Chapter Text
I stare up at the clouds with heavy limbs and half-lidded eyes, pondering the shapes of the fluffy mist.
The one directly above me looks like a malformed cat with wide eyes. How cute.
“Win goes to Uzumaki Kushina! Do you need a medic, Seiko-chan?”
I blink blearily, looking to my left and eyeing my sensei. Around me are many children who seem amused at my predicament. Good. Better to be seen as funny and incompetent than to get sent out to die in the war.
“No, Taro-sensei. I’m just enjoying the dirt,” I say with a little grin, raising my arm to give a thumbs up. My leg aches from where Kushina swiped me off my feet, and so does my shoulder from hitting the ground.
Bruises heal. I’ll be fine.
Taro-sensei, a teenage Chunin who’s gotten benched thanks to a bad experience with Ame poison, sighs at me. “Just do the seal of reconciliation, Seiko-chan.”
I roll to my feet, holding out a hand to the redheaded girl in front of me. Kushina is so pretty and hits so unreasonably hard. I can already tell she’ll grow up into a monster, no foresight necessary.
“You’re so lazy, Seiko-chan. We’ve been going over the counter for leg swipes for a week, dattebane!” Kushina whines, quickly reaching over and clasping her fingers in my own. “You should practice more.”
“Sorry, Kushina-chan, I was distracted thinking about lunch. I’ll do better next time,” I hum. I wasn’t thinking about lunch. I was mostly thinking about how scary Kushina will be once she taps into her demon powers and starts throwing chakra chains around.
“If you were just distracted, you won’t mind another match, will you, Seiko-chan?” Taro-sensei asks shrewdly.
His arms are crossed over his chunin vest, and his hands are gripped tight enough that they don’t tremble. Nerve poison isn’t a joke. I reaffirm my desire never to get ambushed by an Ame nin every time I see Taro-sensei. Which is every weekday. It’s a good reminder.
I suppose I lost too easily against Kushina. I’ll have to make it look more believable next time.
“Yes, Sensei,” I say agreeably. I shake myself out with a few little hops before settling into a loose fighting stance. My left leg and right shoulder feel a little tender, but nothing I can’t move through easily.
I should probably win this one or make it look like I tried to win. Choices choices.
“This time you’d better try, dattebane!” Kushina says threateningly, doing the seal of confrontation with quick fingers before creating distance again.
“Begin!” Taro-sensei commands.
Kushina rushes forward, never the type to let her opponents or herself have time to think before punches go flying.
I twist under a punch aimed for my face, my left forearm just barely shifting to push Kushina’s right arm off course. I grab the redhead’s left leg when it jerks out to smack into my side before I jab my fist forward to hit the girl’s nose.
With a hiss, Kushina draws her head back to avoid the punch, and I quickly shift out of the punch to grasp her shirt and push her down. Kushina’s balance is unsteadied, what with her leg still in the air, and we both go down together.
I straddle the other girl’s stomach, both hands free and ready to start wailing punches down on her face. I raise my right fist and contemplate the morality of child soldiers for the eighth time today.
“Disengage! Win goes to Seiko,” Taro-sensei calls out.
“No, Sensei, I can still beat her!” Kushina shouts, glaring over at the lanky man. Her hand was already reaching out to grab my right arm.
“Not without a broken nose, you won’t. Disengage, Seiko,” Taro-sensei says with mild disgruntlement. He usually dislikes the girls hitting each other in the face, especially the clan girls.
Which is why I did it! Silly me.
I lower my fist and step off of Kushina, happy I didn’t get any new bruises. Maybe I should’ve tried less hard and took the kick to my side before grabbing her leg.
Oh well, spilled milk.
“Seiko, please try not to get distracted next time. You can clearly do well in taijutsu when you focus,” Taro-sensei says as Kushina and I do the seal of reconciliation again .
“I’ll do better next time, Sensei,” I say, blinking at him. I will not do better next time. I will continue to be mediocre with some level of promise and coast until we graduate next year.
With that, Kushina and I leave the fighting ring to let Taro call up the next pair of fighters. I brush the dirt off of my shirt while I walk, and Kushina glares at me.
“Do you think I’m not good enough to fight?” Kushina asks with narrowed eyes, planting herself next to me when I stand at the edge of the ring.
“Hm? No Kushina-chan. You’re pretty formidable. You’re gonna kill a lot of people one day!” I say obliviously, watching Akimichi Jiro and Yamagishi Masako get ready to fight. Yamagishi will probably lose, considering Akimichi has the advantage of clan training, but he’ll probably put up a good fight.
