From up on the roof, Konoha looks like somebody spilled a box of stars and then tried to sweep them into circles.
Paper rings sway over the main street, strung from pole to pole. Lanterns hang from them in neat loops, still dim, waiting. The sky's gone that deep blue where all the colors feel sharper: red banners, gold tassels, the white of winter breath. Drums thump somewhere near the river, heavy as a heartbeat.
Naruto's legs swing beside mine, heels thudding against the tiles. Konohamaru's legs swing too, but twice as fast, like he's trying to kick the air into submission.
I tear off a corner of my festival sweet and pop it into my mouth. It's cheap sugar over stale dough, but it's sweet, and it's mine, and that's enough.
"Man, Iruka-sensei is the best," Naruto says around a mouthful of roasted chestnut. "Did you see how many coins he gave us? I thought my hand was gonna fall off."
"You got three," I say. "That's not how falling off works."
"I'm small," he insists. "My hands are delicate."
I raise an eyebrow. His knuckles are scraped, his nails chewed, there's still ink on the side of his thumb from when I made him copy kanji. Delicate is not the word.
Konohamaru's scarf flaps in the breeze as he leans over the edge to look down. "Ebisu-sensei never gives me extra money," he grumbles. "He just says real ninja don't need snacks."
"Real ninja eat as much as they can when they can," Naruto says, sagely. "That's survival. Your tutor is a fraud."
Konohamaru beams. "Right?!"
I sip from the little paper cup of sweet tea balanced between my knees. It warms my fingers. The coins had felt heavy and strange when Iruka pressed them into our palms earlier, quick and quiet, his eyes already flicking back to the stack of festival paperwork on his desk.
"Can't take you out tonight," he'd said. "Too much to do. But you should enjoy it anyway. That's an order."
Naruto had tried to argue. I'd seen the thing that crossed Iruka's face, just for a second—old smoke and falling walls and something huge and red—and cut in first, bowing my head. "We'll make it count," I'd said.
Now, on the roof, it does feel like we've made something.
The street below is filling up. Families move in slow knots, kids dart ahead, waving paper rings tied to strings. Someone's cooking something with soy sauce and sugar and meat; the smell crawls up to us, wraps around my brain, and refuses to let go.
"There's Akamaru," Konohamaru announces, pointing.
Kiba's easy to spot even in a crowd: big parka, louder voice. He's near the front, arguing with his mother over who gets to stand where. Tiny white Akamaru clings to the back of Kiba's hood, nose twitching as he sniffs at the air, ears flopping with every jump.
A little farther back, Shino is a still point in the moving river of people, hands in pockets, glasses reflecting lantern paper. His chakra hum is quiet and steady even from here, like a hive half-asleep.
On the other side of the street, Ino is carrying a flower ring almost as big as her torso, Chōji walking beside her and protecting it with his body like it's some sort of sacred snack. Shikamaru trails behind them, yawning, his gaze turned up toward the lantern frames instead of the people.
"Sasuke's over there," Naruto says.
Of course Naruto spots him.
Sasuke stands near the back of the square, hands in his pockets, shoulders tipped just slightly toward the center of everything without committing. Lantern light paints his face in slices. His chakra, from here, is a tight dark ring, coiled and small and sharp enough that I can almost feel it on my teeth.
He looks like he'd bite anyone who called him lonely.
We sit above them all, somewhere between observer and ghost. An orphanage roof spot: far enough away no one tells us to move, close enough that Iruka can see us if he looks.
And he does. Eventually.
He's down near a low stone basin set up in front of the crowd, kneeling by a little kid who can't quite manage a bow. He adjusts the tiny hands, murmurs something. The kid laughs. Iruka glances up then, just by chance, and his eyes snag on Naruto's yellow hair, Konohamaru's scarf, my red ribbon.
He lifts a hand. Not big, not obvious. Just a small, private wave.
Naruto waves back with his whole arm.
I tap my fingers against my cup, watching the colors swirl under my skin when I catch a distant pulse of chakra activation.
"Here they come," Konohamaru whispers.
The drums change. The crowd straightens like a single creature.
The Hyūga move down the street with the kind of grace that doesn't happen by accident. White and pale lavender robes, long dark hair, family crest like a stylized flame-circle on their sleeves. They carry ring-lanterns unlit, held in careful hands.
Main house in front, branch house behind. In the chakra field, they glow differently: main house like carefully banked coals, even and controlled; branch house like knots in a thread, tighter, flickering.
