The question hung in the cold night air, more real and tangible than the silence itself. The words, barely a hoarse whisper from sleep, vibrated directly against Sakura's lips, an electric shock that finally rebooted her brain. The problem was, it rebooted in total panic mode, with every alarm blaring at once.
"Sakura-chan...? What... what are you doing?"
"He's awake. NO. NO, NO, NO, NO. THIS IS NOT HAPPENING. IT'S A NIGHTMARE. A TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE NIGHTMARE INDUCED BY EXHAUSTION, BAD FOOD, AND POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS. I'M GOING TO WAKE UP NOW. I'LL BE IN MY BED IN KONOHA. WAKE UP. WAKE UP, YOU IDIOT!"
But she didn't wake up. She remained kneeling beside Naruto, her face inches from his, in the most unequivocally incriminating position in human history. The initial confusion in his blue eyes, still clouded with sleep, was beginning to dissipate, replaced by a genuine and focused curiosity. He was processing the scene. He was processing that her lips were on his.
"SAY SOMETHING! SAY ANYTHING! WHAT DO I SAY? THINK! YOU'RE THE SMART ONE ON THE TEAM, DAMMIT! THE STRATEGIST! THE ONE WITH A PLAN! WHAT'S THE PLAN?"
Her mind, normally an orderly file of tactics and medical knowledge, was now a whirlwind of the worst excuses imaginable.
"I was checking if you had a fever... with my lips! No, that's stupid, who does that? A mosquito, there was a giant mosquito on your nose and I was squishing it... with my mouth! Even worse, that sounds insane! I was practicing CPR! But... he's breathing perfectly. I FELL! Yes, that's it. I fell! But how do I explain the second kiss? Did I fall twice in a row in the same spot? THINK, SAKURA, THINK OF A CREDIBLE, SOPHISTICATED LIE!"
She remained completely frozen, her mouth slightly open, unable to articulate a single sound. The heat rising up her neck was so intense she was sure her face was glowing in the dark. She could guide lost ships at sea with the sheer radiance of her humiliation. Every second that passed in silence made the situation a thousand times worse. Naruto's expression shifted from confusion to a kind of expectant bewilderment. He was waiting for an answer.
And then, a soft voice from the darkness broke the paralysis, but not in the way Sakura would have wanted.
"Sakura-san? Naruto-kun? Is everything alright?"
Hinata's voice, tinged with genuine concern, startled Sakura so violently that her body reacted long before her brain. In a spastic and completely graceless movement, she tried to sit up and move away from Naruto at the same time, a physically impossible feat that defied the laws of gravity. She lost her balance completely.
With a small, choked cry that sounded like a strangled animal, she pitched forward. Her hands, desperately searching for a handhold, found nothing but air. Her center of gravity vanished into the abyss of shame. And she fell, clumsily, hopelessly, directly onto Naruto's chest.
The impact forced a small "oof" out of the boy. The situation had just gone from "extremely embarrassing" to "catastrophically humiliating." She was now literally lying on top of him, her face crushed against the rough fabric of his orange jacket.
Naruto, with Sakura now on top of him, lifted his head slightly to look toward Hinata's silhouette, who hovered at the edge of the fire's circle of light, seeming unsure whether to approach or flee. In that instant, with a social self-preservation instinct that no one, not even he himself, knew he possessed, he understood in a split second that Sakura was in serious trouble. And he covered for her.
He gave Hinata the biggest, most carefree, and radiant smile in his entire arsenal.
"Everything's great, Hinata! Don't worry about it at all!" his voice sounded a bit strained from Sakura's weight, but his enthusiasm was undeniable. "Sakura-chan was just worried I might have a fever from being tired, you know! She got real close to check with her hand and tripped on a root! You know how clumsy she is sometimes! She doesn't watch where she's going!"
"CLUMSY?! YOU JUST SAVED ME FROM THE HUMILIATION OF A LIFETIME AND NOW YOU'RE INSULTING ME! I'M GOING TO KILL YOU WHEN WE GET OUT OF THIS!" Sakura thought from her position of total humiliation, her mental voice a muffled scream in the orange fabric.
Naruto felt Sakura's body tense up on top of his. "Wow, she's shaking like a leaf. And she must be red as a tomato. This is definitely not how you check for a fever, Iruka Sensei never did it like this. But it looks like she really needs help. Poor Sakura-chan. She's probably really, really embarrassed about falling in such a weird way. I have to help her."
Hinata, observing the bizarre scene—Naruto lying down with Sakura on top of him, smiling like an idiot while she remained as still as a stone—processed the information. The explanation was completely absurd. Tripping was one thing, but ending up in that position required a highly improbable chain of events. However, Naruto's delivery was so innocent, so devoid of malice, that it almost seemed plausible. A blush spread across her own cheeks, coloring the pale skin of her face.
