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fear
It’s 2015 and Inside Out, the Pixar movie about emotions, has just been released in cinemas. How does Sasuke know this? Well, for some goddamn reason, despite the fact they’re seventeen and halfway through Year 11 (arguably too old for this shit) Naruto wants to go see it. With Sasuke.
Now, Sasuke knows that Naruto loves Pixar movies. Naruto can recite the entire first three scenes of Cars from memory, quotes Finding Nemo at him constantly, bawls his fucking eyes out if Sasuke even mentions the first ten minutes of Up .
Sasuke is not a big crier. He’s got a Goodreads shelf called ‘i-shed-more-than-two-tears’ because . . . well . . . that’s pretty much what constitutes crying for him.
He looks down at the message again on his hand-me-down iPhone 5S from Itachi, at that cool blue iMessage bubble. He flips the purple leather phone case open and closed, fiddles with the home button and fingerprint scanner.
“Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that,” blurts Siri.
“Oh shut up,” Sasuke snaps, throwing the phone onto his king single bed.
It’s times like these—when it feels like time’s moving a bit too quickly, when he feels old even though he’s young, he’s still so young—that he’s nostalgic for the time of the Blackberry and the Webslider. He’s still got that purple Nokia imitation of the Blackberry somewhere in his desk drawer, probably wherever he put his Nintendo DS Lite and his iPod Shuffle with the polka dot skin from Smiggle. Sasuke knows for a fact that Naruto definitely still has his hideous lime green Webslider phone from Year 7 because he uses it as a fidget toy now.
Of course, he doesn’t really miss these things—just the low-tech simplicity and the childhood they represent.
Sasuke crosses his bedroom, flops onto his bed and stares up at his bedroom ceiling. It’s still got glow-in-the-dark stars on it from when he and Naruto put them up when they were twelve.
It’s not that Sasuke doesn’t want to go see Inside Out with Naruto. What stresses him out about Naruto’s text is it’s just that—a text. Not a callout in one of the four different group chats they’re both in—the drama club, their English project group, their homeroom, and their actual tight-knit friend group, Team 7, consisting of Sasuke, Naruto, Sakura, and Sai.
No, see, Naruto is apparently inviting Sasuke and Sasuke alone. And that shouldn’t be something significant, something that makes Sasuke lie on his bed nostalgic staring at glow-in-the-dark stars—but it is.
Their whole friend group first met after being teamed up for a science project in Year 7, in which they were named ‘Team 7’ by their very uncreative student teacher, Kakashi. While their group has been friends since then, Sasuke has always been closer to Naruto than Sakura and Sai. It could be because he and Naruto always argued and fought in Year 7 and 8 over dumb shit, often ending up in sick bay by themselves with no one else to talk to. It could be because they had almost opposite personalities—Naruto bright and chatty where Sasuke was more quiet and reserved—and YA novels had taught Sasuke that opposites attract.
He supposed that applied to friendships as well as romantic relationships.
Sometime around Year 9 though, something had shifted and they had become, well, genuine best friends. Even within their smaller Team 7. Sasuke would come over to Naruto’s house to play Animal Crossing on his dad, Iruka’s, old GameCube, looking up cheat codes to redeem rare furniture, and Naruto would come over to Sasuke’s so they could play Wii Sports Resort and battle in sword fighting, then tennis, then bowling, then golf. They always teamed up with each other when they had to run scenes in Drama and were often complimented for how natural their improv felt.
Sometimes, if Sakura was hanging out with her sports friends at lunchtime and Sai was holed up in the art room working on a new project, Sasuke and Naruto would go to the Performing Arts Centre, walk around to the front entrance where the audience usually entered on show nights, and sit in the alcove next to the big glass doors, looking out at the staff carpark and the aloe plants.
Just them.
One day when they were sitting up there, it rained heavily, the water dripping off the overhang of the PAC roof like a beaded curtain. It was . . . really nice. Naruto ran out into the rain and Sasuke made slo-mo videos of him on his phone, spinning around, his fluffy blond hair turning brown and flat in the water. That was when Sasuke had first gotten the phone from Itachi and it was the first iPhone to have slo-mo.
It was new.
When they arrive at school too early, they sit in the arts corridor and watch YouTube videos, sharing wired earphones on the linoleum floor. One time, Sasuke downloaded Five Nights at Freddy’s and Naruto screamed so loud at a jumpscare that the teachers came out of their office and told him off.
