Lee found Guy-sensei on Training Ground Six at dawn, already running through an intense warm-up routine that would have hospitalized most ninja.
"Guy-sensei!" Lee greeted.
"Lee!" Guy greeted back.
"Help me train to fight against the Sharingan, sensei!" Lee bowed.
"Help you? I'll help you alright." Guy walked over to Lee before punching him across the face, sending him flying across the training grounds. "You should be resting in the hospital, you fool! What in the world are you talking about helping you with training?!" Guy lectured him with love.
"But, Guy-sensei! I'm already fully recovered! My secret jutsu already fixed my injuries!" Lee shouted out.
"R-Really?" Guy looked at him in disbelief.
"Really! Look!" Lee jumped up.
Lee shadow-boxed against an imaginary opponent. Quick jabs, a sweeping combination, push-ups. Then he leaped, flipped three times at the apex, landed perfectly, and opened the gates. First. Second. Third. His skin flushed red. His pupils vanished. His hair rose and the veins across his arms swelled with the pressure of what was pouring through them. He held it for two seconds, then closed them and dropped back into a Strong Fist stance, breathing normal.
"Well I'll be a monkey's uncle…" Guy couldn't believe his eyes.
"I'm good to go, Sensei!" Lee reaffirmed.
"It looks like you aren't pulling my leg at all." He walked a slow circle around Lee, checking for favoring, for hidden wincing, for any sign that the body in front of him was bluffing. He found nothing. "That secret jutsu of yours really is out of this world, Lee! Hearing, recovery, holding your breath, and who knows what else! I guess I can teach you how to fight against the Sharingan today, no problem." Guy replied.
"I'm ready, Sensei!" Lee bowed again. "Thank you, Sensei!"
"Of course." Guy nodded. "Let's get started." They stood across from each other on the training field.
"Guy-sensei, before we get started. Have you heard anything about Neji?"
Guy was quiet for a beat longer than usual. "I went to the intelligence division this morning to check on him. They told me his case is being processed and that visitors aren't permitted during the evaluation period."
"How long is the evaluation period?"
"They didn't say."
Lee's fists tightened at his sides. Then he released them. "His clan, Guy-sensei. The cursed seal. He told me and Tenten yesterday about it. Why are they allowed to control the lives of their own people like that and the Hokage doesn't do anything about it? Aren't we all people of the Leaf? Why are some allowed to choose and control the lives of others? Sometimes even killing them on a whim?"
"There's no easy answer to those questions, Lee." Guy gave it to him honestly. "Just like you, I wish that they didn't have that system in place either. Since I was a child, the Hyuga Clan has worked like that. And I'm sure they've been working like that even before me or my father's time. Maybe even before the First Hokage's time." Guy sighed.
"Do you think there is anything that could be done about it? I want to help Neji get rid of that curse on his forehead." Lee shared honestly.
"I don't know, Lee. I never heard of any branch family member escaping that cursed mark outside of death." Guy was equally as honest.
"I guess me and Tenten are just going to have to work at it one step at a time. There has to be something out there…" Lee just knew there had to be.
"If I hear anything or find out anything, of course, I'll support you too. I can't let my adorable students handle everything on their own." Guy gave Lee a thumbs up.
"Thank you, Guy-sensei!" Lee bowed toward him.
"Anything for my students!" Guy said as a matter-of-fact. "Now let's begin your training!"
"Yes sir! I'm ready!"
"Listen closely, I've already mastered counter-Sharingan battle techniques from all my bouts against my eternal rival growing up!" Guy started. "The first step is to open your eyes!"
"My eyes are open, Sensei!" Lee stared at Guy with his pupils fully widened.
"Maybe not that open. Regularly open." Guy dialed it down a bit.
"Yes, Sensei." Lee looked at Guy normally.
"When you go up against the Sharingan, you only need to avoid meeting your opponent's eyes! Just keep your sight on their feet at all times, and you can still read their movements and react." Guy explained.
"That makes perfect sense, Sensei!" It was like a lightbulb appeared over his head. "Just don't look at the eyes! It's perfect!"
"All you need to do is get the knack for discerning an opponent's movements just from their feet." Guy simplified.
"I got it!" Lee began shouting. "Let's master the anti-Sharingan technique! If I can't master this by the end of the month, I'll try and withstand the Eight Gates for half an hour!" Lee promised.
"Yosh! If I can't get you to learn this by the end of the month, I'll try and withstand the Eight Gates for an entire hour!" Guy made his own self-rule alongside Lee.
"Sensei!"
"Lee!"
The two clashed.
…
Lee coughed, making sure his breath was fresh as he stood in front of Sakura's home. He smoothed out any wrinkles in his outfit, making sure he was looking his best, before deciding to knock on the door. He took a few breaths, somewhat nervous.
