A month had passed since move-in day, and chaos now ruled their shared space. Naruto's side of the room looked like a laundry bomb had detonated—his mattress barely visible beneath heaps of unwashed hoodies and jeans. Empty ramen cups formed a miniature skyline along his desk, while loose papers from his classes had migrated across the floor like tumbleweeds. Yet amid this disaster zone, one item remained perfectly concealed: the notebook tucked away in his locked drawer.
Naruto flipped open the worn notebook he kept hidden in his side drawer, careful to angle his body between it and the door. The pages gaped back at him—mostly blank space interrupted by question marks, arrows pointing to empty boxes, and theories crossed out so violently the pen had torn through the paper. Kurama's photo—that crooked grin, fox-red hair caught mid-blink—was paperclipped to the inside cover, the corner worn smooth from his thumb constantly rubbing over it. Page sixteen held a campus map with a single, sad notation: "Chem Building?" Page twenty-three was just "Access to security footage???" followed by three inches of pristine, untouched paper. Page thirty-four: "SCHEDULE" written at the top, followed by seven blank lines and a coffee stain.
He slouched at the desk, jaw in his hand, staring at the latest entry. He'd hoped that after a month of investigation, patterns would emerge. Instead, his notes had become a labyrinth of dead ends.
Naruto traced a finger over Kurama's photo, then quickly closed the notebook and slid it back into the drawer. No evidence left in sight. No reason for anyone to suspect.
A ping from the laptop cut through the silence: new mail, subject line in all caps—BIOLOGY TRACK ALERT: ADVANCED SCREENING TEST.
Naruto groaned. He clicked it open, half-expecting a generic warning about study aids or contraband. Instead, it was a personal missive from Professor Orochimaru:
*To all current Biology 101 students:
Due to ongoing faculty evaluation, an advanced test will be administered to determine final placements for the Specialized Track. Performance on this test will be the sole metric for progression. Those not selected will be assigned to General Sciences.
Test Date: One week from today.
Location: Lecture Hall 1A
Time: 1900 sharp.
No exceptions.
-O*
Naruto squinted at the screen, reading the message once, twice, three times. "Sole metric" throbbed behind his eyes like the warning pulse of a migraine. The Specialized Track. Kurama used to laugh about it over late-night calls. "It's basically a cult," he'd said, "except instead of free Kool-Aid, you get pop quizzes at 3 AM." Naruto's fingers tightened around the mouse. If he bombed this test, he'd lose his position orbiting Orochimaru's academic solar system. And with it, any hope of tracking what happened to his brother. Worse, the advanced track kept him visible in ways that protected his Beta façade—hiding in plain sight was safer than skulking in the shadows where questions might follow.
He stood, shoulders stiff. This was not optional. The test was a trap, sure, but it was also a ladder. If he climbed it fast enough, maybe he could catch up to Kurama's ghost.
Textbooks thudded into his backpack one after another, followed by crumpled class notes with corners bent like dog ears and ink smeared where his hand had dragged across still-wet pen. The backpack's zipper caught on a loose thread—another casualty of daily overstuffing. He yanked it closed anyway. From the bottom desk drawer came a mint tin, its surface dented from being carried everywhere. His thumbnail popped the lid, then pressed the hidden catch that revealed the false bottom beneath which lay two neat rows of blue pills, each one small enough to hide under his tongue but powerful enough to mask what he truly was.
Fourteen pills. He counted twice, checking for cracks or powder residue, updating the log in his phone. Two weeks if nothing went wrong. Ten days if he got stressed. Maybe a week if Sasuke kept looking at him that way. The pills caught the harsh desk lamp light like tiny sapphires. His jaw tightened. How many other students needed a spreadsheet just to make it through the semester alive?
His phone vibrated against the desk. Kiba: "Orochimaru's test is going to DESTROY us all. You see that email??"
Naruto's thumbs hovered over the screen, then tapped rapidly: "Already headed to the library. Not leaving till sunrise. Bring energy drinks if you're coming."
He pulled on his jacket, the same one he'd worn since orientation, and checked the fit in the mirror. The sight of his own face—sharp chin, wild hair, eyes too bright—was oddly comforting. For all that he'd lost, he was still here, still fighting. That counted for something.
He glanced back at the drawer—his brother's ghost lived inside those pages, between scribbled theories and dead-end leads. The lock clicked shut. He hefted his backpack, feeling the weight of textbooks and desperation, then slipped out the door toward the library, where fluorescent lights and silence waited to swallow the next six hours of his life.
