Naruto stepped out of the pool area, hair dripping onto his uniform collar. The hallway outside the aquatics wing smelled of old floor polish and something like tired ambition. His shoes squeaked slightly as he walked, the echo a contrast to the quiet weight still clinging to him after what happened with Coach Ingrid.
He didn't look back.
Whatever passed between them in that moment—her grip on his wrist, the closeness of her breath, the strange vulnerability in her eyes—it felt like it belonged to another reality. A different part of Tokyo. Not this high school hallway with lockers dented from years of careless slams and flyers peeling off corkboards.
He rubbed the back of his neck, cheeks still warm.
By the time he reached his classroom, the day had already begun to blur. Teachers droned on about formulas and feudal policies, white chalk scratching across blackboards like whispers in a storm. Naruto nodded when he was supposed to, jotted down notes he'd barely registered. His mind kept replaying the moment in the pool—Ingrid's voice, steady but almost cracked. The way she'd held him—not firmly, not loosely—like she wasn't quite sure if she wanted to pull him closer or push him away.
He blinked. The bell rang again.
Classes passed in a quiet fog.
Eventually, the last bell rang, and the building began to empty with the rush of footsteps, hallway chatter, and the clatter of lockers slamming shut.
Naruto stepped outside, slinging his bag over his shoulder, the spring sunlight now filtered through clouds. Before he could make it three steps down the school steps—
"Naruto!" came a voice like an arrow.
He stopped mid-step, already bracing.
Sakura Haruno jogged up, her pink hair catching the breeze, and gave him a bright, sugary smile that never quite reached her eyes. "Hey, wanna go to the new mall? They've got a half-off sale and I need someone to carry things. You can pay too—since you still owe me for that bento I bought, like, three months ago."
Naruto blinked slowly, not even mustering a grin. "Not today, Sakura. I'm… tired."
"Tired?" she repeated, brow twitching. "Tired from what? Sitting through history?"
He started walking again, not turning back. "Had early swim training. I'm just going home."
Sakura opened her mouth, about to unleash one of her classic screeches—but by the time the first note of her outrage left her throat, he was already halfway down the street. Gone. Just like that.
Left with no audience, Sakura stood fuming, one hand curled into a fist, the other gripping her bag strap. People stared. She didn't care.
No one ignored Sakura Haruno.
Sakura stood there, arms crossed, fuming.
"Unbelievable," she muttered, cheeks flushed with indignation. "He didn't even look back. Like I'm some nobody."
Her eyes scanned the schoolyard until they landed on a familiar figure leaning against the vending machines near the gym.
Kiba.
Still in his training jacket, half-zipped, and chugging a can of something fizzy, he was laughing at something Shino had just said—but the second Sakura stomped toward them like a thundercloud in eyeliner, Shino ghosted away, vanishing with a muttered excuse only audible to bugs.
"Kiba!" she snapped, throwing her hands in the air.
He froze mid-sip. "Oh no," he whispered to himself before turning to her with a sheepish smile. "Hey... Sakura. Uh, nice weather today?"
Sakura didn't even hear him. "Can you believe that idiot Naruto? I waited all day—all day!—to go shopping, and he just brushes me off like I'm some second-year groupie. Who does he think he is?! I swear he's been acting all weird lately, ever since that pool cleanup thing."
Kiba blinked. "Pool cleanup—?"
"Whatever!" she waved it off. "The point is, he just left. No apology, no smile, nothing! And after everything I've done for him. The bento I bought! The homework I let him copy! The way I tolerate his face!"
Kiba, desperate to avoid a scene (and the glances already coming their way), turned toward the vending machine. "Want a soda?"
Sakura blinked. "What?"
He shoved some yen into the slot, punched the button, and grabbed the cold can as it thudded down.
Without ceremony, he handed it to her.
Sakura stared at it. Then at him.
Her lips parted slightly as she took the drink. "You… you got this for me?"
Kiba scratched his neck. "Yeah. You looked like you were about to explode."
