Sightless - UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Chapter 01

Sakura Haruno's eyes fluttered open and mindlessly roamed the room. Morning seeped through the cracks in the cream curtains, warming her face. With a yawn and a stretch of her arms, she sat up and tried to remember why she was where she was.

Sakura cracked her neck, suddenly very aware that she was sitting in the kitchen of her apartment. Her wooden dining table was fighting with the weight of loose files, hanging folders, and pens with uncapped lids. Ironically, anything but food. ('She should really take better care of it' she thought. She'd inherited it from her late grandmother's flat. It had been there every summer Sakura went to visit, and there was even a crudely carved 'SAKURA' scratched on the underside after one of her cousins had dared her.) She looked sympathetically and grimaced. She straightened her back and stretched out her legs. Each muscle felt old and exhausted, despite the early morning, yet it was her own fault for deciding to sleep in a hard, wooden chair. Her memories drifted on the cusp between sleep and consciousness as her fingers rubbed her temples.

I must've fallen asleep studying the case.

She had often pulled all-nighters looking over unusual medical files for Tsunade and writing summaries for each section. It made the work easier for the already swamped Hokage, and since she was her assistant, she and Shizune split the work. It was thrilling. She had always loved the theory elements at the academy. Whereas Naruto would groan when Iruka demanded they pull their textbooks out, Sakura would cheer inside. There was something satisfying about absorbing an abundance of information - it made her feel full, just in her brain. It also helped that, she hated more than ever when people (especially grown-ups) were talking in what seemed a different language, simply because she did not understand the words. To the day she died, it remained one of Sakura's biggest tragedies that she could not learn every language to read every piece of literature as the authors intended. The pursuit of knowledge was her self-proclaimed, 'noble' purpose in life, and it excited her greatly, that now she also got paid for it.  

This one in particular caught her eye because it was a report from a local civilian healer from a few years back. The village he lived in was plagued by a virus no one had encountered before (a cure was never developed because it was never seen again). It was highly contagious and managed to infect the whole village in only three weeks. Sakura theorised it had something to do with weakening the immune system as only the elderly and very young died from it — but her hypotheticals weren't important. It affected the muscles and some sort of misproduction of lactic acid, inevitably causing muscle atrophy. It meant that there was a very sudden surge in amputation rates. Ultimately, it put the whole community out of commission for months, which was, of course, detrimental to such a small population.

Except, there was one woman (Margaret) that the virus wouldn't touch. It was like she had an immunity - not completely unusual by itself - but after a little investigation, the local healer discovered she had never been ill. Ever! Immunities to specific pathogens existed, but an immunity to every harmful affliction - the closest thing to a Byakugou seal in a civilian -  was unheard of. Then, the healer started noticing even more strange things surrounding Margaret. The woman was thirty-nine years old, yet in the moment looked like she was barely out of girlhood. People in the village blamed genetics and that it was 'too bad everyone didn't age so gracefully'. Then, after three births, it was just a question of healthy eating and healthy habits. Sakura was astounded. How could an entire village ignore this blatant an anomaly? For God's sake, the woman had never had a blemish, joint pain, or headaches. It was like her cells were super-charged. It was extraordinary and inexplicable.

Unfortunately for her, she died two years after the whole ordeal. But not before the healer managed to obtain cell samples. Whether she died so young as a side-effect of her 'condition' is unknown, but whatever in her blood that made her so special, could revolutionise medicine. The samples weren't sent with the file, and Sakura would have to write to the healer to figure out if she could possibly see these samples.