“Seiko-chan! You shouldn’t say things like that!” Suzuki Kyo mutters at my side, wide-eyed.
“Why? Kushina-chan is super formidable.”
Being nine again isn’t so bad, I suppose. I get to pretend to be way denser than I am.
—
The first thing I remember is being five years old and completely bored.
Many people have much more interesting stories about when they gained consciousness or whatever. In my first life, my earliest memory was of my fourth birthday and playing with a new pony toy.
In this life, it was of me glaring at a toy kunai. Mostly because I realized what the toy kunai and all the weirdos wearing headbands meant for the first time, and also realized how much shit I was in.
I step into my apartment and kick my sandals off as I close the door. They’re worn, the strap on one of them is about to snap off from the way the threads are looking. I’ll have to buy a new pair soon.
My meager savings and meager-er monthly stipend will just have to cope. The one good thing about war is that pretty much all shinobi basics are cheaper, thanks to government subsidies. And that there’s a lot of second hand shops full of items left behind by some of the unlucky people fighting in that war.
“I’m home!” I announce to my plants on the windowsill. My little mint plant looks so cheerful in the afternoon sun. “If anyone but me is here, you’d better not have touched my snacks!”
One day, an intruder will actually be in my apartment without me knowing, and my joke will land.
I hum a little tune to myself as I set my bag on my kitchen table and open my fridge to find a snack. I made some onigiri two nights ago, so there should still be one in there.
I need to do some homework for the Academy after I eat, a worksheet quizzing on different standard procedures. How should you carry an injured comrade or client? Whose orders should you follow in this word problem? What did this person do wrong when breaking down their camp?
Boring. So boring. At least I’ll get to do some meditation afterward and practice my chakra control.
Living in a shinobi world is more mind numbing than anyone said it would be. If you aren’t willing to throw yourself to the wolves and graduate early, it’s mostly homework and comparing your developmental levels to other kids your age so you don’t stand out.
If only I had a death wish and wanted to go fight in the second shinobi war. I don’t, by the way, and I think the excitement would be tempered by how fast I’d be maimed or die.
I take a bite out of my onigiri, settle in my chair, and pull out my workbook from my bag.
I suppose I’ll need to speed up my development a little to make myself more promising for graduation next year. Uchiha Mikoto is the top kunoichi right now, closely followed by Kushina, and if I kick them down a rank, I’ll secure a Jonin sensei that won’t immediately fail me. Probably.
It’s hard to judge these things when you’re an orphan or civilian-born. If I’m too promising, I’ll have to graduate early and disappear into ROOT. If I’m not promising enough, I end up in the genin corps and get stuck in admin or die on the frontlines.
I’m just lucky I’ve balanced well enough to switch into the class with all the clan kids in it. The most “promising” group that will probably all graduate save a few, and most will get apprenticed or on a Jonin team.
I finish my onigiri and flick through the two pages of work I need to do. I suppose I’ll just get all the answers correct for this one since I’ve resolved to finally make myself more “promising.”
Not genius level. Just promising enough that they won’t send me off to die immediately.
I should practice my hand signs after my homework. We’re covering the first of the academy three in a month, the replacement jutsu. Best to make sure my dexterity is where I want it to be when we do it in class.
—
One part of the delicate balance I must uphold is my connections to others.
“Isn’t Minato-kun cute, Seiko-chan?” Yamanaka Ayako hums to my left, her strange pupil-less blue eyes on the blonde boy in the front row of class. She’s pretty in the way most of her clan is. Unnerving and disarming all at the same time. Like a porcelain doll.
“He’s very pretty,” I offer diplomatically. Minato is , but in a more human way than a Yamanaka. He’s sociable and makes other people feel important when he speaks to them. A useful tool for a shinobi, especially one who wants to become a Kage.
How strange that thought is. If I survive long enough, I’ll be bowing to the friendly boy in my class. If I get even farther, I may end up at his funeral.
Grim thoughts.
“Do you think you’d marry him?” Ayako asks conspiratorially. She does things like this often, where she just gets people to offload everything about themselves for entertainment. It’s definitely a Yamanaka thing, socialized into them early so they do well in information work.
I tap my pencil against the desk in a familiar rhythm, looking at the back of Minato’s spiky blonde head. He’s talking to another student a few rows up, gesturing with his hands and nodding. Something about a game of ninja he played yesterday.
