"How is it so damn hot in September?"

Sakura Haruno wipes sweat from the plains of her perspiring brow, her free hand frantically fanning herself with a folded section of packing paper. She sits slumped against a wooden built-in, her legs crossed haphazardly beneath her.

Dusty stacks of books sit piled up around her, waiting to be organized. Curiously, she inspects their weathered spines, prolonging the task but not really caring. Truth be told, Sakura is well beyond the idea of performing any taxing physical labor right now—not in this heat. She thinks she could live out of boxes until the A/C is back in order.

"Language," Mebuki scolds, despite the scorching temperatures, diligently dusting the empty shelves. Sakura watches with mild interest as her mother rises up on tiptoes to swab the highest shelf, coming up short—neither one of them could reach those spaces without a stool. Absently, the teen wonders if her father Kizashi could have reached it. He was heads taller than either of them.

"Damn…it's too high," Mebuki whispers, then thoughtfully glances at her daughter to see if she's heard her swear. "Darn," she corrects herself, searchingly glancing around the empty room. "I don't suppose you've seen the stepladder anywhere."

"In the truck, I think," Sakura recalls, absently thumbing the gold leaf pages of a leather bound book, breathing in the must. "Want me to look?"

"No…it's not that important. But you can help me over here."

Mebuki crosses the room to several stacks of cardboard moving boxes. She wrestles one to the ground and sits down on the cool wood. "Pick one," she says. Sakura stares in silence for a moment before deciding to join her on the floor, dragging a medium-sized box towards the center of the room.

Early autumn was upon them, though it wasn't Sakura Haruno's kind of fall. Despite the season, the leaves had yet to change. In fact, it was the middle of September, and some days the sidewalk was still hot enough to scorch bare feet. Sweat seeped from every pore, and though Sakura and Mebuki endeavored to unpack their entire house in a mere weekend, the heat was counterproductive. Sakura thinks that she would much rather spread herself across the hardwood floors and languidly absorb their coolness.

"It never got this hot in Maru. Not even in the summer," she observes.

Her mother shrugs absently. "It was always snowing in Maru. It'll take some time to adjust."

But Sakura isn't sure if she can. It's easy for her mother to say—she grew up here in the smothering climate of Konoha—but the pink-haired Haruno was born and raised in Maru, where all four seasons could happen in a day. It was all she'd ever known, so when they arrived earlier that week, the burnt-orange colors of their neighbor's fake seasonal wreath seemed out of place against the lush green hues of midsummer foliage all around them.

It was autumn, but it wasn't autumn. It was Bizarro autumn.

Sakura says this aside to her mother, who snorts in derision. "Don't be so dramatic. I think they even get snow here... It just comes down from the North."

Sakura rolls her eyes, wiping more sweat. "So it's gonna snow on Valentine's Day, or what?"

"Maybe, maybe not," Mebuki says, but her attention seems absent. Her seafoam eyes have fallen upon the half-wrapped object in her hands. It is a framed photo, Sakura realizes, of herself and her parents, huddled before a giant evergreen at the city tree-lighting in Maru. The photo must be two years old, family dressed to the nines in matching hand-knit things—scarves, mittens and hats. Snow is on their eyelashes.

"I sure will miss it though," Mebuki says softly, a strange, hollow quality to her voice. Her sad green eyes linger on that photograph, long enough that she silently betrays the true intention behind her words.

Sakura looks at her sadly.

"The snow, I mean. I swear it snowed six months out of the year in Maru," Mebuki finishes awkwardly, setting the photo aside.

In silence, mother and daughter unpack two-thirds of their lives, neither trying to think too much about the man who for so long had completed both of their existences. Boxes upon boxes full of memories... Try as they might not to reminisce, it wasn't easy. Mebuki, especially, didn't like to speak about the divorce.

Sakura tosses a Styrofoam peanut, hitting her square in the forehead. "At least the pumpkin craze is still a thing," she says, holding up a gas station cup.

It may not be a Maru-style fall, but this silly little pumpkin craze is the one ridiculous constant in all of their chaos. The shelf-space of every retailer in town is still dominated by various pumpkin-related things—candles, bread, lotions. Sakura thinks that this is still the most scrumptious time of the year, and while she complains about the sweat on her brow and the broken A/C, she can sip her too-hot pumpkin spice latte knowing that it helps her forget where she is—or rather, where she isn't.

Meanwhile, the windows are cracked and the fans on the tall ceilings are spinning on high, trying to circulate the stifling, tepid air. Sakura and Mebuki listen to the bangs and clatters of the repairmen working on the A/C unit out back, their indistinct chatter echoing through the empty open-concept home.

Mebuki laughs, reaching for her own scalding drink. "You know what, you're absolutely right," she says, sipping her latte and burning her tongue. "At least we still have pumpkins."

A/N: This chapter is short because the first-day-of-school sequence ended up being over fourteen pages, all told. I'm also debating whether or not to delete the prologue, in case it gives too much away. Since I have quite a lot of the next sequence already completed, the next few chapters might be broken up into smaller sections. I plan to update soon, though! Thanks again!