Naruto snapped his head up, fixing his tear-reddened eyes on Altay's. With a mixture of helplessness and determination brought on by the heavy burden resting on his tiny shoulders at such a young age, he cried out as tears streamed down his cheeks:
"YES! EVERYONE IGNORES ME, LOOKS DOWN ON ME, AND THEY LOOK AT ME WITH HATRED AS IF I DID SOMETHING TERRIBLE! WHY IS IT LIKE THIS? WHY AM I ALONE? I ASK MYSELF THIS EVERY NIGHT! DID MY FAMILY ABANDON ME BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T LOVE ME, JUST LIKE THE VILLAGERS? WHY DON'T I HAVE A FAMILY? WHY? WHY? WHY?!"
Naruto continued to sob uncontrollably; as the words poured from his mouth, the accumulated sorrow inside him completely exploded. He was only three years old, but what he had experienced over the past year was far too heavy for any child to bear. He wasn't just ostracized in the village; adults would physically attack him in the middle of the street whenever they got the chance, and they would even incite their own children against him.
Looking down at the little boy drowning in his own tears, Altay sighed silently. To be perfectly honest, he was a single soldier who had zero experience when it came to dealing with children. Consequently, he could only resolve this crisis using the methods he knew best—military style. Taking a deep breath, he puffed out his chest, awakened the voice of the experienced Maroon Beret commander within him, and barked a command in a remarkably clear and harsh tone:
"STOP CRYING, NARUTO!"
With this unexpected outburst, both Naruto and Kurama, who was secretly watching everything unfold from his cage, flinched at the same time. Startled by the harsh tone, the giant fox facepalmed with his claws and began pulling at his own fur in a massive panic. He was screaming like crazy inside his own head:
'WHAT ARE YOU DOING, YOU IDIOT! YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BEFRIEND HIM! MY LIFE DEPENDS ON THIS.'
Naruto, on the other hand, had completely forgotten his tears and was staring at Altay in utter shock. He couldn't figure out why this stranger, who had been exceptionally kind to him since the moment they first met, had suddenly adopted such an authoritative tone. Never breaking eye contact with the boy for even a second, Altay maintained his disciplined, straightforward demeanor and continued:
"When I told you that you don't have to prove your existence, you misunderstood me! You owe absolutely nothing to this village; on the contrary, the people of Konoha owe you a great deal! Even if they handed the entire village over to you, their debt would still not be paid! If it weren't for you and your family, that furball you see back there would have wiped this whole village off the map!"
As Altay spoke, he pointed his finger toward the background at Kurama, who was nervously biting his nails. The massive fox perked up his ears and opened his eyes wide in surprise. He grumbled to himself:
'Why does the subject always loop back to me, man?'
At that moment, not wanting to speak directly in front of Naruto and ruin Altay's momentum, Kurama etched this memory deeply into the furthest recesses of his mind; the moment the kid left this place, he was going to make this mortal soldier pay dearly. Meanwhile, Altay continued to explain in the same unwavering tone:
"Your mother and father died while protecting this damned village. While everyone else was hiding their asses, your father dragged that furball outside the village to fight him completely alone."
Kurama’s crimson eyebrows furrowed even deeper, and the fur above his eyes began twitching frantically. He inwardly swore an oath:
'Did he just call me a furball again?! And right to my face! Man, just let Naruto leave this place, and I am going to skewer you to that iron plate, you mortal!'
Altay continued in the same serious tone, as if trying to make the puzzle pieces fall into place inside the boy's mind:
"Your mother and father—whom I happen to dislike—loved you more than anything... I am certain about your mother, but you might have been in second place for your father. He put the village at number one. Though, I am not entirely sure about that part."
Naruto was completely dumbfounded by this vital information. He sprang up from where he sat, lunged forward excitedly, and grabbed onto Altay's strong arm, asking:
"Altay nii-san, do you know who my mother and father are?"
Altay gave a clear, definitive, one-word answer:
"Yes."
A bright ray of hope, one that had never been there before, appeared in Naruto's eyes. Gripping the man even tighter with his small hands, he begged:
"Please tell me! Please! I'll do anything."
Altay spoke with military precision and absolute resolve:
"No."
Naruto was met with a crushing wave of disappointment at this harsh refusal, and his shoulders slumped.
"But why?"
