Sakura met Lee on Training Ground Nine the evening after the test.
He was doing one-armed pushups on his left hand while reading a book called How to be a Great Teacher Instead of a Good Teacher with his right. His legs were vertical, balanced overhead, and the pushups were not slowing down.
"Sakura-chan!" He caught her upside down with his eyes and his whole face lit up. He flipped to his feet, dusted off, and was in front of her before the book hit the grass. "I have so much to tell you!"
"I heard." She smiled. "Special Jonin. Students. Ino told me about it."
"They passed!" Lee's hands came together in front of his chest. "All three of them! They were incredible, Sakura-chan. Fuki, she has such a blazing spirit, her instincts are like nothing I have ever seen at that level, she just threw herself at me without a second thought! And Ami, her pride is going to be difficult to work with but her will is something else entirely. And Kasumi was no less amazing! Kasumi was the one who figured out the real trick behind my test, Sakura-chan. Without her they would have failed."
"What are their names again?"
"Ami Tanaka, Fuki Sato, and Kasumi Watanabe!" Lee said it with great pride. "I want to be as great a sensei to them as Guy-sensei was to me. No, even greater! I want them to surpass me! I want to nurture their growth with everything I have and watch them become splendid kunoichi who make the village proud! I have already begun designing individual training plans based on their weaknesses noted in their academy files. Fuki needs emotional control, Ami needs humility, and Kasumi needs confidence. But together, Sakura-chan, together they are going to be something special, I can feel it!"
Sakura was smiling. She was still smiling.
Inside her skull, the smile had turned to glass.
Ami Tanaka.
Fuki Sato.
Kasumi Watanabe.
She knew those names. She knew those faces. She knew the sound of their laughter in a schoolyard and the shape of the word forehead in their mouths and the way Ami's lip curled when she said it and the way Fuki's voice was so loud and the way Kasumi stood behind them both and laughed along with them.
SHĀNNARŌ!!!
Inner Sakura erupted like a geyser. Fists clenched, teeth bared, a full-body tantrum of righteous fury directed at three names she had spent years burying under better memories.
THOSE three?! Lee's students are THOSE three?! The ones who made fun of my forehead every single day until Ino helped me out?! The ones who called me Billboard Brow?! The ones who cornered me during flower picking class and pulled my hair and told me no boy would ever look at me twice?!
AND LEE IS GOING TO TRAIN THEM?! LEE IS GOING TO BE NICE TO THEM AND TEACH THEM AND CARE ABOUT THEM THE WAY HE CARES ABOUT EVERYTHING?!
Outer Sakura's smile did not move.
"That's amazing, Lee. I'm really happy for you."
Inner Sakura was pacing now, back and forth across the floor of Sakura's consciousness with the energy of a caged animal spotting something through the bars.
Wait. Wait wait wait. He's their sensei. He's their sensei and they don't know we're together. They don't know the boy with the perfectly sculpted body and the jonin vest and the most amazing heart in the world is MY boyfriend.
Mine.
Inner Sakura grinned maliciously.
They bullied me when I was small and weak and less confident. But I'm not small anymore. I'm not weak anymore. And I am not alone. I have Lee. And they have to sit across from me and watch me have him.
"Oh!" Lee snapped his fingers. "I almost forgot. I am taking them out to dinner tomorrow evening to celebrate. The barbecue place behind the academy, six o'clock. A proper team bonding meal before their first mission!"
Outer Sakura tilted her head. "That sounds wonderful. Do you mind if I come? I'd love to meet them."
"That would be great! They would love to meet you!"
Oh, they'll meet me alright.
Inner Sakura grinned with every tooth she had.
CHA!!!
The restaurant was a small grilled meat place near the market district. Lee had chosen it because it was close to the training grounds and because grilled meat was good for building muscle, which he informed all three of them the moment they sat down.
Ami sat on one side of the table with Fuki and Kasumi. She had changed clothes twice before coming. She was wearing her best blouse, the striped one with the tied collar. Her hair was freshly washed. She looked good. She knew she looked good. And looking good in front of your new sensei was just smart.