It’s so childish it hurts.
To be honest, I don’t think I’ll ever marry anyone in this life. Let alone the boy who one day marries Uzumaki Kushina and has a protagonist baby with her. Sounds terribly complicated, disrupting fate and time so I can become a Kage’s wife. Seems boring too.
All that aside, I was allergic to attachment before I ended up in this lifetime and career, so now I think it’ll just be having one-night stands forever.
Er, not that that’ll be happening anytime soon, though. I’m a strange child-adult amalgam in my mind, and I’m absolutely physically a nine-year-old. This is a problem for my teenage years.
“Marriage sounds boring. Would you marry him, Ayako-chan?” I ask curiously, tilting my head at the girl and making my short brown hair sway with the movement.
“No, probably not. The boys in the year above us are much cuter,” Ayako says, tapping her dainty chin. “I’m sad Inoichi-nii’s year graduated the year before last. Chouza-senpai was so nice.”
I am not sad the Ino-Shika-Cho graduated. Shikaku always gave me looks like he knew what I was up to. It was disconcerting.
“You see them around your clan compound, though, don’t you?”
Ayako sighs dramatically, lips pulling into a pout. “It’s not the same .”
Isn’t it odd how nine year old girls pine after possible marriages? It’s cultural here. Expected that you’ll marry young, since you’ll probably die young. Especially among the clan types where making more little clan kids is oh so important. I’m glad to be an orphaned clanless kid for that reason, even if it means the state treats me like a disposable resource. No surprise arranged marriages for me.
My mind shifts away from that awful line of thought, and I watch Ayako survey the room around us.
In order to avoid getting disappeared, one must be well known by their peers. Well known enough that they will notice and be sad if you disappear. As such, I am very friendly with my classmates in my class, upper years and lower years.
Something I learned in my last life is that most of the time, being friends with people gets you farther than just being technically skilled. In a few years, half these kids will be out on the frontlines with me, and their connection to me could be the difference between life and death.
Also, a not insignificant portion of them will be desk nin. You always make buddies with the paperwork people. Always.
“Do you have a crush on anyone, Seiko-chan? You never say anything about it,” Suzuki Kyo asks behind me. Kyo’s from a shinobi family, but it’s not one important enough to be a clan. They don’t have any special moves or kekkei genkai.
“I just don’t really like anyone like that. Some people are pretty, but that’s better admired from afar,” I say, leaning all the way back in my chair so I can look at Kyo with my head tilted. She looks funny when she’s upside down.
“Like who?” Ayako asks. Something about her tone reminds me of a shark smelling blood in the water. Thrilled at the chase.
“I saw Orochimaru-sama when I was out shopping once. He was beautiful.”
Several of my classmates in the vicinity turn to look at me with wide eyes, especially the clan kids. They have better context for who Orochimaru is, considering they’re more tapped into the ninja side of the village as a whole.
“Orochimaru the Sannin?” Ayako asks disbelievingly, blonde brows going high as she blinks. “Isn’t he the one that looks like a snake? Doesn’t that scare you?”
I hum, committing myself to the bit and returning to a more normal sitting position. My chair settles flat on the ground again with a clack.
“Tigers are still pretty, even if they can maul your face off. You just have to make sure you’re looking from a safe distance,” I say as though I’m imparting some great wisdom. “It’s the same with some people.”
“But still, why have a crush on him? ” Yamagishi Masako asks to my right with a scrunched nose.
“I don’t have a crush. I just think he’s nice to look at.”
“That’s the same thing!”
“Agree to disagree, Masako-kun,” I chirp with a cheerful grin.
I do not want to be near or touch Orochimaru the Sannin with a ten-foot pole. The thought of it makes me want to break out into hives.
He is interesting to watch, though. The way he walks is so graceful. You can tell immediately that he can kill you in a hundred ways with a flick of his hand. Maybe that would be attractive if he wasn’t twice my age and a psychopathic mad scientist.
Well. Actually, he’s twenty-two or twenty-three right now, isn’t he? I died when I was twenty-one, so technically—
Nevermind. This is a line of thought that leads to doom.
The rest of class follows much down the same line of interactions. Who has a crush on who, who did the best in taijutsu, who scored highest on the last test.
So-and-so heard that someone died on the warfront. So-and-so heard that things are getting worse before they get better.
