The very first thing I saw was a pristine, white ceiling.
Heh, brings back memories.
The maternity ward again?
The second thing I saw was Kiba’s highly concerned face.
Damn.
I was still alive.
I had already mentally prepared myself for a restart.
“Naruto, you’re awake!” he yelled happily, giving me a solid shake.
Hmm, that actually didn’t hurt as much as I expected.
“Brother!” a voice barked from a bit further away.
I shifted my gaze, though my neck screamed in protest.
Ah, Kiba’s older sister, Hana.
A pretty girl, slightly older than Kiba and me, though she barely showed any of the clan’s feral traits.
Even her eyes looked normal, and only her teeth were slightly pointed—not even close to the level of younger Kiba, whose genes hadn’t even fully awakened yet.
“Ah!
Oops!
Sorry, are you okay?
We just came to visit…
oh, right, we brought gifts!” he declared with pure, unbridled sincerity.
And immediately forgetting himself again, he slapped me on the shoulder.
“Brother!” Hana said again, her voice quieter but infinitely more reprimanding.
Amusing.
They were polar opposites, despite being siblings.
“I seem to be in one piece, and honestly, I actually feel fine.
By the way, buddy, I repeated your heroic deed and even multiplied it!
I saved *two* girls!” I grinned.
“Heh-heh, that’s my friend for you!
Though I gotta admit, this time, you actually outdid me!” Kiba beamed proudly, slapping me on the shoulder again.
“Little brother!” Hana said.
Suddenly, I had a very strong urge to play dead.
There was a spine of pure steel in her tone.
“Ah, um, right…
I think I’ll be going now.
Get well soon!” And with that, my first friend bolted from the room like he’d been fired from a cannon.
“Naruto, please forgive my brother.
He was just really worried and doesn’t know how else to express it.
I hope he didn’t hurt you?” Damn, she was so sweet.
It was enough to make a guy melt.
“No, everything’s fine.
They already set the bone, so it’s just a little uncomfortable, but it doesn’t hurt.
Don’t be too hard on him.
I get it; he just doesn’t know how else to show he cares,” I replied honestly, giving her a pleading look.
I wasn’t going to throw my friend under the bus for showing genuine concern.
Let’s see if I could soften his impending punishment.
“You really are too kind.
We’ll come back and visit later.
For now, get some rest, hero,” she said brightly, though still with a touch of modesty.
She completely lacked the aggressiveness typical of her clan.
Following her brother, she left the room.
Soon after, the door opened, and a doctor began examining me in silence.
Hana must have told him I was awake.
He asked a couple of standard questions, checked my pupils, listened to my lungs, and cast a few medical jutsu.
Then he started to stand up.
Hey, what about the diagnosis?
“Um, what’s wrong with me?” I asked bluntly, dropping any pretense of extreme politeness and just acting like a slightly confused kid.
“Everything is fine.
Just some minor bruising and severe exhaustion, which is unsurprising given your injuries, young man.
Just rest.
We will discharge you tomorrow,” the doctor replied calmly.
Where was the glaring prejudice against the demon brat?
Did whoever brought me here bribe him?
Or did he genuinely just not care?
Wait, are there actually normal, civilian people in this village who don’t view me as Konoha’s ultimate pain in the ass?
“Absolutely incredible regeneration,” I heard the doctor mutter as he stepped out into the hallway.
*I can hear you, you know!* The evening, however, brought an absolute assault on my brain.
Frankly, I would have gladly fought those shinobi again to avoid it.
By the way, no one had bothered to explain *why* I’d been beaten half to death in the first place!
Even the Hokage visited me around lunchtime.
I still have no idea how I’m supposed to feel about that guy.
He talked about the Will of Fire.
He asked about my health.
He congratulated me on my heroics, smirking ever so slightly at the corners of his mouth.
He delighted me by raising my monthly stipend and handing me a “Model Citizen” bonus for the month—again, for the heroics.
He complained about having a mountain of paperwork and then vanished, leaving me to parse our conversation.
Seriously, I have no idea how to read him.
He’s the perfect embodiment of the phrase, “There are no absolutely good or absolutely bad people.” But back to the evening.
First, I heard a stampede of feet down the hall, which abruptly cut off.
A few moments later, three princesses proudly paraded into my hospital room, aggressively pretending not to notice each other.
Ino, and two black-haired girls who looked terrifyingly similar to the one I saw yesterday.
They marched in majestically, completely ignoring each other and only addressing me.
Ino even kept trying to pin the blame for my current condition on the other two.
To be fair, it was entirely my own fault for throwing that kunai.
They would have just run right past me.
But I took the bait on the quest.
A minute later, their parents walked in to spectate.
Specifically, the mother of the two girls—a stunning woman with black eyes (just like her daughters), a very generous chest…
*I hope those two inherit those genetics, ahem*…
and curly black hair.
On Ino’s side was her father, Inoichi.
A man I was deeply afraid of.
It was incredibly difficult to keep my face neutral; I didn’t even dare glance at the System logs.
I was terrified of giving myself away.
Experienced shinobi can easily deduce that you’re reading something floating in the air just from your eye movements.
As I learned shortly after, the trio of women, girls…
er, females…
belonged to the Uchiha Clan.
Which, honestly, I should have figured out if I had just remembered the quest text.
Yeah, I was a little slow on the uptake.
The woman was the clan head’s sister, meaning the girls were Itachi and Sasuke’s cousins.
Fantastic.
As it turned out, the adults didn’t actually care much about me.
The woman, named Maya, passionately thanked me for saving her daughters, declared that on behalf of the entire clan I was now a welcome guest in their compound (which I definitely did *not* want to do, considering the political shitstorm visiting that clan would cause), and then immediately switched her attention to Inoichi.
He also thanked me for saving Ino, apologizing that he’d been too busy to do so earlier.
In a much softer tone, he invited me over “for a cup of tea,” clearly playing on the stereotype that orphans are always starving and I shouldn’t be an exception.
I could read it right between the lines.
Honestly, I wasn’t opposed to eating his food once or twice.
After that, as I mentioned, the adults just talked among themselves, occasionally glancing over with encouraging smiles as their daughters…
proceeded to completely devour my brain!
It was only after they finally left that I realized just how incredibly tense I had been the entire time, and how mentally exhausted I was.
Even talking to the Hokage had been easier!
He had treated me like a kid, while these two adults had been blatantly dissecting my reactions, my gazes…
absolutely everything!
I couldn’t even let it show that I wasn’t remotely interested in the girls’ bickering.
Though toward the end, Inoichi did chuckle and “rescue the hero from socializing,” noting that I hadn’t fully recovered yet and it was time for them to go.
Still, my paranoia whispered that the adults had definitely noticed I was simply exhausted by the trio’s constant, petty sniping.
I didn’t even fully understand what the three girls were trying to say to me.
I had just politely nodded, agreed, or stayed quiet whenever they started jabbing at each other with words.
But now, it was finally time to dig through the logs and check out my newly upgraded System.