By the end of the first week in her new place, Sarada felt uneasy. Too many people knew she worked at the teahouse. Too many—little Nanadaime and Uchiha Itachi. Naruto was harmless, if clingy. But Uncle's awareness worried her.
Anxiety grew daily. Sarada felt watched from every crack. She walked alone down the dirty street to the flophouse, no longer fearing drunken civilians but something invisible lurking in the night gloom, seemingly watching intently.
And the nagging thought: what if someone saw her first evening after arrival, before she covered the clan crest?
Curses echoed from an alley. Sarada didn't know such words, so gauging their offensiveness was hard. A spotted cat prowled along the wooden fence where once one drunk slammed another. The cat spotted a crow on the fence and hissed. The bird flapped wings and croaked raspily.
Persecution mania gripped her now too. For a moment, Sarada wondered: what if not paranoia? What if someone really watched her, long ago?
If only she could use Sharingan to check. But no.
No way out. Couldn't fight or activate dojutsu without revealing herself.
Sarada neared the passage to the flophouse's inner courtyard, instincts screaming: "Stop, Sarada! Go back to the teahouse."
She reached the arch and peered in.
Empty.
Coward. Definitely paranoia. Gotta do something.
Sarada advanced slowly. The passage reeked of urine. Beyond the arch lay the flophouse yard; surprisingly, a whole murder of crows gathered on the ground. They cawed and strutted. Where'd they come from? Someone scatter feed?
Sarada reached the arch's midpoint when the crows stopped cawing and turned heads to her. She froze. Chills ran down her skin. First bird launched, hopped ground steps flapping wings, soared. Others followed. Sarada backed to the wall, shielding face with hands. Wings clapped around, soft feathers brushed skin. Crows screeched in ears, pecked bare arms, legs, ears painfully, hammered glasses trying to knock them off.
"Leave me alone!" Sarada wailed mentally.
Why attack? Chance or technique? If technique, what to do?! No one might notice in passage, so counter? But who?
Crows stopped pecking. Flock scattered, birds fled passage. Sarada opened eyes, fixed crooked glasses.
Uncle stood before her. Slightly shorter, face near invisible in dark, only Sharingan blazed crimson. Instant, he was inches away. Elbow pinned throat, pressing head to wall. Something pricked arm like needle, but Sarada couldn't look down; elbow on throat immobilized, Uncle's red eyes bored into soul. So close, she felt his warm breath on face. Tiny move, noses touch, his hair strands brush cheeks. Stunning, deadly proximity.
Uchiha Itachi...
In the arch's silence, a demanding voice:
"Who are you?"
Sarada swallowed, feeling elbow pressure sharper. Couldn't speak. Time stopped. No Konoha, no passage. Just gloom and crimson Sharingan glow enslaving reason.
"If you're Leaf's enemy—I'll kill you."
Sarada tried shaking head no, but elbow pressed harder.
"Understood?"
Uncle's image shattered into a dozen black crows, which cawed fleeing passage. Sarada gasped cold night air. Heart pounded wildly.
"What was that? Genjutsu?" flashed thought.
She touched her pricked arm.
"Hey, you okay?" familiar woman's voice.
Figure appeared in arch street-side. Heel clacks.
"Kid, you good?"
Gentle hands steadied shoulders. Sarada recognized the flophouse neighbor.
"Come on, come on."
Same gentle hands pulled her from stinking wall, led from passage. Sarada followed on wobbly legs.
"What happened, little one? You okay?"
"A-a bit."
They rose to the flophouse as if in a dream, paid the old man, and went to their bedroom. The familiar steady hum of voices, the clatter of dice in a wooden cup.
"Otsuri, give me your drops!"
The neighbor helped Sarada sit on the floor, pulled out the first futon she found from the wall cabinet, and unrolled it on the floor.
"Go on, lie down."
She tried to help her take off her jacket, but Sarada instinctively pulled it closed again.
"Fine, have it your way. Otsuri! Where are you?"
Someone's hands brought a glass of water to her lips. After taking a sip, Sarada came to a bit and stared in surprise at the neighbors gathered around her.
"Sita, is she okay?"
"I think she'll be fine. See, she's already perking up."
Sarada didn't know their names. These women and girls with familiar faces, but still complete strangers, were worried about her as if she were family, and the soul-chilling terror from the encounter with her uncle gradually receded: it was melted by the feeling of warmth and gratitude. Tears welled up in her eyes.
"Sorry," she whispered. "Thank you."
Someone patted her on the shoulder.
"Don't scare us like that again."
The neighbors, convinced she was okay, began dispersing to their beds.
The encounter with her uncle thoroughly ruined Sarada's mood for the entire week ahead. If before she thought life was starting to get better, now everything had changed exactly the opposite. Life wasn't getting better—it was rolling into a deep abyss. Now Sarada knew for sure: she was being watched.
Her uncle suspected her and monitored her every step and breath, believing she was an enemy of Konoha. Sarada was getting more and more confused. If her uncle knew, others might too. What if he'd already told everyone he could, and now Leaf's internal security had their eyes glued to her? Even cheerful Shinko couldn't dispel the darkness occupying her thoughts.