Not in those words, not said in those ways, but that’s what they mean. The Second Shinobi War has been in full swing, and there’s no sign of it stopping for another few years, at least. Children have grown up with it hanging over their heads, children in my class. Children have been and will keep dying in it.
It’s becoming a war of attrition. Who will run out of bodies first?
Class ends fairly unceremoniously. Kushina pranked Taro-sensei, so she’s stuck with detention and stays seated, pouting. I wonder if it was worth the time wasted in detention, even if she managed to douse Taro-sensei in three buckets of water. He just used a fire jutsu to dry off.
Everyone else around me starts heading out the door.
“Seiko-chan,” Taro-sensei says abruptly, pulling me from my thoughts as I pack my things into my bag.
I look up, blinking in surprise. Why oh why would he want to talk to me?
Did I do anything notable today?
Hm.
Well, besides calling a sannin beautiful, nothing that stands out. Just normal nine year old, age appropriate behavior.
Kushina eyes me with suspicion as I throw my bag over my shoulder and wander up front to where Taro-sensei stands, looking at me with some consideration.
Ah. This is it, isn’t it?
I was hoping for more time.
“There’s someone who would like to speak with you,” Taro-sensei says, gesturing to the door. “I’ll escort you there.”
He turns, giving Kushina a stern look.
“You stay right where you are, Kushina-chan. I’m not going hunting through the village for you like last time, I’ll just inform your honorable aunt of your actions.”
Honorable aunt being the local kyuubi holder, Uzumaki Mito. Not a woman anyone wants to attract the ire of, not even her favorite great niece.
“Sure, whatever!” Kushina grumbles, arms folded and those shining violet eyes looking between Taro-sensei and I. She’s a smart cookie, I don’t doubt she’ll put together whatever it is that’s happening.
I ponder on her spar with me yesterday. That, perhaps, was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I trail after Taro-sensei’s slow gait through the halls of the academy. Students wander around on their way home, and senseis cluster together like gossiping hens. I get whiffs of intrigue as I pass by three senseis, one of them grumbling about how expensive the cost of ink has gotten.
I wonder where we get our ink from for it to have gotten expensive. Normal wartime inflation from heavily battered trade routes? Or a specific country that specializes in its creation and most people import from them, and now it’s being trampled by thoughtless shinobi?
I reach up and run my fingers through my short hair. Pondering. I think that’s most of what I do, these days. A lot of thinking, a lot of waiting.
I suppose there’s no need to wait anymore. The violence and the death have finally arrived.
“You’re quiet, Seiko-chan,” Taro-sensei says as we turn a corner. We’re leaving the academy proper to start into the administrative core of the village. I have a very good feeling that I know who we’re going to see.
“Just enjoying the walk, Taro-sensei,” I say with a wry ambivalence. What point is there in stress? We roll with the punches and we kick back. “How are your hands?”
Taro-sensei huffs, peering back at me with the littlest bit of confusion. “Don’t worry about that, Seiko-chan. Why do you ask?”
“They’ve been trembling more today,” I say, gesturing vaguely to how he has them hidden in his standard flack pants pockets. “Is it because it’s going to rain?”
I could smell it in the air before class, then again when we did taijustu today. I turn to look out the window, watching darkening clouds amble lazily across the sky.
“Maybe,” Taro-sensei replies. I don’t look back at him, I just keep my eyes on the clouds.
We turn, no longer having windows for me to view out of and drifting deeper into the tower, twists and turns leading us to some stairs.
A few jonin are leaned against the wall when we trudge up to the highest floor.
I can smell the blood on them. They’re nosy, as all shinobi are, and watch us as we wander past. There’s a few rips on all of their clothes, and the faint smell of fire.
Ah. One of them is an Uchiha, so that explains the fire. I didn’t notice the Uchiwa fan.
Waiting to report, or just finishing reporting?
A little bit down the hall, Taro-sensei and I stop, and he points to the bench by the wall with a hard clenched fist. Hiding the tremors.
“Take a seat, Seiko-chan. They’ll let you know when to go inside,” Taro-sensei says with some level of sternness. It’s ruined by how he’s only, what, eight years older than me?
I nod agreeably, plopping down on the cushioned bench and bouncing a little when I land. I see where all the funding for the ink is going. Nice chairs for outside the Hokage’s office.
Taro-sensei looks at me for a long moment, frowning.
“I don’t need to tell you, of all my students, this, but be on your best behavior, Seiko-chan. This is serious,” Taro-sensei says, finally. He looks more worried about this than I do.
