The In-Between

Sasuke’s good mood carried him for most of the day, through the whispers and stares. He remained in his seat at the end of class. Iruka-sensei hadn’t told him what to do next, so he kept watch of the living and dead in the room. 

“Where to, Benjiro?” Uzumaki Nanami said. Sasuke tensed, but did not turn. On the other side of the classroom, Naruto frowned at his papers before bunching them carelessly in his bag. 

“Uh, the playground by the Inuzuka compound, I think?” Benjiro touched down on the floor, ghostly armor settling around him in shades of white and blue. He must have been fighting at the time of his death. “Kid’s been hanging around there lately.”

“Think we could get him to stumble on the mask temple one day?” Aito cut in. 

“I don’t think there’s anything really left of the temple,” Nanami murmured. “My baby sister didn’t maintain the upkeep.” The Uzumaki woman came into view as she followed Naruto, a bitter smile on her face. “I don’t blame her for that. Much.” 

“Sasuke-kun!” 

Sasuke blinked, and whipped his head back to the front of the class, where Iruka-sensei was staring at him. The man waved a hand at him, beckoning him closer. 

“Glad you’re back with us. Can you move up to the front?” Iruka-sensei began erasing the board from the history questions before. “It’ll be easier from here.” 

He sighed, and began packing his books. Sasuke, once again, tried not to stare when Shisui phased through the classroom windows. Oddly, he stared at Ino first, then Sasuke, and grinned. 

With a sigh, Sasuke sat at the same table as Ino, as far from her as possible. Sasuke still held a kernel of worry that Ino would fawn over him like she had before. 

But she didn’t. 

Instead, she seemed to sit as far away as she could as well. She stared straight at Iruka-sensei, who looked between the two of them with one brow raised. 

“Alright, I thought today we could start with Math.” Iruka-sensei brought out a few books, and began writing on the board. The following lesson was short, picking up on the multiplication that Sasuke briefly remembered a few months ago. To be honest, Sasuke appreciated it. Did he need it? No. But Iruka-sensei didn’t stare at him with pity. There were no whispers here, no pointing fingers or heavy silences. The most normal Sasuke had experienced in a while. 

When he finished, Iruka-sensei passed out two worksheets. “We’ve gone through most of the multiplication exercises while you both were out, and moved onto division. I want to see where you both are currently.” He smiled at both of them. “You can work together, if you’d like.” 

Sasuke didn’t need or want to work with Yamanaka Ino. Judging by the way Ino immediately began the work, she didn’t want to either. He was good at math. He wasn’t worried about whatever work he missed. 

But Shisui did. 

It started when his cousin looked between Sasuke and Ino. He stood at Sasuke’s side, looking over both their shoulders. “You know, you could finish quicker if you work together. There are a bunch of problems.” 

There were only 15. Sasuke shot him a look. Shisui raised his hands, but didn’t leave. 

Instead: 

“Judging from her paper, Ino’s good at math, too. You’re stuck on that sixth problem, right? You could ask her.” 

He didn’t respond. He attacked the problem with a vengeance. 

“It’s really quiet in here.” 

The grip on his pencil tightened. 

“You’ll both be spending months together. You can make friends! Living friends.” 

That time, he sighed loudly, loud enough that both Ino and Iruka glanced at him. Shisui took the hint, and with one more reluctant glance, flew out the window. Sasuke ducked his head, scribbling numbers to show his work. He had most of his family. He had his friends. He didn’t need anyone else. 

He watched Ino from the corner of his eye. The Yamanaka shrugged on a sweater, but kept her head down as well. It was refreshing. But also bizarre. 

Before everything, before the deaths and Tsukuyomi, he vaguely remembered Yamanaka Ino. How loud she could be, laughing until Iruka-sensei asked her and her friends to be quiet. The way she would fight around his desk with many other girls from class to sit next to him. The stares from across the field during recess. The notes that somehow ended up on his desk during class with her name on them. 

He had ranted about how strange the girls in his class were to his cousins, what felt like lifetimes ago. It was probably only a few months. Fusao had just shrugged, as confused by the girls in his class as Sasuke was. Aimi had made a strange face, something a little like disgust. 

“They like you,” she’d said, sounding incredulous. “Gross.” 

Sasuke had pushed her off the swing in the Uchiha park, and she’d pushed back. Soon enough, it was Fusao pulling them apart. Just like usual. But Aimi’s words stuck with him. 

Maybe Ino didn’t—he shuddered inwardly—like him anymore. Good. But something odd had occurred in the past six weeks. To miss school, to be at the psychologist’s office at the same time as Sasuke. To change so abruptly in the time he was missing. 

Sasuke snapped out of his thoughts just as Ino looked up. She had already finished and had begun drawing in what looked like a sketchbook. He caught the edge of an oval before the book closed. Maybe an eye? 

Whatever. He didn’t care what she was drawing. 

Sensei brought out another copy of the problems. “Alright. I’ll go through the problems. Call out the answer you came up with.” 

Ino nodded, but stared past Sensei, towards the board. Odd. 

Sasuke and Ino had gotten most of the questions correct. Sasuke was a bit surprised. He knew the Yamanaka wasn’t dumb; she was closer to the top of the class in final grades, but he had assumed it was more for class participation and cooperation. But Ino had gotten twelve of the first twelve correct, one more than he did. 

“Good job, you two!” Iruka-sensei said with a bright smile. “Okay, number 13. If Itsuko has five sunflowers, how many petals are there in total?” 

“Fifty,” they chorused. Sensei nodded. 

“And for 14, how many seasons are in six years?” 

“Twenty four.” 

“Great work! It’s like neither of you missed anything at all.” It made a part of Sasuke warm, seeing Iruka-sensei’s pride in his answers. He was sure Itachi had answered these questions correctly as soon as he entered the Academy, but even if Sasuke was behind, he hadn’t failed so far. 