_
The library at night transformed into a sanctuary of hushed reverence. Gone were the chattering students and their backpack-bumping chaos, replaced by the soft hum of the ventilation system and the occasional rustle of turning pages. Only the dedicated remained—hollow-eyed figures hunched over textbooks, their faces ghoulish under the harsh fluorescent lights.
Naruto pushed through the heavy door, his student ID card beeping softly against the scanner. The Beta at the circulation desk barely glanced up from his thermos of what had to be his fifth coffee, just flicked two fingers in weary acknowledgment. Naruto's gaze automatically found his target—the biology section waited in the far corner, just past the dusty sociology shelves, where streetlamps cast eerie orange rectangles across the carpet.
Naruto dropped into his favorite chair—third from the end—and let his backpack hit the floor with a deliberate thud that screamed "don't sit here" to anyone passing by. His fingers traced a deep gouge in the wooden tabletop, one of dozens left by students before him who'd pressed too hard while writing equations or carving their frustrations into the surface. These were his people, even if he'd never meet them.
One by one, he arranged his study materials in the same ritual order: textbooks stacked by subject weight rather than size, notebook positioned precisely at a forty-five-degree angle. His phone came last—alarm set for 3 AM, switched to vibrate, then tucked into his inner jacket pocket where it would jolt against his ribs if he dozed off.
The pawn shop headphones swallowed his ears, their noise-cancellation creating a bubble where only his playlist existed—first the pulsing synth that kept his eyes open, later the strings that would fight the 2 AM fog. The library dissolved at its edges until nothing remained but his notes and formulas demanding memorization.
Time passed in the wheezing complaints of the ancient grandfather clock. Each sonorous chime scattered another student: first the Beta with her fortress of legal pads, hoodie pulled to her eyebrows; then the Alpha pair abandoning their statistics battle for the siren call of vending machine coffee; finally the Omega whose pen scratched frantically across her color-coded notebook until it sputtered dry, her departure so swift she seemed to evaporate rather than walk away.
At some point, Naruto's phone vibrated once, then again. He ignored it, lost in the logic of a practice test, his hand flying across the paper with the certainty of muscle memory. It was only when the library lights flickered—an automated warning that the building would soon close for the night—that he surfaced.
The thing about alarms was that, after a while, the brain could edit them out. The steady vibration, the insistent buzz: they became part of the landscape, like the faint hum of the library lights or the slow, rhythmic scraping of pencils on paper.
Naruto hadn't even registered the noise until a finger jabbed his shoulder, hard enough to send a crackle of static through his arm. He startled, yanked off the headphones, and found himself blinking up into the annoyed face of a fellow student—a Beta, tall and rawboned, with a patchy beard and the air of someone barely containing their frustration.
"Dude," the student said, voice pitched low but angry, "your alarm's been going off for like two hours. Some of us are trying to survive tests. Maybe fix that?"
Naruto mumbled an apology, already fumbling for his phone. The screen was a wall of missed notifications: 09:00PM, 09:15, 10:00, 11:15—each one a reminder, each one ignored. Beneath it, the battery hovered at 14%, and the phone's case was slick in his hand with a thin sheen of sweat he hadn't noticed until now.
He checked the time and felt his heart skid sideways. He was overdue. Not just late, but hours late. Tsunade's face flashed before him—that day cafe when he'd asked what would happen if he ever missed a dose. "Your body will fight back," she'd said, eyes hard as flint. "Like a pipe under pressure finally bursting. All those suppressed pheromones? They'll flood your system at once." She'd gripped his wrist then, her fingers digging in. "Don't let the schedule slip, not even once."
The first wave hit almost instantly—heat blooming in his chest, prickling along his spine, rising to flush his face. He wiped at his brow, found it damp. His senses crackled: every distant cough, every creak of the library shelves registered at full volume. The pipe was bursting, just as she'd warned.
The Beta, who'd told him about his alarm, had already retreated, muttering under his breath, but Naruto could feel the eyes of every other remaining student in the room—even if, rationally, he knew no one cared. He reached for the mint tin, hands shaking so badly he almost sent it clattering to the floor. He fumbled the lid open, the little blue pill inside suddenly precious and impossible.
He tried to play it cool, pinching the pill between thumb and forefinger and chasing it with a swig from his water bottle. But the cap jammed, refusing to open, and as he forced it, the bottle popped, sloshing water across the tabletop and sending his notes skidding. He cursed, voice too loud in the hush, and quickly mopped up the mess with the hem of his jacket.
Someone across the aisle snickered. Naruto looked up, caught the sidelong stare of an Alpha girl at the next table—her lips pursed, eyes squinting, nostrils flaring just slightly. For a terrible second he imagined she could smell the panic on him, that the faintest whiff of pheromone had already leaked out, and that any second now the truth would become obvious to everyone.
