The chalk lines bled into each other again.
Sakura groaned under her breath, gripping the brush tighter than she meant to. The looped formula she was writing—a simple two-layer conditional string, in theory—refused to stabilize. Again.
"Stop," Gensai said gently from where he stood under the shade of a willow. "You're not breathing."
Sakura exhaled. Only then did she notice how tense her posture was, how her shoulders had crept toward her ears.
"You're trying to force an answer," he continued, slowly stepping over. His movement was measured. Always was. But this time, something was off. A slight stiffness in his right leg, a faint adjustment to his balance. It was subtle, but her eyes caught it.
She tucked the detail away for later. For now, her pride was more pressing.
"I'm trying to finish the assignment," she muttered.
"No, you're trying to finish it perfectly before you understand it," he said. He crouched—only barely favoring one side—and tapped the smeared edge of her seal. "You wrote this condition before defining the anchor. That's like attaching a parachute to a kunai."
Sakura huffed. "So I'm not ready."
"You are," Gensai said. "But you're asking the wrong questions."
He stood again, brushing dirt from his palm. "Tell me something, Haruno. When these formulas become second nature—when these lines and loops bend to your will—what will you use them for?"
Sakura blinked. "To be a better kunoichi?"
"That's not a reason. That's a result." His voice sharpened ever so slightly. "Why you?"
The question landed like a kunai in bark. She had no answer.
---
That evening, Sakura sat cross-legged on her bedroom floor, her journal in her lap. The page was mostly blank—just a few scrawled phrases: Why me? Better kunoichi? For what?
Her fingers tapped the edge of the page. Thoughts drifted back, unbidden, to Academy days.
The girls used to whisper about Tsunade. Not just the raw strength, not the impossible healing, but the aura. Tsunade hadn't just saved lives—she had refused to let death be final. Sakura had admired that long before she ever admired Sasuke.
I wanted to be her. I wanted to save people like that. I just forgot...
She touched the corner of the page and began to write.
---
The next day's mission had been routine: a scouting patrol, an empty border town, Naruto falling face-first into a puddle of roof tiles.
She and Sasuke walked ahead while Naruto trailed behind, muttering dramatically about cracked ribs.
"Idiot's going to give himself brain damage," Sakura said, mostly to fill the silence.
Sasuke gave a noncommittal grunt.
"I mean… sometimes I wish I could stop the damage before it happens," she went on. "Healing after feels like too little, too late. Why not… I don't know. Stop it from landing in the first place?"
There was a long pause.
Sasuke's voice came low, flat. "If I could've stopped something before it happened... my clan wouldn't be dead."
Sakura looked at him. He wasn't facing her.
"…Sasuke—"
He walked faster.
She let him go.
But her hands curled around a new idea.
---
Their next training session was quiet for the first ten minutes. Gensai didn't comment when she arrived early or that she carried no scrolls—just her brush, ink, and a hard glint in her eye.
She broke the silence first.
"I want to use seals to reject harm," she said. "Not heal. Not undo. Just… refuse it. Stop it from ever taking hold."
Gensai turned toward her. There was no amusement in his face. Only quiet scrutiny.
"I see."
She waited. For criticism, for a warning. But instead, he nodded.
"Then stop shaping your formulas to fit someone else's paradigm. Healing is its own logic. Rejection is another. If that's your conviction, build from it."
A wind stirred the edge of his sleeve. Again, she noticed how he stood slightly unevenly, like the balance of his weight had shifted from what it once was. Like something had changed—subtly, quietly—but permanently.
"I'll start again," Sakura said, kneeling beside her ink.
"Good," he murmured. "We'll begin with intent-sensing threadwork. Design me a seal that feels the difference between impact and motion. Not after it's landed. Before."
---
She sat under moonlight that night, alone, her brush whispering against parchment.
The first seal was messy. It twitched at the corners. The ink smeared once where her wrist slipped.
But the shape was hers.
A ripple of light shimmered across its lines as the formula took hold, barely stable, but alive.
She stared down at it, heart quickening.
"Not to undo," she whispered. "To refuse."
The parchment hummed beneath her fingers.
And Gensai, alone in his study that same hour, moved to stand from his desk and paused as a lance of pain ran through his side. He pressed a hand there—brief, instinctive—but said nothing.
Instead, he turned the page of Sakura's progress scroll and began to annotate it.