Dedicated to Mozelle.

{ Kidnap My Heart }
but it's not the same without you—

CHAPTER V
—Frustrate

Sasuke watched Sakura hurriedly reverse-park her silver Chevrolet into the parking space. She let out a heavy breath of frustration as she cut off the ignition. Sasuke glowered when she angrily turned to him.

"I can't believe you."

Sasuke's frown deepened. If anything, it was Sasuke who should be saying the statement. The moment they had left the café, Sakura had immediately pulled him through the parking lot, reached her car, and sharply turned to him, hissing, "Idiot."

It appalled Sasuke so much that he shot the doctor with anger-driven glare. But before he could have even responded with equal ire, Sasuke had been yanked down into the car, about to be brought to wherever.

What right did the woman have to tell him just that?

"I can't believe you," said Sasuke back, leaning against his seat the moment he had unclasped his seatbelt.

"No! I can't believe you," insisted Sakura. She pursed her lips together and looked ahead of them, her hands resting on the stirring wheel. "I can't believe that you did not even confer this with me."

Sasuke scoffed and shook his head. Couldn't this woman get it? He did not want to have 24/7 surveillance from her.

"Why should I? It's not your —"

"I'm your doctor, and it goes against my oath if I can't keep sufficient surveillance on you."

The man that sat on the passenger seat fought the urge to roll his eyes. That was the point. He did not want any more shadowing from her. It irritated him somehow.

Sakura looked at him and repeated, "I can't believe you."

"Shut up," Sasuke hissed, closing his eyes. "You're annoying."

"Says the person who would not even reply to my text messages," accused Sakura as she glared back. She unbuckled herself and turned to Sasuke, eyeing him critically. "I should have known. Even Mikoto-san did not even tell me."

Sasuke almost groaned in annoyance. As if it was not enough, she just had to turn this to his mother. He would never let that happen. "It's because she didn't know, annoying woman."

"What?"

He hated the surprised look she shot him. "She's abroad right now, so she didn't know," he explained. "I didn't tell. So don't turn this on my mother."

Sakura blinked. "Your brother should have at least —"

"He couldn't actually care any lesser, but he did," answered Sasuke, looking out at his side's window. "I can walk now, and that's all that matters, really."

"You are so frustrating."

Many have said so, Sasuke had wanted to say, but did not. Instead, he looked up at the familiar tall building adjacent to the parking lot and inwardly grimaced. A few months ago, he had been brought to this same place to perform an operation on him that had now changed his life. Gravely changed his life.

"Why did you bring me here, anyway?" he asked, when curiosity got the better of him.

Sasuke did not like the smug look Sakura had on her face. "I'm bringing you to a PT."

"A what?"

"A physical therapist," answered Sakura knowingly. She reached for her bag that sat on the floor below the dashboard and fished for her phone.

Sasuke did not reply. He merely looked at her with boiling frustration.

"You'll need it," snapped Sakura upon sensing Sasuke's irritation. "Muscles that are idle for over two months could cause you more harm if shocked to motion."

"This has to be quick."

"It actually depends."

"What the fu —"

Sasuke was cut off when Sakura glared. "Don't talk obscene words on me, you bastard."

"But you said —"Sasuke tried reasoning.

"It depends on the PT I'm bringing you to, OK?" said Sakura, skimming through her phone. "Your post-therapy could take days, weeks, or months, depending on how he sees you fit. By the way, stop the coffee."

Sasuke almost paled upon hearing the possible duration of the therapy. He had always been looking forward to being physically fit to be able to get to the job that he had always dreamt of even as a child.

He would not dare go into cheesiness, but he loved his work. The few idle months he had made his desire to go back pile up in the pit of his stomach.

So he said things that instantly went in his mind.

"It couldn't take me weeks! I have work, and that work needs my body."

Sakura's eyes snapped up from her phone's screen to his face. "Every work needs a body, idiot. But you'll do better in work if you have a healthy body, not some mushed . . . rotting potato kind of body."

