The Difference between Boys and Girls by fang_shinobi

Disclaimer: Naruto and other related characters, settings and such are strictly under the ownership of Masashi Kishimoto-sama. I take no claim of ownership except for the words I have contributed.

Summary: Sasuke and Sakura have been chosen by their camp counselors to head the debate on which gender was better. But things get personal when they start a girl-against-boy war that could ruin the whole summer. Watch out for cockroaches, bloodsucking leeches and such. Sasusaku and other pairings…

A/N: This fan fic is half dead, but thanks for those who've been trying to revive it.

CHAPTER 30 – Boy

Karin shook her hair, sending drops of chlorinated water flying in every direction. She sat on the edge of the pool, having finally emerged from the water. The class was over twenty minutes ago, and she was tired of waiting in the pool. She ran her fingers through her mop of red hair as she stole a glance at the aqua-haired boy who continued swimming. However, her attempt at being surreptitious was ruined when her fingers snagged in her mane. She'd almost forgotten how frizzy her hair had gotten because of the chlorine.

Her whole class had gone save for the two of them, so aside from the few elderly floating about and the occasional athlete, there was barely anyone who caught her mishap. He too was busy. She could see his pale head of hair coming up for air every couple of minutes. She had no idea what he was doing underwater so often. He was probably diving for pearls for all she knew.

She looked at the shriveled skin of her fingertips, wondering if his looked just as bad. In the last couple of weeks since she'd first met him, she had never once seen him tire of the water. There were so many things she wondered about him. What was his name? Were they the same age? Why was his hair white? Or was it blue? Was it because of all the chlorine? Why does he like the water so much? Was he a fish? A merman?

Lost in thought, she almost fell in the water when she heard the coach's voice.

"Your nanny isn't here yet?" he asked from behind her. He had already thrown on a track suit jacket, a towel thrown over his short hair.

"N-not yet," she replied, inwardly cursing herself for stuttering. "It's not like I'm not allowed to hang around after class." She tried sounding cool and aloof, but she was clearly intimidated by him – the man, at least to her, was huge.

She took this moment to compare the coach to his "nephew". They seemed to contrast in every way – the man was tall, brown-skinned, dark-haired and deathly serious, whereas the boy was (obviously) small, pale, white-haired and easy-going.

"Anyway," she added, changing the subject in hopes of negating any suspicions that she had been examining him, "you don't seem old, yet you're retired. You were a swimming champ, yet you're here training brats in this dinky pool. Is there some sort of reason for that?"

Albeit somewhat taken back by the sudden interrogation, the coach answered with another question. "You're aiming to be number one, aren't you?"

"Yeah, but what does that have to with anything?"

He stepped closer to the pool, squatting down. He pointed at his "nephew" and said, "He's the reason you won't be achieving that goal."

Flabbergasted, she could only stammer out a barely intelligible, "What?"

"Don't think I haven't noticed," he said. "You've been trying to compete with him."

"What? No way!"

"Then it must be some strange coincidence that you always kick off whenever he does. Though you never can catch up."

Karin looked away, feeling her cheeks warm, and if experience proved right, her face would be right about the same color as her hair right now. She slipped on her ear plugs, slid into the water and pushed off.

She swam hard, away from the coach and his accusations. Competing with him? Couldn't catch up to him? Preposterous. She was her father's daughter. She was a winner. She always got what she wanted. She barely paused to catch her breath on the other side before kicking off again for another lap, pushing herself, feeling the pull of muscle and every breath.

At that point, she couldn't even tell if he was still in the pool. She just swam forward, her eyes focused towards her goal. She did another lap, and another, barely a breath in between.

"Ojou-san," she barely heard over her ear plugs as she took a breath by the poolside. She submerged back into the water before her governess could speak any further. She kicked off, slicing through the water despite the strain in her muscles.

It happened so fast she couldn't make sense of it – she felt a sharp tug within her leg, and before she knew it, she couldn't mover her leg, and she was flailing in the water.

She felt the water flood into her mouth, into her nose, down her throat, into her stomach and somewhere into her chest where it hurt. She tried stopping her breath, covering her face with her hands (but that just made her sink). But she needed air – her lips opened without her willing them to, her arms flailed about searching for a way out. She couldn't see, her eyes stung. The water moved around her, tugging her, swallowing her, pulling her in. Her hand broke through the water but was swallowed back in just as fast. A sudden breath of air was followed by water, her knees scraping against rocks. She tried righting herself, but the water rolled her in a confusion of twirls and spins, around and around. She would feel her hand brushing against the ground at one point, banging her elbow against a rock the next. She could tell she was bleeding somewhere, but she couldn't tell where. Her head hurt, and she was disoriented by all the rolling. It was just water, water everywhere.

She felt someone tugging her, and the mouth she held so tightly closed burst open for the nth time, searching for air and finally finding it.

She took a breath, a real hard breath. The next moment, she was coughing, gagging, spitting water. She felt it flow through her nose, up her throat, down her skin, over her eyes. She felt an arm around her, keeping her afloat and tugging her through the water. She couldn't tell who it was, couldn't care who it was, but she continued coughing and hacking as she was guided to the edge, where her governess must have been, because she could hear the old woman's screaming and shouting sound even louder and more annoying.

She felt big hands grab her, pulling her out of the water and unto the tiled floor with ease.

"WHAT SORT OF COACH ARE YOU? HOW COULD YOU LET THE OJOU-SAN–" Karin blocked out the shrilly old voice as she felt big, gruff hands pound her back, helping the water find its way back up, where she gratefully coughed it out.

