Prologue
Sakura is born with her eyes wide open and her tiny fists clenched, as if ready to brawl.
The doctor chuckles as she hands the screaming infant to her mother. “She’ll grow to be quite the fighter, that one,” the doctor says, wiping her hands clean on a towel. As she turns to face the happy couple, she asks, "And what should I call this fearsome warrior?"
The new mother and father ooh and ahh over their newborn, playing with her small fists and cooing over her watchful eyes. Seeing the beginnings of pink tuft on the top of her daughter’s head, the mother beams, her sweat-soaked face gleaming as she leans into her husband’s chest and says, “We’ll name her Sakura.”
The first few months of Haruno Sakura’s life pass in a haze of newborn babble, full to the brim with love and care, her parents never leaving her side. She sleeps in a crib in her parents’ room, the crib painted a light pink to match the color growing on her head. Her parents take her into town with them every time they go out, smiling proudly as strangers coo over their child’s head, complimenting the unusual color of her hair and her quiet demeanor. At night, her parents take turns holding her and sing to her, songs full of light and love, until she falls into a peaceful sleep.
At four months old, she loses it all.
The Kyuubi attack comes out of the dark one windy October night, scattering the shinobi forces of Konoha and decimating the village.
The Kyuubi is a terrifying creature to behold, unrestrained malice pouring out of every whip of his nine tails. His red fur raises in hackles, and his mouth, big enough to easily fit fifty grown men, is pulled back in heart-stopping snarls, revealing his sharp teeth dripping with wet saliva. For the few villagers with the poor luck to be near enough to witness his wrath, their hearts stop immediately, primal fear rising too quickly and too strong, the demon’s presence and mad eyes too overwhelming for them to handle. Still more lose their lives in the effort to protect the village and hold back the demon. Even after the chakra demon's defeat, many would never fully recover from the bone-chilling sounds they heard that night and would forever be a little more careful turning corners and quicker to jump at unexpected noises.
The names of those lost in the battle are memorialized on a stone, the list so long and vast that few of those who remember can stand to look for longer than a passing glance. One name bleeds into the other, and transforms the large stone into a horrifying reminder that many choose to forget. With time, the flowers set by the stone wither and are not replaced, and the trampled grass grows back around the memorial, save for one bouquet of white flowers, replaced daily, and one well-traveled path, long and lonely.
On the stone, the names Haruno Kizashi and Haruno Mebuki lay side-by-side among hundreds of others, lost in the anonymity of a crowd, nothing to indicate the infant daughter who had been left behind.
Sakura is placed in an orphanage, filled to its breaking point with others who, like her, lost their families in the attack, and some who had lived there longer, with no family left to lose.
Unfortunately, as is often the case with these things, the orphanage is hideously underfunded and understaffed, and the Kyuubi attack leaves the whole village scattered and struggling to find its way back. And so the orphanage continues to plod along, raising the orphaned youth of Konoha with little help from the village that shuns the memory of those lost and in turn, shuns the children left alone by those memories.
There are only four caretakers in total: Katashi-san, whose round face has hardened with the years and who runs the orphanage. Eiko-san is the cook and seamstress, and always willing to slip an extra cookie into wanting hands. Rai-san and Hisa-san are employed to keep the children occupied and alive, and they do their best.
But the orphanage is not equipped to hold so many children, and so rules are put in place. Every child in the orphanage over the age of six must work; caring for the little ones, helping Eiko-san buy and cook enough food to feed them all, and tidying up the rooms and halls of the house.
One such child, Isamu, age seven, becomes the unofficial caretaker of Sakura, feeding her with bottle formula, changing her diaper, burping her when she cries, and stays with her as she sleeps, holding her tiny body close in comfort to his through the night.
And so pass the beginning years of this young girl’s life, unaware of the fate laid ahead of her.