Altay laid the naked truth bare before the boy:
"Because you are too weak! Your mother and father made far too many enemies. If the secret leaks out that they are your family, there are at least a thousand people who will line up just to kill you! If you want to know, you must at least become an elite chunin!"
Naruto opened his eyes wide in sheer astonishment.
"Did my family anger that many people?"
Altay nodded in confirmation:
"Yes."
Naruto's eyes suddenly sparkled brilliantly.
"So they were very strong!"
Altay replied with the same confident tone:
"Yes!"
Naruto asked once more, as if trying to bridge the massive gap of logic in his head:
"But if they were so strong, how did they die?"
With a perfectly calm movement, Altay raised his finger and pointed back toward the massive cage once again:
"Kurama disemboweled them!"
Faced with this direct and brutal explanation, both Kurama and Naruto froze in absolute shock. Poor Kurama first turned completely to stone in astonishment, and then felt as if someone had pushed him from behind, sending him tumbling down a bottomless abyss. He muttered to himself in utter despair:
'Altay, instead of sabotaging our relationship like this and killing me, it would have been better if you just dropped a nuclear missile on my head! What the hell are you doing, man!'
Shaking off his initial shock with the weight of this new information, Naruto glared at Kurama in the cage with a deep rage erupting from behind his tears. His tiny body became so consumed by hatred that the Nine-Tails' chakra within the seal began to leak, slightly affecting his physical form. Turning toward the cage, he screamed with all his might:
"IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!"
Losing his control entirely, Naruto lunged forward to attack Kurama behind the bars, but Altay caught him firmly with his strong hands and held him back. Driven by the erratic fury of the red chakra, Naruto snapped his head around to look at Altay:
"WHY ARE YOU STOPPING ME?! MY FAMILY DIED BECAUSE OF HIM!"
Altay spoke in an exceptionally balanced and calm voice:
"Calm down."
Pounding his small fists against Altay's holding hand, Naruto exploded like a volcano:
"CALM DOWN?! HE KILLED MY FAMILY!"
Completely unfazed by the boy's uncontrolled outburst, Altay asked calmly once more:
"Well, why do you think Kurama killed them?"
Naruto screamed, repeating the cliché phrases he had memorized from the adults in the village:
"BECAUSE HE IS A MONSTER! A MONSTER THAT WANTS TO DESTROY THE VILLAGE!"
The playful look in Altay's eyes suddenly vanished, replaced by a chilling seriousness:
"Are you even aware of what you are saying right now, brat? Is there any difference between you and the idiots in the village?"
Naruto flinched at this heavy comparison. In his mind, the faces of those villagers who looked at him with hatred, mocked him, and excluded him on the streets flashed before him. He didn't want to be like them, but unable to accept the reality of the situation, he tried to deny the truth in a panic:
"No, this is different, he is a real monster."
Altay chuckled softly at the boy's desperate denial:
"According to what? According to whom? In my opinion, Kurama is the best friend one could ever have. You've been hating the wrong person, kid. Kurama is innocent here."
Naruto was thoroughly bewildered by what he was hearing. Furrowing his small eyebrows as tightly as he could, he looked at Altay with deeply questioning eyes:
"What do you mean?"
Altay chuckled again with a patient smile:
"Kurama has lived for a thousand years, and he used to avoid contact with humans entirely. As long as he was left alone, he would sleep peacefully in the forest—until the founders of Konoha coveted his power and captured him. Kurama has been locked in a cage, tortured, and forced to become a weapon for over sixty years."
Naruto was left staring with wide, bewildered eyes, feeling his mind get completely tangled. Ultimately, he was only three years old, a child who was just beginning to understand life, and he couldn't fully grasp these historical and political matters:
"I don't understand what you mean."
Altay chuckled once more at this adorable confusion, dropping to his knees to bring himself down to eye level with Naruto:
"You don't understand, do you? Alright then, I have a proposal for you. Uzumaki Naruto, become my student!"
While Naruto stared at Altay, frozen in shock, the man continued speaking without breaking his posture:
"I am not a ninja, so I cannot teach you chakra, but I will teach you everything else I know. I will teach you how to discern enemy from friend, how to read human psychology, battle tactics, fighting, survival, infiltration, disguise... I will teach you everything I know."
Altay drew the sharp knife he had received from the system—which hung at his waist—from its sheath, and without a moment's hesitation, slashed a deep line across the center of his own palm. As red blood began to seep from the cut, Naruto lunged forward in utter shock:
"What are you doing!"
