Naruto stared at his phone the way a child might stare at the locked door of a haunted room—curious, terrified, and certain that whatever lay on the other side would not be as easy to forget as to ignore. The screen glowed with the contact information he'd spent five years avoiding: Uchiha, S. Underneath the name, a string of texts lay like unswept shards, most of them work-related, a few personal, all of them perfectly preserved.
Outside the office window, the day was starting, indifferent to his private apocalypse. Light pooled on the street in watery rectangles. Inside, the familiar disarray of his desk should have felt comforting—scattered manuscript pages, coffee mug with "Bestselling Author" scribbled in marker, a half-eaten protein bar slowly oxidizing beside a stack of dog-eared concept art. But this morning, the chaos didn't insulate him from anything; it only made him hyper-aware of the one place where order had failed: his own head.
He tapped the phone screen, considered the options, then set it facedown beside his keyboard. His finger lingered on the edge, trembling slightly. Last night's revelation still burned: Sasuke had come back for him once, and he'd never known. The thought clawed at him, demanding reconsideration of everything—the years of silence, the practiced indifference. But no. He'd made a promise to himself at nineteen, drunk and crying on Iruka's couch: "If he ever tries to come back, I won't be there." That promise had kept him upright through three states, two relationships, and countless nights staring at old photos. Breaking it now would mean those years meant nothing.
He took a breath, deep enough to sting his lungs, and then began the ritual: compartmentalize, sanitize, optimize. There was a project to deliver and a job to do, and Uchiha Corp was the client. He was nothing if not a professional, and professionalism required a perimeter.
He clicked open his laptop, bracing as it loaded the desktop with its wallpaper: the cover art of his first book, a splash of orange and blue ink. Without thinking, he changed the background to the default gray. Then he created a new folder and named it Uchiha Corp - Adaptation, each word an iron rod hammered into place. He dragged every file, outline, script revision, and reference image into the folder with the precision of a bomb technician. The click-drag-release became a small, savage pleasure.
When he finished, he double-clicked the folder to review. Every document, every scrap of dialogue, was there. He right-clicked on the project plan—formerly "ProjectSasuke.docx"—and renamed it "Client_Lead_Adaptation.docx." He went down the line, stripping Sasuke's name from file after file. For good measure, he opened the document properties and replaced every reference with "Lead Executive" or "Uchiha, S." He set his jaw as he worked, the motions growing more deliberate each time.
The only break came when Tenten swung by his open door, mug in hand. "Hey, you're early," she said, glancing at his screen with professional nosiness. "Or are you still here from last night?"
"Just couldn't sleep," Naruto replied, keeping his tone breezy. "Figured I'd get a jump on the asset transfer. Big meeting tomorrow, right?"
"That's the rumor." She eyed the ever-growing pile of paperwork. "You good?"
He nodded, once, sharp. "Good. Focused. Getting it done."
She gave him a half-smile, the kind that said she didn't buy it but also wouldn't push. "Well, let me know if you need backup. That Karin lady is supposedly bringing the whole legal department this time." With that, she vanished, leaving the smell of espresso and the faintest impression of concern.
Naruto waited until the footsteps faded, then returned to the purge. He even scrubbed the comments section on one of the scripts, where a snarky edit from months ago had simply read: "Try again, dobe." The word caught in his throat like a cherry pit. He deleted the line, highlighted the empty space, and kept it that way for several seconds before moving on.
The rest of the morning passed in the slow drag of scheduled distraction. He responded to Jiraiya's "urgent" email (not urgent), weighed in on a cover font debate (pointless), and even proofed two chapters of someone else's book without once letting himself think about the afternoon meeting. By noon, he'd constructed a fortress out of rational tasks, each one bricking up the messier parts of his brain.
But at 12:01, the calendar notification arrived, as inevitable as the next heartbeat:
PRIVATE REVIEW: Uchiha, S. // Jiraiya Publishing HQ // 9:00 AM TOMORROW
The bold, unblinking text seared through every wall he'd built.
He stared at the invite, reread it twice, then swiped it off the lock screen. He could feel his heart start to race. There was no way to decline. This was business, and Sasuke Uchiha was business. All he could do was show up, survive, and get out with the project intact.
