"Thanks for the business!"
The shop's entrance bell jingled as Sakura strolled out of the hair salon that had sprung up just a few houses down from her home in the new Uchiha district. A shame, really— it would all be flattened in a few months when Pain came calling.
As she exited the shop, Sakura paused in front of the tall mirror set into the display window— placed there so passersby could catch their reflection and realise it might be time for a haircut. She turned her head forty-five degrees and winked at herself, then pulled an array of different expressions.
"Whoa," Sakura told her reflection. "I look… kinda handsome."
Much of Sakura's long, silky pink hair had been badly singed when she'd nearly taken a dip in the lava below the Mōryō's boss arena. The Creation Rebirth Technique hadn't regrown the burnt strands, so she'd opted for a haircut, to get rid of the blackened ends and make everything look nice and presentable again.
Except… there was much more damage than she'd bargained for, so the male stylist with the breezy voice had trimmed her hair a bit shorter than the original Shippūden-era Sakura's cut. With her flattened chest, the mirror showed someone who might easily be mistaken for a cute femboy, or at the very least, a super mega lesbian… which she now admittedly was.
"Should I use the Creation Rebirth Technique again and focus on my scalp to regrow my hair?" Sakura mused out loud. "No, that's a bad idea… I don't want to go bald by the time I'm thirty…"
It had been a while since Sakura had a proper break, and she wasn't quite sure how to fill the rest of the afternoon. With her trip to Takumi Village looming the next day— to commission a new sword using her remaining chakra metal— there was no time for any grand undertakings.
And so, Sakura decided to wander aimlessly through the streets of Konoha.
It felt oddly liberating to walk without being gawked at or catcalled— almost as if a heavy weight had been lifted from her shoulders… both metaphorically and literally. After walking around for a while, she decided she deserved a treat, so she stepped into the Dango Shop and ordered her usual three skewers of tricolour dango.
"Mmh!" Sakura moaned, pressing a hand to her cheek as she chewed and swallowed a bite of a green, sugary dumpling. "Sho good~!"
Out of the matcha green, plain white and cherry blossom-flavoured pink dango, she liked to save the pink ones for last.
Sakura's a bit quirky like that~ she's not like the other girls~.
"Sho good~!" echoed Mitarashi Anko from a few tables behind Sakura, her mouth also clearly still full. "I'm in heaven~!"
Sakura glanced over her shoulder at the busty woman practically inhaling her mitarashi dango, tearing the sticky rice balls from their skewers with sharp teeth and sending droplets of sweet soy glaze flying in every direction.
At the thought of what Anko would look like in the future, Sakura's ravenous appetite mysteriously vanished.
"Oi, you lot still hungry?" came Chōji's voice from the roadside, just outside the Dango Shop. "I could do with some dessert…"
"Seriously, Chōji?" Ino's nagging voice rang out. "You literally spent the last hour stuffing your face with BBQ pork."
"Well, why not, it's been a while since the last time we came here," replied Shikamaru, as he ducked into the shop, followed closely by Ino and Chōji. "Oi, pops!" he called out loudly. "The usual, got it?"
Sakura stood to greet the Ino-Shika-Cho trio, only to realise her mouth was glued shut with the sticky, gooey, glutinous sweet dumpling made of rice flour. She couldn't speak at all!
"Will do!" responded the Dango Shop's owner from the kitchen. "Coming right up!"
To Sakura's surprise, Ino, Shikamaru, and Chōji walked straight past her without so much as a glance at her, before settling themselves at the neighbouring table. They couldn't recognise her…? Then again, she did look rather different than usual… so wasn't this the perfect occasion to listen in on some gossip?
Sakura giggled to herself inwardly.
"I heard Team 7 returned from the Land of Demons early in the afternoon today," said Shikamaru. "Haven't had the chance to see them yet, though."
"So much meat…" Chōji said dreamily. "I wonder what they taste like…"
Ino shot him a strange look. What sort of meat was he thinking about, exactly…?
"Oh, by the way," Ino chirped, "you'll never guess who dropped by the shop to buy red roses…"
"Asuma," said Shikamaru immediately.
"Asuma-sensei," said Chōji at the same time. "For Kurenai-sensei, right? Everyone knows."
Ino looked disappointed.
Sakura popped a white dango into her mouth and began counting the months on her fingers.
Sarutobi Mirai was born towards the end of autumn, after the Fourth Shinobi World War had wrapped up, following Naruto's seventeenth birthday in October. But it was only September now, and Naruto was still fifteen. And babies took nine months to gestate, which meant…
It had been a while since her last maths class. Sakura ran out of fingers, so she started snapping her dango skewers into small sticks to help her count the months of the upcoming year.
"No way…" she mumbled through a sticky mouthful of plain white dango. "Asuma's not the real father!?"
Weren't the Twelve Guardian Ninja arc and the Akatsuki Suppression Mission coming up soon? Asuma was about to die, yet the timeline of his daughter's conception didn't quite add up— how could he have got his girlfriend pregnant if he was already a three- or four-month-old corpse?
Sakura hadn't even bought a present for Naruto's upcoming sixteenth birthday yet!
