Ball and chain|| Sasusaku

Chapter 15

Sasuke's office is an illustration of his demeanor. The decor brims with minimalism, beige-painted walls boasting a few awards on the right, a cabinet overflowing with documents stands sentinel behind a plush leather chair tucked into the back of the room. Opposite the door, a spacious table occupies a quarter of the room, files neatly stacked on one corner, interspersed with a miscellany of objects—a small glass globe, a Rubik's cube, a penholder, a stamp pad, a bottle of water, a nameplate and more. A photo frame rests on the right corner, its back facing Sakura until she walks around the table to find Itachi and Sasuke standing proud inside the glass wall; Sasuke with his well-adorned scowl and Itachi with a gentle uplift of his lips. A framed certificated is held by both, Sakura notes, before finding said certificate on the wall.

"Sit," Sasuke requests, and Sakura gazes around, bewildered, seeing nothing to sit on in sight when she finds Sasuke pushing his seat around to face her. She regards him with wide eyes, making him sigh, before he gently nudges her shoulders to seat her down and himself walks away to crouch down before the cabinet, opening drawers and closing them, sifting through folders old and dusty, before settling on one and pulling it out, the sound of metal clanking before Sasuke shuffles over to her. A red folder in his hands, he extends it towards her and she accepts it, their fingers brushing at the tips.

"I'll be back," he says, before drifting out of her sight. Sakura leans back against the chair, a sigh on the brink of her lips, holding the folder open in her arms. The coarse feel of the folder, cold against her fingertips, and the rhythmic ticks of a clock previously unnoticed compel her to sit up straight and flip open the file. Loud headings and a family picture greet her and Sakura gently traces the outline of her parents' faces, the arc of her mother's smile and the lines around her father's eyes. Her smaller, younger face looks back at her and she finds her shoulders sagging at the weariness on the teenager's face, her smile around it like a plastic wrap. Letting her nails glide across the smooth veneer, she immerses herself in memories of the day her family posed for their last photo together, snapped on the day of her high school graduation. Her uniform-clad self seems like a long-lost friend she had hated and admired at the same time.

Sakura forces her eyes to skim over the more minute details. The blank space in the job field below her father's name feels like a spear down her throat, especially when her gaze falls on the three lines below hers. Long nails find the depths of her skin as she curves her fingers and swallows the lump in her throat. 'Businessman' was what her father used to call himself, and she understood, truly, that failure in the field was expected, that a fraud transaction, a ruined negotiation and a scam partner company were risks every businessman took. Yet, in retrospect, it all seems foolish to her now. Her father could have had the same epiphany, found a stable living and provided for the family he had chosen to create.

Except he didn't.

Sakura presses her thumb against the corner of her eyes.

Could-haves  bring back pain. Pain which she wishes to relinquish, doesn't want to accept, that it was ever a part of her, as if it isn't the exact term for her relationship with her parents.

Sakura flips to the second and last page, her parents' educational details, close relations, debt history, and ties to the Uchiha family, all mentioned in brief. References mentioned include some old neighbors and family friends who she assumed disappeared, like old memories, over time. She lets her thumb roam over the span of the paper surface, mind everywhere but the letters printed on it, when her forehead meets a warm metal surface. Her eyes move up to find Sasuke, his entrance gone completely unnoticed by her, and a can in his hand.

The file lands on the table with a soft thud as Sakura curtains the gasp on her tongue with the tips of her fingers. The brand of coffee, from years back, gleams away before her eyes and her heart swells from a feeling so vast to contain and so hard to explain, as if words exist as nothing but congeries of notes and a snow-clad road and so much less, and so, so much more. She finds, in that single breath held back, staring back at her, eyes wider and jaw softer, the black of the irises darker and much more lost, in a muffler very out of style.