Naruto doesn’t read books but he likes listening to Sasuke tell him about whatever he’s currently reading, explain why he thinks Cress was the best book of the Lunar Chronicles and how he’s so excited for Winter to come out in November.
Anyway. . . . Yeah.
They’re best friends.
So it shouldn’t be strange that Naruto wants to see Inside Out with just Sasuke. But for some reason it is. Because Sasuke’s been taught that seeing a movie one-on-one is a date.
Is it? Does he want it to be?
No. . . . Right?
They’re best friends.
Sakura makes jokes about how she ships them—when her Tumblr fangirl side comes out—but that’s dumb.
Life’s not a YA novel or a Pixar movie. If it was, it would be easier to understand.
~ * ~
disgust
Of course, Naruto being Naruto, books them tickets in Village Cinema’s Vjunior—the theatre designed for kids.
Sasuke grumbles about this the whole car ride over, sitting beside Naruto in the backseat while he chatters on about how it’s ‘soooo cool’ that he’s seeing a movie with Sasuke.
It’s weird. This is weird. Why is Naruto so damn happy about this? Something’s off, something’s wrong, and Sasuke’s not old enough yet to identify the smoke clouding these thoughts.
He feels gross inside. Iruka even asks if he’s feeling sick and Naruto looks at him concerned, reaches a hand across to press a palm to his forehead, which only makes the feeling worse.
He doesn’t like these feelings. And yes, he understands that is incredibly ironic given they’re going to see a movie about emotions.
So he chalks it all up to Vjunior. They’re too old for this, this is for kids, he argues as Iruka drops them in the underground carpark and as he and Naruto trek up the escalator to the second floor. The darkness of the cinema comes into view, with its burgundy carpet and illuminated movie posters behind perspex and wide open lobby with snaking polyester ropes forming the queue up to the ticket and snacks counters. There’s a claw machine Naruto tries to drag them towards before Sasuke reminds him the session starts in ten minutes, still grumbling about the fact they should be seeing this in a regular cinema.
Once they’ve weaved through the snake and reach the back of the queue for snacks, Naruto punches him in the arm, the stacked woven friendship bracelets on his wrist fluttering.
Sasuke’s purple one is there between Sakura’s pink one and Sai’s black one.
“Technically, Sas, we’re not adults yet—we’re not eighteen, I’m not even seventeen yet—so we should enjoy this while we can, ya know?”
The popcorn is overpriced but its buttery smell and obscene amount of salt is something you can’t find anywhere else. Sasuke hugs the cardboard box that’s almost as big as his torso to his chest. Naruto’s got toothpaste on the corner of his mouth. God, he’s such a child.
When they enter the Vjunior cinema room, it’s worse than Sasuke remembers. The chairs are basically giant pillows on the floor in aggressively friendly blue and yellow and on the side of the room, there’s a fucking tube slide, like the ones at Maccas and Hungry Jacks.
There are thankfully no actual kids in the session—which makes sense given it’s quite late for a Vjunior session, 7pm on a school night.
They’ve got a Drama SAC in the morning for their monologues.
When the lights dim (not too dim because, again, Vjunior) and the onslaught of commercials finally ceases, Naruto turns to Sasuke, legs bouncing in ripped skinny jeans where they’re stretched out on the star-printed carpet.
“It’s starting!” he hisses excitedly and Sasuke rolls his eyes.
He hears a sparkling sound—like starlight on glass.
Their fingers brush when they both reach for popcorn. Naruto’s wearing the silly friendship rings he got from a gacha machine last time they went to the cinemas (they saw Monsters University with their drama club group and it was horrible).
Naruto’s wearing the cheap sun ring. The paint has rubbed off to silver in some parts and his tanned skin is stained green beneath it. Sasuke’s matching moon ring is at home.
The long cuffs of his mauve jumper get stained with butter and salt clings to the fibres.
The floor chairs are surprisingly comfortable.
It’s not a date, Sasuke tells himself every time his hands brush with Naruto’s, every time that feeling rises in his chest (because it’s in his chest now instead of his stomach).
“I’ve always wanted to learn to ice skate,” Naruto says as the main character, Riley, glides around a frozen lake.
Sasuke looks at his best friend. In the colourful light from the screen, the popcorn salt clinging to his lips looks like glitter. And then there’s the toothpaste.