"So." Ami put her hands on the table, taking charge. "About tomorrow's mission, Lee-sensei. What should we expect? What kind of difficulty are we looking at? Should we pack for overnight or is it a day trip?"
"Great question, Ami-chan! It'll be a surprise! So don't worry about having to prepare anything ahead of time."
"But, I already packed for two days." Ami glanced sideways at Fuki.
"You can unpack!" Lee told her.
Fuki laughed at her for overpreparing and looking to be praised like a teacher's pet. She had her chin in her hand and was staring at the grill hungrily. Her knuckles were still wrapped from the test. She'd refused to let the hospital re-bandage them that morning because, in her words, she wanted to look like she'd been in a fight.
Kasumi was sitting at the edge of the bench, her body angled slightly inward, occupying as little space as possible. She was looking at the menu.
Lee was in the middle of explaining the nutritional value of grilled beef tongue when the front door of the restaurant opened and a girl with pink hair walked in.
She was pretty. That was the first thing Ami noticed and it annoyed her immediately. She wore a red dress and her hair was down, and she crossed the restaurant like she had a reservation.
"Lee!" Her voice was warm and bright.
"Sakura-chan!" Lee stood up. "Everyone, this is Haruno Sakura. She is..." He paused. "She's..."
Sakura sat down next to him. Right next to him. The side of her thigh pressed against his thigh. Her arm went through his arm. She leaned into him so that her shoulder was against his shoulder and her hip was against his hip and there was not a centimeter of air between any part of them.
"His girlfriend." Sakura finished.
Ami's chopstick stopped halfway to her mouth.
She looked at the pink hair. She looked at the green eyes. She looked at the forehead, wider than average, unconcealed, worn with the confidence of someone who'd long since stopped caring what anyone thought about it.
Ami's stomach dropped straight through the bench.
No.
No way.
Forehead Girl?!
It was her. The girl she'd made cry during flower picking class. The girl whose forehead she had pointed at and laughed until most of the other girls were laughing too. That girl was sitting across the table from her, arm woven through the arm of HER sensei, and calling him her boyfriend.
Kasumi saw it a heartbeat later. The recognition hit her like cold water. Her hands went under the table and folded in her lap, fingers pressing white against each other, and she did not say a word.
Fuki was the last. Fuki had never paid much attention to faces. The girl who sat across the table might as well have been any pink-haired kunoichi in Konoha until she saw Ami and Kasumi acting weird.
Holy crap. That's Billboard Brow.
The three of them sat frozen. Sakura was not frozen. Sakura was performing.
"Lee, have you eaten already? Here, try this." She picked up a strip of beef tongue with her chopsticks and held it to his lips. Directly to his mouth, the way couples did, with eye contact and a little tilt of the head. "Open."
Lee went red. "Sakura-chan, I can..."
"Open." She smiled.
He opened. She fed him.
"You work so hard." Sakura's free hand found Lee's forearm and ran down it, her fingers tracing the muscle through his sleeve. She was not looking at Lee when she did it. Her eyes went to the three girls across the table and stayed there for exactly one second too long.
She remembers, Ami thought. She remembers and she came here on purpose.
"My boyfriend is the youngest Special Jonin in the village's history," Sakura said to the table. "Did you know that? He's also one of few people alive who have ever killed a tailed beast by himself. And another jinchuriki was captured by him. An S-rank shinobi." Her fingers laced through his. "And he's mine."
Fuki's jaw clenched. Her hand gripped her cup so hard the knuckles went pale.
Kasumi was shrinking. Her shoulders drew inward. Her eyes dropped to the table.
Ami held Sakura's gaze. She held it because she was Ami Tanaka and she did not look away first. But behind the held gaze, something was churning. This was payback. She recognized it because she had been on the giving end of it for years. The positioning, the display, the casual cruelty dressed up as affection. This wasn't a girlfriend meeting her boyfriend's students. This was a girl who remembered every insult and had come for revenge.
Lee laughed at something Sakura said and the laugh was genuine but distracted. He was looking at Sakura and then at the girls and then at Sakura again.
Sakura called him a pet name she had never used before and Lee's laugh got smaller.
