I don't know him. I never had seen him before in my life and yet, when he looks at me, he looks at me like I am somebody: Somebody important. He would usually come up to me, corners me by my locker and look me dead straight in the eye with his undeniably dark and harsh gaze and always, always, asks me the same question. Over and over again:

"Why don't you remember, Sakura?"

The thing is, I don't even know his name. Yet, he says mine like we had shared something together. He always says it with such grief, such urgency that—though I may not know this beautiful stranger—my heart always break because the moment he says my name, I see the briefest glimpse of darkness flickers through his eyes.

But I still don't remember anything and when I look at him back and say these last words, his lovely face will twist into such sadness—in a moment so swift and brief that I may have imagined it—that in that instant, my chest might puncture and burst into tears:

"No, who are you?"

Sakura's Memory

I dream of a dream where I finally mean something to you

—I can't remember a thing—

.

Mother is calling me. Calling. She tells me that she is my mother, so I believed her. I woke up that morning and felt so alone, alone. It felt as if I was reborn and been given birth at an age so ripe that when my eyes took a glimpse of the world, my heart shattered. I don't know this place. Why is this place so white, bright and smells so strongly of medicine and harsh detergents?

"Sakura-chan…" This lovely woman said and her voice cracked. I didn't know her then but I wanted to run my fingers down her delicate pink hair when she started to cry.

I blinked at her at that moment. "Who?"

She started to cry. Harder each second and I could imagine her crumble into frail pieces. I didn't understand, I never understood.

"Who—Who's Sakura?" I managed to croak and that woman forced a smile so weak, I wanted to cry.

"You are, dear." She smiled at me but her tears won't stop pooling in her eyes. "And I'm your mother."

My mother. This lovely woman is my mother. Then, just like my heart had a life all on its own, it started to crumble and it screamed in my chest, the whole room filled with a shrill beeping sound so quick I thought I might have died. A sharp pain stabbed, scratched and pounded its way through my head and just suddenly a group of men and women wearing white coats rushed into the room. My eyes went blurry and all I saw was a film of red. I started to scream and screamed for someone to save me.

Just like that, I was knocked out of this world. And felt, for once, that I didn't belong.

.

The morning is beautiful, I think. There are so many birds searing through the sky in flocks and the sky is a divine hue of pale blue. The sunlight is so delicate that I don't feel heat when it caresses my face. I feel like a lost princess. I stare at the magnificent building I assume to be my new school from a distance—Leaf Academy—and the crowd that is walking together in groups to enter the premises, I suddenly feel nervous and small, like I really don't belong. I wonder how I'm going to get along with so many people, with people faces I don't seem to recognize.

After walking into the building, avoiding many conspicuous gasps and stares, even whispers through cupped hands, I run into the hallway away from all these people. I don't understand why I'm being looked at weirdly.

I don't understand.

I don't understand anything.

I wait outside of my class. I know it's my class because it held the same chunky letters on its front door as it is written on my schedule. ST-3-7. I smile and wait until the homeroom teacher introduces me to everyone. It feels like an hour worth of wait, even though in reality it really only has been three minutes.

The door finally opens and what greets me is a man half-covered in a mask and gravity-defying grey hair. When he smiles at me I feel myself blush because it is so sincere, and it is also a hint of relief that someone here won't look at me like I'm out of place. He beckons me to enter the class and I do so timidly, staring down at my feet as I stand in front of many students. I somehow don't expect the reaction that follows upon my entrance.

Gasps. Silence. Whispers.

I suddenly feel like a victim once more and I don't dare to look up at anyone. I suddenly feel like an alien from outer space or someone mutant that just don't belong. I feel like a stranger.

"Sakura-chan…" I hear a frail whisper coming somewhere from the back. My head whips up so quickly I feel a head rush and my apple-green eyes fell on a blonde boy with tattooed whiskers on his cheeks. He reminds me of a fox but with striking cerulean blue eyes. He knows my name and I don't even know him. He looks sad, shocked and so mixed with all these complicated emotions I'm just forced to look elsewhere because my chest feels hollow when I look at him. I don't even know why. I've never seen him before.

The teacher (Hatake Kakashi, his name tag says) places a hand on my shoulder and introduces me to the class but no one seems to be paying any attention to him, all eyes are on me. I'm certain that it's my odd pink hair.

Taking the silence from his part as the cue for me to introduce myself, I clear my throat.

"Hi, my name is...Haruno Sakura."—I take in a shaky breath, the place is too cold and quiet—"I am a new student here at Leaf Academy. I hope to get to know you all very well, very soon." I force a smile but my nervousness shines through like light through glass. Everyone's mouth is gaping like a landing fish.

