and reputation and institutional weight behind it.
And Naruto was... Naruto.
His actual identity would be more than sufficient to satisfy any clan's requirements. But no one knew that. To the world, he was just a genin with unusual potential and zero pedigree.
Even at his current ceiling — a particularly strong tokubetsu jonin — he was a mote of dust against the Hyuga institution. Even if she quietly restored his status as the Fourth's son, the clan elders would not simply hand over their heir on that basis alone. Not without the reputation, the accomplishments, the unignorable public record that canon-Naruto had built over years of visible effort.
The Fourth was dead. That name meant history, not leverage.
Sakura exhaled.
I got ahead of myself. Plan A is dead on arrival.
She thought at speed.
...But wait.
A different angle.
The original story had Naruto accidentally glimpse Hinata bathing at a distance — and then, bafflingly, tell her about it to her face. That had been a turning point. Embarrassing and chaotic and very Naruto, but it had done something.
The manufactured proximity didn't need to happen all at once. Assigned missions together. Shared objectives. The same unglamorous time-on-task, day after day, until the paper-thin wall between them dissolved on its own.
And the clan?
For Naruto's future happiness — fine. I'll take that on too.
She already knew that the River Country front line operation was coming. Supply corps departure, scheduled in the near future. She'd bring it to the Hokage herself — include her in the deployment. Two birds: knock out Kakuzu on the way through, and stack another layer of verifiable achievement, reinforced reputation, and political goodwill on top of what she already had.
For the Hokage path.
The Hyuga clan could trace their roots back centuries. But the Third was seventy years old. He had three years left in him at most, at a generous estimate.
Fifth Hokage.
Who else?
She thought about what that would mean for Naruto, for Hinata, for the path she was clearing. She thought about Boruto needing to exist.
I'm going to all this trouble for you. You'd better appreciate it.
Your godmother is going to be the Fifth Hokage, and you are going to be born, and you are absolutely going to call me Godmother.
The resolution to become Hokage faster — for this, specifically — struck her as both absurd and completely logical.
Waiting until he's twenty and finally figures it out? Twenty years is too long. Seize the day.
Plan B: active.
Ino watched her friend go from quietly deflated to visibly re-energized in about thirty seconds, without any apparent external cause.
What just happened in there?
Sakura looked up — and her expression immediately fell.
There, standing directly behind Ino, was a very familiar Uchiha clan symbol.
I got so caught up in Naruto I forgot about the red-eye problem.
She looked at Ino.
...Actually.
The Yamanaka clan would probably be very enthusiastic about adding a Sharingan to the family line.
Maybe there's an angle here.
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