She leaned her head against his shoulder and told the girls a story about how Lee had carried her home one night after a training session, and the whole time she was talking her hand was on his leg, and Lee's posture had shifted from embarrassment to something else.
He looked at Fuki's white knuckles.
He looked at Kasumi's shrinking shoulders.
He looked at Ami's false smile.
He looked at Sakura's eyes and watched where they went when she thought he wasn't tracking them. They went to the girls. Every time. And the gaze wasn't friendly.
He knew that look. He could read intent from the placement of a foot. And he could read the girl pressed against his arm, the girl he loved, well enough to know that this was not how she acted.
Not around Ino, who teased them both constantly. Not around Naruto, who would have made a scene. Not around anyone else, ever. Sakura kept their closeness private. She blushed when people brought it up. She denied things, deflected, changed the subject. The girl sitting next to him right now, draped over him like a trophy, calling him her boyfriend for the first time in public, that girl was performing.
And the audience was three people sitting across the table with faces he was starting to understand.
Lee put his hand on Sakura's waist. Gently. Firmly. And he moved her.
To the other side of the bench, where she would normally sit. Where the space between them was comfortable and natural and not a show. Sakura's hand slipped out of his and she looked at him, and the look was surprise mixed with the first spark of something hotter.
"Lee, what..."
"Sakura-chan." His voice was warm. It was always warm. But the smile was gone. "What is going on?"
"What are you talking about, Rock?" The reflex answer was too fast and she never called him by his first name. No one called him by his first name.
"You are not acting like yourself." He said it. "You would never act like this in front of Ino-chan. You would never act like this in front of Naruto-kun or Kiba-kun or anyone else. When Ino-chan teases us, you get embarrassed. When people ask about us, you change the subject. But tonight you walked in here and attached yourself to me like you were trying to prove something to someone, and you have been looking at my students more than you have been looking at me."
The table went silent.
Sakura's face changed. The perfect girlfriend mask cracked and underneath it was the real thing, red and caught.
"So I am going to ask." Lee looked at her, and his eyes were kind, and the kindness made it worse. "What is going on between you and my students?"
SHĀNNARŌ!!!
Inner Sakura slammed both fists against the inside of Sakura's chest. DON'T YOU DARE MAKE ME THE BAD GUY HERE! THEY BULLIED ME! THEY MADE MY LIFE HELL! I HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO SIT HERE AND SHOW THEM WHAT I BECAME! CHA!!!
Outer Sakura opened her mouth.
Inner Sakura wanted to scream. Wanted to flip the table. Wanted to grab Lee by the collar and shake him and ask why, why couldn't he just enjoy having his girlfriend all over him for once? Why couldn't he just let her have this one thing?
But Sakura looked at Lee's face, really looked, and she saw it. He wasn't angry. He wasn't rejecting her. He was confused and concerned, and the concern was real, and it was for everyone at the table. Her included.
And she saw the girls.
Fuki's jaw was locked so tight it looked painful. Kasumi looked like she was trying to dissolve through the bench. Even Ami, proud and sharp Ami, was sitting very still.
How bad would it be, Sakura thought, if I made a scene right now? How bad would it look? He saw through me in fifteen minutes. He saw through me and he was right. And if I yell at him for that, if I punish him for being right, what does that make me?
The same girl I was trying to prove I wasn't.
Inner Sakura went quiet.
Sakura exhaled.
"Ami, Fuki, and Kasumi..." Sakura's voice came out smaller than she wanted it to. "They used to bully me. When we were in the academy together. They made fun of my forehead. They called me names. They cornered me and pulled my hair and made me cry."
Ami shot to her feet. "That was years ag-"
"She's making it sound worse than-" Fuki started.
"We didn't-" Kasumi, barely audible.
Lee looked at them.
He did not raise his voice. He did not narrow his eyes. The three girls on the other side of the table felt the weight of his glance land on them like a hand pressing down on their shoulders.
"You will get your turns to tell your side as well." His voice was level. Calm. "Wait until she is finished. Then I will ask each of you."