The class resonates a loud but somewhat soft, "Hello Sakura!" and I am ushered to my seat. I look up and see an empty table, and behind me sat the most handsome boy I have ever seen. He has dark indigo tinted black hair in casual disarray, and his face is chiseled to perfection. He reminds me of some dark angel I've often see in my deepest dreams, saving me from my worst downfall. My heart races to its highest limit and crashes back down when he glances up at me.

I blush at his sight and give him a timid smile.

He just looks at me in his ever so neutral expression but his eyes look so wide and shocked that I feel intimidated by them.

So I just sit down in silence and try with all my will to never look at those dark orbs again.

School is over and I never have been so glad to leave a place so unfamiliar to me. I walk out of its great copper gates and down the narrow road saturated with lush green trees on either of its side. The place suddenly looks familiar, like a dream of a dream, or a dream lost in the midst of my other thoughts. My head starts hurting, it starts pounding again with such unbearable pain and I scream. I clutch my head in between my hands and kneel on the gravelly road;

Green trees. Night, so dark. Darker than sin. Bright lights knifing through my eyes. Piercing scream. Screams. Red.

I start to hyperventilate; all these images rush through my mind like a broken film on fast forward. Making no sense to me at all. My heartbeats, clawing through my chest and the tears began rapidly down my face like a perpetual flowing river.

That night. Dark. So Dark. So red. Alone. Screaming.

"Sakura!" a deep voice shouts and the person runs toward me. He grabs hold of both of my arms and shake me to my senses. "Sakura! What's wrong?"

I shake my head. No, nothing is wrong. Nothing. I'm not crazy. I look up and my bleary green eyes met dark ones.

It's the boy who sat behind me earlier this morning.

His face twists into a worried scowl. "Sakura, are you okay? What's wrong?"

"I'm fine. I'm, fine. I swear." I whisper in a rush that I don't think he heard me. I suddenly feel embarrassed to have broken down in front of such a beautiful angel. "Who are you?"

His face turns to a pained expression. "I'm Uchiha Sasuke."

I smile and never thought it possible for his face to be even more pained than it was. I want to ask him what's wrong but he cuts me off and asks me a question of his own.

"Don't you remember me, Sakura?"

I blink at him and he shakes his head, running his long pianist fingers through his messy dark hair in despair. Somewhere inside of me yearns to reach for his face and caress that perfectly sculpted cheeks and jaw and to foolishly kiss him. I have never met anyone so lovely and yet here he stares down at me with a gaze so heated I can practically feel my face burning. I don't know what took over me that moment but I shake my head at his question.

"No…Should I?"

And just like that, he gets up and leaves without another word.

.

.

So tell me, tell me the reason why—How can you do this to me?

You break my heart and you made my cry

—

"Who is he?"

"That? Oh. That's, um, Uchiha Sasuke. He doesn't talk to anyone, really."

"Why is he sitting all alone?"

"He lost someone very special, rumors said, and never spoke to a human being ever since."

.

.

I'm getting used to waking up every morning and going to school. No one looks at me weird anymore and I also made new friends. There's Uzumaki Naruto, that boy with the whiskers tattoo, and there's Yamanaka Ino; one of the prettiest girls I've ever seen. She always looks like she had just walked out of the runaway with her perfectly styled blonde hair and legs to die for. There's Hyuuga Hinata, famous for her unique and breathtaking icy eyes and there's Tenten; school's toughest tomboy.

There is also Uchiha Sasuke, but he's not really a friend. Not really. He seems to have this hatred for me, or at least that's what I think. He will look at me from across the classroom, the hallway, and the cafeteria with such intensity but never approach me—Not ever since that incident from the first day.

"He's always been such a prick lately." Ino will say when we walk to class together.

"Is he really always that cold?"

"Yeah. He's like, a one-man team. Even Naruto is pissed off at him—They used to be best friends."

.

I sit on a bench in an isolated park nearby my neighborhood. I stare at the wistful Cherry Blossom tree overhead and how it is shedding its delicate pink petals, I always think that it's just a way for a tree to cry. I wonder that is what people meant when they referred to "Tree Hugging" to comfort the tree and let it know that there is nothing worth crying for; Not even when it just happens to be the prettiest scene with its pink tears dancing in the wind.

I hug the white jacket around me and my pink hair—now long and wavy—pooled on my shoulder, falling down gracefully. I like this place a lot, for some reason my heart feels like it's at home whenever I sit on this very same bench. A sanctuary, a place I run to whenever I feel so unsure about everything (and I always feel unsure. I feel like I don't belong.) This very bench feels like it holds a precious history that the more I think about it, the more I feel foolish about my very own thoughts.