According to her sticky calculations (no pun intended), the earliest Sarutobi Mirai could have been conceived was January, well after Asuma's death… assuming his death was just around the corner. Could it be that Kurenai was cheating on him? Or, in the haze of grief, had she let herself get knocked up on the rebound by some random bloke?
Was Shikamaru the real father!?
"Gllk!"
Sakura's face went blue as she clawed at her throat.
In her past life, Sakura had been quite fond of the female:"large insertions$" tag on certain websites for gentlemen of culture, but this was ridiculous! What would the other transmigrators think if she died choking on her favourite snack? Dango was delicious, yes, but it was also a serious choking hazard…
"I've got you!" said Anko, quickly darting up behind her and performing the Heimlich manoeuvre on her. A moment later, Sakura coughed up the chunk of white dango that had gone down the wrong pipe. "There, all better?" Anko added, winking. "Don't worry about it, handsome— happens to me all the time."
On second thought, perhaps the lack of clear time indicators in the show had skewed Sakura's expectations of the timeline. There were probably gaps of weeks— or maybe even months— between major arcs.
"Thanks!" Sakura wheezed, gulping down some tea before reaching for the last of her pink dango, clearly not having learned her lesson.
The Ino-Shika-Cho trio glanced briefly in her direction, before resuming their conversation.
"Speaking of dating," said Shikamaru, "my mum's been nagging me to find a girlfriend again. Such a drag."
"Me too," Chōji sighed despondently.
As much as Chōji hated it when people called him out for being chubby, he knew very well women weren't into cuddly, pleasantly plump lads such as himself. At least, the good-looking ones weren't.
"Got your eye on anyone, then?" asked Ino, always eager to talk about love. "Maybe that pretty Sand kunoichi who keeps visiting the Hokage residence, hmm?"
Ino was referring to Temari, who seized every opportunity to leave Sunagakure and visit her brother Gaara, now being kept in secret in Konohagakure. Temari often ran into Shikamaru at the Hokage Residence, as Tsunade was grooming him to succeed his father as Jōnin Commander.
"Nah, too much of a drag," said Shikamaru lazily. "I was thinking of asking out Sakura, actually."
Chōji, who had just shovelled a heap of anmitsu straight from the bowl and into his mouth the moment the proprietor had set it down, immediately started choking.
"She's way out of your league, Shikamaru!" he spluttered. "There's no way she'll say yes!"
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Shikamaru said wryly. "But nah, me and Dad came up with this strategy, see— girls like Sakura, they're usually dead easy... or so Dad says. He even gave them a name: practice girls. Not the sort you bring home to meet your parents, but the ones you use to practise your dating skills on, for the keeper you're actually after. Brilliant, huh?"
Shikamaru figured that, best-case scenario, Sakura would say yes and he'd have a bit of fun with her before breaking things off. Worst case, she'd say no, and he could go back to his mother with a sigh and say he tried— buying himself a little more time before the marriage nagging resumed.
It was a win-win situation!
"Ugh, I didn't know you were such a pig, Shikamaru," Ino said, wrinkling her nose. "But that stuck-up cow who stole my boobs definitely deserves some karma. She's always looking down on us for being weaklings, too— you just have to let me know how it turns out, 'kay?"
So much for sisterhood.
Sakura's vision began to blur, her eyes welling with tears and her bottom lip trembling uncontrollably. Was that really what her comrades thought of her? A bitch in heat who'd spread her legs for anyone? Just because she was a bit bustier than the other girls?
If it were the Ino and Shikamaru who had already lived through Asuma's death, who truly knew what loss felt like, they never would've said something so hurtful, not even to make fun of Sakura behind her back. But right now, they were still just immature brats who thought it was all just fun and games.
"It's like you're one of the boys with the locker room talk," Chōji guffawed. "You even have the chest to match—"
Chōji couldn't finish his sentence, as Ino kicked him in the family jewels under the table.
"Oi, watch the elbows!" Shikamaru snapped, as Sakura stood up and stormed past him with an unreadable expression on her face. "Honestly, people have no manners these days."
Sakura slammed the money for her sweets onto the counter and turned to leave.
"Oi!" the shop owner called out to her. "You didn't leave enough!"
Mortified, Sakura turned back, counted out the last of the ryō from her purse and dropped the coins onto the counter before running off. It turned out the perverted proprietor had always done her a special favour by quietly removing the tax from her bill, but with her short hair and washboard chest, he hadn't recognized her.
The moment she was out of sight, Sakura used Tsunade's special Transformation Jutsu to restore her sultry, O-cup figure with her long, luscious hair. Then, feeling every bit the fraud she was, she strode off as quickly as dignity would allow to the Third Training Ground to find Naruto.
Naruto would never be this cruel to her, she thought ruefully, wiping the corners of her reddened eyes. At least she hadn't worn any mascara today— that was the only silver lining she could find.
…
Sakura sighed wistfully as she approached the training grounds.
To think she had been so happy just half an hour earlier to glimpse within herself a shadow of her former male self, which she had ignored for so long, as her heart had gradually turned into a woman's… yet now, she wished she never had to look in a mirror until her body had fully recovered.