Within Buddhism, it is taught that the source of all suffering is desire. One must seek to achieve enlightenment by letting go of Earthly wants, and in this way achieve true happiness. Now, that's an overt simplification of a rather old and venerated religion, practised by many around the world, but it does give you an idea of the general philosophy.
So, if the source of all suffering is desire, then is it any wonder that Sakura's body has suffered numerous aches and pains from illness over the years? It's a fine body. Very, very fine. In spite of, you know, the cold sores and the rashes and the randomly sprouting and disappearing hairy moles - the point is that her body was extremely appealing in spite of all those little blemishes. When you're this hot you're bound to be desired, hence suffering must manifest upon it.
Right now Sakura was standing in her room staring at clothes that she could never bring herself to wear. Not out of embarrassment, no no. Because if she did try to she'd come down with the flu. Or a stomach ache. Or... pick a malady, spin the wheel of sick. She might even come down with plague or chickenpox one of these days.
"One of these days, I will get better..." Sakura said wistfully. "Then I'll be able to go out like a normal person... Dressed up like they do, in clothes like they wear."
"Take care, niece. Your Earthly desires are showing."
Speaking of desires, here is the living embodiment of the exact opposite. Cherry, the absolutely hideous monk that has absolutely no sense of personal boundaries. That's it, by the way. That's his real full name. His father was Mister The absolutely hideous monk that has absolutely no sense of personal boundaries. You can see why he dropped the surname and picked Cherry, it had nothing to do with ascetics or religious practises. If anything he'd been kind of railroaded into the career by all the bullying kids.
"Uncle! It's polite to knock when you enter a lady's room!" Sakura yelled, punting him out the door. She threw her weight upon it, and there he was, sitting in the middle of her room smoking up a hunk of meat he got from... best not to ask where.
"I shall bear that in mind the next time I must enter one," Cherry sagely said. "Now Sakura, you simply must discard all of those clothes. They are a hindrance to your training. Unhealthy thoughts lead to an unhealthy body."
Not today, uncle. Not today! "On the other hand, pushing yourself to the limit is the only way to train yourself," Sakura said. She sniffed a little. A cold coming on? She reached into the wardrobe and... No, not the miniskirt. Nor the bikini... Nor the evening gown... aha! A simple smart pantsuit, just what the doctor ordered! "If I am to banish this perpetual illness, I must endure a little bit worse than normal, and push myself a little more each time. That's the only way I'll ever improve."
This logic did not make any sense to normal human beings. But it seemed to work on Cherry.
"Very well." Cherry pulled out the meat, gave it a good look over and then... it mysteriously vanished even though he didn't open his mouth. Much like food tended to around him. "If you insist upon testing yourself in this way, so be it. I shall not stand in your way."
Yet he also didn't move. For a moment Sakura thought he might, you know, stand up. Leave the room. Let her get changed. Instead he pulled out meat that was of even more suspicious origin than the last lot, and started roasting it over the open flame he'd set in her bedroom.
"Out!" she yelled, then threw him out the room another three times for good measure "That man is like a cockroach!" She took a step, then bent double from a sudden coughing fit. "Must... change clothes!" she insisted, reaching out to the pantsuit while shrugging off her robe. Deep breath. Concentrate. Meditate...
And think of that boy.
Ataru Moroboshi entered her thoughts. The coughing fit receded, and vanished allowing her to walk across her room with her head held high. That dopey face seemed like the perfect cure for whatever ailed her. Why was that? Sakura didn't know. Maybe there was something mystical about him that was influencing her level of health?
There was nothing for it but to experiment. While dressing, she thought about the boy in other situations. Say, wearing a bulky fur coat while walking through the snow. Ah! Ah! A stye formed in her eyes! Both of them at once! Painful, irritating, extremely powerful urge to scratch at it even though she knew it would make it worse! A different situation then? Let's see... Diving into a swimming pool and doing a backstroke.
Her eyes cleared up. In fact, it felt like she could see much clearer than she normally could.
"Ah! I understand now!" Sakura said, pounding her fist into her open palm. "Since I'm imagining more of his body, the curative effects are more potent! So if I imagine him naked..."
The image of his naked body that had struck her when she had last seen him was more invigorating than a dozen pills. Then, though she would not recognise it for what it was, a rather perverse grin fell upon Sakura's face.
<hr>
"Oh dear, oh dear, this is quite troubling," Cherry sighed. "That girl has such potential, for her to squander it on such frivolous desires is really quite troubling."
The annoying little monk looked around once, twice, thrice, then stuck his fingers in his mouth and let out a loud whistle. All of a sudden he was surrounded by tiny little spirits of all shapes and sizes, if those sizes all started with the word "small". They yipped around him like excitable pomeranians after their owner had been away on holiday for a month, and he tossed out little scraps of meat for them to consume, resulting in quite excitable sounds from each of them.
"Now now. You've done fine work until today," Cherry said. "Whenever Sakura was little, and she would stare longingly into a candy store, you would give her tummy aches. When she was a teenager and she started getting interested in boys, you would make her acne break out and give her big disgusting boils at inconvenient places on her face. This is no different. We shall push her back onto the road of asceticism, much as we always have."
Turns out you can still be an asshole if you're a devoted Buddhist. Who knew?
<hr>
Sakura strode out the front door with a spring in her step, and a snazzy pantsuit on her body. Oh, how refreshing it was! Those baggy robes always felt like they were colliding with everything around her, but this form fitting set gave her dexterity and motion. She was practically dancing down the street. Normal clothes! Oh yeah! Perfectly mundane and normal clothes, hotcha!
