Last night a light rain fell, the first of the autumn, and it stopped before dawn.
Konoha was a long way from the sea, but its rain was always gentle, rarely in a hurry.
The season had turned, too.
In the yard of the house Yuuga rented stood a maple three or four meters tall, and its reddened leaves came rustling down and spread across the ground.
He had gone to bed near dawn, but the moment the first light slanted through the window onto his eyelids, Yuuga woke.
He sat up rubbing his eyes, covered his mouth for a huge yawn, got out of bed and went to wash up.
He came fully awake when he pulled open the refrigerator door and felt around the compartments a few times.
You have got to be kidding.
There isn’t even a single cup of instant noodles in here?
He gave a start.
Every ryo he had earned from yesterday’s quest was already spent, and with no instant noodles stocked in the fridge, that meant going hungry.
For a “teenager” still growing, that was a bolt from the blue.
His stomach growled right on cue.
He shut the refrigerator door with some resentment and changed out of his pajamas without hesitation, planning to go out and take a quest to earn money.
Breakfast was a lost cause, but lunch had to be solved.
His stomach was the master.
Yuuga was the servant.
He locked the door and went briskly downstairs.
There was a slight chill in the air, and the fallen maple leaves under his feet had a charm of their own.
Remembering last night’s slightly awkward conversation with Ino, Yuuga opened the System, switched on the Game Perspective, and looked along the quest map toward the Academy.
There was a light there.
He wondered whether Iruka still needed people.
Ino had said yesterday that she was going to hurry over and sign him up.
He had been busy chasing news about the publishing house, and it had gotten so late that he forgot about it.
Not that he was worried.
The Academy was “lit up” in his Game Perspective, so even if Iruka had already taken on enough people, he could still accept the quest inside the System.
Besides, the Academy would certainly put on some interesting activities for the school festival, and there would probably be stalls selling tea and snacks.
With Shikamaru, Ino and Choji as connections, eating and drinking for free would be no trouble at all.
Konoha was simply too big, and it had none of the convenient transportation that came with modern industry.
People had only their two legs.
For an ordinary person, walking from the east of the village to the west would take most of a day.
For a ninja it was a different concept entirely.
Even so, walking every last corner of Konoha would take even a ninja a long time.
Konoha was not only the largest village in the Land of Fire, it was second to none in the whole ninja world.
Fortunately Yuuga’s strength was already the equivalent of a genin, and he was strong and fit besides.
His place was out of the way, but he could still reach the Academy gate within twenty minutes.
He gathered the chakra in his whole body into his feet and ran toward the Academy.
Konoha had a population on the order of a hundred thousand, and as for ninja, Yuuga estimated Konoha had upward of twenty thousand.
In the Fourth Shinobi World War every village would throw in everything it had and field an army of eighty thousand shinobi.
Yuuga believed there would still be people left behind to guard the villages.
As the only ninja school in Konoha, the Academy was on a scale that matched a modern university, with enrollment holding steady at around 600 students.
Enrollment, foundations, drills, application, graduation, genin: that was the training progression at the Academy.
Depending on talent, students took different lengths of time to graduate.
Kakashi, called a child prodigy, had graduated from the Academy at only 5 years old, a record no one has broken to this day.
Itachi Uchiha had also graduated early.
To get Naruto Uzumaki standing on his own sooner, the Third Hokage had him enter the Academy earlier than ordinary children.
But Naruto kept getting held back, out of loneliness and a distaste for study.
The boy who talked people to death had been a sensitive, stubborn little shut-in as a child.
Tsk, tsk.
“Yuuga!
Yuuga!”
He was standing at the Academy’s main gate, lost in thought, when he heard a familiar voice with a note of excitement in it.
He came back to himself and turned to see a girl dressed up very prettily, a good-sized bundle in her left hand, her right waving at him cheerfully.
It was Ino.
Her soft pale-blond hair was not tied up high in a ponytail but left loose over her shoulders, with a light purple bellflower tucked by her ear.
She wore a sky-blue kimono scattered with cherry blossoms.
The sleeves were so loose that when she raised her hand to wave at Yuuga the sleeve slid down and bared a slender white forearm.
His brows drew together without his noticing, then smoothed out as Ino came trotting over in her wooden clogs.
He looked her up and down, striking as she was, and teased, “No midriff today?
Your kimono is very pretty.”
“Hmph.” Ino had already reached him, and at that she pouted.
“Shouldn’t it be me that’s pretty?”
“Mm, you’re pretty too.
The bellflower by your ear really suits you today.” Yuuga let it go at that, a smile pressed at the corner of his mouth.
While he was speaking Ino opened the bundle in her hands, took out a wooden lunch box and held it out to him, saying happily, “Since you’ve already fallen for my charms, I’ll be generous and bring you a bento.
Hurry up and thank me.”
Looking at Ino being smug, Yuuga felt a warmth in his chest.
He had not expected the girl to bring him a bento.
But he hesitated.
“This isn’t your own lunch, is it?
Don’t skip your lunch just to fill me up.”
Ino rolled her eyes at him, shoved the bento into his hands, and opened the bundle fully in front of him.
“Look, there are two more boxes in here.
That’s lunch for you and me.
I’m not you, how would I be that stupid?
Hurry up and eat.
You know, to bring all this I had to take Dad’s lunch box too, and he glared at me this morning.”
At that her mouth twisted a little, unhappy, but it passed in an instant.
Of course he glared at you.
Yuuga smiled helplessly.
He could even picture the aggrieved look on Mr.
Yamanaka’s face.
Bad enough that his daughter was bringing a boy a bento, but she had brought two.
There weren’t enough boxes, so the father had to donate his own.