"Oh... okay. I understand," she said, though her tone of voice clearly indicated she didn't understand at all. "I'm glad everything is alright. I just... heard a noise."
"Yeah, the noise from the fall! That was it! All under control!" Naruto quickly added.
"G-good night, then," Hinata murmured, giving a small, awkward bow to the strange pile of teammates.
She turned and quickly disappeared back into the darkness she had come from, leaving behind a silence even more palpable, awkward, and charged than before.
Several seconds passed. The only sound was the crackling of the fire and Kiba's soft snores a few feet away. Finally, when the sound of Hinata's footsteps had completely faded, Naruto gave Sakura a couple of clumsy pats on the back.
"She's gone. You can get up now. I think you're crushing me a little."
Sakura shot up as if Naruto's jacket had turned to red-hot metal. She sat a few feet away, her back to him. She began to cough and sputter, trying to fix her hair and clothes in a vain, frantic attempt to recover some of the dignity she had just so spectacularly lost. He sat up too, rubbing the chest where she had fallen, watching her with a curious expression. He wasn't laughing. He wasn't even smiling. He just watched her with a strange focus.
He stood up with a small groan, went to get a canteen that was near a tree, and crouched beside her, offering it.
"Easy, easy. Drink some water. Your face is really red."
She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye before taking the canteen with trembling hands. Her fingers brushed against his, and a new shiver of panic ran through her. The cool water was a relief to her dry throat. As she drank, he gave her a few clumsy but strangely gentle pats on the back, like you would with someone who was choking. His complete lack of judgment or mockery was what unnerved her the most. She had prepared for yelling, for teasing, for him telling everyone the next morning. But not for this. Not for this... bewildering calm.
When she finished drinking and handed the canteen back, he sat beside her again, maintaining a respectful distance. Not too close, but not too far either. He scratched his cheek, a gesture Sakura knew he made when he was thinking about something.
"So... Sakura-chan," he began, and she braced herself for the interrogation, tensing every muscle in her body.
He looked at her, and a silly, playful smile, the typical Naruto smile, appeared on his face, illuminated by the flickering flames.
"So why did you really kiss me? Are you trying to marry me or something?"
The question caught her so completely off guard that she almost choked on her own saliva. Of all the possible reactions, that was the last one on the list.
"MARRY HIM? THIS IDIOT...? HE JUST SAVED ME FROM TOTAL HUMILIATION IN FRONT OF HINATA, HE BRINGS ME WATER, HE'S NOT LAUGHING AT ME, AND NOW... HE'S JOKING?! WHY ISN'T HE YELLING AT ME? WHY ISN'T HE CALLING ME A PERVERT OR WEIRD? WHAT'S WRONG WITH HIM?"
It was a joke. Obviously a joke. An incredibly dumb, Naruto-like way of trying to lighten the mood. And for some reason, that stupid kindness both infuriated and disarmed her.
"Of course not, you idiot!" she snapped, her voice an octave higher than she intended. "I didn't kiss you! I told you!"
"Hmm, well it felt a lot like a kiss," he replied, not losing his smile, tilting his head. "Two, actually. The second one was longer. Like you gave it some more thought."
Sakura's face burned with the intensity of a rising sun. It was over. All was lost.
"I tripped! Like you told Hinata! It was a good excuse! I tripped and fell on my face! On your face! It was an accident!"
"Ah, I see," Naruto said, nodding slowly, as if considering a complex shinobi theory. "So you tripped, fell on my face, got up a little, regained your balance, and then tripped a second time, again, exactly on my face. You've gotta be more careful, Sakura-chan. The forest floor is really dangerous."
Her explanations were getting weaker and more pathetic, and they both knew it. Naruto's simple, direct logic was dismantling her lies one by one.
"It was a muscle spasm!" she tried as a last, desperate resort, the most absurd idea she could come up with.
"A spasm... in your lips?" he asked, genuinely curious, as if it were a medical phenomenon he had never encountered. "Does that happen a lot? We should tell Kakashi-sensei, it could be serious."
Sakura gave up.
There was no big, dramatic moment. The air simply deflated from her lungs like a punctured balloon. The energy to keep lying, to keep fighting, abandoned her completely. With a sigh of total defeat, she let her head fall forward and rested it on her knees, hugging herself. She was too physically and emotionally exhausted to keep up the charade. She stayed there, curled into a ball, wishing she could disappear.
The silence returned. Naruto stopped smiling. He saw her trembling slightly. He waited a moment, and then another. He shifted a little, sitting closer to her.
"Hey..."
She didn't answer, just curled up tighter.
Naruto was surprised by her reaction. He stiffened for a second, not knowing what to do. He didn't expect her to fall apart like that. "Man, I really screwed up. Maybe the joke went too far. Now she feels awful. I'm such an idiot."
Slowly, as if afraid of scaring her, he raised a hand and, with palpable hesitation, began to stroke her hair, a clumsy and unpracticed gesture. His fingers tangled gently in the pink strands.