If it’s not a date then why does it feel like one? Why does it trigger something in Sasuke’s brain that has steeped in YA novels for the better part of four years?
All he knows is this feels strange and it’s definitely not what he should be feeling with Naruto.
It feels green.
There’s a part of Sasuke that worries this is a trick, a prank, a joke, some long-con Naruto cooked up to get back at him for . . . something. He used to be such a little shit.
A bigger part of Sasuke though—a part that he tries to stuff down like a sleeping bag back into its stupidly tiny tube—wants it. Wants this day to hold . . . significance.
Yes. That’s the word he’ll use for now.
Sasuke reaches forward with the buttery sleeve of his mauve jumper and wipes the toothpaste off Naruto’s mouth in the dark.
“Idiot,” he mutters. “You’re so gross.”
~ * ~
anger
Sasuke never expects too much from Pixar movies. They’re much more Naruto’s thing and with the exception of Monsters Inc. and Wall-E , Sasuke isn’t particularly partial to any of them.
He doesn’t like Inside Out.
Not because it’s a shit movie (it’s actually quite interesting how this ties into what he’s learned in his Year 11 Psychology classes) but because there’s something about this movie that makes Sasuke feel open and vulnerable.
And it makes his chest hot and his eyes burn in indignation because fucking hell, this isn’t even an emotional part of the movie, he shouldn’t be feeling this . . . ugh! Disgust is trying to be Joy and Riley ends up being sarcastic. This is not a pivotal scene!
Fuck.
He’s leaning towards his left, towards Naruto, as if he’s a damn planet in his stupid bright sunny orbit. Why the fuck are his legs curling up? Why is he shuffling over to Naruto’s side? Why are their elbows touching on the armrest?
This is dumb. Brightly coloured characters in a kids movie should not affect him this much. Naruto—yes, of course he’s affected. That makes sense. He’s a fucking two-year-old on the inside.
But Sasuke is ‘mature for his age’. (Or at least he’s supposed to be.)
Pixar movies are made for kids and they’re dumb. He wants to go home. And he knows that’s dumb to want.
He’s so comfortable in this giant pillow chair with his legs stretched out on the floor and Naruto beside him laughing at all the cheesy jokes.
He’s so uncomfortable seeing the cavities of his heart smeared on the screen, still beating with every clink of the memory marbles.
Naruto shifts in his seat, against where he leans on the armrest. Their shoulders touch, then their legs. His blond head falls onto Sasuke’s shoulder, a soft weight tickling his neck.
The world roars and quietens all at once, like a pulse of sound.
Sasuke doesn’t cry when Riley decides to run away.
He doesn’t cry when Bing Bong dies (even though Naruto is full-on sobbing at that point).
But when Sadness and Joy return to Headquarters, when Sadness takes control and Riley cries in front of her parents, when her parents hug her and hold her and Joy presses the console with Sadness and turns it a mix of yellow and blue. . .
Sasuke doesn’t cry.
(Not loudly at least.)
With tears silently rolling down his face, collecting on the ends of Naruto’s hair where his head still leans on his shoulder, Sasuke decides:
Inside Out is his least favourite Pixar movie. And if Naruto tries to make him watch it again he’s going to pull a move from their Year 8 days and fucking punch him.
~ * ~
sadness
They stay through the credits. Of course they do.
Sasuke stays leaning into Naruto’s side. Of course he does.
When the theatre fully illuminates, Sasuke blinks. It still feels dark. There’s popcorn crushed into the star-printed carpet. Sasuke’s legs are somehow tangled into Naruto’s, his black skinny jeans against Naruto’s ripped blue ones.
Naruto is rambling about how good the movie was, talking about his favourite parts, scrubbing the salt from his eyes and his hands but Sasuke barely hears it. He unfolds himself from the soft yellow pillow, grabs the empty popcorn box, hugs it to his chest again.
He follows Naruto, up the padded carpet stairs, out of Vjunior, into the wide cinema hallway with the burgundy carpet and illuminated cinema numbers, bins overflowing with popcorn and drinks.
The hallway spins a bit, like that scene in Inception.
Something claws up his chest, spreads like a stain across his tongue. Against all his efforts, a sob escapes him, and after he chokes trying to stuff it back down his throat like an unfurled sleeping bag, Sasuke just . . . bursts into tears. Full-on loud, ugly, embarrassing crying in the middle of the dirty cinema hallway.