Meanwhile, Kurama also leaped to his feet inside the cage in surprise. Because he had peered into Altay's memories before, he knew exactly what the man was doing right now; this was an ancient Turkish tradition, a blood oath. The giant fox muttered to himself:
'Is this madman really going this far?!'
Altay, completely disregarding the sting in his hand, pressed on with his speech:
"I give you an Alp's word upon my Turkishness. I will not deceive you, I will not lie to you, and I will not manipulate you! I will teach you how to be a good and just man! When the time comes, you will decide what to do with Kurama using your own judgment. Besides, he will always be right here in your belly anyway; you can come here and see him whenever you want. Do you want to accept my offer?"
Naruto still looked at the man before him with eyes full of wonder. As a three-year-old child who had been constantly abused and excluded by the village population, he couldn't decode what was happening here word for word; but based on the feelings deep within him, he was as sure of one thing as he was of his own name: This man in front of him truly cared about him... After hesitating for a brief moment, he wiped his tears away and made a definitive decision:
"Okay."
Altay smiled with a warm grin on his face:
"Good..."
Over the course of the next twenty minutes, Altay and Naruto sat alone at the table, talking for a while longer. Naruto had finally calmed down completely. Even though he still threw occasional sharp and distant glares at Kurama in the background, he was going to wait for now; because he had given a firm promise to his new master, his big brother Altay. When he grew up and reached the maturity to fully comprehend everything, he would arrive at the final decision regarding his revenge against Kurama of his own free will. Now, both of them were settled at the dining table; Altay had tightly bandaged the cut on his palm with a clean dressing.
Meanwhile, poor Kurama felt as if a few years had been stripped from his life all at once due to the sheer fear and shock. It was as though his soul had left his body; the color of his fur had turned stark white from the shock. He had suddenly been placed at the absolute top of the hate list of Naruto—his only protector and future in the outside world. Frankly, he didn't feel any internal regret for killing his former Jinchuriki, Kushina; because that woman had tortured him for years and humiliated him like a monster. However, because things had reached this point, he was looking at Altay with deeply hurt and reproachful eyes.
Noticing the resentful glares the giant fox was casting his way, Altay turned his head slightly in that direction and whispered, moving only his lips without letting Naruto notice:
"We'll talk later, be patient."
Kurama let out a heavy sigh and sat down at his own massive dining table wearily. Normally, he would be dying of curiosity about what food would appear on the table from the system and would wait with great excitement, but after the massive crisis that occurred today, nothing was going to be enough to restore his ruined mood.
Turning to Naruto beside him, Altay spoke:
"Let's fill our stomachs first, then I'll explain how you're going to get out of here! But Naruto, do not mention me to anyone. If they find out that I am inside you, they will kill me, because I am not supposed to be here."
Naruto nodded silently, confirming this vow of secrecy. In their conversation over the past twenty minutes, Altay had summarized the dangers of the outside world in detail using language the boy could easily understand; therefore, he could more or less grasp what his big brother meant. Altay nodded with satisfaction and began to open the copper lids of the steaming trays on the table one by one:
"Oh~ crispy roasted chicken and rice with chickpeas! They've sent a classic meal!"
Altay lifted the other lids radiating appetizing aromas in turn:
"For dessert, we have shredded wheat pastry (tel kadayıf) and Maraş ice cream! As for drinks, there is Ayran and cranberry sherbet! Nice."
Seeing the exquisite dishes and flavors on the table—tastes he had never even seen before—Naruto's eyes instantly sparkled with joy. Altay took a clean copper plate from in front of him; first, he filled it with a generous portion of steaming rice with chickpeas, then placed a whole chicken, roasted to a perfect golden brown, right on top of it, and set the plate down in front of Naruto. Facing this massive portion, Naruto spoke in a panic, not knowing what to do out of sheer astonishment:
"This is too much! I can't eat all of this!"
Altay chuckled affectionately at the boy's modest panic:
"Don't worry, and eat as much as you like; the food is unlimited. Look, Kurama has already started."
Altay pointed toward the giant cage to the side with his finger. When Naruto looked toward the cage, he found himself on the verge of astonishment once more. Kurama had completely cast aside his previous stark white, displeased state and was devouring the food in front of him at an extreme speed and with a roaring appetite. After all, chicken—the single food in the world a fox could never say no to—had been placed right before him; the wild instincts of the noble and proud beast had completely taken him over the exact moment he caught the scent.