They sat down. All three at once, like someone had pulled a string.
Sakura continued. She told it plainly. The names they called her. The way it made her feel. How she started hiding her forehead with her bangs and how that made it worse, how they went after the hiding itself, how she ate lunch alone, how the only person who cared enough to stop it was a blonde girl with a big attitude and a bigger mouth.
"I wanted..." Sakura's hands were in her lap now. Her voice was steady but the red was climbing her neck. "I wanted to show them that I'm different now. That I'm not the girl they used to pick on. That I became something. That I have someone who chose me, someone kind and respectful and..." She stopped. "I wanted them to see what I have."
Lee was quiet for a moment.
"What you did tonight," he said, "was not the Sakura-chan I know."
Sakura flinched.
"You came here tonight to use me against them. To make them feel small. To show them what you have and make them feel what they do not." He paused. "You wanted to prove you were better than the Sakura they used to bully. But using someone to make other people feel lesser, that is not better. That's the opposite."
The table was silent.
Sakura's face was burning. Her eyes stung.
"I'm sorry." Sakura said it to Lee first, looking him in the face. "I'm sorry. You're right. I used you and that was wrong and I'm... I'm sorry."
Then she turned to the three girls across the table, and this was harder, this was the part of her that still remembered every name and every laugh and every day she spent wishing she could disappear. This was the part that wanted to be small again and furious again and righteous again. But she looked at them and she said it anyway.
"I'm sorry. What I did tonight was petty and spiteful and you didn't deserve it. Not tonight."
Ami's mouth was open. Fuki's grip on her cup had loosened. Kasumi was staring at Sakura like she had spoken a language that didn't exist.
Their sensei just made Forehead Girl apologize to them. Sincerely. With her face red and her voice cracking, she said I'm sorry to three academy repeats who tormented her for years.
Then Lee's gaze crossed the table and settled on the three of them.
He was only one year older. Sakura was their age exactly. But Lee's eyes felt older. Deciding if they were going to lie to him.
"Your turns." Lee said. "Tell me."
Ami went first.
"We did it." No excuses. Her voice was tight but she kept her chin up, because Ami Tanaka did not grovel. "We picked on her because of her forehead. We called her Billboard Brow. We were stupid kids and we made her life miserable." She paused. The next part was harder. "I started it. The other two followed me. It was my idea, most of the time."
Fuki went second. "Yeah. What she said. I was in it too. I liked... I liked having someone to go after. It wasn't personal." She winced at her own words. "I mean, it was. But it wasn't because of her specifically. She was just..." She trailed off.
"An easy target." Kasumi finished, barely above a whisper. Her hands were knotted in her lap. "She was shy and her forehead was different and she was alone. And we... I went along with it. I never started it but I never stopped it either, and that's just as bad."
Lee listened to all of it. He did not interrupt. He did not nod or shake his head or give any signal of approval or disapproval. He just listened.
"And?" Lee asked.
Ami looked at Sakura. It physically cost her something. "I'm sorry for what I did to you in the academy. It was wrong. I hope you can forgive me."
Fuki met Sakura's eyes, which was harder than meeting Lee's. "Sorry. For real. I was a bi- jerk.."
Kasumi could not look up. She spoke to her lap. "I'm sorry, Sakura. I should have said something back then and I didn't. I'm sorry."
The restaurant was very quiet. The grill hissed. Somewhere behind the counter a cook dropped a pan and picked it up.
Sakura wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and nodded. She did not say I forgive you. She was not there yet. But she nodded, and the nod was enough for tonight.
Ami's mind was already racing behind her straight posture. She's his girlfriend. She's going to be in his ear every night. If she wants revenge, all she has to do is whisper. He could make our training a nightmare. He could sabotage our shinobi career. He could...
The thought wouldn't stop. And Ami was too smart to say it out loud, but she couldn't stop thinking it, and across the bench Fuki was thinking something similar, and even Kasumi's quiet hope from the night she'd received the notice was flickering now, dimmed by the question of whether their sensei's girlfriend would ever let them be anything other than the girls who made her cry.
Lee watched all of them for another moment. Then his face changed.