“Oh shit, Sas—oh my god—”
Naruto’s hands grasp his arms, the popcorn box is gone, then one of his arms is around Sasuke’s shoulders and it feels so good, so safe, so it doesn’t make sense that Sasuke starts crying harder but he does. Why? The world shifts beneath his feet, the walls warp around him and then suddenly, it’s a bit darker.
Through the tears, the gasps, Sasuke opens his eyes to the colour blue.
Naruto’s looking at him with tears forming in his own eyes. He’s backed them over to the side of the hallway, turned his body so that he’s blocking Sasuke from view, blocking out the light with his face, tilted close to Sasuke.
His eyes are blue and in the warm light, his hair is yellow.
“Shut up,” Sasuke gasps out. “Shut up—shut up—I hate you—”
Naruto smooths his palms across Sasuke’s shoulders, up to cradle the back of his neck. “It’s okay, Sas, it’s okay—”
He gulps for air before being pulled underwater again. Because that’s what it feels like—being swept up in a wave, a crest, a surge, a riptide and all those other things he’s always heard used as metaphors but never understood—still doesn’t understand.
“You can’t—” he stutters, trying to keep his voice down but it fights, forces its way out of his throat in sharp punches, “—you can’t tell anyone about—about this.”
Naruto’s laugh is soft, like clouds parting. “Why would I want to tell anyone, Sas?” he murmurs and Sasuke tries to cry quieter so he can hear him.
“Because I never cry, I never cry, I don’t—I shouldn’t—”
“Hey, no, Sas, you saw the movie, yeah? It’s okay to cry, ya know. It’s good! This is good! If anything, I’m . . .” He looks away, then back. “I’m lucky I get to be the one to take care of you.”
The water recedes like draining bathwater. Naruto’s eyes are shiny.
“I . . . sometimes I can’t believe you trust me , out of everyone. That I get to be . . . your best friend . . .”
Books and movies have taught Sasuke that word, that phrase, is somehow lesser. That a ‘best friend’ will never be a ‘partner’, a ‘lover’, a ‘boyfriend’.
“. . . and you get to be mine.”
Yet despite that knowledge, Sasuke feels it in his chest, in the first lungful of air after being underwater, that all the books and movies are wrong when it comes to him and Naruto.
Sasuke steps back to lean against the wall, tugs Naruto with shy fingers tangled in the fabric of his t-shirt.
His face is red and blotchy. His eyes sting. His face is wet. But there’s something inside him that feels light, feels like the air he’s breathing is somehow fresher, feels like he’s shed some invisible tension in the tears that cling to his chin, the snot clogging his nose.
“It’s always gonna be you and me, ya know?” Naruto says, smiling a little, wiping the tears from his own eyes.
Naruto’s always been golden in appearance—the sun to Sasuke’s moon—but he’s never looked more like a goddamn Disney prince than in the light of the shitty cinema hallway with popcorn salt on his lips like glitter and tears on his cheeks like glass.
Sasuke feels like a mess.
And he’s never felt freer.
Sasuke has never been one to picture himself in the many stories he consumes but when Naruto blushes, then moves close to peck Sasuke’s cheek, the salt from the popcorn dissolving in the salt from Sasuke’s tears, Sasuke almost hears that shimmering sound from Inside Out —the sound of a new core memory, the glass-like tink of the marble rolling through his mind, slotting into place and, instead of creating a new island, revealing one from the mist that had always been there.
He sniffs. Yeah. That’s Naruto’s place. That makes sense.
His arms move on their own, curve around Naruto’s body, its warm, comforting shape, and draws him closer into a hug.
Sasuke hears Naruto’s sharp intake of breath. He feels the air of his own laughter puff back at him where his head is buried in Naruto’s shoulder.
The details of the world come into focus:
The warm smell of Naruto, like he’s been bathing in the sun even though it’s late July and firmly winter. The doughy texture of Naruto’s skin beneath his shirt, the way his body expands shakily with breathed laughter. The distant sound of action movies booming in other cinemas, muffled not by walls but the sound of Sasuke’s own mind sparkling. It feels like he can see every little piece of popcorn ground into the burgundy carpet.