"... is there an advertisement running or something?" a random man she danced past asked his friend.
"I dunno, never seen a babe dance like that except in an advert..." the friend commented.
Oh yeah! Feeling great! Feeling fine! She was walking on air! Nothing could stop her from reaching Moroboshi's place. Nothing at all!
Meanwhile, from a nearby bush, Cherry popped up with a slingshot full of disease spirits. He shot them directly at her back. Couldn't miss. He was about to load her up with rheumatism so bad you'd think she was triple her age.
However, at that very moment Sakura happened to see an ice cream parlour, and conjured up the image of Ataru Moroboshi lying on his back with a heaping dose of ice cream sitting on his chest. For some reason this made her thrust out her hips hard enough to make her jump a whole foot forward - in turn causing the disease spirits to fly right on by and land in a passing limousine.
"Oh! My back!" Shutaro Mendo complained.
"Brother, dearest! It pains me to see you so," his sister Ryoko gasped. "Lie down on the floor a while. I hear that slow dancing on a hurt back does wonders for aches and pains. And by slow dancing, I mean this new fangled moshing style I've been hearing so much about. Everyone on my brother's back!"
It's worth noting that this limousine was the size of a small mall. The Mendo siblings were travelling light today.
“Curse this stupid cameo just to inflict pain on me! This is your doing isn’t it Ryoko!?”
Incidentally, has anyone seen this new house I've recently acquired through perfectly legitimate means? It's quite the location, I would never normally be able to afford it... But anyway!
"Hrm... She truly does have the devil in her loins..." Cherry mumbled to himself, sinking back into the bush and then mysteriously popping out of another one closer to Sakura. This time he was carrying a bucket, which he made to empty over her.
"Excuse me miss!" a young girl said, rushing up to Sakura alongside her friends. "You're that pretty priestess who sorts out all the wicked spirits possessing the town, right?"
"You think I'm pretty?" Sakura asked. The girls looked up at her and nodded, while blushing a little. "Well... Is there something I can help you with?"
"We want you to banish the evil spirits hounding Ataru Moroboshi!" The girl that said that got elbowed for her trouble.
"Stupid, what if she goes after him too? Um! Could you please train us to do it? We can't abide seeing him suffer at the hands of those supernatural sluts!"
An alarm bell went off in Sakura's head, which incidentally caused her to reflexively punch a certain bucket about to be emptied over her head, causing it to sail off into the distance and land on top of an unattractive man pulling a cart.
"Ah! Ryuunosuke!" the man yelled. He clutched at his chest. "I have sudden heart palpitations! Pull the cart for your old man while he rests in the back!"
"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, you skiver!"
Back with Sakura her mind was racing. Ataru Moroboshi had evil spirits plaguing him? That couldn't be a coincidence. Right as she was going to visit him? There's no mistaking it! Evil spirits are out to ruin her life!
"Pardon me, ladies," Sakura said to the Ataru Moroboshi Protection Society. "I must hurry to the Moroboshi residence."
"Ah shit, she's already hooked on his dick..." the girl in glasses sighed. “She’s going to hog him!”
The tall and slightly chubby one groaned, “I thought he really was being possessed!”
The hime cut girl looked at them, “I mean, this is Ataru Moroboshi, right? I don’t think it’s possible to hog him.”
But Sakura was in no position to hear them complaining about the guy they liked bedding literally any cute girl but them. (If only because he had never actually met any of them.) The only thing going through her mind was that Ataru Moroboshi's life was surely in danger, from the evil spirits flitting about him. Stealing his life force. Tormenting his soul. Leading him into temptation. It was up to her, and her alone, to save him from this fate!
<hr>
Meanwhile in Ataru's room he was currently lying on his back while Shinobu, in full haremgirl gear, was riding him cowgirl style. The only thing that would make this better is if one of the other babes like Lum and Oyuki were around. Alas, they had some space business to take care of or something.
"D-Don't get the wrong idea!" Shinobu moaned semi-coherently. It was really hard to concentrate because Ataru was railing her harder than normal today. "I'm only wearing this stupid thing b-because Lum didn't know what a haremgirl was!"
"Huh, really?" Ataru said. He looked around his room. "I don't see Lum anywhere."
“W-well just in case she walks in, I want to be able to explain it!”
"That's nice," Ataru said, sitting up to kiss Shinobu on the mouth. She melted into him. "By the way, it turns out that when a girl can fly, she can teach you a <i>lot</i> about new ways to satisfy a girl. Here's a new trick Lum taught me last night."
Suddenly, and quite without warning, the door burst open and a certain sexy priestess burst in with beads waving around her head. "Ataru Moroboshi! I have come to... Goodness me, I've never seen those kind of clothes before. What are those?"
"Look Shinobu," Ataru whispered while tracing his finger alllll the way down her spine just the way she liked it. "There's someone else you can explain it to. Practise for Lum!"
- Harem girl Sakura? Harem girl Sakura.
- Lum and Oyuki try to prepare for Setsubun with Benten... but have dick on the brain.
- Mrs. Moroboshi tries to interfere. Fails hilariously.
- Meanwhile, a new menace is coming. Soon Ataru will face his greatest ri… Ok I can’t finish that sentence. Shutaro Mendo is signing up for Tomobiki High.
- Something else
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