He set the phone on his desk, watched it vibrate as a second alert popped up, then a third—automated reminders, the mechanical gears of a world that had never once cared about the tangled history beneath the subject line.
He closed his eyes, hands braced on the edge of the desk. For a second, he was tempted to send a reply: "Sure. Let's finally settle this." Or maybe, "Stop using the calendar for emotional warfare." But no, that wasn't the plan. The plan was boundaries, professionalism, not giving an inch.
He exhaled through his nose, reached for the phone, and typed a one-word response: "Confirmed." He pressed send and felt the finality of it like a blade sliding home.
A silence settled in after that—a good, clean silence, the kind that comes when you've made a decision and there's nothing left to do but live with it. Naruto allowed himself a minute of stillness, then opened the front-facing camera on his laptop. He looked at his own reflection, the set jaw, the tightness around his eyes. He practiced a neutral expression. Held it. Then, satisfied, he closed the laptop and let the screen go black.
The phone was still on the desk, but he didn't look at it again for the rest of the day.
The Uchiha Corp building towered over the financial district like a threat made of glass—forty stories of cold transparency, every surface engineered to reflect ambition back at anyone who dared enter. Naruto stood in the lobby for a full minute, hands jammed in the pockets of his jacket, watching his own reflection stretch and warp in the marble. He told himself he wasn't nervous, that it was just another client meeting, but the twitch in his jaw betrayed him.
He took the elevator up, silent and alone, to the executive floor. When the doors slid open, the air changed: colder, drier, as if even the oxygen here obeyed corporate protocol. The reception area was empty, but the path to Sasuke's office was unmistakable—every line, every angle, an arrow pointing toward the final confrontation.
Naruto walked the hallway, shoes muffled by carpet so thick it threatened to swallow his stride. At the end, a door of blackened glass stood half open. He pushed inside.
Sasuke was already at the desk, surrounded by an expanse of empty white and chrome. No paper, no distraction—just a single laptop and a stack of what looked like contract drafts. The wall behind him was floor-to-ceiling windows, the cityscape beyond rendered in perfect grayscale. Sasuke didn't look up as Naruto entered. Instead, he finished whatever he was typing, hit Send, and then sat back, hands folded with military precision.
"You're early," Sasuke said, voice clipped but not unkind.
"Old habit," Naruto replied, letting the door ease shut behind him. He took the seat across the desk, perching on the edge like someone prepared to flee at the first sign of trouble.
For a moment, neither spoke. Naruto reached into his bag, extracted his laptop, and set it on the glass surface with a muted click. He booted up, eyes studiously avoiding the man across from him.
Sasuke broke the silence first. "I read the latest draft," he said, sliding a marked-up draft across the desk. "It's good. Better than last month's."
Naruto blinked, surprised at the lack of critique. "Thanks," he said, accepting the draft and pretending to scan it. The paper was warm, the ink fresh. He could feel Sasuke watching him, dissecting every micro-expression.
Sasuke leaned forward, elbows on the desk. "You removed my name from the project file."
Naruto's lips pressed into a thin line. "It's company policy. We use formal titles for all major stakeholders."
"Since when?" Sasuke asked, a ghost of a smile flickering across his face.
"Since last week," Naruto replied, not missing a beat.
Sasuke let the silence linger, then said, "I wanted to talk about what happened. Last time. In the garage."
Naruto stiffened, fingers hovering over the keyboard. He reached into his bag and pulled out a document, flipping to page six with practiced precision. "'Section 4.3.1,'" he read aloud, "'All parties acknowledge that no interpersonal relationships beyond professional collaboration shall exist between key stakeholders and creative leadership.'" He slid the contract back into his bag. "If you want to hit the mid-quarter delivery, I need approval on the storyboards by Friday."
Sasuke's eyes narrowed slightly, but he didn't push. "You memorized the clause number."
"I highlighted the important parts." Naruto kept typing, not looking up. "The legal team was very thorough."
Sasuke's chest rose and fell with a sigh so controlled it barely disturbed his tie. "You're the one who insisted on that language." His fingers drummed once on the glass desk—tap-tap-tap—then stilled.
Naruto looked up, meeting Sasuke's gaze. Something flickered in those dark eyes—a question, an invitation. "And you're the one who signed it." He turned back to his screen. "So, about those storyboards?"
