“Stop!”
In the blink of an eye, the depths of winter had arrived.
Naruto had just returned from cutting a hole in the frozen river to catch fish when, as though guided by fate, he encountered his future wife, Hinata Hyūga, being bullied.
He immediately set down his bucket, shouted, and charged over.
Before the largest of the boys could react, Naruto tackled him to the ground and began pummeling him with his fists.
With the physique of the Uzumaki Clan, his status as the Nine-Tails’ Jin chūriki, and the fact that Naruto had been supporting himself and eating far better than his original counterpart, his strength was no weaker than that of an ordinary five- or six-year-old boy.
After only a few punches, Naruto had already beaten the brat, who was two or three years older than him, into tears.
When the two skinnier boys saw that even the strongest and fattest among them had been beaten until he cried, Naruto’s fierce expression frightened them so badly that they burst into tears as well.
They did not dare fight back at all.
Crying out, “Mommy!” they turned and ran.
Hinata Hyūga stared in stunned silence.
“Apologize!”
In the end, only the chubby boy Naruto had beaten remained.
Naruto forced him to apologize to Hinata.
“S-Sorry…”
His face bruised and swollen, the boy apologized through a mess of tears and snot.
“Get lost!”
Only then did Naruto shout at him.
The boy immediately scrambled away.
“Are you all right?”
Naruto finally turned toward Hinata.
The moment he got a good look at her, his heart practically melted.
He had to admit that three-year-old Hinata was unbelievably adorable.
“I-I’m fine. Thank you,” Hinata Hyūga replied softly.
“Mm. Wait here.”
Naruto went back and picked up his wooden bucket.
“Come on. I’ll walk you home.”
“O-Okay.”
Hinata nodded shyly.
With Hinata leading the way, the two soon arrived outside the Hyūga residence.
“All right, you’re home. I should get going too.”
Naruto waved and prepared to leave.
After all, both he and Hinata were still little kids.
Talking about love at their age would be ridiculous.
“W-Wait! Um… y-your… name…”
Hinata summoned her courage and stammered out the question.
Naruto stopped.
“My name is Naruto Uzumaki. What about you?”
“H-Hinata… Hyūga,” Hinata answered, her face turning red.
“Mm, I’ll remember it. See you.”
Naruto smiled, waved, and turned to leave.
“Naruto Uzumaki…”
Hinata gazed longingly at Naruto’s departing figure, silently engraving his name firmly into her memory.
“Boss, I want twenty Jin of rice.”
After returning home and putting down the fish, Naruto went to the market to buy rice.
“Two hundred ryō!”
Seeing that his customer was Naruto, the rice seller spoke with an extremely sour expression.
If not for the prohibition, he would never have wanted to sell anything to Naruto in the first place.
Naruto did not bother wasting words.
He handed over two hundred ryō, hoisted the rice, and left.
Throughout the market, the cold gazes directed at him had not diminished in the slightest.
Naruto did not care.
As long as they did not interfere with him, why should he care how coldly they stared?
After all, if they were free to look at him coldly, there was nothing stopping him from looking back at them with equal indifference.
“Oh, little Naruto, you’re back. You even bought rice?”
When Naruto returned home, he found the Third Hokage waiting for him.
“Grandpa Third, when did you get here?”
Naruto deliberately put on a delighted expression.
Ever since their encounter half a year ago, Hiruzen Sarutobi had begun visiting Naruto from time to time.
“Hehe. Your living allowance for this month has arrived, so I brought it over,” Hiruzen Sarutobi said with a kindly smile.
“It’s still only one thousand ryō…”
Naruto accepted the money and looked visibly disappointed.
“Little Naruto, precisely because I am the Hokage, and because everyone in the village is my family, I must be even more careful not to show favoritism,” Hiruzen Sarutobi explained.
“The other orphans all receive one thousand ryō as their living allowance. Although I’m very fond of you, I can’t give you more simply because of that. It wouldn’t be fair to the other orphans.”
“Oh.”
Naruto deliberately wore a confused expression.
“Hehe. Although I can’t use my authority as Hokage to favor you, since you call me Grandpa, there’s nothing wrong with giving you a New Year’s present,” Hiruzen Sarutobi said.
“A present? What present?”
Naruto’s eyes deliberately lit up with excitement.
“Haven’t you said you want to become a ninja? To become a ninja, you need chakra. And the present I brought you is the Chakra Refinement Technique,” Hiruzen Sarutobi said with a smile.
“That’s great!”
Naruto immediately accepted the chakra-refinement scroll with feigned excitement.
But the moment he opened it, he frowned in frustration.
“What’s wrong?” the Third Hokage asked.
“I can’t read,” Naruto replied.
“Hahaha! I already thought of that. I brought you a dictionary too. Come, I’ll teach you how to use it and how to read and write,” Hiruzen Sarutobi said.
“Mm!”
Naruto nodded vigorously.
Chakra was formed from a combination of mental energy and cellular energy.
Mental energy and cellular energy did not combine automatically.
Therefore, even descendants of the Ōtsutsuki such as the Uchiha, Senju, Uzumaki, and Hyūga Clans would not possess chakra without learning how to refine it.
Truthfully, Naruto did not feel grateful to the Third Hokage.
That was because recently, Naruto had become increasingly sensitive to the malice of others.
There was no doubt that the Nine-Tails’ chakra had gradually begun leaking through the tightly secured seal.
Teaching Naruto how to refine chakra had therefore become unavoidable.
Only once Naruto learned how to refine his own chakra could he suppress and seal the Nine-Tails’ chakra again.
After all, the Eight Trigrams Sealing Style had only developed a tiny opening through which the Nine-Tails’ chakra was leaking.
Once Naruto’s own chakra filled that opening, there would naturally be no problem.
After teaching Naruto how to read, the Third Hokage carefully explained the Chakra Refinement Technique to him as well.
Then, after eating dinner, Hiruzen returned home.
As a member of the Uzumaki Clan, Naruto’s aptitude as a ninja went without saying.
Combined with his status as a Jin chūriki, refining chakra went extremely smoothly.
Less than twenty minutes after the Third Hokage finished dinner and left, Naruto had already successfully refined his chakra.
The instant he succeeded, the malice Naruto could sense from the two ANBU outside his window gradually faded away.
Clearly, the influence of the Nine-Tails’ chakra on Naruto had once again been suppressed.
Now that he had successfully refined chakra, it was time for Naruto to take the next step.
Without revealing anything, Naruto slowly opened his eyes and scratched his head, deliberately putting on the appearance of someone who had failed to refine chakra.
Then he picked up a change of clothes, entered the bathroom, and began taking a bath.
Come to think of it, Naruto really ought to thank the Nine-Tails’ leaking chakra.
At the very least, because of it, he had obtained the Chakra Refinement Technique.
More importantly, he had discovered a weak point in the ANBU’s surveillance.
The bathroom.
As long as they were normal people, no one would seriously stare at a naked little kid taking a bath.
And now that Naruto possessed chakra…
It was time to find a way to meet the Nine-Tails.