“Young man, do you have anything you want to tell me?” Yugao started strictly the moment I stepped into the kitchen.
Hitomi was intensely pretending she wasn’t there, though there was a distinct glint of approval in her eyes.
And it wasn’t aimed at me.
“Um…
Good morning, Yugao-san, Hitomi-san!” I smiled, deploying my best canon-protagonist grin.
“Good morning.
Now, let’s get back to your promise yesterday to not go anywhere,” she said darkly.
Thinking logically, it was highly unlikely Hitomi had snitched on me.
And considering I had passed out in the park, Hitomi was almost certainly the one who had carried me home.
Therefore…
Yugao only had suspicions.
Let’s try to dispel them.
I didn’t level up my Rhetoric skill for nothing, after all.
“But I didn’t go anywhere.
I spent the whole night right here,” I replied honestly and sincerely.
“The whole night?” Yugao narrowed her eyes suspiciously, fully leaning into her role as a strict caretaker.
I didn’t like her tone, but since I’d already committed…
“Yep, the whole night!” I answered with the exact same confident ‘honesty.’ “Take a look at yourself.
Or rather, your clothes.” That was when my stomach dropped.
My outfit was scorched, filthy, riddled with holes, slashed by kunai in several places, and soaked in dried blood.
Hmm, I wonder if the scorch marks were from Itachi managing to cast something in those brief windows, or if the Kyuubi’s chakra just does that to fabric?
Crap, wrong thing to focus on!
“The mosquitoes are absolute beasts these days.
I barely fought them off,” I replied, still playing the fool.
I couldn’t come up with anything smarter on such short notice.
“Mosquitoes, huh?
Ah, mosquitoes, is it?!
Mosquitoes?!” Yugao was rapidly heating up.
“Uh-huh.
Like I said, beasts,” I replied modestly.
“So it was after this grand battle with the mosquitoes that Tsuru-san spent half the night healing you?!” Well, I hadn’t known that part.
I shot Hitomi a grateful look.
“Uh-huh,” I said, looking away.
“Idiot!” A sharp slap to the back of my head rang out.
It hit so hard I actually lost my sense of direction for a split second and dropped seventy HP.
And then I was immediately crushed in a steel embrace.
“You little, arrogant liar.
Do you have any idea how worried we were?
How worried I was?
Don’t ever do that again…
and don’t tell anyone you went out.
Lie to them exactly like you just lied to me.
Just don’t you ever dare lie to me again!” the second candidate for the role of older sister said fiercely.
Oh, there was the second heart.
There had been 40% left to fill, so that was a nice little bump.
“Okay, Uzuki-san…
and thank you.
Now, I should probably make us some breakfast.” I smiled, sincerely but a little tiredly.
They had healed me up well, but a mild sense of fatigue still lingered in my bones.
Breakfast passed in silence.
But the moment I reached the entrance to the Academy, I was intercepted by two miniature surface-to-surface missiles, much to the faint amusement of Maya and Hitomi.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Saya cheered, hanging off my neck.
“What was that back there?!
It was so cool!
How did you do that?” Aya started bombarding me with questions and opinions simultaneously.
“Alright, girls, calm down.
You’ll have plenty of time to chat with your hero at school.
For now, it’s time to head inside; classes are starting soon,” Maya said gently, leaning down to corral them.
She looked up at me.
“Naruto-kun, would you be so kind as to walk my daughters home today?
As the sister of the clan head, I have a lot of business to attend to—as do all the adult Uchiha right now—and it wouldn’t be right to let the girls walk back alone.” “Of course,” I smiled, then gave a serious nod.
An invitation for a private chat on clan territory.
Message received.
Classes flew by in a blur.
To be expected, really—most of the kids, and even the teachers, were just whispering about what had happened last night.
It was unheard of: three-quarters of the Uchiha Clan slaughtered in their homes, and no one in the village had heard a thing.
Over in our corner, the swamp was as stagnant as usual.
Shikamaru slept out of habit.
Kiba looked exhausted and apathetic, as always; his mother had recently upped his training load.
That meant my conversation with him regarding speed training would have to wait a week.
If I asked him now, he wouldn’t even understand what I wanted…
or worse, he’d just agree in a daze and accidentally spill all his clan’s secret techniques.
I didn’t want to set a friend up like that.
Sasuke surprised me, though.
Right before class started, he walked up to my desk, looked me dead in the eye, and simply said, “Thank you.” What was that all about?
For the rest of the day, he sat at his desk looking intensely gloomy, completely ignoring the flock of fangirls trying to comfort him.
Actually, it wasn’t just him ignoring them—Saya and Aya looked ready to physically beat up the “comforters” for getting too close.
Yeah, other girls, almost three full relationship hearts is no joke.
You have zero chance here.
Ino was also weirdly distracted and burdened today.
I had no idea what was up with her.
After classes, I walked the twins home, where I was met at the gates and handed a bag of scrolls.
Along with it came an invitation to drop by for that chat…
in about two weeks.
I’m an idiot!
Well, obviously they delayed it.
