I love healing. I love healing as I love being healed.

I sit on Rin's clinic with my two feet dangling. I was feeling Polyanna--seeing her makes my heart leap. Not in a romantic sort, but I with her kids couldn't help but feel jolly. She's pretty, she's a nurse, and she bears an experience tougher than anybody else--because she was young when she started; she was not of ten years old when she became a devotee for healing. 

Without the Medical Team, the University or everything else would have fallen upside down. 

Doctors--nurses--the Allied Health mutants, they were superheroes. 

The Allied Health have given hospitals a heart. Nurses tend to the sick with passion. Surgeons hold onto the patients' lives as if they were their own, even if fate was something that cannot be controlled--these people help as much as they can to let humanity have an extension of years, as if giving you another chance to be happy. 

"Let's see what you can do." Rin says. "Find something in this room you'd want to put an end with. A wall, a desk...me." 

I did what she asked, which meant punching a hole in the wall. But there was more: a heavy force of wind blew right through me, making me lose my balance. 

I turned around to see her, a pen pinched towards her cheek. 

"So it's true. You can make shockwaves." Rin says. "Sakura Haruno, one. Wall, zero. You have an enhanced strength that can devour your enemies. This physical ability doesn't usually apply to a woman, but I'm proud we're advancing." 

Being the giddy twelve year old, I asked: "Can I make earthquakes?"

"I heard someone like you even dislocated some perverted man's ribs. Suit yourself." She went back to her papers. "Since healing brought you here, I don't think we'll have to get you warmed up for that. Do you have any concerns, Little Sucker Punch? I won't be around for the weekend."

"Where are you going?"

She smirked. "Singapore. Hong Kong."

"You can get out of here as much as you want?"

"It's not like I have a choice but, I enjoy it anyways."

"When you come back, can you help me out?"

"Sure. It's good to know there's somebody I can leave my legacy behind." 

✡

Manhattan, New York, 2014

100 YEARS LATER

I pop the bubblegum in my mouth and chew. My mouth tastes sugar and candy. I stand on the best-selling section of the library. This is one of the reasons I love Saturday. You can tumble about pretty much anything you want in your life and you choose to go out on a library and read a book. I flip a page of the rom-com novel I'm holding.

Ah, love--it is the smell of books. I close my eyes and picture myself walking on a town called paradise. In my dream, I'd be barefoot. I am wearing the whitest Sunday dress as I stumble to the great library and read a book to myself. I clutch it to my chest and let the tears fall.

Life goes on, it gets so heavy. Those are pretty words I'd never forget. Don't you just love mornings? Summer, I mean. No one particularly loves school since it's all about keeping cool and maintaining a self esteem higher than the Eiffel Tower. I love breakfast. I love how my dad sometimes knocks on my door and brings me a tray of hot oatmeal and a cup of coffee. Kisses my cheek and says, good morning, sweetheart.

"Excuse me?"

I turn around to see an average boy, wearing round spectacles, holding a school book. He reminds me of Kabuto suddenly, the boy who is best in science and of course is best in spying on everyone else. He knows every student's story. "I'm sorry, I just wanted to ask if your hair is natural."

"Um, yes?" I respond politely. "Is something wrong with it?"

"No, it's just... You're just--"

I open my mouth to let him finish his next word. Yes?

"You're really pretty."

"Oh." I say quickly, a little in a hurry that he might jump at it. I have a boyfriend. "Thank you."

"You must be a Mutant, then?"

I blink my self-conscious eyes. I'm wearing a sleeveless plain white cropped top, an oceanic-blue skater skirt matched with my adorable knee-length socks and two-inch black shoes. I don't feel comfortable with heels, but sometimes I feel so poor that I was never blessed with enough height to tower on a book rack.

I find it hilarious that this boy did not notice my giant forehead. Does being a Mutant--sucks?

When I was in elementary I had trouble with my reputation. Sakura Haruno, the girl in bright pink hair.

I consider myself lucky that my mother never stops braiding my head. I am one of the lucky Mutants, who, who, fortunately weren't kicked out of their homes. Supernatural stages may occur in a lower age, causing one's abilities to strike inevitably. TenTen was orphaned at a young age ever since her parents knew her capabilities of summoning objects from a piece of paper. Lee never knew his family. He was guided by the most energetic youthful teacher I ever know; and he actually got his brows groomed thick to make Lee believe that he wasn't alone.

Kakashi's voice rings at the back of my head. Mutant and proud. "I suppose I am."

I remember the feeling of being born... I remember the feeling of being human. None of us really tries to over think of living like them. When you're normal, can you actually go on a day without realizing how that life bores you? When you breathe the air in your lungs, have you not noticed of how life is cruel that you're just dependent and vulnerable when you could have been more? That this life chose you?

Mutation. It is the start of the human evolution. How the genes and cells of the human body epidemically changes that takes about million years to develop, but the human race has found a way to speed that up. One Mutant can dominate its partner and bear a Mutant child. Those are just a few factors that made humanity fear us.

