Chapter 103

Sakura blinked a couple of times at her teacher, "You mean…?"

"Yes, Sakura," the older woman confirmed without Sakura finishing her statement, "You are no longer my pupil—you are a full fledged medic: my equal."

"Congratulations, Sakura-san!" Shizune exclaimed enthusiastically, seeming just as surprised as Sakura.

"T-Thank-you, Tsuande-sama…I don't know what to say," Sakura found herself stuttering. She had only studied as a medic for three years, yet Tsunade was going to graduate her with the other medics who had complete the entire five years? Tsunade had said that she was the best student—but good enough to graduate at seventeen? If she could recall correctly, that would make her the youngest ninja to graduate from medical school in twenty years.

"Just collect anything that you might have at the hospital and attend the formal ceremony at the end of December. And from October onwards, I expect Team Seven to become a full-time mission group, do you hear?" Tsunade spoke strictly, but a kind expression was on her face.

"We'll do our best," Sakura replied confidently, "Thank you so much, Tsunade-sama!"

"You deserve it," Tsunade waved the two of them off, "Now, you have two months to go prepare for the mission. –Oh, and Sasuke?"

"Aa?"

"Happy birthday."

"Sakura?"

"Hm?" Looking over from where she stood at the counter, the pink-haired kunoichi turned her attention to Sasuke, who was probing around the fridge with his hand, looking for something.

"We're out of tomatoes too," Sasuke told her, turning his head slightly towards her direction.

She let out a sigh; ever since they had requested a mission from Tsunade a week ago, they had been training extra hard with the chakra senses. It was immensely difficult for him, and even after a few days of focusing chakra, he had only gotten a hint of her chakra signature with the guard slightly lowered. After their request had been put forth, Sakura knew that they only had until the end of September to perfect his senses. With that deadline in front of them, Sasuke had insisted that they train for the rest of the day, despite Sakura saying that it was his birthday and all. Eventually Naruto hunted them down and dragged the both back to village where he treated the both of them to ramen and gave Sasuke a present of what Naruto considered the best kind of instant ramen.

Since then, both of them had been training hard, but just as things stood when they were genin, Sasuke still had trouble getting the perfect precision that was required with controlling chakra. She herself had little difficulty with the chakra control, having acquired a level of chakra control equivalent to that of the Hokage only after a year of training with Tsunade. Of course Sasuke's chakra control was much better than when they were trying to climb trees all those years back—he currently had the standard level of jounin chakra control, but that was not enough to detect fully-masked chakra signatures.

Because of all the time that they had spent with training, Sakura hadn't had any chances to go shopping and the number of items they had run out of had accumulated quickly. Tomatoes were now the eighth addition to her mental shopping list.

"Naruto's coming in a few minutes to take you training," she told Sasuke after a moment's thought to his statement, "I'll go shopping while you two are out."

"Hn," Sasuke replied, closing the fridge door—Sakura was unsure of how to interpret this particular syllable.

The day after Sasuke's birthday, Naruto had received a scroll from Tsunade informing him on the Team's resemblance, and had promptly come to the house at the crack of dawn to express his enthusiasm. After that, he had insisted on training with Sasuke too, seeing as they were now a team again, and after what seemed like hours of Naruto's pestering, Sakura had finally relented. She had later pulled Naruto aside and privately told him not to go too hard on Sasuke—they may be able to go on a B-ranked mission, but Sasuke only just above the genin level. Today was the first day that Naruto would be going out training with his best friend.

There was a knocking at the back door and Sakura put down the pen she had been using to write her shopping list, running to go answer it. Behind her she could hear Sasuke following unhurriedly; ahead of her, the banging on the door was getting more and more insistent.

"I'm coming, Naruto!" she shouted down the hall, "Stop banging on the door! You'll break it down!"

The banging on the door ceased and Sakura pried it open with an irritated look on her face as she glared at the blue-eyed boy, who flinched slightly. However Naruto wasn't one to stay perturbed long, and quickly got over Sakura's intimidating appearance.

"You took forever to open the door, Sakura-chan! I'm surprised that you weren't crawling to it or something," he complained, then turned his head towards Sasuke as the said Uchiha came up behind Sakura, "You ready to go training, Sasuke?"

"Aa," he remarked, making his way past Sakura and slipping on his shoes—something that he used to have difficulty with, but no longer.

Reaching out, Sakura grabbed his wrist and when he turned to her—wordlessly inquiring was wrong, she bit her lip slightly, "Be careful; don't overwork yourself—you have a problem with that. Be careful on the path, and stay close to Naruto's voice, which shouldn't be hard seeing as he talks all the time."

"Oi, Sakura-chan, I don't talk that much! And don't you think you're worrying a little too much? Sasuke's gonna be fine," Naruto remarked lazily, putting his arms behind his head, giving her a irritated look from being told he spoke a great deal.

.

.

.

‼️If you want to access advanced chapters, wait no more and subscribe to my Ko-Fi, where you can buy books in completely downloadable PDF format.‼️

☕️ko-fi.com/skyarc☕️