Chapter 109

There was a silence between them after that, and to pass the time, Sasuke put his hands together in a seal to focus his chakra, expanding the area in which he could sense the presence of others. After a few second of deep concentration, Sakura's chakra flickered within his awareness; having gotten a lock, it was easy to maintain awareness of its presence, and he continued to expand the field out. Animals and plants contained low amounts of chakra as well, and if one concentrated hard enough, it could be detected as well, Sakura had told him, however it was unwise to go seeking the presence of chakra in non-sentient beings, as it could hide the chakra of sentient beings.

After a few more minutes of fiddling with the rose bush she was planting, the grass rustled in front of him as Sakura seemed to have stretched out on the lawn. There she lay for a moment longer, and the presence of her chakra disappeared from his awareness. He blinked in surprise.

"Sakura?" he found himself asking, somewhat startled—the lack of chakra sent to him the message that she was dead.

There was a soft silence, but he could subtly catch the sound of her breathing, "It's too easy for you now. We're taking it up a notch."

He gave a short nod and retracted the field of his awareness, concentrating it to where she was located. It was harder now, he noted with frustration; it was like grabbing onto something slippery—someone can hold it for a minute, but then it slips out of one's hands.

"Sasuke?" Sakura spoke after a minute of his trying.

"What is it?" slightly irked that she had disrupted his concentration.

"If I was a rose…" she spoke serenely, like her mind was drifting away to far away places, "…what colour do you think I would be?"

He raised his eyebrow; it was a strange question, to say the least, but he supposed not entirely random. He closed his eyes for a moment in concentration, not that it mattered—it just felt more natural—and contemplated an answer.

"I don't know…pink?" it seemed fitting.

She moved, so that when she spoke her voice was projected towards him, "Really? How come?"

He shrugged lightly. Well, the first colour he supposed he associated with Sakura was pink, because of her hair colour, but other than that, pink just seemed to suit her anyways.

"It's…delicate," he replied, the words sounding awkward from his mouth, "Pink, that is."

"Are you saying I'm delicate?" her voice was teasing—playful, "I thought training with me would have shown you otherwise."

"Emotionally delicate then," he suggested, her depression during his absence coming to mind, "A pink rose is a delicate flower, it can be easily hurt if you're not careful."

She fell into a silence, and a frown came to his face as it stretched out. It was a contemplative silence, and as it continued drag on, he began to wonder if he had said something to upset her. He was about to ask her if he had when she spoke up again.

"And what about you, Sasuke? What colour of rose are you?" her tone of voice was the same, and the question and caught him more off guard than the other one had.

What colour rose was he? Different colours of roses came to mind as he thought about it. Red? —No. White? —No. Yellow? —No. None of the colours seemed to match him; when one thought of roses, they thought of love, ardor, beauty, and compassion—all virtues that he could never label himself with.

"Black," he answered finally, "I would be a black rose."

He could imagine the expression on her face, she was frowning in disapproval, he was sure of it. "There's no such thing," she replied, her voice matching the expression he had imagined in his mind.

The image of a black rose had not come to mind initially when she asked him the question, but instead a withered rose was what he saw, and it was upon that image that he based his justification: "Red roses turn black when they die."

She said nothing to this, his statement seeming to have put her into a silence of shock. She moved to reach out to him, and as she did so, she slipped her hand between his, breaking the seal he was using to focus his chakra. Determinedly she worked her hand so that she grasped one of his, running her thumb over the back of it. Another awkward silence passed between them before he finally decided to free his hand from the hold she had on it.

"I'm going to go inside," he told her, getting to his feet.

"Sasuke…"

He shook his head firmly at her, "It's okay, Sakura. This has nothing to do with the roses."

"No, that's not it," she interrupted, suddenly sounding slightly edgy, "I just wanted to tell you… My parents have invited us over for dinner on Saturday evening."

"Oh," he stated rather bluntly, now feeling stupid, "Okay."

With that last note, he headed indoors, trying to ignore the embarrassed burning on the back of his neck.

Shortly after Sakura had told him about the invitation, Sasuke promptly forgot about it and it never crossed mind as the days passed by. He was focusing mostly on his training, spending sometimes hours in the yard trying to detect Sakura's chakra. After raising the bar on detecting it, he had been able to pinpoint it in a few days, and by the time he had managed that, she had decided to switch the exercises to a longer range—taking up gardening in order to maintain an adequate space between them.

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