Flashback:
Silence.
Nothing penetrated this uncomfortable calm, except maybe the rustling of the otherwise always so quiet wind.
On the edge of a small, not exactly homely-looking street, in front of a small house, two people stood facing each other, both of whom gave each other furtive glances and yet only kept them occupied with their own thoughts.

The silence of the two lasted until at some point everything pensive had disappeared from the young man's face and he carefully took a few steps towards the blonde. "Ino," he said calmly and looked at her seriously.
The strangely calm sound and the strangely familiar voice caused a brief shock from her thoughts and now she could recognize Shikamaru's figure in front of her again, which she had previously simply faded out in order to take care of the thousand questions in her thoughts that were concerned you all upset now.

He came a few steps closer to her and then, before she knew it, he was standing so close in front of her that he carefully raised his right hand and placed it loosely on her shoulder.This caused a sharp, electrified pain in her that could hardly go unnoticed. She winced for a moment and was now completely in this world again and no longer in the world she would have preferred to be in, in the past, in which everything could still enjoy the best order and in which everything had been much simpler.

"Ino ..." he said again calmly, seriously and at the same time so quietly that she could just barely understand it. He said it with such calm that the blonde wondered if she was just dreaming. It sounded so unreal and just not right, after all he had just had a violent argument with Temari and it looked like they weren't together anymore. So why should he stay so calm now? Ino would have thought that he was angry or even sad but so relaxed, she had last seen him a few years ago. He was often annoyed, but one couldn't speak of serenity so often with Shikamaru."Ino ... about yesterday ... so ... I'm really sorry ... I couldn't have just let you go ... but it ... so ..." he began to talk, but Ino didn't listen any more. It hurt too much to hear from him that he felt guilty. She didn't want that, she now knew that she loved him too much for that.

"Sssht ...", Ino made quietly and put one of her delicate fingers on his lips so that he finally stopped talking.
He immediately fell silent and looked at her. Her look was slightly sad and hurt at first, whereby Shikamaru wondered what he had said or done wrong, but then some of her worry lines smoothed out on her forehead and she just smiled lovingly at him.
"You don't have to apologize to me, because I would forgive you one way or the other because you mean more to me than anything else ... I love you", after Ino had finished talking, he looked at her slightly confused at first, but then he smiled too and gently touched hers with his lips.At that moment Ino was probably the happiest girl in the whole country, now more likely in this little deserted street.

~ End ~

Ino was still smiling all over her face and Hinata seemed to have to process what she had just heard first. Ino got up and was about to go into the kitchen when Hinata startled at the stupor in which she was in thought and with a single question banished the whole happiness and smile from Ino's face for the whole time:

"Did he say that he loves you too?"
...


At the same time, in a small apartment near the city park:

"It never works like that!" A male voice could be heard coming from a room that was probably the bedroom. Exactly from this room you could hear an annoyed sigh of a girl and then it was quiet.

Sakura's head was supported on her arms and so she was stretched out on her stomach, on the carpet in Sasuke's room and Sasuke was sitting cross-legged in front of her, both of them were bent over a few math problems in a book."I'm sorry, but I just don't understand!", She uttered a bit stubbornly and wiggled tensely with her legs, which she was holding in the air.

"That's all totally logical. How can you not understand that?" Asked the black-haired man, sounding visibly annoyed and impatient. Now he had been busy teaching her math for over an hour, which he couldn't really do. Sakura was just as smart as before.

But to Sakura none of this soundedlogical. All she saw was countless numbers, nothing else.
He sighed.
"Maybe we should take a break first !?" This was more of a statement than a question from the Uchiha. She only nodded fleetingly, knowing that he hadn't waited for an answer from her anyway.
So he got up and left the room. "Do you want a drink too?" He called to her from the kitchen, which Sakura found difficult to understand.

