While Sasuke spent his Monday training alone, Ino and Sakura had other ideas. They visited Tenten and explained to her that Sasuke had already promised to marry both of them and told her to stay away. Tenten was shocked with the news and couldn’t focus for the rest of the day.
---
The next day, Sasuke noticed that Tenten was acting weird. She seemed colder towards him. Sasuke initiated several conversations with her, and she replied with short answers and she didn’t start any conversation.
'It seems that something has happened. The most probable scenario is that Ino and Sakura opened their mouths,' he thought.
At the lunch break, Sasuke told Tenten that he wanted to talk with her privately, and she followed him to a remote corner behind some trees.
"Tenten, you are acting weird today. Is there something wrong?" he asked politely.
Tenten looked at him, then looked at the floor and said, "Nothing is wrong."
Sasuke grabbed her hands and told her, "Tenten, you are my friend. I know that something is wrong. I am here to help you. Please trust me."
Tenten stared at Sasuke’s hands for a few seconds, blushing. She finally managed to say with embarrassment, "I learned that you promised to marry Sakura and Ino."
"Tenten," Sasuke said, moving his right hand to her chin. He gently lifted her head until her eyes were facing directly at his. The girl was truly surprised by his sudden action, and she blushed even more. She lost her concentration, and the three leaves left her forehead and arms and reached the floor.
"I don’t know if the girls explained it to you, but the reason I am marrying them is because it’s mandatory to restore my clan. As the last Uchiha, this is my obligation towards my ancestors and that is something beyond my personal preferences. In order to do that, I need to marry four kunoichi."
Tenten was initially delighted, but her expression then became complicated. 'Why am I so upset? I've known Sasuke only a few days, and he is younger than me. Why can't I take my mind away from him? Have I fallen in love with him?' Tenten thought, completely confused with herself.
"Tenten, do you like me?" Sasuke asked with an honest expression and a clear voice.
Tenten's heart pounded extremely hard, and she barely kept herself from running away. "I... I am not sure," she finally said with panic.
"Tenten, the truth is that I find you really cute. You are always kind and cheerful. You are very motivated and mature. You train really hard, and I am sure that in the future, you are going to be a very strong kunoichi. I think that I have fallen in love with you," Sasuke said without breaking eye contact and while holding her left hand.
They kept staring at each other’s eyes for 10 seconds until Tenten couldn’t take it anymore and looked at the floor.
"But what about Ino and Sakura?" she finally asked reluctantly.
"Ino and Sakura had feelings for me before the demise of my clan. As I have told you, my obligations for the clan is something that has priority over my feelings, and that’s why I decided to accept their love. They are both pretty girls, but I can’t really return their feelings yet. However, since meeting you, my heart keeps pounding hard, and I can’t take you out of my mind. I am not really sure since I haven’t felt like this before, but I think that this is love."
Tenten had never felt like this before. 'A guy like Sasuke, who is admired by so many girls, loves me? He can’t take me out of his mind?' All her life, Tenten was acting mostly like a tomboy and never considered herself a beautiful girl. As a result, she couldn’t immediately comprehend what Sasuke was saying.
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Before comprehending what was going on, Sasuke moved his mouth next to hers and kissed her on her lips. Her eyes opened widely, but something like an instinct took over, and she returned the kiss.
'What is happening? Why I feel so good? Sasuke’s mouth is so sweet.' However, before being able to continue her thoughts, Sasuke stopped the kiss and told her,
"It seemed like you were overthinking things, so I decided to prove my words." Sasuke said without breaking eye contact.
Tenten was looking at him like a lost fish until Sasuke asked,
"Do you want to do it again?"
Tenten nodded without thinking.
'I'm not into this, but a plan is a plan. It's far from the worst things I've done. I need to find one more girl and reach Jonin to restore the clan as soon as possible. This is a prerequisite to becoming Hokage, which will bring me one step closer to my final dream,' Sasuke thought.
Sasuke and Tenten returned to the classroom ten minutes late and received several questioning looks from their classmates.
---
A week passed after their first kiss, and Tenten and Sasuke made it a habit every night after their training.
Sasuke had asked Tenten to keep it a secret because if Ino and Sakura learned about it, they would probably ask him to do the same for them. Tenten happily agreed.
The training was progressing well. His weight increased from 20kg to 35kg. The changes in his muscles were visible in the mirror. Sasuke had perfected the transformation jutsu and the clone jutsu, performing them without hand signs. He was also progressing well with the body replacement jutsu, and in two or three more days, he would be able to cast it without hand signs.
'I don’t want to dive deep into these techniques, but I want to achieve a partial transformation jutsu and also remove the smoke from the jutsu. This is a must in order to camouflage the use of my Sharingan. When I manage that, I would be able to steal techniques and avoid trouble.'
Moreover, Sasuke had almost completely merged his physical workout with his control workout, performing mixed exercises the whole day. He was changing the leaf exercise to different chakra points every hour and trained with five rocks and five leaves, pushing his control further and further ahead. He did it, of course, while exercising on water.
The next variation he was trying was extremely hard. Instead of walking on water, he wanted to create a completely smooth membrane to slide on. After a lot of trial and error, Sasuke managed to perform it for two seconds. In the normal water walking, Sasuke only had to predict the force of the water and adapt the chakra membrane. However, in this variation, he had to create his own counterforces with his chakra constantly to achieve the necessary smoothness. The calculation part was something that Sasuke could easily do, but he still lacked the control to guide his chakra at the required speed.
He also spent a few hours on his shuriken throw and brought his technique to a satisfying level. However, he still was not good enough to pull off complex throws with hidden shuriken and strings. Sasuke calculated that he would need to spend a week only at this in order to perfect his form. Right now, he considered his chakra control much more important and was planning to leave this for the future when he reaches a wall.
The training with calligraphy was also a huge success. There wasn’t any difficulty to begin with, but it was a time-consuming progress. However, with Iruka’s help and his hard work during the classes, Sasuke calculated that he would finish all the characters by the end of the next week.
Calligraphy was a prerequisite to begin studying fuinjutsu. Following that, the introduction to fuinjutsu involved mastering the basic storage scroll and the exploding tag. This level was where most ninja interested in fuinjutsu typically stopped. However, for Aizen, who aimed to master and explore the limits of the art, this was far from satisfying.
---
The next day at the academy, Sasuke and Tenten stared strangely at their classmates. Yesterday, Daikoku-sensei had praised Sasuke and Tenten for their hard work in front of the whole class, and apparently, their classmates decided to copy them and practice the leaf balancing exercise during classes. However, two people refused to copy him. The first was Neji, who was constantly glaring at Sasuke after the spar with Rock Lee. The second was Rock Lee himself, who seemed to be a little sad.
Daikoku-sensei was pleasantly surprised and had a big smile on his face.
“Sasuke, you have created a new fashion,” Tenten said while laughing.
“I hope that this won’t turn around and bite us. I know that both of us can do this and keep our attention in class, but most of them probably won’t be able to do it, and this will create problems.”
---
It was time for taijutsu, and finally, it was time for the spar that all the class was expecting.
‘Neji Hyuga and Uchiha Sasuke,’ Daikoku-sensei said.