With a final glance at the Alpha girl, he gathered his scattered notes and stuffed them into his bag. He rose, his body moving of its own accord, and he started towards the exit. The library seemed to stretch out before him, the distance to the door suddenly daunting. As he walked, he could feel the eyes of the other students boring into his back, their whispers echoing in his ears.
The main hall stretched before him, janitorial lights casting long shadows. Was it always this far to the exit? His steps faltered halfway across, a heaviness settling into his knees. By the time he pushed through the doors, his legs felt disconnected from his commands. Outside, the night air touched his face—at first just cool, then suddenly overwhelming. He caught a whiff of something sweet, then realized he could smell orange soda spilled days ago, the sugar molecules breaking down into something sour and wrong. His nostrils flared involuntarily. The scent of night-blooming jasmine hit next, unnaturally vivid.
He took the back route to dorms, along the edge of the old football field where the groundskeepers never mowed after dark. Each step was a balancing act: forward momentum versus the roaring in his ears. His thoughts stuttered, then broke apart. He remembered Tsunade's warning—side effects, hallucinations, mood swings. The prickling heat crawled up his spine, fizzing like static under his skin. He tripped on a crack in the sidewalk and caught himself on a lamppost, leaving a sweaty handprint.
Two silhouettes materialized ahead—broad-shouldered, confident strides. Alphas. Naruto froze, heart hammering against his ribs. One of them stopped, head tilting up like a predator catching a scent. "You smell that?" The words carried clearly across the empty field. "Something sweet." Naruto ducked behind the lamppost, legs trembling, breath held until his lungs burned. When he finally dared to look again, they'd disappeared.
The building loomed ahead, sterile blue lights shining in every window. The steps up to the entrance might as well have been a mountain. Naruto gritted his teeth, dragging himself upward one riser at a time. By the time he hit the third floor, his forehead burned and his mouth was sandpaper dry. Every noise in the hallway felt like a shout. He didn't see anyone, but the back of his neck tingled as if he was being watched.
He fumbled his keys three times before they finally made it into the lock. The door to 327 creaked open, and the room hit him like a physical blow—Sasuke's scent everywhere, concentrated and undiluted. His knees nearly buckled as he inhaled involuntarily. Cinnamon and woodsmoke and something darker underneath. The room was almost pitch black—Sasuke's side perfectly made, his laptop closed and stacked with predatory neatness. Naruto closed the door behind him, shoulders hunched, each breath now stoking the fire building inside him.
He made it to the bed before his legs gave out. The world pinwheeled, and he curled into a fetal ball, clutching at his neck with one hand. Sasuke's pillow was too close—the scent of his shampoo, his skin, his Alpha pheromones wrapping around Naruto like invisible hands. He tried to focus on the wall, on the clock, anything to anchor himself, but everything dissolved into heat and hunger and a desperate, wild emptiness.
He bit his wrist to keep from making a sound. It worked, barely. The pain grounded him for a moment, long enough to remember the emergency kit in his nightstand. He scrabbled for it, dragging open the drawer and pawing through the contents until he found the backup suppressant—a tiny glass vial and a pill bottle with a childproof cap.
His hands wouldn't stop shaking. He tried to twist the lid, but his palms were slick, the plastic kept slipping. Sweat streamed down his temple. The pressure inside him built, a chemical tide that wanted to swallow everything—thought, identity, even his own name. He tried to think of Kurama, to call up his brother's voice, but it was lost in a howling static, a need that replaced every other sense.
The pain made him gasp, a dry, keening whine that even he couldn't recognize as his own. He pressed the vial to his lips, gnawing at the stopper, but his teeth just slipped over glass. The bottle tumbled from his trembling fingers, rolling under the bed with a soft clink. Naruto lunged after it, then froze as a wave of heat crashed through him. Sasuke's scent pulled at him like a physical force, emanating from the perfectly made bed across the room. His body knew what it wanted—to burrow into those sheets, to surround himself with that cinnamon-woodsmoke smell. He dug his nails into his palms and curled tighter on his own mattress, hugging his knees to his chest.
Minutes passed, maybe hours. He had no way of measuring. The only reality left was the burning pulse under his skin and the war between his mind screaming no and his body screaming yes. Every few seconds, his gaze dragged unwillingly to Sasuke's pillow. He'd catch himself halfway across the room before forcing his body back to his own side. He heard footsteps outside the door but couldn't care. The only thing that mattered was staying put, not giving in to the instinct that begged him to nest in Sasuke's bed, to prepare for what his treacherous body wanted.
In the end, that was all he could do: fight the urge with every remaining scrap of willpower, and hope to wake up on the other side.