Sasuke leaned forward, closing the space between them by inches. "Remember that ramen place in Konoha Heights? The one with the red lanterns?" His voice softened, almost nostalgic. "They still have your photo on the wall."
Naruto's jaw tightened, fingers hovering motionless over his keyboard. He said nothing.
"We could go again," Sasuke continued, watching Naruto's face for any reaction. "The old man probably misses you."
Naruto closed his laptop with a snap. "We're not doing this. We're working." He stood, gathering his papers. "If there's nothing else—"
"Sit." The word came out clipped, Sasuke's expression hardening into something professional and remote.
Naruto hesitated, then dropped back into the chair, arms crossed.
Sasuke reached behind his laptop for a navy folder stamped with the Uchiha crest and slid it across with unnecessary force. "Since you're so focused on work, review these projections."
Naruto flipped through charts and graphs, all impeccably prepared. He felt Sasuke's eyes on him, cold now, clinical.
"Looks fine," Naruto said, closing the folder. He started to rise.
"I've scheduled a full team review for Thursday," Sasuke said, his tone deliberately casual. "Eight a.m. I'll need you to present the entire section on market demographics." He glanced at his watch. "The one you haven't started yet."
Naruto froze. "That wasn't on the timeline."
"It is now." Sasuke's smile didn't reach his eyes. "Unless you'd prefer to discuss other matters?"
Naruto gathered his things in a single motion. "I'll email you by end of day."
He walked to the door. When he looked back, Sasuke was already typing, his face illuminated by the blue glow of his screen, pretending Naruto had already left.
Naruto left the office, the hush of the hallway closing in around him. He didn't let himself breathe until he was in the elevator, descending floor after floor, each passing level a buffer zone between him and the battlefield above.
The next meeting was the same, and the next. Each week, Sasuke scheduled more one-on-ones, always under the pretense of project updates or executive sign-off, and each time Naruto constructed a thicker wall between them—sticking strictly to the agenda, shutting down every attempt at intimacy, refusing to let anything from the past trespass on the present. They waged a cold war, one calendar invite at a time.
In the privacy of his own office, Naruto kept a tally: how many times Sasuke tried to broach the subject, how many times he'd shot him down. After two months, the numbers were even. He told himself it was a victory, that he was finally in control.
But late at night, when the office was empty and the city lights glared through the windows, he found himself replaying every meeting, every touch, every word not spoken. It was a stale comfort, but it was better than nothing.
The final time he left Sasuke's office, Naruto noticed the ghost of his own fingerprint on the edge of the desk. He wiped it away with the back of his hand and never looked back.
—
By the time the big conference room filled, every seat carried a charge. Uchiha Corp's top floor looked out over the city like the prow of a ship, and the late afternoon sun hit the glass at just the right angle to blind anyone who tried to hide from the proceedings. Naruto took a seat dead center at the long, sleek table—knowing it made him the target of every gaze, and wanting that, needing it, if only to keep his hands from shaking.
To his left, Karin perched at the right side, every gesture a study in competitive compliance. She wore her hair coiled tight, lipstick a shade of warning red that matched the band of her glasses, and she set up her laptop so it created a literal barrier between herself and anyone else on the table's far side. Next to her, Suigetsu slouched with the lazy arrogance of a shark between feedings, reading the room with one predatory eye on Naruto.
Opposite them, Naruto stacked his own folders, uncapped a pen, and tried to ignore the faint tremor in his thigh. He would get through this. He would make his case, the real case, the only one that mattered.
Sasuke walked in last, on the dot, suit jacket hung over one arm and shirtsleeves rolled up. Naruto's knee bounced under the table, his fingers drumming a staccato rhythm against his thigh. When Sasuke circled to the head of the table, their eyes met for a fraction of a second before Naruto looked away, jaw clenched.
"Thanks for making time," Naruto said, the words clipped. He flipped open his folder with enough force that the corner caught on his water glass, nearly tipping it. He steadied it with a muttered curse. "I'll get right to it. We need to stick with the original ending. The one where they go their separate ways." His voice rose slightly. "It's what made the book authentic—"
Karin's hand shot up. "The focus groups consistently prefer closure. Happy endings test sixty-two percent higher in our key demos." She tapped her laptop screen with a manicured nail, the red polish matching her lipstick perfectly.
