Nindō 0117: Job Offer (1/3)

"So, what did you want to talk to me about?" Sakura asked as she stood up from the dining table before approaching the kitchen. "Come on."

"First off," Naruto said seriously, looking at Sakura as she started cleaning the dishes. "How have you been? Really."

"I'm doing fine … really," Sakura responded, putting a wet plate on the rack beside her.

"Sarada tells me you've been stressed," Naruto said. "Frustrated even. What's up?"

"It's nothing," she said. "It sometimes gets to me when I can't heal my patients. That's all …"

"If you say so …"

"I said, I'm fine!" She snapped at him.

Naruto looked at her with a raised brow. "I definitely believe you now," he said.

She sighed, turning back to the dishes as a slightly uncomfortable silence took over the room. Naruto didn't seem to mind it much and leaned against the counter, silently watching Sakura wash her dishes.

"Cut it out," she said.

"What?"

"You're looking at me … It's distracting."

"Where else am I supposed to look?"

"Anywhere else?" Sakura sounded increasingly frustrated.

"Don't wanna," he said. "Just like you don't want to tell me what's wrong with you."

"Why do you want to know so bad? I'm frustrated with my life; big whoop. Why do you care?"

"How long have we known each other?" Naruto asked rhetorically. "Almost thirty years now. We've been close friends for more than twenty-five of those years. Do I need any reason to be concerned about my friend? We all grew up and got busy. But that doesn't suddenly make our friendship meaningless."

Sakura didn't say anything and continued focusing on cleaning the dishes.

Eventually, she sighed in defeat and turned to look at Naruto with a thoughtful look in her eyes. She then turned back to the dishes and continued on with her work.

"Fine," Sakura said, her face turning into one of annoyance as if she was recalling something unpleasant. "Some time back, Sasuke spent a week with us. You know about it, right? Awesome, that was very thoughtful of him."

"Yes, after Urashiki stole his chakra. I'm aware."

"I'm going to sound really selfish when I say this," she said preemptively. "So if I see even the slightest judgment from you, we're done. Understand? That's the reason I wasn't telling you about it. But it's eating me inside."

"Is he fucking someone on the side?" Naruto asked instinctively. In his current situation, that was the first thing that came to his mind.

"No …" She squinted her eyes at him. "At least I hope not." Her eyes widened as she imagined the image before shaking her head.

"Just making sure," Naruto said. "Don't worry. We're friends. I'm not here to judge; I'm here to help. Tell me what's bothering you, and we will try to come up with a solution."

"So Sasuke was home for a week." Sakura placed another plate on the dish rack with more force, causing everything to rattle a little. She didn't notice and continued speaking. "Great. Sarada got to spend time with him. He trained her and took her out. Amazing. I'm proud of him for caring about our daughter enough that he spent time with her and let her experience what it's like to have a father. This is where the problem comes in."

"He didn't pay enough attention to you?" Naruto threw out his guess.

"That's a stretch," Sakura scoffed. "Other than the time the three of us spent eating dinner together, he didn't even bother to talk to me. It's one thing to not be interested in having sex. I've seen my fair share of patients with exceptionally low libido. I can live with that. But not even trying to spend some time with me? It's as if I have no place as his wife, and everything revolves around either the village or our daughter. He acted the same way last time when those two Ōtsutsuki guys attacked. He tried a little bit with Sarada, not as much as this time, but he did. Me? Barely any conversations beyond asking what I'm making for dinner or telling me that he's the one making dinner because Sarada asked him to. Not once did he ask me how my day was when I came home exhausted from the hospital."

A cracking sound brought Naruto's attention to Sakura's hand. She had just crushed the plate she was washing. Not only that, but she had done it without the use of her chakra enhancement, leading to a deep cut that was bleeding badly.

"Fuck …" Sakura looked at her hand resentfully and immediately healed herself. The wound visibly closed itself before healing completely. Within a few seconds, the only traces of the injury were the blood on her hand and the plate's broken edge.

"You okay?" Naruto asked casually. "Do you have something to snack on? We could have some popcorn."

"I'm telling you about my woes, and you want to eat popcorn?" She asked with disbelief.

"Instant ramen would be fine as well."

"Huh?" Sakura was completely thrown off the loop and flabbergasted. She didn't know how to respond. "Did I miss something?"

"I don't really have a solution for your problem," he said. "What Sasuke does is far too important to the village for me to just ground him. And even if he stays, there's a very small chance of him giving you what you need. Talking to him isn't suddenly going to arouse feelings of romance in him for you. You understand that more than I do."

Sakura sighed weakly as her shoulders slouched. "The only reason he even runs into me is because he wants to meet Sarada … After she was born, he ghosted me for a whole fucking decade. I'm his wife, for fuck's sake. I've deluded myself by thinking that he's busy, but I know that he comes to Konoha to give you in-person mission reports. If he wanted, he could've come to say hi to his wife and daughter. But he didn't do that."

"You said it yourself," Naruto said. "You knew what you were getting yourself into when you married him in the first place. I don't usually address this, but the only reason he even married you was that he didn't want his clan to die with him. It has nothing to do with you either; that's just the way he is."

"Why?" She asked him flatly, suppressing her emotions. She knew crying would only make things worse. "Why can't he just feel something, huh? After all these years …"

"He does feel something. Admiration, appreciation, respect, and more. But love isn't one of those things. And there's a reason for that. It's the genetic defect of the Uchiha bloodline and the trauma he went through as a child. Hell, I'm pretty sure that his trauma was half the reason he stayed away from Sarada. He probably feels that if he stays away, the so-called Curse of Hatred won't affect her."

"Yeah," Sakura said. "Sasuke is damaged after all that he went through. Especially because of how the damn Uchiha work with their extreme emotions. After going through so much, he suppressed pretty much everything. I'm kinda glad Sarada doesn't have a sibling."

"I'll be brutally honest. If companionship is what you wish for, Sasuke isn't where you'll find it. You'll find it with your daughter. Your friends even. Sasuke is busy enough that he is almost never in the village. And the times he is here, he avoids you because he doesn't want to lie to you. That's where his respect for you comes in. He knows that giving you the illusion of a caring husband would be inconsiderate."

Sakura continued silently cleaning the dishes, looking less thoughtful and more as if she was bringing her full focus to the dishes to clear her mind of things.

"Anyway," she said as she put the final bowl on the rack. "You wanted to talk to me about something important, right? What is it? I doubt your important talk was about my marriage problems and the dumb decisions that I have made in my life."

"I was going to offer you a new job. Better pay, better hours, and you don't have to deal with as many people. It's confidential until you accept, but it is a research role, and you will be working with multiple people," Naruto said.

"Oh?" Sakura raised her brow questioningly. "Who's going to run the hospital? I'm sure you know how many patients I have to go through every day."

"I'm going to put Granny Tsunade to work," Naruto said. "Unlike you, that old woman is very competent in dealing with subordinates and will easily set all of your unruly people in line. She will have a fraction of your workload while maintaining the service level of Konoha's hospital. And you know more than me how much better she is at teaching apprentices than you."

"Way to put me down," Sakura said. "Why don't you give that research role to her, if she's so much better?"

"Because this is a sensitive job. And she is far from suitable for putting in the kind of work necessary. While in practice, you might not be as good as her, your knowledge of medical ninjutsu and human biology is at least comparable, if not better, than hers. That makes you the better candidate for a research role."

"You came to my home to have dinner. With your real self and leaving your wife to wait at home, no less. There has to be more to this than just a simple job offer," she said. "What's the catch?"

***

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