Picturing myself as the little girl in a Cherry Blossom hair, I can remember the tears and sacrifices my mother made for me. Whenever I think of myself as a child, I only encounter the ignorant grade school student that was bullied because of her giant forehead. Annoying, bratty pink-headed Sakura. 

My mother had to transfer myself to another school to make sure I won't be discovered. Children were starting to get a glimpse of what I truly was: a misshape. I couldn't get a hold of my powers. They were getting stronger, aggressive.

Over the years I had discovered two talents inside of me. I was eight and we had a dying plant displayed in the table. My hands were reaching out of it as if it were God's will, and I didn't stop myself. I laid my tiny hands at the leaves of the Del flower as it bloomed from purplish withering dead flower to a bright splashy one. The way it used to be.

Another talent of mine is I can pound my outweighing fist on anything in particular and cause a severe damage. I can break into doors, car windows, give bone fractures to assholes. This one I don't use often. Fear is fast to those who see it.

I grab a hard-cover of The Realm of Possibilities. I check the clock and realize my boyfriend is not here yet. It fills me with joy that I have enough bubblegum to chew with. I walk onto the cashier like a normal person. The customers eye me, one by one, as if they are a bunch of vixens.

The lady in the cashier, wearing a jumper, raises a brow. "You're taking this?"

I nod at her and smile. August 21st and everything sounds so--ordinary. So quiet. The people near in line wouldn't stop chattering, and that's when I've realized how people bore me. 

I gaze my eyes somewhere else, like the cashier's jumper. It is a pretty jumper. I recall Ino and picture at the moment. Ino, the girl who is sometimes a cheerful princess, then a bitch. Ino in her knee-length boots can make her step on a bunch of unfitted suitors for her, leave a kiss mark on a cute guy's cheek, beat everyone in volleyball with her amazing human speed. Ino and I, we're rivals in the only sport I know, and we just dote on it.

Every time I look at Ino, though--I see an opposite. 

You don't have a best friend that reads the same books as you do, dress the same outfits you always want to put on, but she's a very straightforward person. We usually go out on a date together and eat on Manhattan's finest restaurant. I do not know how she maintains a healthy body. I don't know how I do it, either. I'm afraid to admit this, but we both eat like a pig--Ino is worse, though. The thing I'm grateful is I'm not skinny but I have a flat stomach. She's Ino and she can put on any laced tube top like a mannequin.

Speak of the devil--here she is--bugging me on my messages. I grab my phone out of my black Jelly Bean satchel with my nails polished in mint green. I haven't received a call from my boyfriend yet and it sucks.

Forehead I am having an emergency oh my freaking hell, you need to go to my house real quick!

You remember those crazy stuffs we did at seventh grade? I'm planning to climb on top of Mt. Fuji so I can have something new on my Instagram. Call me if you change your mind of going to a really crappy place with crappy people. I hope you become center of attraction again, now that you spend another twenty-four hours without me. 

I roll my eyes. I picture her laying in bed, her hair tangled. I text quickly.

Sakura: Ino, we see each other everyday. We might even be developed if you don't stop bugging me.

Ino: If you really don't come over, you're regretting it.

Sakura: My man is picking me up.

"That'll be zero buck for you." The lady says, handing me the book. Her smile lingers in her face, while the customers, whose attention focuses on me, turns swiftly to the cashier woman.

"Excuse me?" 

"You can ask that guy wearing orange." She says, as I take the book from her.

I turned around and saw Naruto standing against the wall. He grinned softly when I got closer to him, our bodies standing inches apart. I punched the book in his shoulder. Naruto yelled aw, which I thought was cute.

"You're so annoying." I bite my lip to restrain myself from laughing.

"And you're biting your lip."

"That doesn't mean anything, Naruto."

"Sakura, I always know when you're lying." He takes my hands. "Right now you just want to kiss me but you don't, because you always hate the attention."

"You know what? You're right about that." I smirk. "But you're a little mistaken." I place my hands around his neck, not to mind if The Realm of Possibilities hard-cover gets a little warped. "I don't care what other people think. I don't care about the attention."

"You're really doing this?" Naruto laughs. 

He slips his hands around my waist. 

I'm wearing a cropped top, as a result he gets to touch a little portion of my bare body.

I lean forward to his ear and whisper, "I think the idea of flirting with you is not so bad, so deal with it." I can feel him breathe under me.

He looks at my side. "What, you want to make out here? 'Cause I'm down for that. How was your weekend?" He kisses my forehead. He brings me towards one of the library's racks where we can be alone. 

"Never been better." I smile as I place a peck on his nose. He smells so good it hurts. "Go on, kiss me. It's free."

"Alright, I love you. I always have." 

"Shh. Don't say anything."

XXX

******************************************************************

Everything happens for a reason ;)