“Last one: how many kunai does the team have all together?” 

“Fifteen,” said Sasuke.

“Twenty,” came Ino’s quiet voice to his right. 

They both paused. Sasuke looked over at her, eyebrow raised. Ino hadn’t looked away from her paper, but she frowned at the problem. Her mouth opened, as if she was going to say something instinctively, but it quickly snapped shut. 

“Okay.” Iruka-sensei had a crooked smile on his face, but not like Shisui’s. “Okay, so you had a difference. Sasuke, can you explain to Ino how you reached your answer?” 

What was the point? The reasoning was easy. He looked at the side of Ino’s ducked head. “There are five kunai to a person, and three on a team. Three groups of five make fifteen.” 

Sensei nodded slowly. “That is true. Ino, how did you get your answer?” 

There was a pause. Ino continued to look down at her paper, twirling her pencil. “They’re on a genin team. Genin—” 

“Can you look at Sasuke, Ino?”

A beat of silence. Sasuke watched her swallow. When Ino looked up, she had the remnants of a smile on her face, but once again looked like she was ready to flee, just like she had at the office. She didn’t meet his eye. 

“They’re on a genin team. Genin always have a sensei, so there would be four people on the team all together. Four pouches of five kunai would make twenty.” 

A moment of silence. Shisui made a small considering noise to his right. “Oh, your sensei’s good.” If Sasuke could turn and see him, he’d glare. 

Iruka-sensei hadn’t let go of that little smile. “Technically, you’re both right. But Ino has the correct answer. It’s a trick question.” 

He couldn’t hide his instinctive displeasure. Sasuke was sure he had gotten it right. Ino didn’t seem bothered either way. 

“The three genin would have fifteen kunai between them, but because they are genin, they also always have a leader—either a jonin sensei or a chunin leading them. So they would have twenty all together as a team.” 

Sasuke could feel himself scowl. 

“Good work, both of you! Let’s take a break for about fifteen minutes—I need to grab my lunch from the teacher’s room, and you can eat any snacks you may have brought. We can do a few chakra exercises before wrapping up.” 

Sasuke reached into his bag for a snack, some senbei he tried to recreate with his mother. It didn’t come out the way it was supposed to: it was sweeter than Auntie Katsu’s, and Sasuke suspected that Mother’s sweet tooth was at fault. He crunched into it and snuck a glance at Shisui—

And paused, cracker still lifted to his mouth. On the other side of the room, his cousin stared at Ino, brow furrowed. And it wasn’t the glance, necessarily. Many ghosts had an odd way of zoning out in a random direction, or looking at someone for too long. 

No, it was the way he looked at her. Shisui looked at Ino the same way he stared at Itachi when his older brother had come down with the flu after a mission to Frost Country. Itachi had gone off to train a few days later, and came back on Shisui’s shoulders, sniffing and protesting through a stuffed nose that he was fine, Shisui was overreacting. And though Shisui had laughed and joked about Itachi being slower than ever, he hadn’t left his brother’s side. Shisui ruffled Itachi’s hair, fed him miso soup and forced him to sleep. He only stopped when he caught the same nasty bug. Sasuke remembered placing hot bowls of soup on the table as Shisui coughed weakly by Itachi’s side. 

If Shisui had tangible hands, Sasuke thought he might have tried to ruffle Ino’s hair. He stared over Ino’s shoulder at whatever she was drawing, frowning deeply. Sasuke tapped at his desk until Shisui looked over, before raising an eyebrow. 

His cousin, as usual, did not give him a proper answer. “You can talk, you know. Your sensei’s made multiple opportunities for that.” And what in the world did Sasuke have to talk about with Ino? They had nothing in common. 

But next to him, Ino finally made a sound as she shut her book. “I—I’m sorry about what happened to your family, Sasuke-kun,” she said, eyes fixed on his cheek. The lack of eye contact was starting to get to him. What was the point of talking to someone without looking at them? “I hope you’re doing… okay.” 

Okay? he mouthed. What could be okay? Like there could be an okay after everything. He wasn’t going to say anything back, but he could feel the prickly awareness of someone’s gaze on the back of his neck, oddly sharp. It could only be Shisui. 

“Thanks,” he said shortly. What was Shisui’s deal? Had he been talking to his mother about Sasuke needing friends? But if talking would get Shisui off his back… “Why did you miss so much class?” It sounded just like Naruto’s question the day before, and Sasuke tried to ignore the feeling of déjà vu. 

Something curious happened to Ino’s expression. Maybe it was from trying to read his relative’s reactions, from Noriko-san’s anger to Hisoto-san’s grief to Mother’s depression. Everything that his family had tried to hide from him, even Fusao. For a split, instinctive second, Ino’s blue eyes met his. They widened in what looked like sheer panic, before going glassy. 

“It wasn’t—” Her breathing picked up. “I just—” she cut herself off. She looked like she was staring through him, something he’d seen in a few of his relatives. 

He was prepared for a polite answer about illness. A clan matter, maybe. Sasuke didn’t know how to handle this. But he couldn’t deny it was… similar… to the way he woke up from his nightmares. He shifted, uneasy and far out of his depth. “Ino?” 

She blinked rapidly, and her eyes refocused on his cheek. Her leg shook underneath the desk. “I was sick,” Ino said, and Sasuke knew it immediately to be a lie. “My parents wanted to make sure I was well enough to go to class, so I stayed out extra long.” 

It was then that Iruka-sensei came back into class, steaming cup of ramen in hand. Ino’s mouth quirked in what looked like a painful grin. It didn’t match her shaking legs, or how pale she had become. Iruka-sensei looked at Sasuke, then Ino, and Sasuke wasn’t imagining his small frown.