Hinata Hyuga ultimately didn’t show any clear response.
After having her feelings for Naruto seen through by Sakura, she was so shy that she subconsciously broke away from Sakura’s side, leaving the school even faster than Sasuke.
The maid from the Hyuga Branch Family, who had been waiting outside the school, only had time to give a slight bow to Sakura, showing the upbringing of a Ninja clan, before hurriedly chasing after the increasingly distant Hinata Hyuga.
Witnessing Hinata Hyuga’s departure, Sakura continued to wait at the school entrance for a while.
Hinata Hyuga’s appearance was just a small interlude; she still planned to farm some friendship points with Naruto before leaving school today.
However, as the students left one after another, Sakura saw the future ‘Konoha 11’ from her own class leaving with the parents who came to pick them up, but she still didn’t see Naruto appear.
“Sakura, see you tomorrow.”
Ino waved goodbye to Sakura while holding her mother’s hand.
At this moment, they felt like ordinary children rather than Ninjas who could go to the battlefield at the age of five or six.
“See you tomorrow!”
Sakura also smiled and bid farewell to Ino, but she had other doubts in her heart.
Naruto was hiding somewhere in the school for some reason, unwilling to leave.
Sakura looked around, thinking she might have missed Naruto’s figure, but when she looked at the adults who came to the Ninja Academy to pick up their children, Sakura suddenly understood the reason why Naruto didn’t show up here.
The malice shown by the Ninja Academy students towards Naruto was merely parroting; they didn’t even know why they hated Naruto.
It was just the environment influencing their judgment, and a herd mentality made them feel that hating Naruto was the right thing to do.
The malice shown by these students didn’t matter at all to Naruto.
But in Konoha, there was indeed a significant number of adults who explicitly loathed Naruto.
In the Nine-Tails Rampage that devastated all of Konoha, even though Naruto was the biggest victim of the incident—losing his parents at birth and having the fate of being the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki forced upon him—more people needed someone to take responsibility for the night the Nine-Tails appeared in Konoha, a target to vent their anger on…
Thus, Naruto, who in rumors became the culprit who killed the Fourth Hokage and possibly even the source of the Nine-Tails Rampage, naturally became the target of public criticism.
How could an infant born at that time be the root of the disaster?
They were simply enjoying the satisfaction of having someone to blame.
Sakura looked up at the Hokage Rock Faces carved on the precipice of Konoha that could be seen from the Ninja Academy.
The Hokage Rock Faces recorded the appearance of the Third Hokage in his youth, his gaze resolute as he watched over Konoha.
For Konoha, he was indeed a Hokage recognized by everyone, who did not fail the trust of the Second Hokage before his death.
However, regarding the Fourth Hokage’s last words, the treatment Naruto received during his childhood clearly had nothing to do with being a hero.
During the Third Great Ninja War, Minato Namikaze fought against the AB Brothers—A, who is now the Fourth Raikage and the pillar of Kumogakure, and Killer Bee.
Minato Namikaze witnessed the possibility of a Village and its Jinchuriki coexisting in harmony.
To let this possibility take root and sprout in the soil of Konoha, after becoming Hokage, he also managed to return personal freedom to Kushina Uzumaki, who had been restricted in her movements and imprisoned within a Sealing Barrier after becoming the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki.
Minato Namikaze successfully changed Konoha’s attitude of viewing the Jinchuriki as a strategic weapon.
But he never understood that the prerequisite for these changes to succeed was for him to remain alive and lead Konoha as the Fourth Hokage.
He trusted the Third Hokage and his master Jiraiya.
Fearing that Kushina Uzumaki would suffer loneliness in the Pure Land, he chose to use the Reaper Death Seal to die with Kushina Uzumaki, abandoning his responsibility as a father.
He left the Chakra of Kushina Uzumaki—who was destined to die after the Nine-Tails was extracted—inside Naruto, so that Kushina Uzumaki could participate in her son’s growth as a ‘mother.’
Minato Namikaze hoped the Third Hokage would recognize his will and protect Naruto’s healthy growth;
He hoped his master Jiraiya could replace him and Kushina Uzumaki to compensate for the lack of parental love Naruto faced.
