The Friday morning boardroom was a display case for anxiety, brightly lit and climate-controlled. Floor-to-ceiling glass let in too much January sun, refracting blue sky and skeletal cityscape onto the surface of the polished walnut conference table like a cruel reminder of all the things waiting outside. Naruto sat nearest the door, a pen pinched between thumb and forefinger, its blue plastic biting into the web of skin until he was certain he would draw blood if he squeezed harder.
The meeting was already in progress, the parade of pie charts and performance metrics marching across the giant wall display in crisp, merciless detail. Sasuke occupied the seat at the head, his posture knife-straight, a perfect negative of his father's legendary rigidity. He wore charcoal today—no tie, shirt unbuttoned at the collar just enough to signal that this was "creativity" hour, not the weekly financial inquisition. His hands were steepled over a sheaf of notes, and his eyes—dark, half-lidded, intent—tracked every movement on Naruto's side of the table.
The dream kept leaking into Naruto's vision, overlaying slides with ghostly afterimages: Sasuke on the dock, eyes rimmed in moonlight, lips trembling around the word "idiot." He blinked hard, but the memory clung to the edges of his sight, whispering "I always did" whenever the room lapsed into a beat of silence.
Karin swept the perimeter of the room like a predator in heels, clipboard held to her chest, her red hair drawn back in a no-nonsense tail that snapped when she pivoted. She stopped behind Naruto, casting a shadow across his notepad. It was mostly blank. Three lines at the top, each crossed out in a different shade of ink, followed by a small, tight circle of pen stabs in the upper right margin. The rest of the page was pristine, a snowfield awaiting disaster.
"Perhaps Mr. Uzumaki would like to share what's so much more important than our Q1 adaptation timeline?" Karin's voice was honeyed, but her smile was the kind that belonged on warning labels. She bent at the waist, leaning over Naruto's shoulder, eyes skimming the desert of his notes before returning to his face with theatrical concern.
Naruto straightened, the motion jarring his chair half an inch from the table. "Uh. I was just making sure we didn't miss the, um, last version control update?" He reached for the copy of the agenda, as if it might provide cover, but his hand landed on the corner and missed entirely, nearly sending the whole stack skidding off the edge.
Karin placed one lacquered nail against the page, holding it in place with surgical precision. She left it there just long enough for everyone in the room to see, then withdrew. "Thank you for your vigilance," she said, voice gone flat. She pivoted back toward Sasuke, who hadn't moved, but whose eyes had narrowed just a fraction.
"The creative team has asked for an additional two weeks on content alignment," Karin reported, lips pursing at the end of the sentence. "That will put us behind schedule for the marketing drop. Unless, of course, someone can work weekends." Her gaze flickered pointedly back to Naruto.
He felt his face heat, a slow rising tide of embarrassment and something meaner. "If the asset pipeline had been finalized before the holiday, I wouldn't need two weeks," he said, before his brain had time to shackle the impulse. "A lot of the design changes were made after sign-off."
A hush. The intern sitting across from Naruto shrank in their chair, and the two designers in the corner started surreptitiously closing tabs on their laptops. Karin didn't blink, but the pink of her cheeks brightened. Sasuke exhaled through his nose, a sound so quiet it would be missed by anyone not holding their breath for it.
"Asset pipeline is your domain, is it not?" Karin cooed, eyes glinting as she rounded the table. "Shall we walk the group through your latest resource allocation?"
Naruto's stomach twisted. He forced his face into neutral, flipped the cover of his notebook to reveal the printed spreadsheet beneath. "Sure," he said. "It's the same as last week, only without the surprise late-stage rebranding you requested Friday." He tapped a cell with his pen, smearing a tiny circle of blue over the pale gray numbers. "If creative wants a new logo, that's a three-day bottleneck, minimum."
Karin snatched the spreadsheet, held it up to the light as if searching for a secret code. "I'm just ensuring all stakeholders are fully informed," she said, eyes never leaving the page. "Transparency is the foundation of this team."
"Maybe let him finish," Sasuke interrupted, voice so sudden the room actually startled. He didn't look at Karin, but his tone made it clear the meeting belonged to him, not her. "Naruto, please walk us through the critical path for next week. Assume Marketing doesn't touch the logo again."
Naruto's first instinct was gratitude, but he smothered it before it reached his mouth. Instead, he spoke in measured tones, tracing the line items and deliverables, ignoring the twitch at the corner of Karin's lips. As he spoke, Sasuke nodded, once or twice, never looking away, as if the rest of the team had ceased to exist.