. . . God, is this what clarity feels like? Is this why people cry? It’s as if in order to cry, he knocked down this wall and now the breadth of his emotions spreads like wings, feathery and overwhelming.
They stay there in the hallway for a while. Long enough for a couple more groups of people to pass. They sit on the carpet and lean against the wall, legs tangled together in the light like they were in the darkness of the theatre.
Sasuke knows it means something—he felt the memory click into place.
What does it mean though?
He looks at Naruto. Naruto’s looking at Sasuke’s hand, held in his own, tracing the ridges of his knuckles with the other.
Sasuke doesn’t know yet. What he does know is he feels understood.
He feels sad and happy at the same time. And maybe it’s not the first time he’s felt this way but it’s the first time he’s accepted the paradox and listened to its discordant harmony, let the antonymous feelings come without raising fists at them.
It’s the first time someone—even if that someone is a bunch of pixels in a Pixar movie—has explicitly told Sasuke that it’s okay to feel (and feel and feel and feel ), ugly and wet and tidal.
Sasuke thinks back to his Goodreads shelf. He shed more than two tears today. Hell, he’s probably cried more than he ever has in his life in the span of two hours.
Naruto squeezes his hand. “Are you okay?” he asks softly, reaching up to touch Sasuke’s cheek, right on the spot where his lips pressed.
Sasuke grabs Naruto’s reaching hand and, by some instinct he may never understand, kisses it. “Yeah,” he replies. “I’m okay, usuratonkachi.”
~ * ~
joy
It’s early 2020 and Sasuke is on a plane, leaving Konoha for the first time in his life. The Economy class seats of the international flight are cramped but he, Naruto and Iruka take up an entire middle section so at least he doesn’t have to sit next to strangers.
“Ah shit, I’m gonna die,” Naruto mumbles. His chin is tucked into his shirt as he hunches down over his Oppo phone, flipped landscape so he can play a pirate deck-building game. The TV on the back of the seat in front of him is playing what looks like Pirates of the Caribbean (Sasuke can’t tell which one, he’s never seen them).
On Naruto’s other side, Iruka has a satin eye mask on and he’s snoring.
Sasuke meanwhile is flicking through the poor selection of movies, trying to decide whether to watch one or attempt to read his book, This is How You Lose the Time War. Honestly, he hasn’t updated his Goodreads in forever but Itachi recommended this book. While so far it’s confusing as all fuck—full of time travel and paradoxes and words he doesn’t understand—there is, within that, a strange familiarity.
A lot of things are unfamiliar these days.
As Naruto will say in another five years, this is a squishy time of life. He’s squishy. Naruto’s squishy. Time itself is pretty squishy.
Sasuke digs his cheap wireless earphones out of his pocket. They’re from AliExpress and pastel purple with a soft touch finish. It’s his third pair because they keep breaking, yet he’s not at a point in his life where he can justify an expense like AirPods. He wouldn’t be able to use them anyway, not since he finally gave up on carting around his iPhone 5S permanently attached to a power bank larger and heavier than the phone itself and broke the shackles of Apple to get an Oppo phone on Naruto’s recommendation.
Naruto had always been better at trying new things than Sasuke. (He still will be in another five years.)
The day Sasuke got to uninstall iTunes was like the clouds parting. Never again, would be have to spend another New Years Eve warring with that hellish program as the year ticked over.
Sasuke leans into Naruto’s side, watching him play.
They played Minecraft for the first time last week. They built their house next to a pit of lava because Naruto thought it was a good idea (“It’ll defend us from monsters!”) only for them to fall in numerous times.
Sasuke checks the animated flight path on his own TV screen. Still four hours until they land in Suna.
Not like he really has anywhere else to be, or much else to do with his time. They’re uni students—they go to class three days a week and even then, only for three hours max, then spend the rest of the day walking around the city, trying new matcha cafes and ramen places (so many ramen places . . .) before taking the tram down two blocks to the macaron shop because they’re too lazy to walk.
They have part time jobs, sure. Naruto is a duty manager on weeknights at Kmart and Sasuke is trying to be a freelance editor, posting his profile on every freelancing website he can find that won’t charge him just to put up an ad.
They stayed up until 4am last week bleaching Sasuke’s hair, then dyeing it blue-black. At this point, Sasuke’s pretty much given up on having clean towels given how much the dye stains them. He almost stained Naruto’s hair once when they went swimming.
