Detrimental: causing damage, harm, or disadvantage. Antonym: beneficial
Benefit: something that has a good effect or promotes well-being. Antonym: detriment
A 'detrimental benefit': an oxymoron that implies anything received which is meant to be positive is in fact harmful to it's receiver. Example: Falling in love with your hated enemy who just so happens to be the same gender as you are.

A/N: Konnichiwa, mina! Dreaming-Of-A-Nightmare at your service for another NaruGaa fanfic! This one is AU taking place in Konoha High (a usual setting for these AU fics). This story has a similar-yet-changed plot inspired by the novel Love Letters, Perfect Strangers by Jahnna N. Malcolm. It's a really good book if you care for, you know, teen romance written at a 6th-grade reading level. In the book, the main character (Madison) is a good student and a junior, blahblah, and her technology teacher assigns his whole class – which means her – an anonymous e-mail address to write to for once month. It's the Heart-2-Heart program that gives kinds a chance to talk to someone they don't know who won't judge them. It's supposed to get you to open up and have new friends and perhaps work out some issues at home, but Madison ends up falling for the guy she's e-mailing. But what's this? He turns out to be her biggest enemy.

That's where NaruGaa comes in! I revised the plot line and events to suit my needs, but generally I'm going to have Gaara be a transfer student since the 8th grade (about age 13, nearly 14) from Suna High. The story won't start there, but the background story about him and Naruto coming to very much dislike one another will start there. Present time (when the story actually starts) will be junior year like in the novel, and Iruka (because I love that guy so much) will be the one to suggest to his technology class that they are going to start the Faceless-and-Nameless Project in which each student across the entire school gets assigned an e-mail of someone they don't know and have to write to them for once month without sharing identities, only thoughts.

Unfortunately, FF.n doesn't allow certain things, so e-mail adresses look normal in my Word Doc but on here they will appear like this: usernamehere(at)yahoo/hotmail(dot)com

There will be hints of other couples, like KibaHina, ShikaTem, one-sided SasuNaru, one-sided LeeGaa, one-sided MatsuGaa, one-sided SakuSasu and InoSasu, and some NejiTen, but mainly you will hear about the NaruGaa. If Gaara feels the same way later on, who knows, it might also be GaaNaru. But we'll see.

Lots of people make Iruka as Naruto's AU guardian, which makes sense and all, but in my fic (since I like the father-son like relationship for them) Kyuubi is his adoptive father. You'll see what I mean in chapter 4.

I know you all hate opening chapters that are Author's Notes, but have no fear; I made sure to type up 4 whole chapters (one being an opening flashback, so it'll be all italics) before posting just this. So you'll have quite a bit to read to start off with.

Also, this entire fic will be in third person aside from the e-mails and text messages. But know this: ALL POETRY IN THIS FIC BELONGS TO ME. That's right, I wrote it, so no stealing or I'll personally kick your ass.

Now go read the first few chapters, and be sure to tell me what you think by leaving a review!

P.S. To see what my AU versions of Naruto and Gaara are based off of, please see my profile for a tinypic link. Also, certain medication is mentioned in chapter 3, and I choose it from a website I found. Here's the link with spaces: WebMD. com/ depression/ guide/ medication-options (you can probably guess what kind of medication now, and maybe even who it's for, but I won't tell. To double-check your guesses, just wait to read chapter 3.)