The night is falling and there is hardly a shred of the proud fiery sun. The stars twinkle overhead and a gust of wind blows some rustling leaves and cherry blossom petals toward me. The breeze makes me want to dance around and wait for the wind to fly me to the white cold moon—

Someone sits next to me and I jump at the surprise of seeing Uchiha Sasuke in his navy blue turtleneck sweater. God, he looks so amazing, it's like he has walked right out of a cover magazine. His dark strands shyly graced his eyes and I see him peering at me. My heart does its funny thing whenever he does.

My eyes are hazy from looking at his incredible figure.

"It looks like you still remember this place, but not me." He says and I just blink at him in confusion.

He never makes sense to me. Boys that beautiful will never make sense to me.

"I like this place. It's nice. It feels like, home." I say and crane my neck up towards the glimmering dark sky.

Sasuke looks at me in his dark smoldering gaze that I feel like melting. "I'm sure it does."

I don't understand why he's so cold to me.

"Excuse me?"

"We used to come here a lot."

"We as in…?"

"You and I. We come here. It's where we first met."

I turn to look at him but he is gazing at a distance ahead of him. I, too, look ahead and stare mutely at the vacant swings and the broken twigs on the ground. Suddenly I have a feeling that he is just toying around with my mind. Of course I'd remember if I had met someone so unbelievably divine in a place like this, but I don't because I know I haven't.

"I don't remember." I say simply and see him clench his jaw through my peripheral vision.

"Of course you don't. You don't remember anything. I'm not stupid. But I do."

Ouch, that somehow hurt. I pretend to ignore what he said and I dare myself to look towards his direction. A glinting object catches my eye and I look at his collarbone and down to the pendant that hung from a graceful silver chain. I look at the intricate design of swirls, made in white gold, and feel my head spinning and heart pounding against my chest.

"Sakura…" He sits up in alarm and his eyes widen at me as I clutch my head violently. "Sakura, what's wrong? Stop it, you'll hurt yourself—Sakura! Listen to me! Sakura!"

I feel blood trickling down my scalp where my nails dug in. The pain is unbearable. I've seen that pendant before. I've seen it. Somewhere, somehow, it's important. It's there, glimmering at me in its white gold glory, that pendant. I keep seeing my hands holding that very chain in my hands so lovingly and putting it on someone's neck. I see his graceful neck and a dark tee where that pendant softly rests against the fabric. I see it all like a dream.

"I—I keep seeing things. I've seen your pendant before, I've seen it but I don't know where." I start to cry without me knowing, the pain is attacking me endlessly. "Sasuke, what's wrong with me? Why do I keep seeing these things? I've never—"

Then the images swirl in again like washed out paint. I see this very bench we are sitting on, the sun as a swollen knot at the horizon and Sasuke's hands on mine, our fingers intervened. I see him smiling at me and I thought it's impossible because I've never seen him smile before. Everything is going through me so quickly that I can't catch hold of them, then I see Sasuke staring longingly into my eyes.

The pendant.

"Sasuke-kun!" I smile.

Cars screeching and piercing screams.

"Sakura, why don't you remember me?"

I feel my body shaking then vigorously swaying to and fro until I realize that Sasuke has been trying to snap me back to my senses. He looks so terrified that I wish to just kiss all his colorless fears away. All these images, they don't make sense. I don't remember any of this ever happened, none of them—

Until I realize that I don't exactly remember anything about my life.

"Sasuke..." I stare mutely ahead as if in a trance.

His eyes still so dark and anxious. "Sakura, are you alright—"

"What happened to me?"

A dead beat of silence. "What?"

I don't look at him but my eyes and mouth has a life of its own, speaking for me. "What happened to me? Why is it that I don't remember anything about myself, why is it that everyone else knows who I am but me? Sasuke, who am I?"—I close my eyes and remember to breathe, still not looking at him because I don't dare to look into his eyes—"And who are you to me?"

Even though I'm not looking at him, I feel him turning away from me, fists clenching like it always does. Like he's holding back something he so badly wants to say, but can't.

"You're Haruno Sakura..."

I sigh an exasperated breath and before I look a way, a magical-like force propels me to look at him. He glances down and his hair frames his eyes so perfectly, face bathed in moonlight, I want to capture the moment. Why can't I remember such a beautiful creature if he can remember me?

He gazes at me through his dark hooded eyes. "And we were in love."

.

.