Turbulence brings him back to the present. Naruto’s phone jumps out of his hands and Sasuke catches it without thinking and passes it back to him. Naruto kisses him on the cheek.
With this kind of turbulence, there’s no way he’ll be able to read, so Sasuke idly flicks through the movie selection again. Something about the fact he’s in transit, that he’s in an in-between space, that his life is squishy, that he’s free but unmoored, drives him to the familiarity of the kids movie section, the Pixar category.
And then he finds it.
Life feels unfamiliar these days, like something he’s feeling out in the darkness of a cinema, like a claw machine he fucking sucks at.
(Everyone sucks at claw machines.)
He clicks Inside Out.
The Webslider phone and the PAC and the Wii have never been further away. They will only continue to get further and further away. Yet somehow, Inside Out still resonates the same as when Sasuke was seventeen, sitting in that Vjunior with Naruto.
At the exact same part of the movie, he’s crying into Naruto’s shoulder while Naruto kisses his hair.
“Your hair still smells like grapes from the hair dye,” Naruto says with a giggle.
“You’re a grape,” Sasuke shoots back weakly, through quiet sobs.
Sasuke cries easier now, lets his Sadness take the console when she calls. He is content with the rushing of water, with the way it dulls and muffles and roars in his ears.
Sometimes he needs that.
He gets angry, snaps at Naruto when he doesn’t mean to (I’m sorry, I’m sorry), burns hot and fast.
He’s disgusted with himself and the amorphous jelly ooze of his life and the sticky ugly glue of his longing.
He’s so fucking afraid (of everything and nothing and especially things that won’t matter in the morning).
But maybe that’s why he’s happier.
Sasuke watches Joy and Sadness press the button together, watches the new core memory glow and cast them in both blue and yellow light.
Naruto’s eyes look even bluer in the light from his phone screen.
In high school, so many people, Sasuke included, wondered how Naruto could be so happy. He’d lost his birth parents as a baby. He’d been open about the fact he’d been bullied in primary school.
But after that day seeing Inside Out in Vjunior and then crying his eyes out in the cinema hallway, in Naruto’s arms, Sasuke understood.
Feeling happy means also feeling sad. Feeling angry, disgusted, terrified.
Feeling means . . . feeling everything . Sasuke’s been there, holding Naruto’s hand through his panic attacks, holding him when it feels like the world is rocking beneath him. But he is also there when he wakes up in the morning and he’s soft and smiling in his sleep, touched with yellow from the morning light.
Some things change a lot when you get older, Sasuke has realised. Some things grow and shift with you and some don’t. Maybe, like Naruto’s woven friendship bracelets, they don’t stretch, or maybe they’re just made of metaphorical polyester so you discard them, throw them into a donation bag when you’re cleaning your room on New Year’s Day with Lorde’s Melodrama album blasting from your Bluetooth speaker.
Yeah, some things change a lot and it sucks to let go of them consciously. It sucks even more to consider how much you lose unconsciously, grey faded marbles vacuumed up and spat into the Memory Dump to be forgotten forever.
But some things never change.
And the understanding Sasuke feels with Naruto is one of them.
Sasuke seems to understand—from the cheap wireless earphones he keeps buying, from the fact they don’t keep in touch with Sakura and Sai anymore, from the fact he can’t remember a single word of his Drama monologues—that nothing is permanent in life but somehow . . . Naruto is.
Right now, they have so much free time that they don’t know what to do with it, but one day they won’t and he’ll look back on moments like this with an air of wistfulness (maybe he’ll even write about them).
He’s going to graduate uni this year. So is Naruto. He remembers the time they graduated high school, how unfathomable the idea of ‘after’ was.
Sasuke holds Naruto’s hand and he wonders what comes next. In that wondering, he feels the familiar surging water of sadness, the jittery tension of fear, the hot flare of anger, the curdling clench of disgust, and through all that . . .
Naruto’s hand is warm.
When they’re about to land in Suna, the flight attendant hands out hot towels.
Naruto takes his and rolls it up into a long band before holding it up against his forehead.
“Look, Sas!” he whispers. “I’m a ninja!”
Sasuke laughs.
The flight attendant pushes the cart past with drinks.
Sasuke hears the sound of twinkling glass.
So, life’s not a YA novel or a Pixar movie.
That’s okay.
It’s something even better.