If the village’s Jinchuriki hung around the Uchiha compound for a long time right after a massive massacre for no apparent reason, people might start getting the wrong idea.
Sure, no one would guess the real reason, but there would be enough rumors to go around—up to and including the idea that I had been put under Sharingan mind control.
The clan was already taking a massive risk just handing me Itachi’s parting gift out in the open.
So the talk was postponed.
That was fine.
It would give me time to gather my thoughts, figure out what to say and what to hide…
in the worst-case scenario, I could just dump some unallocated points into INT right before the conversation.
Back home, a rest day awaited me.
Both “older sisters” had conspired to give me a day off from training.
Not that we could have gone anywhere anyway, since it had started pouring rain outside.
Because of the weather, Hitomi was currently sitting in her room, darning my clothes.
I only owned three outfits, and I really didn’t want to throw out the ruined one, so Hitomi had taken up a needle and thread—which, surprisingly, she handled with extreme confidence.
I needed to ask her for a few lessons.
Yugao was in the same room, buried in paperwork.
She was either writing reports—possibly even about me—or drafting a new training schedule.
I didn’t look too closely, but she was deeply engrossed in it.
I decided to get a head start on making us something for dinner.
While the food was simmering, boiling, and frying, I sat in the kitchen, looking out the rain-streaked window.
A dark, heavy melancholy was settling over me.
Itachi’s situation with all that mind-control crap had been incredibly telling.
I wondered how many other people were walking around Konoha with loyalty “firmware” forcefully installed in their heads.
Then again, judging by Itachi’s state before I purged that garbage from his system, he had been considered expendable; no one had cared about preserving his sanity…
or maybe it was just conflicting programming from too many masters.
So there probably weren’t that many similar brainwashed puppets running around.
Except for Root, of course…
yeah.
One of whom was currently sitting in the next room, operating on a wavelength I still couldn’t comprehend.
And Yugao was a “dog” too, just a more legal one—loyal to the Hokage instead of Danzo.
And right now, both of them were playing family with me…
after these exact same political factions and village intrigues had robbed me of my real family and even my inheritance.
Alright, that was enough.
I was digging way too deep into the negativity.
Heh.
Maybe while the food was cooking, I could grind one of my safer skills to distract myself.
For example, the one I just couldn’t seem to push to level one hundred, and which my roommates knew nothing about.
Yeah, I meant Singing.
But I wasn’t in the mood for rock.
I didn’t like rap and couldn’t perform it.
I violently despised pop music, and all the new songs were just more pop.
That left something old, tested, eternal, and kind…
With my current mood, there was really only one song asking to be sung.
Was it the influence of a child’s body, or just a sudden bout of self-irony?
Whatever.
I didn’t care if those two heard me.
Let them think what they wanted, let them even get offended.
Maybe I’d regret it later, but right now, I was going to be honest with myself.
I took a breath and began to sing softly to the empty kitchen.
Across the blue sea to a shore of bright green, I sail on my white ship, the finest you’ve seen, On my white ship, I sail, On my white ship, I sail.
I want to reach land, I want to go fast.
“I’m here!
I’ve arrived!” I will shout out at last!
To my mother, I will shout, To my mother, I will shout.
May my mother hear me, may my mother come, May my mother find me and bring me safely home!
Because it simply can’t be, in this world that we roam, For children to be lost and alone!
Because it simply can’t be, in this world that we roam, For children to be lost and alone!
Lost and alone!
Lost and alone!
Children!
Children!
Across the blue sea to a shore of bright green, I sail on my white ship, the finest you’ve seen, On my white ship, I sail, On my white ship, I sail.
I am not frightened by storms or the sea, I sail to the only mother for me, I sail through the storms and the sea, To the only mother for me.
May my mother hear me, may my mother come, May my mother find me and bring me safely home!
Because it simply can’t be, in this world that we roam, For children to be lost and alone!
Because it simply can’t be, in this world that we roam, For children to be lost and alone!
Because it should never be, in this world that we roam, For children to be lost and alone!
Ugh, my eyes were watering.
It was all this melancholy’s fault, and the child’s body…
plus the emotional exhaustion after everything that happened last night.
I needed to wet my throat, I was getting hoarse.
But before I could stand up and go get a glass of water, a body pressed tightly against my back.
Judging by the scent of her chakra—it was Hitomi.
Yeah, after yesterday, it was like I had started to smell chakra, as weird as that sounds.
Then again, what was so weird about it?
It clearly came from the Nine-Tails.
Why a scent?
Because the Fox was an animal, meaning my sense of smell had taken a massive leap.
And why chakra?
Because even though he was a beast, he was a beast made of chakra.
It was an entirely different spectrum of perception.
Normal animals smell scents; I smell chakra.
Well, technically the Fox smells chakra, and now, because of him, I did too.
I don’t know how long Hitomi and I stood there in the kitchen like that, but the melancholy slowly faded away.
Man, I was saying “thank you” to her more and more often these days.
Kind of ironic, considering who she was and why she was here.
Playing family is a double-edged sword, isn’t it?