Chapter 43

During lunch, I tracked down Hinata among the students on top of the Hokage Monument. She was eating and laughing with Shikamaru and Chouji and a couple other students.

I tapped her shoulder to get her attention. "Hinata, I heard that you helped Ino clean my apartment while I was in the hospital."

"Oh, yes, um, I hope I did a good job. I mostly just tried to clean up your bookshelf. I hope you don't mind that, um, I looked at some of your notebooks while you were gone," Hinata admitted embarrassedly.

"It was fine, Hinata. I just wanted to know...You didn't take anything from my refrigerator, did you?" I asked. Shikamaru was already eyeing me suspiciously and I wanted to put off explaining my long absence to anyone at the Academy for as long as possible.

"I remember that I was about to open your refrigerator and then I remember waking up in your bed. And by then everyone else had taken care of it already. I don't think I took anything out though," Hinata said, struggling to remember.

"That's okay, Hinata. It probably got tossed out with everything else. I just wanted to say thanks for cleaning my apartment. And please, explain to them the situation so they don't get the wrong idea," I said, bowing out of the small circle of students.

During what had previously been called kunoichi studies, I glanced over to where Ino and Sakura were sitting. Neither one of the girls were acting suspiciously. Naruto was sitting behind the two of them, exhibiting subtle signs of lovesickness. "Poor guy. I'm surprised it started so early. Oh, well, not my problem."

After a couple months of being disallowed from physical training, my training weights felt a lot heavier. I had been too busy with shopping and cleaning the day before. I was looking forward to some proper training.

Surprisingly, Sakura was the one to approach me after the Academy classes had ended. I noticed her following me as I walked to the training grounds, which justified my newfound paranoia. I resolved to ask Iruka later whether there was a better way to sense other presences than smothering them in chakra. In the meantime, I covered my face with my hood and ignored her until we reached somewhere private. The six year old girl tried her best to follow stealthily.

I started to play with an ordinary Rasengan attatched to the end of a chakra string like a yoyo ball. I remembered how long it had taken me figure out how to 'tie' the chakra around the volatile storm of chakra.

"Why can I control my own chakra so well but still not manage to make it fly?" I should be able to manipulate the flight of a Rasengan without chakra threads if I'm able to so easily keep it in my hand. I could feel my chakra in the Rasengan as the sphere flew, as if it were a part of my body. But when I released the chakra thread, I could control it no more than an ordinary kunai.

It was interesting that my Rasengan didn't immediately rip through my net of chakra strings as if they were wet paper. The only thing I could figure was that the chakra simply knew intuitively what I wanted it to do. I had no idea why I could accomplish some tasks with chakra, but not make it do anything. What frustrated me the most was all my failed attempts at walking on thin air. If you could walk up vertical surfaces and walk on water, why couldn't you simply use chakra to step on the gaseous molecules in the air? Or, better yet, why couldn't I fly just like in Dragonball? I knew it was possible here but I had no idea how to do it.

Eventually, I got tired of playing with my leashed Rasengan and flung it into a tree, decimating the wood into a shower of splinters. "Yeah, definitely a good idea to make them a projectile." I heard a loud, shriek from where I assumed Sakura had been watching me.

"Oy, are you done hiding now?" I yelled toward her.

Sakura walked out from behind a tree. Today she was wearing a sleeveless red shirt and khaki almost-pants. At realizing I had forgotten the word for capris, I thought to myself, "I've finally become one of those ninja that wear nothing but the same clothes all the time."

I could tell she was trembling as she stood across from me. She might have been trying to come up with the right thing to say to me. Personally, I was just annoyed at the length of the awkward silence so I decided to set the tone of the conversation myself.

I pulled back my hood and said, "Just go ahead and ask me already."

The young girl in front of me pulled out a tiny black jar covered in seals. "What is this?" she asked seriously.

I rubbed my temple in frustration. "Did...did you really just bring that with you? You found a highly suspicious object in my grape jelly, you took it without telling anyone else, and then you carried it around all day just to show it to me, the person whose refrigerator you took it from, hoping that I'd explain just what it is you stole?" I should have played it cool and said 'Where did you find that?' but I was too astonished at Sakura's decision-making.

"Yes," Sakura answered, not realizing I had been making fun of her. "What is it?" she asked again as she gripped the container tightly in her fingers. "It looked like eyeballs."

"Wait, did you...did you open it? You opened it?" I asked, wide-eyed in shock.

"Was I not supposed to? Are they really eyeballs?" she asked in bemusement.

I fell to my knees, unable to look at the innocent little girl because I was laughing and sobbing at the same time.

"I only looked at it a little. I didn't touch it or anything. I thought it was creepy so closed it right away. Why did you have eyeballs in your refridgerator?"

Eventually I overcame my hysterics and, curled on the ground, I said, "They were a present."

"What kind of person gives eyeballs as a present?" Sakura asked, looking at the tiny jar.

"Honestly, I have no idea."

"I don't like you," she said with a sneer. "You don't make any sense. If someone gave you eyeballs, why didn't you tell an adult? Who has eyeballs in their refrigerator? Why would you put them in your grape jelly?"

In my head, grape jelly simply reminded me of the vitreous humor of the eyeball. Apparently, trained ANBU missed a pair of Sharingan but a six-year-old had found it. I sat in a cross-legged position and asked, "Sakura, you and I both know that came from my fridge. Why did you decide to keep it?"

She seemed to be taken off guard by my question. "Well, Hinata had fainted and Ino and Naruto didn't want anything to do with your fridge. It was really messy. I thought only my parents could forget about food for that long. I guess it made sense cause you were in the hospital but...hey, don't make me change the subject! Explain why you had this in your fridge!" she demanded, holding the ominous black jar at me.

I raised my shoulders, still keeping my hands on my ankles. "Like I said, they were a present from someone. I had two perfectly good eyes at that point so I just hid them as best as I could. After all, it would be hard to explain to the Hokage why I happened to have a tiny jar of Sharingan eyes on my bedside table. And now you have them. So what will you do with them?" I dismissed the genjutsu on my eye patch and stared at her with my one eye.

Again, Sakura seemed confused. "What are Sharingan? Is that like what Sasuke has?"

I sighed. "Yeah, it's like what Sasuke has." This conversation was excruciatingly tedious. "So what do you want? Are you going to tell on me and show all the adults how you unmasked what a terrible person I am? Or are you going to give it back? You never know when a spare eyeball can come in handy."

"Why...why is Ino friends with someone like you?" Sakura asked in horror, looking down at the jar in her hands.

"I don't know," I said blankly.

"Ino said that you almost died. But whenever I saw you, you never acted like someone who almost died. In the hospital classes, it was like you had just broken a leg or something. I don't understand."

I simply answered, "I was weak. I was unprepared. The only answer is to get stronger so it won't happen again." I didn't like to remember. I just...needed to be ready. That's all I had to focus on. There was no point in resenting a clueless little girl.

"What do you mean?"

"Sakura, just keep that jar safe for me. Just stare at it in my place, wondering whether Sasuke would hate you if he learned that you had a pair of his family's eyes," I told her.

"I don't want..."

"If I ever learn that you've lost them, I'll kill you. After all, that's why Sasuke's brother died, because of the value of the Uchiha's eyes. That terrible power will be a weight upon you until the day I decide a use for them. Remember, if anyone finds out, they'll want to take them away. And then I'll come for you, I promise." I ended my threat with a smile and a genjutsu that should make her believe I had disappeared. "You won't even see me coming."

I heard her crying as I left the training grounds. "Why would anyone want to be friends with someone like me?" I asked myself without looking back.