Her cheeks turned just a shade pinker. "You always take care of me, Kiba…"
"Uhhh…"
"You just get me. Unlike Naruto, who doesn't even notice when I need retail therapy."
Kiba held up his hands. "No, wait, that's not what I—"
But Sakura had already turned away, cradling the soda with both hands like it was a love letter.
"Kiba…" she whispered, eyes sparkling in a dream that existed entirely in her own head, "you're such a man."
Kiba turned to the vending machine again, quietly pressing his forehead to the cold plastic.
"Should've run when I had the chance."
To avoid more embarrassment—or the growing number of confused stares from students heading home
The café was dim and comfortably anonymous, the kind of place where no one asked questions and the tables were just far enough apart to keep secrets from leaking.
Sakura sat back in the booth, one leg crossed over the other, her fingers delicately stirring her drink. "He didn't even look at me," she muttered. "Just said he was tired and left."
Kiba didn't respond right away. He knew how this went. Let her vent first. Then distract. Then devour.
He sipped his coffee, then leaned back. "That's Naruto for you."
She rolled her eyes, exasperated. "I don't even know why I bother. I swear, sometimes I think he doesn't even like girls."
Kiba chuckled. "Well, lucky me, huh?"
Sakura smiled—slow and easy, the kind of smile she didn't use around Naruto anymore. "Lucky you," she echoed.
Their fingers met under the table, naturally, automatically. They didn't flinch or glance around. This wasn't new. It wasn't forbidden to them—only to the world outside.
For over a year and a half, they'd stolen moments like this. Quick make-outs in hidden corners of campus. Texts deleted before anyone could see. Excuses made to be alone. And every time Naruto was too busy, too distracted, too naive—Sakura fell right into Kiba's waiting hands.
And neither of them felt bad.
Not once.
"Remember last summer?" she said, her voice a little softer now. "That hotel by the lake? The tiny one with the broken A/C?"
Kiba grinned. "How could I forget? You swore we'd die of heatstroke mid-makeout."
"Because you wouldn't stop," she teased, sipping her mocha.
"You didn't want me to."
Her smirk returned. "Still don't."
The tension tightened—not nervous, but familiar. Craved. He leaned in, and she met him halfway.
Their lips met over the scent of cinnamon and coffee. It wasn't shy. It was practiced. Deep. Intimate. A language they'd mastered behind someone else's back.
Kiba pulled away slowly, brushing his thumb across her cheek.
"I don't get why you're still with him."
Sakura didn't flinch. "Because I like the version of me that he sees. She's quiet. Nice. Someone he can believe in."
She leaned forward again, her voice lower. "But the version of me you see? She's real. And I like her more."
Kiba didn't answer. He didn't need to.
They finished their coffee in silence, fingers still entwined beneath the table.
The bell above the café door jingled softly as they left—Sakura's laugh low in her throat, Kiba's hand slipping around her waist like it belonged there.
Because to them, it always had.
Naruto's POV
The mansion loomed ahead, quiet and still under the early evening light. It was too large for a high school student, filled with too many empty rooms and echoes that didn't quite belong to anyone. Naruto pushed the gate open, shoes dragging a little as he stepped onto the cool tile floor of the foyer.
He didn't bother turning on the lights. The house knew him well enough to let the dusk in through the tall windows, casting long shadows across the marble floors and the quiet, expensive furniture no one ever sat in.
His bag dropped with a dull thud near the stairwell. His blazer followed soon after, tossed lazily onto the back of a chair.
But even as he moved through the routine, his mind wasn't here.
It was back in the pool.
Back with her.
Ingrid.
The air in the mansion felt colder now. Not sharp, not bitter—just... real. The kind of cold that settles around you when something unspoken becomes undeniable.
Naruto sat on the couch, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor like it could give him answers. His wet hair still clung to his forehead, drying slowly in the silence.
He thought of her grip on his wrist.
Her voice, low and steady even when she was flustered.
The way her eyes softened, just for a moment, like she didn't want him to go.
And what he felt in his chest—confusion, fear, longing, maybe even something scarier: hope.
"She didn't push me away."