"Well, that was close." It was him, and she was more surprised by that she could pick up his voice over her old nanny's ramblings than the fact that he'd spoken. She turned to see him just beside her, sitting by the pool edge, looking the same as always.

"Did you –" She coughed a couple of times, barely any water coming out.

"I'm sort of the lifeguard here," he answered, the pride evident in his voice. "I'm faster than the guy sitting on that high chair thing." He nodded towards a bewildered man who seemed to dress the part, a buoy under his arm.

They heard a long sigh behind them. "You didn't do the bubbles like I told you, did you?" they heard the coach ask, and Karin blushed again. The bubbles were performed to prevent cramps like this. If she had been more cautious and had done them as she was told to, she wouldn't have ended up ingesting so much chlorine.

"YOUR FATHER WILL HEAR ABOUT THIS, YOUNG LADY." At that point, no one was even listening to the poor old woman who was half-frightened out of her wits. It had come as a surprise that she didn't suffer from a stroke from all the screaming and stressing she did in the last couple of minutes.

They heard a loud whistle from afar, and the boy said, "That's my brother. I have to go now." He smiled at her, a canine tooth protruding at one side, giving him a more mischievous look. "Bye." He got up and took a towel from his uncle before bounding off toward a teenager who looked a lot like him. She watched them turn away. It was perhaps the last time she saw him.

"She should be okay," the coach said in the general direction of the governess, almost as if her were talking to himself, "Suigetsu pulled her out pretty quick. She should still be able to swim again next meeting."

Suigetsu, she noted his name, as if it had been a mighty puzzle she had just solved.

Suigetsu! That name made her stomach drop.

"There will be no next meeting," said the old woman through her teeth. "Your father will not allow it."

"I'll be fine," Karin muttered. "I can still swim."

She felt like gagging, but not from the water. It continued to pour in, through her nose, her mouth. Her ears were up to capacity, she could barely hear a thing past the mighty roar of the current. That boy was Suigestu. What the hell. What the fu –

…

She gasped, and water flowed out through her mouth, making her gag and choke. She felt the cold sting against her skin, the arm loosely wrapped around her waist. The arm moved, and she felt a hand against her back, pounding it – what a déjà vu – and the water kept coming out in sudden spurts.

"Well, that was close." She almost swallowed the mouthful of water coming back up at hearing those words. That was when she remembered the boy in her dream – what a dream to have while passed out from drowning!

"YOU!" But before she could spout off a long stream of verbal assault, she was caught in another wave of coughs and gags– her nostrils hurt while water sprayed from them. She could almost taste the chlorine from her dream, and she cringed.

"You. Were. That. Boy."

"The boy from what?" he asked, confusion clouding his face.

"The boy!" she screamed in his ear. "The swimming pool! The coach's nephew or something! I was drowning! You – " She faltered but continued nonetheless. " – saved me!"

He continued staring at her with the same expression. "I've saved many drowning people."

"Argh!" she screeched. "You took swimming lessons, didn't you?"

"Uh… I've known how to swim since I could remember," he said with a shrug. "I've never taken any lessons."

"The swimming pool! Swimming lessons at the pool! You called the swimming instructor uncle!"

"Aren't we supposed to call old people uncle?"

"Your brother came to pick you up sometimes."

"You mean Mangetsu-nii? Yeah, he did." A curious look came about his face, and Karin hoped he wasn't stupid enough to have totally forgotten – if in fact, that dream was really a memory and not some deluded dream she'd made up – goodness knows what that entailed.

"So this boy from your swimming lessons is me?" he asked, that smirk of his coming out again, and she could see that feral canine sticking out.

She hesitated, disconcerted by the look on his face. "Yeah."

"Didn't you…?"

"What?" she asked, irked by his answer. "Do you remember now?"

He was grinning even wider, as if he was about to burst out laughing.

"Wha – " She stopped, ice cold. She felt her stomach sink as the realization set in. She had told everyone at the bonfire that her first love was the boy from swimming lessons. Suigetsu was the boy from her swimming lessons.

She heard the sirens burst from her lungs, and she could hear him guffawing over her keening scream, see him roll unto his back with his arms around his stomach. She buried her burning face into her wet hands, but she couldn't block out the laughter beside her as he practically rolled around the gravelly riverbed.

She could almost kiss their faces when Naruto and Shikamaru found them, their flashlight beams swinging back and forth. But that would have provided Suigetsu with something to laugh over some more, so she settled for screaming at them for leaving her with this maniac, who still hadn't stopped laughing.

…

With a huff, Sasuke finally managed to pull Sakura over the ledge where they'd fallen off. With a few more tugs he managed to pull her towards a tree, which she clung on to.

"You weigh a ton," he remarked as he untied the rope to pack it away.

"Don't start with me," she sneered. "I still have the knife."

He rolled his eyes. "If you hadn't led us down here, we'd be playing some stupid camping game with the others by now."

Sakura snickered. "Are you telling me you'd rather be playing one of Kakashi-sensei's awful games right now?"

Sasuke barely suppressed a smile. "Come to think of it, no, I'd really rather not.

END OF CHAPTER

Author's note: Busy reading web comics, manga, digital drawing/coloring and other crap lol. Again, thank you, thank you to the wonderful people who made efforts to kick my butt back into gear. Thank you. And uh, I hope this chapter wasn't so confusing – the first part is a dream/memory by the way.