Worst of all, Sarada didn't know how to justify herself to Itachi. She couldn't tell the truth; her uncle wouldn't believe her anyway. And lying would be tantamount to signing her own death warrant. She had no convincing lie. No sane excuse could explain all the oddities of her sudden appearance in Konoha six years after an equally sudden disappearance.
Guilt gnawed at her heart.
I shouldn't be here. Uncle's right.
"You're kinda down, Sarada," Shinko noticed. "What's up?"
"Nothing."
Yeah, nothing. I was attacked in a dark underpass and sworn to be killed if I'm an enemy of the Leaf. And I can't even object. All because of your partner, senpai. The very one the first parallel class in the academy swooned over. My own uncle.
But she couldn't tell Shinko the truth, so Sarada kept carrying her anxiety inside, not sharing with anyone. She replayed the moment of their last meeting with Itachi over and over in her memory. Scary. Creepy. Dangerous. But...
He was so close.
Family. Sarada mentally called him "uncle," but with horror realized she perceived Uchiha Itachi not as an uncle, her father's brother, but as a boy her own age, bound to her by very strong ties. And those ties weren't necessarily familial.
It was as if fate itself had thrown her into the garden where little Itachi sat, and that same invisible force guided him toward the teahouse so they'd cross paths in this time too. They kept meeting again and again. Itachi suspected her. She feared Itachi. But in the enigmatic, dangerous image of her uncle there was something indefinably alluring. Attractive. And her own feelings scared Sarada even more than Itachi's threats to kill her.
"Nee-chan, why do you need Sakura-chan, dattebayo!"
Naruto was a little jealous of her toward the other kids.
"We need to talk."
The boy scowled.
Shinko had let her go on break. Sarada was getting sadder and more restless every day, and her senpai hoped a short walk would refresh her a bit.
"Don't pout, Nanadaime Hokage."
Naruto demonstratively turned away. He grumbled, but still led her to where his peers gathered.
The address "Nanadaime Hokage" slipped from Sarada's tongue automatically. Naruto liked it, it was habitual for her, so that form of communication had stuck with them from their first days. Sarada became the little sister "nee-chan," and Uzumaki Naruto prematurely acquired the title of Nanadaime Hokage.
She'd thought long and hard about how to save her mom. Nearly two weeks had passed, and Sarada clearly felt her life hanging by a thread, and with it, the entire plan to save her loved ones. A plan that still didn't exist.
Any moment a new wave could hit. Any moment her uncle could appear and kill her quickly and painlessly. Or slowly and painfully, in revenge for the Leaf. Sarada considered herself a shinobi, but she'd never killed anyone, and imagining her uncle could so easily end her life was hard. Sarada couldn't believe that Uchiha Itachi, that boy with the ponytail, was a killer. And yet the cold certainty in his gaze confirmed: killer.
He could.
Her request to be escorted to Sakura was a panicked attempt by Sarada to do at least something in time.
So you meet your mom. Then what? What do you tell her? That less than three decades from now she'll die on a mission and needs to be careful?
Nonsense. Mom will forget. And Sarada couldn't tell her the details anyway. She didn't know them herself.
Or worse, Mom won't forget, gets scared, and changes her mind about entering the academy. Won't become a shinobi. Won't meet Dad. They won't fall in love.
And I won't be born. Gods, why is everything so complicated?
"There she is," Naruto snorted angrily.
Sarada snapped out of her thoughts and looked at the crowd of kids in the park. Among the throng flashed a pink head tied with a ribbon. It could only be Sakura.
Mom.
Sarada froze, unable to tear her gaze from the tiny girl. She recognized future heroes of the Fourth Shinobi World War in the unfamiliar children. There was Yamanaka Ino. And that was Nanadaime Hokage's advisor—Nara Shikamaru. So small, but already businesslike and indifferent. Just like Shikadai, like two peas in a pod. Sarada didn't recognize the other kids, and her gaze kept returning to Mom. Little Sakura was yelling something to her friends.
Mommy. Alive.
Naruto seemed to sense the tremor gripping her and stopped grumbling, just standing silently beside her, watching the kids who had no intention of letting him join their game.
No, she couldn't approach her little mom. Stupid, pointless idea. Meaningless to tell her anything. Impossible to rip this pink wonder from her magical little world, meet her surprised, frightened gaze, and announce that someday in the future she'll die and her daughter from a man she probably hasn't even met yet will miss her terribly. So much that she'll travel back in time.
"Nee-chan," Nanadaime Hokage called softly.
His voice sounded surprisingly calm and firm.
"Why are you crying?"
Tears blurring the crowd of happy little ones spilled from her lashes and ran down her cheeks. Sarada lifted her glasses and wiped them with her fist.
Past and future overlapped again. She stood next to the Seventh again, looking at a world inaccessible to her where her mom was. Only in the future it was a graveyard, and now... No, now Mom was just as far from her as in the future. An invisible wall separated them. It stopped any impulse to step toward her mother and speak. And little Sakura remained on the other side of the wall, in her childish world of games, friends, and happiness. While she and Naruto stayed on this side, where there was only loneliness and pain.