However, the result was that the Third Hokage, with a ban ‘disallowing talk of Naruto’s origins,’ stripped Naruto of his treatment as the son of a hero.
That Toad Sage, Lord Jiraiya, one of the Legendary Sannin—who was obedient to a toad—after experiencing the ‘deaths’ of his two designated ‘Children of Prophecy,’ Nagato and Minato Namikaze, used the abstract and noble reason of ‘pursuing the future of peace in the Ninja World’ to once again set out on a journey to find the so-called child of prophecy, decisively absent from Naruto’s entire childhood.
At the end of the original story, Jiraiya was a ‘master’ in Naruto’s eyes, while Iruka was a ‘father’—doesn’t that attitude actually explain everything?
In Naruto’s most painful days, the only one who truly understood him was Iruka—not the Sakura from the original story who was annoyed by her parents’ discipline, nor Sasuke who, when defecting to Orochimaru, said, ‘What do you know about me, you who had no parents from the start,’ disregarding Naruto’s feelings and wantonly tearing open the wounds deep in Naruto’s heart.
Sakura’s gaze moved from the Third Hokage’s face on the rock to the Fourth Hokage’s face right next to it.
Minato Namikaze, such a unique existence in the history of the entire Ninja World, if he hadn’t died young but had successfully reached the peak of his Ninja career, he might have even been a genius on par with Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara.
He is the most realistic portrayal of all living beings in the current Ninja World.
Even if one is as brilliant as a meteor while alive, one can change nothing and protect nothing.
Ideals are forgotten, and beliefs are trampled upon.
“I really don’t like Ninjas.”
Sakura whispered softly.
From beginning to end, she had no sense of identity with ‘Ninjas.’ Many tragedies in the Ninja World were caused by the extreme thinking inherent in the identity of a ‘Ninja.’
The reason Sakura also took ‘Ninja’ as her goal was only because being an ordinary person in the Ninja World was too insignificant.
So even if she moved forward with the goal of becoming a Ninja, her dream was the early retirement life seen at the end of the Fourth Great Ninja War in the original story.
She didn’t want to be bound by the identity of a ‘Ninja’ or deeply mired in it. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
She considered herself a small figure, and she indeed lived in the Ninja World as the small figure ‘Sakura.’
She had to put in all her effort just to look after herself.
Even the physical test at the Ninja Academy almost drained her body and spirit, so she never had the noble ideal that ‘transmigrators should change the world.’
This is a Ninja World of bloodline supremacy and fatalistic reincarnation.
There is an insurmountable chasm between ‘noble bloodlines’ and ordinary people like Sakura;
Inevitable fate also ruthlessly toys with human destiny.
In the past, Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara, in whom bloodline and destiny coexisted, could not change the Ninja World.
In the future, Naruto and Sasuke, who were the same, did not change the Ninja World either.
In the original story, Naruto did not agree with Nagato’s ‘Tailed Beast Deterrence’ theory regarding the unification of the Ninja World after he became Pain.
But after the Fourth Great Ninja War, the peace of the entire Ninja World merely returned once again to the era of Hashirama and Madara.
Although the process was different, the result was exactly the same.
To change the Ninja World, one must completely subvert the existing rules of the Ninja World.
Rather than covering up problems with power and delaying the outbreak of conflicts.
Absolute power stands at the highest point, yet the division of the Ninja World still exists.
When the new powers named Naruto and Sasuke exit the stage of the Ninja World’s history…
The history of the Ninja World will only enter a new, unchanging cycle once more.
As expected, the Ninja World has no future.
Just slack off, retire early to escape the high pressure of the Ninja profession, and finding a way to die of old age in this life is the real priority.
Sakura became even more determined in her dream!
She suddenly pulled herself together, and her whole person returned to that boisterous and carefree appearance.
Then, among the crowd of adults who came to pick up their children, Sakura saw the figure of her mother, Mebuki Haruno.
It seemed she wouldn’t be able to wait for Naruto to appear and seize the chance to farm friendship points from him now.
Since things have come to this—let’s go home and eat first!