The smile came back.
"Good. That took courage from all of you." He picked up his chopsticks. "Now eat. You have a mission in the morning. I want all of you at Training Ground Nine at five sharp, and if any of you are late I will add a hundred laps to our warm-up." He flipped a strip of meat on the grill. "The past is the past. What matters now is the future we strive toward together."
He said that last part to all four of them.
They ate. Not comfortably, not easily, but they ate. The conversation restarted in fits and stops, Lee filling most of the silence with his usual energy, asking the girls about their favorite hobbies and their least favorite things and whether any of them had tried spicy curry, because if not, they should give it a try, because spicy curry built character.
When it was over, Lee stood and looked at his students.
"Training Ground Nine. Five o'clock. Do not be late."
"Yes, Lee-sensei." Ami said it first.
"Yeah, yeah. Five." Fuki muttered.
"I'll be there." Kasumi said, quietly.
The three of them left together, walking in a tight group down the lamp-lit street, and before they rounded the corner Ami looked back once at the restaurant, where Lee and the pink-haired girl were still standing outside. She had the faintest, most reluctant thread of respect and jealousy for a girl who had apologized when she didn't have to.
Then they were gone.
The street was quiet with their absence.
Lee was standing outside the restaurant with his hands at his sides and the evening cooling around him, and he felt tired in a way that had nothing to do with training.
Sakura stood next to him with her arms crossed over her chest and her hair catching the light from the restaurant's lantern.
"You were right…" she sighed. "I hate that you were right."
"I did not enjoy it either, Sakura-chan."
"I know." She looked at the ground. "I just... I spent years being afraid of them. And then I spent years being angry at them. And when you said their names, all of it came back, every single thing, and I thought..." She shook her head. "I thought if I could show them what I became, it would feel like winning. Like I finally beat them."
"Did it?"
"No." She said it immediately, without thinking. "It felt terrible. The whole time. I felt terrible the whole time and I couldn't stop because stopping would mean they won." She laughed sadly. "That doesn't even make sense."
Lee did not argue with that. He just stood there, solid and warm and present the way he always was.
"Lee."
"Hm?"
Sakura looked at him. Really looked. The bowl cut and the big eyebrows and all of him. The boy who had chased her and never once made her feel obligated. The boy who had just told her she was wrong, calmly, in front of company, without cruelty, without anger, and without backing down.
She had never seen him do that before. Not to her.
Something shifted in her chest.
She grabbed the front of his green suit with both hands and pulled him down and fiercely kissed him.
This was a different kiss from usual. Her mouth found his and stayed there, and she pulled him closer, and her fingers tightened in the fabric of his suit, and Lee's hands hovered at his sides for a full second before they came up and settled on her waist, and she kissed him until she had nothing left to say that the kiss hadn't already said.
She pulled back. His face was red and his eyes were wide and he looked like someone had thrown a flashbang directly into his brain.
"Sakura-chan, what..."
"Don't ever stop doing that." She said.
"Doing... what?"
"Telling me when I'm wrong." She poked him once in the chest. "Even when I don't want to hear it. Even when I'm scary. Even when Inner Me wants to punt you across the village."
Lee blinked. "Inner you?"
"Don't worry about it." She was already stepping away, already turning, and the smile that crossed her face was private and new and aimed at no one but herself. "Five o'clock, right? Your students have a mission."
"Yes! Training Ground Nine, five o'clock sharp!"
"Good. Don't be late either, Lee-sensei." She emphasized the word with a glance over her shoulder that carried heat and fondness and something hungrier than both.
Then she was skipping away, down the lamp-lit street with her hands behind her back and her pink hair swaying and her step just slightly lighter than it had been when she'd arrived.
Lee stood in front of the restaurant for a very long time.
A pair of late-night genin walked past on the other side of the street, saw the green suit and the expression on his face, and decided not to ask.
Lee touched his mouth once with his fingers, confirmed that it was in fact still there, and started walking home. He had a mission to prepare, students to train, and a girlfriend who had just kissed him like she was trying to memorize the shape of his mouth.
It was, he decided, a very confusing but very good night.