His mind was already three steps ahead of itself. First date. Then a second. Then eventually a wedding where Neji would have to stand up and say something nice about him in front of a crowd. The image started to form and then caught in his chest. Neji wasn't here. Neji was in a cell somewhere in the village, and Lee didn't know when he'd see him again. He shook it off. Neji would come back. Lee would make sure of it. But tonight was for Sakura, and he owed her his full attention.
He knocked three times politely while holding a bouquet of cherry blossoms while dressed in a professionally tailored deep-green kimono. Top quality, cost a lot of money, and recommended by Tenten, who had threatened him with physical violence if he showed up in his Might Suit.
He could hear multiple voices inside. Sakura's, Ino's, and two older ones who seemed to be fighting to reach the door first. The door swung open and two adults stood shoulder to shoulder in the frame, both slightly out of breath from what had clearly been a race to get there first.
Sakura's father was a kind-faced man with dull-pink hair shaped into something that looked, if Lee squinted, like a cherry blossom. He had blue eyes, sideburns that curved into an angular mustache, and a bit of stubble on his chin. A silver necklace with a cherry blossom pendant hung from his neck. He was already grinning.
Her mother was not grinning. She was a fair-skinned woman with sharp green eyes, the same green as Sakura's, and shoulder-length blonde hair with a single bang falling across her face. She wore a white qipao dress with red designs along the hem, and her arms were crossed, judging Lee.
"So you must be Sasuke Uchiha, the boy my daughter talks about all the time!" Kizashi's voice boomed with warmth. His eyes dropped to the bouquet in Lee's hand. "Cherry blossoms for my cherry blossom, eh?" He looked enormously pleased with himself.
Uh, no. That wasn't correct. He wasn't Sasuke Uchiha…
"Don't start." Mebuki didn't look at her husband. Her eyes hadn't left Lee. "You. What's your name?"
"Rock Lee, ma'am!" Lee bowed deeply, still holding the bouquet. "It is a tremendous honor to meet Sakura-chan's parents!"
"Rock Lee…?" Mebuki repeated it confused. "I don't believe I heard that name from her mouth."
"Yes, ma'am!" Lee fought to stop the tears from falling. Sakura will definitely talk about him more to her parents after this date. They'll know him better than Sasuke Uchiha! If he doesn't engrave his name into all three Haruno's mind more than Sasuke's, He'll do ten thousand one-handed pushups with a boulder on his back!
"I see. You're a genin too, right?"
"I am hoping to become a chunin after the Chunin Exams! Currently taught under Guy-sensei."
"Guy? Now that I look at you, you really do resemble him… Are you his son?"
"No ma'am!" Lee got that question a lot.
Mebuki's eyes narrowed. Kizashi threw an arm around Lee's shoulder before his wife could continue the interrogation, pulling the boy close enough that Lee could smell grilled fish and soap.
"Don't mind her, she's just protective." He squeezed Lee's shoulder. "I see your outfit, the flowers, the polite mannerisms! You're really looking to rock out tonight, huh?" He waited a beat, clearly expecting a reaction.
Lee blinked. "Yes, sir! I prepared all day for today!"
"Get it? Rock? Because your first name is Rock?" Kizashi grinned wider.
"Kizashi." Mebuki sounded like she had heard ten thousand puns and had not laughed at a single one.
"What? It's funny!"
"It's not funny. It's never funny."
"Sakura thought it was funny."
"Sakura has never once laughed at your jokes."
"She laughs on the inside! And I can tell, because she always covers her mouth when I tell my jokes."
From somewhere deeper in the house, Lee could hear Sakura's voice, strained with what sounded like barely contained mortification. "Can we PLEASE just go?!"
Ino's voice followed, giggling like crazy. "Your parents are intense as usual, Sakura!"
"Shut UP, Ino!"
Mebuki turned back to Lee. The investigation was not over. "Where are you taking her?"
"I have reservations at-"
"What time will you have her back?"
"Before-"
"Are you going to be anywhere dangerous?"
"Of course not, ma'am, I-"
"Mebuki, let the boy finish a sentence." Kizashi patted Lee on the back. "He's clearly a fine young man. Look at that kimono! Very sharp. A real cut above the rest." Another pause. Another expectant look.
"That wasn't even a pun. That was just a compliment with a pause after it."
"It was a pun! Cut! Because he's a ninja! We use sharp things!"
"Go inside, Kizashi."
"It's my house!"
Eventually, Sakura yanked her parents back inside despite them wanting to talk more with Lee-kun.
"For you!" Lee handed her the flowers as he took in her appearance.
It was a reddish-pink kimono and sandals with painted nails.
"T-Thank you… Can you believe you're the first boy to ever give me flowers?" Sakura blushed.