Ah, am I his favorite? I’m easily the least work out of all his students.
I give him a lopsided smile, showing off one of my missing canines. It’s growing back soon, but the baby tooth was lost in a very nasty spar last week.
“Don’t worry so much about me, sensei. You should worry about what Kushina-chan has done since you left her alone,” I say reasonably. The jonin leaning nearby are watching our exchange with great interest. Sage save them all from bored and nosy jonin.
Taro-sensei makes a face that conveys all the dread he has for dealing with whatever is waiting for him in their classroom.
“Good luck, Seiko-chan.” Then, he begins his slow walk back, grumbling to himself. “And good luck to me.”
Yes. All the luck in the world for the poor teenager in charge of Uzumaki Kushina.
I swing my legs in the air where they dangle off the edge of my bench. Observe my surroundings like any good ninja in training. There’s four jonin. One is an Uchiha, another an Abrume, then a Hyuuga, and finally an Inuzuka.
Tracker team. What they were tracking, I will probably never know. The fact that they’re all jonin-level and put on the same team for a mission screams so classified you get to spend a month with a Yamanaka if you hear a whisper of what it was.
I wave at them, cheerfully. The Inuzuka snorts, and his dog yawns.
There’s a tap on my shoulder, and I jump, blinking to see a masked shinobi pointing at the door.
Anbu. I make a point of only looking a normal amount of curious at the person, rather than a Oh-Shit-Its-One-Of-Those-Fuckers-Who-Can-Really-Kill-Me amount of curious.
It’s a very specific level of curiosity. Easily mistaken for other, panicked levels of curiosity but distinct in its own way. It’s bad to look like you know what an anbu is when you’re not even a genin.
I walk silently to the stately doors of the Hokage’s office, eyeing the shining lacquer of them. They look like they’re made out of Hashirama wood, which I suppose does make sense. Make the doors to the Hokage office out of the first Hokage’s signature wood. Really makes a statement.
The anbu opens the door for me and I walk in, the door shutting with a quiet click behind me.
Sarutobi Hiruzen is much younger than I expect everytime I see him.
He’s, what, forty now? Barely? Young but not too young, stately and imposing. He looks up from his papers on his desk and eyes me with a considering gaze. I’m in the same class as his eldest son. Hopefully that makes me more endearing.
It probably won’t, but a girl can hope.
“Hokage-sama,” I greet agreeably, bowing at a ninety-degree angle.
“Good afternoon, Seiko-kun. I don’t believe we’ve ever spoken before this,” the Hokage says, something parental in his tone. Probably to put me at ease.
“No, I don’t think so. Haruki-kun does talk about you a lot, though, so maybe that counts,” I hum, peering around the room. There’s a painting of the first Hokage, and another of the second. A few hanging scrolls about the will of fire. Potted plants.
I wonder who waters the plants? Certainly not the Hokage. He’s a bit busy handling the war effort.
“What are you thinking, Seiko-kun?” the Hokage asks, surprising me. Most of the time adults get bemused and then correct my behavior when I’m overtly distracted. I suppose it’s more novel for him, since he’s constantly being given the full attention of others.
“About how you probably don’t have time to water those plants. There are too many things going on with the war.” I look back at him, noting the way his eyes flash with interest. Oh, my time has absolutely arrived. War rations and muddy fields here I come.
“I see,” Hokage says, nodding. “What do you think about the war?”
Why does he want to know? Doesn’t he have better things to be doing?
Am I being thrown into ROOT? I’d be speaking to Danzo if so.
“It seems tedious and long,” I say honestly, because children are often afforded leniency in their observations. Even in a world of child soldiers. “They’re talking about lowering the graduating age again, right? I don’t think any of my classmates are ready to fight yet.”
The Hokage hums, then waves a hand to the chairs in front of his desk.
“Please take a seat, Seiko-kun. I believe we have much to speak about.”
Maybe they’ll give me a half decent sensei, one that won’t be useless out on the field. That’s preferable to the genin corps. Anything but the fucking genin corps.
I take a seat in front of his desk, noting that these chairs are just as comfortable as the ones outside.
“Why do you think your sensei brought you here today?” The Hokage reaches into his desk and pulls out a pipe, lighting it with a sealless fire jutsu. I eye the way he does it a bit greedily. We’ll start learning the academy three in a month, so I have no jutsu under my belt yet.
I kick my legs a little, looking at the wrinkles under Sarutobi’s eyes.
