Chapter 20 Abnormality

But thank God, Sakura did not walk towards Naruto. She walked around Naruto and sat next to Shikamaru. Sasuke didn't think that she could get any useful information from this sleepy guy.

Sakura glanced at Choji first, who nodded, holding a bag of potato chips in his hand.

Sakura gently pushed Shikamaru's arm. Shikamaru raised his head sleepily and looked at Sakura in confusion. After a while, he reacted and his eyes gradually became clear.

Sasuke shamelessly eavesdropped on their conversation.

"What's wrong?" Shikamaru yawned and asked lazily.

Sakura pointed at Naruto.

"What's wrong with him? Do you know?" Her voice was very low.

Sasuke was stunned for a moment. How did Shikamaru know about Naruto?

Shikamaru looked at Sakura, then at Naruto, as if he was weighing something.

Sakura glared at him angrily.

"Don't tell me you don't know, Nara Shikamaru. Although I'm not as smart as you, I'm not stupid either." Her tone was still calm, as if she was worried about disturbing Naruto.

But Sasuke felt that she was completely overthinking it, because Naruto's eyes looked empty, as if he was immersed in his own world and unable to extricate himself, which made him very uneasy.

Shikamaru sighed helplessly and scratched his head impatiently. He looked at Naruto again and his eyes fell on his golden hair.

Sasuke noticed the worry in Shikamaru's eyes and it really irritated him.

he is very angry.

He hated the fact that Shikamaru knew things that he didn't, especially about Naruto.

He wanted to suppress this emotion, but the anger grew wildly in his heart like weeds and could not be controlled.

"He's sick, I guess," Shikamaru said.

I got sick?

Sasuke was stunned for a moment. Naruto didn't look like he was sick. He just looked very painful. His face was full of fatigue and pain, not the weakness that appeared when he was sick.

Sakura seemed to have the same question as him.

"But he doesn't look sick at all."

"He never gets sick." Sasuke said. He suddenly remembered that in his impression, Naruto seemed to have never been sick, not even a cold.

"I don't mean that kind of sick." Shikamaru explained, his eyes full of worry. He tore a page from his notebook, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it at Choji.

The paper ball hit Choji on the head. Choji turned around angrily, but when he saw it was Shikamaru, he showed a surprised expression.

"What's wrong, Shikamaru?"

"Do you remember what happened outside Ichiraku Ramen last time?"

Choji immediately turned to look at Naruto, then turned his gaze back to Shikamaru.

"of course I remember."

When is “last time”?

Sasuke had a bad feeling. He felt that this incident must be related to the fact that Naruto did not wear the orange sportswear that day.

Shikamaru asked casually:

"Did anything similar happen later?"

Ya shook his head.

"I don't know. It's just that my sister is a talkative person and I happened to hear it for the first time." His eyes fell on Naruto and then back again. "Did you catch any wind of it?"

Even though Hinata leaned forward curiously, Shikamaru still shook his head.

"What are you talking about? What happened?" she asked.

Ya gave her a reassuring smile, but it was fake.

"Nothing, don't worry. How's your stupid brother doing?"

Hinata's face turned red with anger, and she was so eager to defend Neji that she didn't notice the tension on Kiba's face.

What exactly is going on?

"Shikamaru?" Sakura asked, her tone full of uncertainty.

Shikamaru waved his hand as if to dispel her worry.

"Just… ignore him. I'm sure he'll be fine."

Sakura didn't look convinced, and neither did Shikamaru himself.

Sasuke couldn't stop thinking. What bothered him wasn't that something was wrong with Naruto, or that he was acting strange today, but an urgency to find out why.

Naruto was an idiot, a loser, he didn't deserve Sasuke's attention, let alone occupying his thoughts as easily as he was doing now.

Sasuke's instincts frantically tried to analyze this rush of impulses and gut feelings, and it felt like trying to classify a hurricane - trying to distinguish wind from rain, and rain from flying debris.

It's not one thing, it's many small things mixed together.

Naruto mostly slept in class now, but his grades weren't bad enough to get him kicked out.

So where did he learn that? He wasn't as good at absorbing knowledge as Shikamaru, or else he wouldn't be the last one in the class, but he somehow managed to squeak through the exams.

To make matters worse, he always came to class exhausted, but when it came time for their sparring, Naruto didn't fight any worse - in fact, he got stronger.

Sometimes, when Naruto was too tired to think, or when Sasuke was about to win in a sparring match, something would change.

Sometimes, deep within Naruto's eyes, some instinct or reflex would activate and Sasuke would be forced back by a force he shouldn't have, and all his hard-earned advantages would disappear in an instant.

He would still win, but the victory would feel hollow and leave him with a strange feeling in his chest—a strange feeling that told him he was missing something.

The more he interacted with this idiot, the clearer a particular instinct deep inside him became amidst the chaos.

Because even before these strange things happened, Sasuke had always had the feeling that deep inside them both, some secret place, they shared the same pain.

It made him both hopeful and angry, because ever since that night, Sasuke had been defined by his own pain.

Naruto might be in the same pain, but he could still find joy and meaning in the smallest things - and that made him angry.

Once, Sasuke might have said that it was his apathy that made him powerful, that it was his focus on revenge, his disregard for everything else, that gave him strength.

But now, he wasn't sure.

It was because of this uncertainty that a subtle possibility began to arise in his mind, that Naruto was the more powerful one between the two of them.

That night, the thought sickened him; he lay in his too-large bed, in his too-large house, a mansion full of ghosts, and tried to sort his mind out by their suffering.

To avenge those who died here, to avenge his mother and father, and his damned brother, the one he remembered.

But the thought of Naruto's power kept lingering on him, lingering until he could almost feel the taste of blood rising up his throat.

He hated this kind of night.

But what hurt him more were the nights when he was overwhelmed by thoughts of what could have been, when he dreamed of having a family again, only to have it taken away from him again and again, until all he was left with was more and more pools of Uchiha blood.

So he lay there awake, hating it.

But he was increasingly overwhelmed.