"She held on."
The implications of it all began to surface. What if she was pregnant? What would happen to her? To him? To both of them? The world wouldn't be kind. She was his coach. A teacher. An adult. They weren't supposed to be...
Yet they were.
And he couldn't bring himself to regret it.
Naruto leaned back on the couch, staring at the ceiling now. Everything swirled—school, expectations, Sakura's constant demands, the lies around him he hadn't even noticed till now—but this, this moment with Ingrid, felt honest. Messy, terrifyingly real, but honest.
She hadn't promised him anything.
And yet, she looked at him like she saw him.
That meant something.
He closed his eyes, heart pounding just under his ribs, not with panic but with certainty.
He couldn't leave her.
Not if she was pregnant.
Not if she wasn't.
Not even if the whole world called it wrong.
His fists clenched gently on his lap—not in anger, but in resolve.
Night – Naruto's Mansion
The room was silent except for the faint hum of the city beyond the tall windows. Naruto lay sprawled across his king-sized bed, sheets tangled around his legs, his chest rising and falling unevenly.
His face twitched slightly in his sleep.
— The Dream —
The pool was still. The water glistened under overhead lights, reflecting off Coach Ingrid's wet hair as she stood just inches away from him.
Neither of them spoke. The air between them was dense, electric.
Ingrid reached for his wrist—her fingers cold, her touch deliberate. Her lips parted as if to speak, but no words came out.
Then, a kiss—tentative, unspoken, inevitable.
His hands found her waist. Her breath caught.
"Don't promise things you'll regret later, Naruto."
And he whispered back, "I won't."
— End of Dream —
Naruto jerked awake, chest heaving slightly. His hand went immediately to his forehead, wiping away the sheen of sweat.
"That dream again…"
The room was quiet. A hint of early dawn light was beginning to creep along the edges of the curtains.
He sat up slowly, rubbing his eyes. The weight in his chest didn't fade with the dream. If anything, it felt heavier now.
It wasn't just desire—it was something more tangled, something dangerous. But the strange thing was...
His heart and his brain, for once, agreed.
He couldn't push Ingrid away.
Pregnant or not. Rule or not. Logic or not.
He had made his decision, even if she hadn't.
Ingrid's POVLate Night – Streets of Tokyo
The city lights were soft tonight, muted beneath a veil of thin clouds. Ingrid walked alone, coat pulled tight against the breeze, her hair still damp at the ends from the pool. Each footstep echoed faintly in the nearly empty street, like memories trying to catch up with her.
Her fingers, still cold, curled slightly as she remembered Naruto's face—so close, so vulnerable, so young. And yet, there had been something steady in his gaze. Something... certain.
She hated how easily her heart reacted to that look.
"You're not supposed to feel this way," she muttered to herself, glancing down at the concrete.
But the truth was already carved into her like a slow-blooming bruise:
She didn't want to leave him.
Not because of what happened. Not because of a possible pregnancy.
But because for the first time in years, she had felt seen.
And she wasn't ready to let that go.
Her pace slowed as she neared a narrow alley that cut through toward the market—an alley she used often to shortcut home.
That's when she saw them.
Kiba. Sakura.
Their backs were pressed to the brick wall under a flickering neon sign. Her hands were all over his jacket. His mouth was against her neck. It wasn't just a kiss. It was practiced.
Intimate. Shameless. Familiar.
Sakura laughed breathily as Kiba nipped at her jaw. She swatted him playfully with a soda can. Their conversation was muffled, but the chemistry was unmistakable.
Ingrid didn't move. She stood in shadow, eyes narrowing—not in judgment, but calculation.
She slowly took out her phone.
Click. A photo.
Record. A few seconds of whispered laughter and stolen kisses.
She didn't feel triumph. Nor anger.
Only confirmation.
So this is who Naruto was giving his heart to so freely.
Tucking her phone away, Ingrid turned and walked the long way home, her expression unreadable. She didn't need to interfere. Not now. Not yet.
Tonight, she had her own truth to face.
And tomorrow... things might begin to change.