"And I hope it won't be the last first we share." Lee smiled.
"R-Right…" She looked away momentarily, playing with her hair.
"You look beautiful, Sakura-chan." Lee pointed out.
"T-Thank you, Lee." Sakura still couldn't meet his eyes. "You clean up pretty nicely."
Ino squealed behind her as she watched from inside. Sakura tossed the flowers at Ino's face and closed the door behind her.
"Shall we go, Lee?" Sakura suggested as Ino wished her the best with an incredibly loud voice.
"Yes! Please, follow me. I have a reservation at Yakiniku Q!" Lee held out his arm.
"Not yet…" Sakura politely turned him down.
"No worries! Let's go." They walked side by side, instead of Sakura holding onto his arm as they walked down the street together in the evening.
Yakiniku Q was warm and loud and smelled like charcoal and soy sauce. The evening crowd had filled most of the booths, families and off-duty shinobi and civilian couples occupying the restaurant. A waitress led Lee and Sakura to a booth near the back, slightly removed from the busiest section, and Lee pulled out Sakura's chair before she could reach it.
She looked at him.
"Thank you," she said, and sat.
Lee took the seat across from her and set his hands on the table, then moved them to his lap, then put them back on the table. He wasn't just nervous. He was beyond nervous. He had passed through nervous somewhere between her front door and the second street corner and was now operating in a territory of emotional intensity that he had no training reference for. Guy-sensei had taught him how to fight ninjas. No one had taught him what to do with his hands at a dinner table or on a date. He decided to fold them. That seemed safe.
"Have you been here before?" he asked.
"A few times with my parents but not recently. Not after I became a ninja. It's a bit expensive to eat here regularly." Sakura opened the menu and looked at it happily. It gave her something to look at that wasn't the bright wide eyes of the boy across from her. "Their pork belly is really good."
"Then we should get that!" Lee agreed immediately.
"Have you even eaten pork belly before?" She looked at him with an inquisitive gaze.
"I like all food, Sakura-chan. I learned growing up that a true shinobi cannot afford to dislike any source of nutrition."
Sakura looked at him over the top of her menu. "I don't remember that from the academy."
"Yes!" Lee said this with total sincerity. "I learned it in the hospital. I was pretty much always in the hospital growing up."
"Oh, why is that? Were you a sickly kid?" She asked. She couldn't imagine someone as strong as Lee being sickly.
"Ah, I wouldn't say that." Lee rubbed the back of his head, embarrassed. "Neji put me in the hospital."
Sakura had to stop herself from bursting out laughing. "W-What do you mean?"
"I always challenged him when we were in the Academy. And I lost and always ended up in the hospital after."
"Neji is stronger than you?" Sakura was unable to believe this. She did watch him brutally beat up Hinata, but there was a difference from beating up a girl and beating a guy who beat a giant monster.
"Well, he was." Lee chuckled. He wouldn't admit to the girl he liked that another boy was stronger than him.
They ordered. The pork belly, plus beef short rib, vegetables, rice, and two glasses of plum juice because Lee did not drink tea in the evening on principle, something about it disrupting his sleep cycle, which disrupted his training schedule, which disrupted his entire life. He explained this to Sakura very seriously.
"You really think about training all the time, don't you?" she asked.
"Not all the time." Lee paused. "Most of the time. Maybe ninety percent."
"What's the other ten?"
"Right now, it is one hundred percent focused on this date."
Sakura's eyes dropped to the table. The pink on her cheeks, which had been fading since they left her house, came back. "You're a little too direct, Lee..."
"I don't know how to be anything else."
"I can feel that from you." Sakura said softly.
The grill between them hissed as the waitress laid out the raw meat and vegetables. Lee picked up the tongs immediately and began placing pork belly strips across the grate, each piece aligned, evenly spaced, turned at the exact moment the edges began to curl and brown.
Sakura watched him cook for her without being asked and felt something shift in her chest.
"Lee."
"Yes, Sakura-chan?"
"Can I ask you something personal?"
"Of course!"
"What's it like?" She hesitated, turning her glass slowly on the table. "Not being able to use ninjutsu or genjutsu. Like... what does that actually feel like? I know it's your thing, I know you've made it work, but I've never actually met anyone like that before."
Lee set the tongs down.
He was quiet for a moment, which was unusual enough that Sakura looked up from her glass to check if something was wrong. His expression hadn't changed. He was still smiling. But the smile had settled into something less bright, more honest.
"When I was five, I found out that my chakra network could not shape chakra for jutsu. No one really told me. But when you fail at the simplest jutsus that everyone else in your class can do, you start to realize something. Everyone agreed that I could not become a real ninja." He picked up a piece of grilled pork and placed it on Sakura's plate before continuing. "It felt like the world had decided I was broken. Like a tool that came out of the forge wrong and could not be fixed."