Sasuke looked appalled. "You just didn't compare my body to some rotten potato."

"I just did," replied Sakura, grinning. She turned her attention back to her device as she continued, "And I could do some worse analogy if you keep putting up a fight with me."

"Analogy like?" challenged Sasuke. The woman, after all, could use some challenge in life.

It surprised Sasuke when in a heartbeat, Sakura managed to reply, "Like your heart's going to start bruising like ugly tomato if not given enough work out."

Sasuke glared. Sakura just did not use his favourite fruit as an analogy to his current state. And she just did not call a tomato ugly.

Sakura, to Sasuke's chagrin, did not stop. "And it will smell and wrinkle and—"

"Fine."

It annoyed Sasuke when the doctor beside him mocked her surprise. She gasped and turned incredulously towards him. She told him, "I kind of didn't hear what you just said."

He frowned. "I said fine."

"Wait, what?" Sasuke swore his knuckles turned white upon Sakura's obvious mockery. His frown deepened when his doctor went on, "Some fly buzzed about my ears so I didn't quite catch what you said."

When Sasuke was a kid, he had been too spoiled. Anything he asked for, his parents — his mother most especially — would hand it over in a blink of an eye. Had he not liked one thing, his parents would go out of their ways to dispose of it. He was king, and they were his minions. But then again, that was once upon a time.

This time, Sakura was king, and he was slave. And he did not know why, understand how, but he kind of enjoyed being that way.

Gazing at his doctor's mischievous and laughing green eyes, Sasuke felt that he could live with it for a while longer.

"Fine! Just take me to that fucking PT," said Sasuke looking away.

"Good." Sakura's smile was smug. "Oh, and again, stop the coffee. Or worse analogy about tomatoes."

Sasuke glared at nothing. How did she know?

"Oh, and I think I'll have to thank Naruto for this," said Sakura, looking down her phone. It buzzed, and she laughed as she read the contents of her new SMS.

Sasuke felt his blood run cold.

Naruto.

"Ah, Sakura-san, the youthful cherry blossom of my ever-so-youthful life! How may I be of your honorary service?"

Sasuke felt like gagging. In front of him stood a very active, wide-eyed, and bushy-browed man in green spandex. The man had been frustratingly swooning over his doctor, and said doctor actually giggled in response to the weirdo's advances.

"Thanks, Lee-san," Sakura told the man. She smiled and gestured towards Sasuke. "Uh, this is Sasuke, my current transplant patient. He's just recently begun working on his muscles again, and I was wondering if you could set therapy plans for him."

Sasuke, being such a good-looking man, despised it when girls ogle him over. He felt as if he was being undressed with just their eyes; he would not admit it, but he feared those kinds of girls.

So having a man look him over like those girls almost spiked Sasuke's stress levels top notch.

"Such youthful, fine, specimen!" Lee stared Sasuke up and Sasuke swore that he saw the PT's wide eyes sparkle. "Great, young body, so full of muscles and so little of fats! The perfect body composition —"

He went on and on. Sasuke shot Sakura a hard gaze.

Sakura laughed. "Follow me up with your observations later, Lee-san. In my office. See you in two hours, Sasuke."

Sasuke's frown remained intact.

The bitch.

Sasuke was in a cab on his way to his workplace when he felt his phone vibrate from his pants' pocket. He fished through it and checked the caller ID.

Incoming call . . .
— Mom

He pressed the answer button and answered, "Mom."

"Don't sound so . . . I don't know — annoyed?" said Mikoto from the other line. Sasuke could almost hear the mischief in her unseen smile.

"You have no idea."

Only a few minutes after his first therapy session from Lee, Sasuke had texted Mikoto about his condition. He was meaning to surprise his parents upon their return from abroad about him being able to walk again, but after the stress of attending therapy with a man he did not like at first glance, Sasuke could not help but tell his mother about it all.