When Naruto finished, Karin was already halfway through drafting her next volley, but Sasuke cut her off with a flick of his wrist. "We'll proceed on Uzumaki's timeline," he said, pronouncing the surname with unnecessary clarity. "Any further changes from Marketing will go through me, not the creative team."
Karin's lips formed a shape that wasn't quite a frown. "Of course," she said, "if you feel that's best."
The rest of the meeting was a charade: bullet points, delivery dates, a quick round of "any other business?" to which nobody responded. Naruto's hands shook as he collected his things, but he managed to snap his notepad closed without exposing its emptiness again. He stood before anyone else had moved, the chair legs scraping the floor with more noise than intended.
"I need to follow up on some urgent revisions," he said, to no one in particular. The phrase tasted foreign, rehearsed, but it got him to the door.
Sasuke's voice caught him just as he hit the threshold. "Naruto."
He hesitated, one hand braced on the cool metal of the frame, but didn't turn. He waited for the next word, the next command, but it never came. Instead, Sasuke let the silence hang, a leash that reached all the way into the hall.
Naruto stepped into the corridor, the hush of the executive floor enveloping him. His footsteps echoed, growing faster and louder as he put more distance between himself and the boardroom, between himself and the question he could not bear to have answered in public. He didn't look back, but even after he rounded the corner, he could still feel the weight of Sasuke's eyes following him, refusing to let him vanish completely.
Back at the publishing office, Naruto burrowed into his desk chair like a deep-sea creature retreating into its shell. The space was a monument to entropy—sagging piles of manuscript paper, a half-built model kit scavenged from a display case, a tangle of power cords, ramen wrappers, sticky notes, and at least three coffee mugs, all in different states of abandonment. The blinds over the window let in light with military precision, striping everything into alternating zones of orange sun and office gloom. Every surface was covered in evidence of last week's deadline, except for a single clear patch in the shape of Naruto's head where he'd face-planted onto the desktop at some point this morning.
He rotated a pen between his fingers, spun it like a propeller, and let it clatter to the ground. The caffeine in his veins had long since gone to acid, and the lack of sleep pounded at the back of his skull with a sledgehammer rhythm. The worst of it, though, was that he couldn't even work—every time he started a sentence, the memory of the boardroom, Karin's sharp-edged smile, and Sasuke's hungry, silent stare hijacked his attention.
He picked up his phone, unlocked it, relocked it, then unlocked it again. He stared at the screen until the icons started to blur. The urge to throw it across the room was so intense he set it down with deliberate slowness, as if putting a lid on a boiling pot.
Ten minutes passed. The hands on the wall clock barely moved. He fiddled with his tie, yanked it off, then immediately felt underdressed and looped it back over his head, leaving it loose and lopsided.
The memory of the dream nipped at his brain. Was it possible? Had Sasuke really come looking for him the next morning? Was the whole five years just a missed connection, or was his traitor subconscious filling in blank spaces with wishful thinking?
He needed advice. Not the kind found in books or podcasts or motivational memes, but the sort that could only be delivered by people who had known you long enough to remember your favorite flavor of trauma.
He thumbed out a message to the group chat labeled "Squad Goals." The typing bubble appeared, hesitated, vanished. He tried again:
need advice. video call in 10?
He sent it, then immediately regretted it. Too needy? Too vague? Would they even be free? The seconds ticked by with a steady thump, and then, in rapid succession:
Lee: "I AM READY FOR ALL CHALLENGES!!!" (sent with five flexing biceps emojis)
Gaara: "Confirmed. In mtg, can break at 00 or 30 past."
Naruto exhaled, the tension in his shoulders loosening by a micron. He let the phone rest on his chest, eyes fixed on the ceiling tiles, tracing cracks like constellations.
The next nine minutes were a purgatory of anticipation. He tried to clean his desk, but only succeeded in moving one stack of paper to a slightly different angle. He debated going to the break room for coffee, but the thought of running into TenTen or—God forbid—Jiraiya, was enough to keep him rooted in place. The video call icon pulsed on his laptop, green and insistent, a countdown to judgment day.
He clicked Accept. The screen split into three windows.
Rock Lee's face took up the entire left panel, cropped so close it was mostly eyebrows and a glistening, sweat-sheened forehead. He was in a gym locker room, background filled with battered lockers and the sound of distant thuds. He wore a neon tank top and the look of a man who had already crushed three sets of burpees and was eager to crush anything else that needed crushing.