Sakura's hand had stopped turning the glass.
"For a while, I believed them. I thought maybe they were right. Maybe I was not meant to be a shinobi. Maybe I should do something else with my life." He placed another piece on her plate. "But then I angry. I shed tears. And then I hit a tree. And I hit it again. And again. And my knuckles bled, and my shins bruised, and nothing about any of it felt wrong. It felt like the only honest thing I had ever done."
He looked at her across the grill, and his eyes were warm, and there was nothing guarded in them at all.
"It feels like running uphill while everyone else rides downhill. Every single day. But the view from where I am is mine. Nobody gave it to me. Nobody handed me a kekkei genkai or a technique passed down through generations. Everything I have, I built with these hands." He held them up. Calloused. Thick-fingered from years of impact training. "So when you ask what it feels like, Sakura-chan, it feels like the hardest thing in the world. But, I've always had it like this and I couldn't really imagine my life being any other way."
The restaurant noise filled the silence between them. Laughter from a nearby table. The sizzle of meat on hot iron. Glasses clinking.
Sakura realized she had been holding her breath.
"That's..." She swallowed. "That's really admirable, Lee."
"You think so?"
"Yeah. I do." She picked up her chopsticks and took the pork he'd grilled for her. It was perfect. Crispy at the edges, tender in the center. She chewed slowly. "I kind of know what you mean. Not the same way, obviously. But feeling like you're not enough. Like everyone around you is stronger or more talented and you're just... there. Not able to catch up or do anything about it."
Lee's head tilted. "You feel that way?"
"Lately, yeah." She hadn't meant to say that much. The word just came out, pulled loose by the honesty of what he'd shared. She stared at her plate. "Sasuke and Naruto are both incredible. They're so strong, they have their own goals, and they just keep getting stronger. And I feel like I'm just a burden to them. So far behind and can never catch up…"
"That is not what I saw in the Forest of Death."
Sakura looked up.
"When I arrived, you were standing in front of your unconscious teammates with a kunai in your hand ready to protect them with your life." Lee's voice was gentle but certain. "You were alone against three enemy shinobi who had your team dead to rights. And you didn't run."
'I don't remember that side of the story…' Sakura thought.
"That is not someone who just stands behind others, Sakura-chan. That is someone who has not found her strength yet. There is a difference."
The words landed somewhere deep. Deeper than she expected. This was Lee, the boy who couldn't use ninjutsu or genjutsu, telling her that he saw something in her that she hadn't been able to see in herself.
'Shannaro!' Inner Sakura whispered. 'He's actually kind of pleasant when you get past the eyebrows.'
Sakura took a long sip of her plum juice to buy herself time to recover.
"So what about you?" Lee asked genuinely curious. "What does Sakura Haruno want to become?"
Nobody had asked her that in a while. Naruto talked about becoming Hokage. Sasuke wanted to restore his clan and kill someone no matter what. Ino wanted to surpass her. But nobody had looked across a table at her and asked what she wanted for herself.
Back when she was starting out, she was just interested in Sasuke-kun. But now…
"I want to be strong enough that I never have to watch them from behind again." The answer came faster than she expected. "I want to be the one protecting people for once. Not the one being protected."
Lee's smile returned to full brightness. "That's the spirit of youth, Sakura-chan!"
"What does that even mean?" Sakura laughed as she flicked her hair out of the way.
"The feeling of wanting to do something no matter what and working toward that goal full sprint. No matter what anyone says or what anyone tries to do to stop you. You keep going. Till you reach that dream or die trying. That's the spirit of youth."
"That's your ninja way…?" Sakura asked.
"To work hard and never give up." Lee nodded. He raised his glass of plum juice. "To becoming a better us, Sakura-chan."
She stared at him for a second. Then she laughed and picked up her glass. "To becoming a better us."
They clinked glasses, and the grill hissed between them, and Sakura thought, briefly and without quite understanding it, that this was the first time in a long time she had talked to someone her age who made her feel like she could actually do the things she wanted to do.
She reached for the tongs. "Let me cook the next batch. You've been doing everything."
"Are you sure? I am very skilled at grilling!"
"Lee, you literally just put meat on a flat surface. It's not that complicated."
"Grilling is an art, Sakura-chan! The way a man grills reveals the depth of his character!"
"And who told you that?" She snorted.
"Guy-sensei." Lee answered openly
"Does Guy-sensei also have a stance for flipping beef?"
"He does, actually! It is called the Searing Flame of Youth Reversal Technique and it requires-"
"I was joking. Oh my God, I was freaking joking."
Lee grinned. Sakura smiled back and began placing beef strips on the grill, and they continued talking for the rest of the date.