Chapter 53: Cherry Blossoms in a Spring Field
Beneath the Moonlight
Karin pulled the blankets up around herself and ducked her head, not daring to meet the stranger's eyes.
Sakura studied the girl in front of her with mild surprise.
Wasn't Karin supposed to have the same brash, devil-may-care personality as Naruto? Why did she look, right now, like a wilting flower?
Sakura had broken into her room in the middle of the night and Karin was still curling in on herself like the wronged party.
Sakura crossed the room in measured steps and took a seat at the foot of the bed.
Karin tracked the movement and her whole body went rigid.
She finally forced herself to look up at the intruder. Pulled tight into the corner of the bed, voice almost trembling, she asked:
"Wh-what do you want?"
Sakura looked at the trembling redhead and decided to drop the games. The girl was clearly already running on fumes, emotionally — leaning on her any harder would be cruel.
"Karin. I need a favor from you."
She kept her voice low and even, careful not to spike the girl's panic any further.
"...A favor?"
Karin blinked at her, confused. The matter-of-fact tone had thrown her completely.
"You have a kekkei genkai. The body restoration ability."
Sakura watched her closely.
"Anyone who bites you — wounded shinobi, chakra-depleted shinobi — recovers. Almost no matter the injury, as long as the organs are intact, you can pull them back from the brink."
Karin's hand instinctively went to her bite-mark-covered forearm. She tucked it under the blanket.
This stranger knew. Knew everything.
Konoha's intelligence was terrifying.
"I'm not going to hurt you," Sakura said. "I need you to lend me chakra. That's all. The technique I'm carrying needs a specific volume of chakra to mature, and right now I don't have the time to wait for it to fill on its own."
She reached up and tapped her own forehead, just above the brow, where a faint rhomboid outline showed against her skin.
"This is a chakra storage seal. It's been forming for years. With your help, I can finish it tonight. Without your help, I'm half a year out."
Karin stared at her. Then, slowly:
"...Why are you telling me all this?"
Most people who'd come for her ability over the years had not bothered to explain. They'd just bitten.
"Because I'm asking, not taking."
Sakura held out her hand, palm up.
"You can refuse. If you do, I leave. You don't see me again."
A long silence stretched between them.
Karin looked at the open palm. Looked at the pink-haired girl's face. Looked, for a long moment, at the green eyes — which were direct, but not cold.
Slowly, Karin pulled her arm out from under the blanket. Pushed back the sleeve. Held it out.
Sakura took the offered arm gently, paused — and then bit, just hard enough to break the skin at a clean spot away from the older scars.
Karin gave a small, sharp inhale, but said nothing.
Sakura felt it the instant the chakra began flowing. It was an extraordinary kekkei genkai — a fountain of pure, dense chakra, pouring directly into her own coils and routing up to the seal on her forehead. Years of slow accumulation, completing in minutes.
She drew exactly what she needed and not a drop more, then released Karin's arm and pressed her thumb to the bite to stop the bleed.
"Done."
Karin looked at her, pale, breathing a little harder than before. Her eyes flicked up — and caught on the violet rhomboid mark now fully outlined on Sakura's brow.
"...That's mine. That chakra. It's mine, in your seal."
"Yes," Sakura said. "Thank you."
She let the silence sit for a beat. Then:
"Karin. Would you come with me, after the exam?"
The redhead froze.
"To Konoha," Sakura said. "As mine. Specifically. Not the village's resource — mine. My team. Under my protection."
Karin stared at her, ruby eyes wide behind the red-framed glasses.
The Hidden Grass village had used her like a walking medical kit. Her so-called "comrades" treated her as a bite-stick they happened to have to keep alive. The two days in Konoha had been the longest stretch of peace she'd had in years.
"Why me?"
The question came out small.
"Because you deserve better than what you have. And because I have a use for someone with your abilities — but that use comes with food, a bed, a village, and people who won't bleed you dry."
Sakura was honest about it. No false sentiment.
"My master is the Hokage. If you walk into Konoha as my recruit after the exam, your village won't get you back. They won't be in a position to."
Karin's hands curled in the blanket.
"...The Forest of Death," she said quietly. "That's the second stage, isn't it. That's what people whisper about."
"Yes."
"And my teammates from Kusagakure — what happens to them in there?"
Sakura met her eyes.
"That's their problem. Not yours. You stay near me, and you walk out."
Karin sat very still for a long time.
Then she reached out and laid her hand, lightly, against Sakura's open palm.
"Okay."
Sakura closed her hand around it, briefly — a handshake, nothing more — and let go.
"Tomorrow, the written portion of the exam begins. You and your squad will pass it; the Grass team is rated competent enough on paper. Then you'll be assigned to enter the Forest of Death through Gate A4."
"I'll be at A4. We'll enter together. Stay near me inside. That's all I need from you between now and then."
"Okay..."
Karin's voice was small, but steady.
Sakura stood up to leave. At the window, she paused, and glanced back.
"What's your name? Properly. I want to hear you say it."
"...Karin."
"Sakura. Sakura Haruno."
The redhead's lips moved silently around the name. Sakura. Cherry blossom. Haruno. Spring field.
Cherry blossoms blooming in a spring field...
That's a beautiful name.
By the time Karin looked up again, the window was open and the room was empty. Only the night wind stirred the curtain.
She sat for a long while in the dark, one hand still resting where the other girl's had been. The bite on her arm had stopped bleeding already.
For the first time in a long, long time, when she finally lay back down, she didn't curl into the corner.