He had told her how Sakura managed to force him into it, and it frustrated him how Mikoto seemed to like the idea.

Mikoto laughed. "She's a miracle-doer, isn't she? After having you manage to attend something like that —"

"Forcing me is more like it," Sasuke corrected.

"But you let yourself be forced to, so it's really surprising, Sasu-chan." Mikoto laughed again. "I'm inviting her over for dinner later, Sasuke, and you can do nothing about it. Your dad and I are only a few away from home. We're on our way."

Almost too immediately, Sasuke felt his head pounding again.

The snarky remark of his operative in the forensics division annoyed the hell out of Sasuke.

"What are you doing here?"

Sasuke glared at the periwinkle-haired man working on one of the lab tables in the room. He went over to him and said, "I'm boss."

Hozuki Suigetsu did not even bother looking up from his current work. He manipulated with the microscope he had and pulled away to jot down data. He said to Sasuke, "But that doesn't mean you're allowed to be here."

"Who says."

Suigetsu grinned and finally turned his attention toward the boss. "Naruto."

Sasuke felt his blood boiling again for the said blond. The fact that in just one day, Naruto had managed to irk him in more ways than one could make him kill the man at any moment then.

"The dobe."

His subordinate laughed. "He says something about your doctor turning into an evil bitch if she finds out you go to work."

"She wouldn't turn into an evil bitch because she already is one," commented Sasuke as he got one of the folders lying on top of a nearby table. "She doesn't know what my job is. She doesn't know I'm here."

"But —"

"I'm not working."

"Oh, well, fine. But" — Sasuke did not like the sly smirk Suigetsu shot him — "is she hot?"

"Fuck off, Suigetsu." He glared when the other man began laughing. Sasuke sat on one of the high stools around and skimmed through the paperwork he got.

"Seems to me she's feisty," remarked Suigetsu, turning back to his job.

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Suigetsu."

"Well, just saying," continued the periwinkle-haired man, trying to pacify his boss. "Naruto has said quite a lot, 'ya know."

"I wouldn't want to hear anything about that."

"Whatever, Big B."

For half an hour, the two investigators talked about things that had run about the office in the long while that Sasuke had been gone. And even though Sasuke had said that he did not go there to work, he could not help but be on work mode. Suigetsu, after all, did not seem to mind.

"Have you sent a copy of this report to Division III?" Sasuke asked, completely forgetting that he was not there for the job.

"Uh-huh," answered Suigetsu anyway. "Had to re-expound some details but it ended up clean."

"Hn. Good."

"Sasuke!" a voice called out.

Both men looked up from what they were doing to Inuzuka Kiba, a brown-haired man with tattoos on the face, who was leaning on the wall adjacent the glass doors of the laboratory. He held up a wireless phone.

"Emergency call for you." Kiba's face turned serious. "And by emergency, I really mean it."

Sasuke frowned while Suigetsu whistled. Mobile phones were not allowed upon entering the workplace, so he had to surrender his own at the entrance. Only a few people knew what it meant if he did not answer a phone call on his mobile, and he felt like he knew who was on the other end of the line.

Almost warily, Sasuke took the wireless phone from the Inuzuka's grasp. He held it in his ears and said, "Uchiha Sasuke speaking."

Muffled sobbing sent Sasuke's heart throbbing.

"Tenten?"

—because it takes two to whisper quietly
{ to be continued }

author's notes. i'm really, really sorry for the long wait! and the short update. :( i'd experienced the spontaneous hell weeks of my life in the past few and i could not find time to work on this chapter. sorry. i'm currently a little bit free from academic load so i might update sooner. :) thank you for the very kind reviews and i'm looking forward for more. haha. i'm looking forward to hearing from you, guys.

forgive my shameless advertisement, but i've written a new anthology. :) if before, i've written about how to break things off with your boyfriend, this time, i have written how to move on. or at least, reminders on how to move on. :P it's entitled "the moving on chronicle". check it out if you have the time. :D