"Thanks, Nanadaime Hokage," Sarada said wearily.
"You're not gonna talk to her?"
"No."
Naruto didn't reply.
"Listen..." Sarada said. "When you become Nanadaime Hokage, you'll have kids, and so will Sakura. They'll turn twelve and graduate from the academy."
Naruto listened in surprise.
"Don't send Sakura on missions. Otherwise, she'll die. Promise, Nanadaime Hokage?"
"What, you see the future?"
"Just promise me," Sarada clenched her teeth to keep from bursting into tears.
Tension gradually eased over time. Her uncle no longer appeared. Life flowed smoothly and steadily. Sarada worked at the teahouse, walked with little Naruto in the evenings, and then returned home to the flophouse. Relations with the neighbors were excellent. If before Sarada didn't talk to anyone and tried to be as inconspicuous as possible, after the arcade incident the unfamiliar women became almost friends. Sarada entered the bedroom and loudly greeted the women's collective, and the collective greeted her warmly. She no longer felt like an outsider in the flophouse or the teahouse. But this wasn't the life she was used to. Sarada was still a kunoichi, missing training. And training in such a situation was impossible.
She understood she needed to get stronger, that the gap between her strength and the abilities of local genin was enormous. The encounter with her uncle confirmed it again. How easily he'd bound her genjutsu. Her, a bloodline Sharingan bearer.
Though according to Shinko, Uchiha Itachi had long since earned chunin rank. And at what age? Ten?
Sarada thoughtfully watched the group on the shifted futons. Today the women were playing cards.
The old administrator's voice came from the corridor.
"Ladies, to the right! You can't go there!"
"Beat it, scum."
Shadows appeared behind the paper door. The shoji panel slid aside, and a man peeked into the women's bedroom. A horrific screech rose. Girls jumped up and pulled on robes, others hid behind blankets. From the corner of the card players came a hoarse voice:
"Get outta here!"
The man smirked, leaned back, said something to the people behind the door, and confidently stepped into the room.
"Well, what a flower garden."
Other men followed him in.
"Guys, we're in luck today."
"Ladies, please..." the administrator timidly tried to restore order, but was punched in the gut and shoved out into the corridor.
Ice-cold fear gripped her muscles. Sarada guessed what the men wanted to do, and it horrified her.
I don't want to see this. Don't want to be part of this. I don't want this happening at all!
Could she handle a mob of men? Yes. She was far from her uncle's level, but these were civilians. She could bind them with genjutsu without even fighting.
But I can't show I'm a kunoichi. What if Uncle...
Her thoughts swung back and forth. The desire to protect the kind women by inertia rolled back to the need to hide her shinobi identity. And back. Protect...
Gods, what do I do?
"Bastards," one girl exclaimed. "Get out. There's a kid here!"
"Doesn't matter," the man smirked, grabbing her arms.
The girl tried to fight back, but fingers clamped around her wrists like iron. The man laughed smugly.
I can't watch this! I have to stop them...
"Hey, chick. C'mere!"
A sturdy guy moved confidently straight toward her.
"Me? Why me?" Sarada wondered in panic. "I'm..."
Alcohol breath hit her face. The guy pushed her back. Sarada pressed against the wall and froze in horror as he loomed over her, his eyes not with lustful anticipation, but cold killer resolve.
Shinobi.
The pendulum of doubts in her heart suddenly froze.
She wouldn't let him touch her. No way.
Sharingan activated instantly, in a fraction of a second. A hastily crafted illusion seeped into the guy's mind. He resisted. Genjutsu stalled, held by the ninja's will, but Sarada furiously pushed the illusion deeper. The opponent collapsed to the floor. The frightened girls and other men turned at the crash.
Sarada didn't deactivate Sharingan. Hiding was pointless now.
"She's Uchiha?" one neighbor whispered in horror.
"Shinobi?" a man said incredulously, inadvertently meeting Sarada's gaze.
The grip on one of the unfortunate girls loosened. The man rolled his eyes and toppled heavily onto the nearest futon. The girl shrieked and jumped back.
Sarada quickly realized there was only one shinobi. The one who'd attacked her. He'd brought the others for cover, to make it look natural. A lustful mob egged on by a shinobi disguised as a civilian. And it wasn't her uncle. Uchiha Itachi wouldn't have been caught in genjutsu; his Sharingan outmatched her dojutsu.
The others, if shinobi, would've averted their eyes instead of casually turning to gawk at Sharingan. Sarada plunged them into genjutsu one by one. Men released their desired women and fell into the chaotic tangle of bedding amid the commotion.
This was surely staged to provoke her. They were still watching and finally acted today.
Gotta bolt.
The rescued neighbors gaped at her in shock. Sarada deactivated Sharingan.
"Sorry!"
She bolted from the bedroom. Rushed into the corridor, quickly slipped on sandals, and burst into the flophouse courtyard. Like a cornered animal, Sarada dashed into the arcade, onto the street... When suddenly something hit her in the back of the neck. Her body stopped obeying and went limp. The world plunged into darkness.
***
Read the story months ahead of the public release — early chapters are available on my Patreon: Granulan