Naruto's pen snapped between his fingers, plastic shards scattering across his notes. "I don't give a damn about your percentages."
"Uzumaki—" Sasuke started.
"No." Naruto stood, chair rolling back with a screech. "This is my book. Mine. I wrote every word while you were—" He caught himself, jaw working. "I created these characters. I lived with them. I know how their story ends."
Suigetsu whistled low. "Now we're getting somewhere."
Sasuke remained seated, one eyebrow raised. "The contract gives us creative control over the adaptation."
"The contract doesn't change the truth!" Naruto slammed his palm on the table, making water glasses jump. "You can't just—just rewrite everything because it's inconvenient for you!"
"We need a new ending," Sasuke said, voice glacial. "The market has shifted."
"Fuck the market!" The words exploded from Naruto, his face flushed crimson. "This story is about consequences. About how when you destroy something, it stays broken. It's about letting go when there's nothing left to hold onto."
Karin's mouth formed a perfect O of shock.
"You're being unprofessional," Sasuke said, but his knuckles had gone white against the tabletop.
Naruto's voice cracked. "You want to change my ending because you can't face what it means."
Sasuke's eyes narrowed to obsidian slits. "I changed my mind. It's my prerogative."
The silence that followed was absolute. Naruto's chest heaved, tears of fury pricking at the corners of his eyes.
"It's my story," he said, quieter now but no less intense. "My ending. Not yours to fix."
Karin made a sound somewhere between a gasp and a giggle, then leaned in as if to shield Sasuke with her body.
Sasuke's eyes flashed. "You think I don't know what you're doing?" His voice sliced through the room. "You're hiding behind your precious artistic integrity because you're too scared to admit how you really feel."
"Feel?" Naruto's fist crashed onto the table. "I'm not the one trying to rewrite history! You can't buy a different ending just because you don't like how things turned out!"
Someone gasped—Suigetsu or one of the junior execs at the far end of the table.
Sasuke shot to his feet, knuckles white against the polished wood. "You self-righteous bastard," he hissed. "You think you're the only one who suffered? The only one who lost something?"
"Don't you dare!" Naruto lunged forward, color flooding his face. "You don't get to play victim after what you did! You're just afraid of these characters ending up alone because you can't stand the thought of ending up alone yourself!"
Sasuke's laugh was brittle. "And you want them miserable and separated because that's all you know how to be!"
Naruto's fists slammed onto the table, tears finally spilling over. "And whose fault is that?" he shouted, voice cracking. "You broke me, Sasuke. You took everything I gave you and threw it back in my face like it was garbage!"
Sasuke flinched as if struck. His shoulders dropped, the fight visibly draining from him as he sank back into his chair. The mask of corporate indifference slipped completely, revealing something raw and wounded underneath.
Naruto's chest heaved, guilt twisting his stomach at the sight, but he couldn't stop now. Wouldn't take it back.
"Everyone out," Sasuke said quietly, not looking up. When no one moved, his head snapped up. "Now. Except you," he added, eyes locking with Naruto's. "You stay."
Chairs scraped back in unison as bodies scrambled toward the exit, briefcases clutched to chests like shields. Suigetsu practically vaulted over a junior exec to reach the door first. Naruto's legs had turned to concrete, his heartbeat thundering in his ears as he realized what he'd done, what he'd said. Karin remained planted beside Sasuke, knuckles white around her tablet. "I should stay to document any decisions made," she insisted, sliding closer to Sasuke's side, her eyes darting between them like she was calculating blast radius.
"Get. Out." Sasuke's voice dropped to a register so low it seemed to vibrate through the floor.
Karin's face flushed the same shade as her lipstick. She gathered her things with deliberate slowness, leaning to whisper something in Sasuke's ear that made his jaw clench. The door clicked shut behind her, leaving them alone in the suddenly vast conference room.
Naruto sank back into his chair, adrenaline draining away and leaving only exhaustion. Sasuke remained standing, staring out the window, fingers flexed and unflexed as if debating whether to shatter the glass or himself against it.
Neither spoke. The silence, once crowded with witnesses, now crackled like the moment before a thunderstorm.