“I’m a genius, and he’s figured it out finally,” I say with a shrug of my shoulders. “We need more shinobi in the war effort, so I’m probably graduating early.”
“A weighty claim, calling yourself a genius,” the Hokage says after taking a puff of his pipe, blowing it out to the side and away from me. Tobacco. The bitter smell is nostalgic, even after so long living as and being Seiko.
“There’s nothing prideful about being smarter than other people.” I tilt my head. “You don’t earn it, it’s a part of your nature.”
In my last life I viewed my intellect as more of a burden than a boon. It benefited me, but it came with drawbacks. Ignorance is bliss, so the saying goes. Knowing and understanding things only gives you more problems to worry about.
Now, I’ve learned to accept myself for what I am. Life is too fleeting to worry about possible lifetimes where you’re more stupid and happier.
The Hokage takes another puff of his pipe, eyeing me and stewing in silence for a moment. I take it as an opportunity to look out at the windows behind him, looking at the rain pouring down onto Konoha. You can’t even hear the rain faintly, in here. Seals for sound-proofing?
“Why have you hidden your talents from your teachers, Seiko-kun?”
My eyes shift back to the serious man before me.
Honesty is usually the best policy.
“I could have graduated when I was five,” I state, pausing. Thinking on my next words. “Then I would’ve been dead by now. Seems like a waste. I’ll last longer with a stronger body to match my mind, and kill more of Konoha’s enemies. Maybe live long enough to teach students what I know.”
We stew on those words together for a moment, the Hokage simply watching me and taking another puff from his pipe.
“Pragmatic.” The Hokage shuts his eyes. A weight seems to lay itself on his shoulders, making him slump just so. This isn’t what he imagined the future for Konoha’s children would look like when he became Hokage, I’m sure. “Perhaps you were right to do it. You were correct, earlier. This war has become… tedious .”
I have a feeling he’s only sharing this openly with me because I am a child and it doesn’t matter if I say the Hokage believes the war effort is going poorly. No one will believe me.
“It’s not your fault, Hokage-sama. You inherited this conflict, just like I have,” I hum with a careless wave of my small, callused hand. It’s more his fault than mine, but breaking cycles of violence from the center of the machine is very hard with no context of what else you can do.
“Your sensei was correct. You are a very perceptive girl, Seiko-kun,” the Hokage says, looking off into the far distance, chewing on the end of his pipe. “You will graduate with your peers. You will also stop pretending to be less skilled than you are.”
An order is clear in the last sentence. I bow my head.
“Hai, Hokage-sama. I will make Konoha proud with the time I have been given.”
That was easier than I thought it would be. No war rations for me!
“I will be watching your progress with interest. You are dismissed, Seiko-kun. Study hard.”
I hum an idle tune as I’m freed from the clutches of a man who could see me dead in seconds, stepping out the door of his office and almost running into one of the jonin from earlier.
“Excuse me, Uchiha-san,” I say, having swiftly sidestepped around the frowning man.
He’s tall, and more sturdily built than most of the Uchiha I’ve seen. They tend to be more lithe, like elegant wraiths out for your blood. That is how one can tell a Uchiha apart from a Hyuuga from behind. The inherent bloodlust. This Uchiha has a dirty uchiwa stamped flack jacket, and a solemn face with premature eye wrinkles. He looks like he could be closely related to Uchiha Fugaku, the clan heir in the year above me, but I can’t be sure.
“Be more alert to your surroundings,” Uchiha says grimly, and I wonder how he got the slicing scar on his cheek. Probably someone trying to take his eyes out of the equation in a fight.
“Only because you’ve asked,” I say with a solemn nod. Then I start towards the stairs, wondering if I remember the way out of this section of the administrative building.
I’ll figure it out. It’s good practice for when I have to walk around here after graduating next year.
I give myself only a few moments to be relieved at how close of a near miss that entire interaction was. I’ve been given my life basically on the whim of a tired man who decided to handle my situation personally, for whatever reason. There were probably men lower in the totem pole who could have spoken to an orphan genius, but Sarutobi did instead. Why?
My feet tap down the stairs, and the sound of rain is faintly heard hitting the roof. The Hokage’s office is absolutely sealed soundproof.
Hm. I definitely have to be Rookie of the Year now, or else the Hokage will be giving me a stern talking to. Unfortunate, but it must be done. Sorry Minato, you’re my direct competition now, I don’t care if you’re supposed to be Hokage in ten years.