Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. It is the property of Masashi Kishimoto; I merely borrow the characters for my own amusement.

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Tell Her Lies

To call Sai clueless would nearly be a misnomer—his IQ is remarkably high, and his intellect had been used to solve many a difficult problem in the past. This occasion was no different.

For all his expertise in other areas (he could kill a man a thousand different ways, for one), Sai finds it hard to maneuver through the rocky waters of human interaction. Once, he simply had no idea how to say something without having people out for his blood. This could be attributed to his lack of inherent social knowledge, but the fact is Sai is not a particularly charitable person for all his harmless looks, and what he really thinks is usually the one thing that offends people the most.

Now, this is a situation that wouldn’t be particularly alarming, but for the fact that he spends all his time around ninja, and the ones he spends the most time around could quite conceivably kill him a thousand times over, in a hundred thousand infinitely creative ways.

And so Sai comes up with a plan. From this point forward, he would only ever say the opposite of what he really thinks, and no one would ever have an issue with him ever again (but he would – silently – with their looks, their behavior, just everything about them).

It turns out that this is a good plan. When Sai lies through his glowing smile, flashing those perfect pearly whites, people smile back.

Chouji has clearly lost a lot of weight in the past couple of months. Which he hasn’t, because he’s nearly doubled in size.

Akamaru is the finest specimen of ninja dog that he has every come across, and it must be owing to Kiba’s superior care of his familiar. Not quite—the mongrel looks like something that got into a fight with chidori and lost (and generally smelled like it had been rolling in rotting feces).

Naruto is looking more and more distinguished, more like a Hokage by the day. Two words: orange jumpsuit. Honestly.

Rock Lee is an example to all the young ninja boys. If there are any more freaks like him and his teacher, Sai will probably move out of Konoha.

Sasuke doesn’t look so much like a crazed serial killer anymore. Yes, if you disregard the maniacal tendencies to fire up a chidori just to imagine it sinking into someone’s body, and the way he strokes the fading Akatsuki robes when he thinks no one else is looking—yes, definitely improving.

Miss Ino is the prettiest girl I have ever seen in my life. For a female pig, she cuts a pretty fine figure, true enough.

Sakura is Ugly. Not ugly. Sakura is Ugly.

The last is what confuses him most, because it works for everyone else—why does Sakura insist on giving him a concussion every other day for it? Everyone else accepts what he says without question, and even go so far as to call him their friend. And yet Sakura, the strange one, the only exception to his perfect rule continues to be unsatisfied.

Well, it’s probably just Sakura being weird. Sai thinks she’s ugly, isn’t that enough?

Apparently not.