"It's okay, it's okay," he said, his voice now low and surprisingly gentle, stripped of all teasing. "You don't have to say if you don't want to. Really. I won't tell anyone. It's our secret."
She didn't move, but she stopped trembling. The gesture was so unexpected, so simple, that it left her defenseless.
"By the way," he added, almost in a whisper, as he continued to awkwardly stroke her hair. "I've always thought your hair is really pretty. It reminds me of... I dunno, something good."
The comment, so simple, so out of place, and so completely unexpected, was what broke down Sakura's final defenses. It was just... a compliment. a dumb, honest compliment at the strangest possible moment. And it was enough.
Disarmed by his unexpected gentleness, by the total absence of malice in a boy who had every right to be angry or make fun of her, she confessed the truth. Her voice came out muffled and distorted against the fabric of her pants.
"...I thought it would make me stronger."
Naruto stopped, his hand still in her hair. "Huh? What'd you say?"
Sakura lifted her head a little, just enough to be heard better, but without daring to look him in the face.
"I thought if... if I did it... the power would make me stronger," she continued, the words tumbling out in a rush of humiliation and frustration. "Like at the lake. When I pulverized the rock. You said it reads the soul. I thought that maybe, if the connection was... stronger... that the Falna would react. That it would increase or something. It was an experiment. A stupid, desperate experiment."
Naruto stopped stroking her hair. There was a long moment of silence, broken only by the crackling of the fire and a particularly loud snore from Kiba. Sakura kept her face hidden, preparing for the laughter, the mockery, the "I told you so." She expected him to call her crazy.
But he didn't laugh. He simply processed her words, his expression slowly changing as he understood them.
"Oh... So that was it. It wasn't because... well, not because of what I thought. It's about the power. She feels weak again. She has this incredible ability, stronger than anything I've ever seen, but she's scared. Scared she won't know how to use it when she needs it. Scared of being the one who needs protecting again."
And then, a final thought hit him with the clarity of a bell, an echo of his own deepest feelings.
"That's... exactly how I would feel. Having some incredible power inside me that I can't control, that comes and goes..."
"I see," he said finally, and his voice was gentle, full of an understanding that surprised Sakura. "So it was for the power... It made sense, I guess. It was a good theory."
Sakura slowly lifted her head. Her eyes were red and still damp, but the shame had been replaced by a cautious curiosity. "A good theory? It was stupid."
"No, it wasn't," he said, shaking his head. "It was logical. If the power comes from connections, you try to strengthen the connection. It made sense. Hey, speaking of that, something weird is happening to me with it too."
Sakura's head shot all the way up. "To you too? What do you mean?"
"Yeah. Ever since we left the Land of Waves, since this all started, I've been seeing something. Here," he pointed to the upper right corner of his field of vision, where there was obviously nothing. "It's like... like a blinking message. It's annoying, it kinda buzzes in my head and it won't go away, no matter how much I ignore it. I thought it would go away on its own, but it hasn't."
Sakura's expression changed completely. The embarrassment, the vulnerability, the shame... it all evaporated in an instant, replaced by an analytical intensity that was purely her. Her eyes lit up with the fire of a scientist who had just stumbled upon a world-changing discovery. Her own humiliation was relegated to the background, forgotten.
"A message?" she said, sitting up straighter and leaning toward him, her voice vibrant with excitement. "What does it say, exactly? What does it look like? Is it an icon? Text? A dialog box? Does it have a color? Does it make a sound or just the buzzing you mentioned? Does it change in size or intensity?"
Naruto blinked, completely bewildered by her sudden and drastic change in attitude. Thirty seconds before, she had been crying in shame.
"Uh... I dunno. It's just... a little blue light that blinks. Like I told you. I haven't paid much attention to it. It was distracting me when I was trying to focus on walking."
"YOU HAVEN'T PAID MUCH ATTENTION TO IT?!" Sakura grabbed his arm, her excitement so palpable it was practically vibrating. Her grip was surprisingly strong. "Naruto, that's it! That's a clue! It could be anything! A new skill waiting to be unlocked! A quest log! You can't just ignore it! It's information! We need the data!"
He stared at her, completely lost at her torrent of words. "Quest log? What are you talking about, Sakura-chan?"
"It doesn't matter! Focus!" she interrupted him, shaking his arm slightly to emphasize her words. "Look at it! Don't ignore it! Focus on it! Try to interact with it in your mind! Like you're trying to click on it with your thoughts! Try to open it! Do it right now!"
Naruto was filled with a mixture of total confusion and surprise at Sakura's sudden, imperious intensity. She, who just a minute ago had been a miserable ball of shame, was now looking at him as if he were the world's most fascinating forbidden scroll, her eyes shining with anticipation, urging him to interact with the mysterious message that, until now, had only been a small, persistent annoyance blinking at the edge of his mind.