"Yes, please, a glass of water!", she called back and closed her eyes for a moment, which she had been exposed to this confusing number of numbers the whole time and which were already tired. She thought about the day so far. Nothing suspicious had yet appeared in Sakura's eyes, that she even suggested that this tutoring was going in the wrong direction. She couldn't help smiling and sighed again as she thought of what was about to happen: math maybe hoped that this tutoring was moving in the wrong direction, because she found everything better than math now, but she didn't dare to think it, let alone say it.


Sakura got up slowly because Sasuke had been in the kitchen for a while and she couldn't drink on the floor anyway.
She looked around for another seat and was disappointed.
There, in the middle of the room, there was only Sasuke's, big bed ... why it was so big, she wondered for a brief moment, but didn't really want to think about it any further.The pink-haired woman quickly sat down on the edge of the bed and waited until Sasuke came back.

After a short time he came back with two glasses in his hand and initially stopped in front of her. He raised an eyebrow, but finally sat down next to her. Sasuke handed one of the glasses to Sakura and finally took a sip from his himself before setting it down on his bedside table.

Sakura didn't drink anything, just took her glass in both hands and held it in front of her chest before she looked at Sasuke and then looked thoughtfully at the water in the transparent vessel in her hands. What on earth could she talk to him about?
She had thought about this right from the start. Sasuke was very different from what she was. He was much more confident and almost always stayed cool and inscrutable. And last but not least, he was also a total magnet for women. Sakura wasn't exactly ugly, but because she comes from 'higher circles', hardly any boy appeals to her, as she seems unreachable for the male sex one way or another.But despite all the inequalities they had, they were now sitting across from each other on this bed and trying to talk at least halfway normally.
What an irony in life ...

The only thing they probably had in common were their friends and that they both have well-deserving parents ...
Sakura let her gaze wander through the small room in which they were sitting on the bed.
The pink-haired woman wondered why Sasuke lived in such an old and small apartment, although he could still afford a much larger one.
Was he just too lazy to look for a new apartment?
This wasn't unreasonable, but even he would still have that much brain and besides, he was far too boastful to introduce this small, dirty apartment to his friends as his home.

No.
It could be impossible, but what was it then?
Sakura asked this question, but couldn't come up with a logical answer, why he lived in this 'thing', which she no longer dared to call an apartment, since the longer she looked around, the more flaws she discovered.Some laminate boards were loose in the floor, the ceilings and walls were crooked and in the dirty corners, spider threads were already hanging here and there in the room. Sakura grimaced slightly at the thought that there were spiders walking around here, slightly disgusted, which Sasuke didn't see. Since she still hadn't got a suitable answer to her question that haunted her head, and because the crushing silence between the two of them hurt her ears, she decided to just ask.

"Tell me ... why do you actually live here and not in some luxury villa? I mean you have so much money ...", Sakura tried to bring so much sarcasm into her words while she said this, which she did not succeeded when she intended.
Through her sudden voice, which penetrated so calm, Sasuke looked up from the sheet of his bed and looked into her eyes, slightly confused. First of all he had to realize what she had said to him.When it occurred to him, the expression on his face suddenly turned very serious.
"That's none of your business .." he almost hissed. She had never seen him so unfriendly before. So there had to be something more to it, which Sakura couldn't explain anyway.
Sakura was a bit startled at first, at his tone of voice, but then that expression disappeared and gave way to anger. She honestly had no idea why she got so angry about it, but Sakura always felt weird around him anyway, so she didn't worry about her emotions going crazy.

"Well then you don't have to tell me ... I don't care at all ..."
"Is that why you're asking me that too ?! You don't want to be interested, are you?"
"No, I just want to break the silence at last. You didn't seem to have bothered to talk to me ..."
"I never said that Iwant to talk to you!!!", now he got up and left the room angry.
Sakura just looked after him confused and indignant about his behavior, she was actually just left sitting here! It wasn't even the worst that he let her sit, but how he did it. You could tell that he was angry, but at the same time he was so absent and ... cold ...
It seemed as if he was no longer here, with her, or simply somewhere else, in another world ... In a past world ...