Gaara appeared in the upper right, occupying only a sliver of his own window. He sat perfectly still in what looked like a minimalist office—white walls, a single potted plant, the suggestion of a modernist painting just out of frame. He wore a black turtleneck and regarded the camera with the flat, unblinking patience of a cat watching a bird trapped behind glass.
Naruto's own face hovered in the lower right, pale and slightly pixelated. He looked exhausted. He made a face at himself, then forced a smile for the others.
"Naruto!" Lee shouted, voice echoing in the empty gym. "You are alive!"
"Barely," Naruto muttered, but the sound of Lee's enthusiasm was already lifting him.
Gaara spoke next, voice low and measured. "You requested counsel."
Naruto nodded. "Yeah. It's about… It's about Sasuke."
Lee's face lit up, as if someone had just told him the next challenge was to break-dance up a flight of stairs. "You are dating again!" Lee declared, tone equal parts congratulation and warning. "Is it a rematch of passions, or are you finally crushing his spirit on the field of romance?"
Naruto's cheeks burned. "It's not— We're not—" He tripped over the next five words, then gave up. "He kissed me. In the parking lot. And then we had a meeting. It was weird."
Gaara's eyes narrowed, the only sign he was paying attention. "Define 'kissed.'"
Naruto groaned, covering his face with both hands. "Like, real. Not— Not a joke. Not a mistake. He slammed me against a car and kissed me like I was going to disappear if he let go."
Lee pumped his fist. "THAT IS A YOUTHFUL STRATEGY!"
Naruto barked a laugh, despite himself. "Yeah, well, after that he told me not to be late to the meeting. So, I guess that's closure?"
Gaara tilted his head. "You didn't reciprocate?"
"I did," Naruto admitted, the words heavy. "But I stopped it. I pushed him off." He glanced at Lee, then back to Gaara.
Lee, who had not stopped beaming, said, "Perhaps this is the final round! The one where you both learn to respect the power of direct communication!"
Naruto stared at his own thumbnail on the video feed. "I had this dream last night. About Christmas." His voice dropped. "We were back at the lake. Just me and him standing there. And he told me—" Naruto's throat tightened. "He said he came looking for me the morning after. Said he tried to fix things between us, but I was already gone."
Gaara was quiet for a long time. "How can you be certain this actually happened?"
Naruto's fingers tightened around his phone. "It wasn't like other dreams. It felt like... like when you suddenly remember where you left your keys. Like I was accessing something that actually happened, not just making it up." He swallowed hard. "I think it was a memory, not a dream."
Lee let out a long, explosive exhale, like a balloon deflating in reverse. "THEN IT IS DESTINY! The bond has not been broken!"
Gaara ignored him. "You should verify. There is no reason to act on a dream."
Lee's eyebrows shot up like twin exclamation points. "Wait! If your dream is actually real—" He leaned in so close his forehead filled the entire frame, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that somehow remained at full volume. "Maybe that's why he hasn't mentioned it! He thinks you rejected him on purpose that morning, Naruto! He might believe you left knowing he was coming!"
Gaara spoke over the noise, his gaze narrowing as he studied Naruto's face through the screen. "What do you want to be real, Naruto?" The question hung in the digital space between them. "If this memory is genuine, what changes for you?"
Naruto's mouth opened, then closed. His fingers traced an invisible pattern on his desk. "I don't... I'm not sure," he finally admitted, voice barely audible. "Maybe nothing. Maybe everything." He looked up, vulnerability raw in his eyes. "I just need to know if I've been carrying the wrong story all these years."
Lee leaned forward, uncharacteristically quiet, waiting.
Gaara nodded once, slowly. "The truth rarely gives us what we expect." His eyes narrowed, focusing intently through the screen. "If Sasuke truly came looking for you that morning, someone would have witnessed it. Your mother, perhaps. Or his driver." He paused, letting the words settle. "Get the facts straight first, Naruto. Confirm what happened before confronting him. Once you know the truth, you can decide how to proceed."
The call ended with Lee shouting something about 'THE FLAMES OF YOUTH' and Gaara's screen going black without ceremony. Naruto was left alone with the soft hum of the computer fan and the glow of the sunset slicing the room into gold and shadow.
He stared at the phone in his hand. He opened his contacts, scrolled to "Mom," and let his finger hover just above the call icon. His heart pounded like a trapped animal. So easy to press it. So easy to finally know.
But for now, he just watched the sun slide down the wall, waiting for the courage to pull the trigger.