At the center, a little behind Hiashi Hyūga, walks Hinata.
Her kimono is almost too big for her, sleeves swallowing her hands. Lantern light turns her face softer, rounder. She walks like she's afraid of existing too loudly.
"I didn't know she was gonna be the one," Naruto says quietly.
"For what?" Konohamaru asks, already bored.
"To start it," I murmur.
Because that's the Hyūga role in Rinne, always has been: the ones with the eyes that see chakra itself, in charge of the first light.
They reach the stone basin and the tall post beside it crowned with a fan of paper rings. Branch heirs hang back. Hinata steps forward when her father nods.
Silence drops like a cloak. Even the stalls quiet.
She kneels, hands trembling just a little as she rests her fingertips on the rim of the basin. Lantern paper rustles overhead. The rings lining the street wait.
Hinata closes her eyes.
Byakugan blooms under her skin, veins bulging faintly as pale lavender flares around her irises. I feel it at the base of my skull: a sudden uptick in that quiet high singing I've come to recognize as Not From Here. Circles inside circles, something in the sky above us paying attention for the first time all night.
Her chakra pushes out, slides into the water, reaches for the first lantern-circle strung above.
It catches.
Lanterns flicker. The first row glows to life in soft, milky white. The next row quivers—
—and one ring refuses.
Chakra stutters. For a second, half the lanterns along the main drag blaze, half stay stubbornly dark. The darkness stands out like a missing tooth.
Hinata's breath catches. I see it from up here, the way her shoulders jerk.
A murmur goes through the crowd. Not cruel yet. Just startled. Expectation tripping.
Beside her, Neji moves.
He doesn't hesitate. Doesn't look at Hiashi for permission. One second he's in the line where he's meant to be, the next he's stepped forward, hand hovering a bare breath above Hinata's.
Byakugan already active. Chakra precise and bright like a needle.
He slides his own chakra into the unfinished circuit, smooth as if this was always how it was supposed to go, correcting the flow, bridging the stubborn gap. The dark row of rings flares to life all at once.
Down below, the crowd bursts into relieved applause. Lanterns ignite in a ripple down the street, ring after ring after ring catching fire from the last.
From the roof, I feel the emotional snap instead.
Hinata's chakra collapses small and tight, like she's trying to fold herself into the floor. Neji's presence spikes: sharp-edged satisfaction twisted with something bitter and old and ugly. Behind them, main house elders' chakra goes sour at the edges, branch house elders prickling like needles.
"See?" Konohamaru whispers. "Told you it was boring."
His idea of interesting involves things exploding, so he's not a reliable judge.
Naruto leans forward. "She kind of messed up," he says, voice low. "But then Neji—"
He trails off as a hissed argument starts below. I can't catch all the words, just sharp fragments rising out of the murmur:
"…heir…"
"…embarrassment…"
"…out of turn…"
"…duty…"
The drums keep playing, but the pattern underneath has gone tight.
Hinata lifts her head just enough to glance upward, toward one of the rooftops they'd pointed out at the academy as "best viewing spots." Her eyes snag on the place where Naruto was leaning a moment ago.
We're still here, but Konohamaru's flopped onto his back and Naruto's shifted farther down the ridge, out of her direct line of sight. From here, it just looks like she met an empty patch of tiles.
She flinches like he's not there at all.
Something twists in my chest. Some mix of recognition and guilt and secondhand shame. The moon-singer at the base of my skull hums a single low note. I ignore it.
"It's all fake anyway," Konohamaru says, waving his hand at the procession. "Adults playing dress up."
"You're gonna be one of those adults," I remind him.
"Yeah," he says. "But cooler."
Naruto snorts, distracted. Movement below catches his eye first.
Ebisu has spotted his prey.
He appears at the base of our building in a puff of offended composure, pushing his glasses up his nose, eyes scanning the rooftops. The rigid set of his shoulders says he's been hunting for a while.
"There he is," Konohamaru whispers. "Boss, code red, code red!"
Ebisu starts climbing the narrow access ladder, lecturing as he goes. "Konohamaru-sama, rooftop jumping without supervision is strictly prohibited during high-traffic festival nights—"
Konohamaru squeaks and scrambles to his feet. His heel slips on the tile, and for a terrifying second, he teeters on the edge.
Naruto grabs the back of his scarf. "Idiot!"
"We gotta move!" Konohamaru yelps. "Retreat!"
He bolts for the far side of the roof. Ebisu's head pops up just as Konohamaru launches himself off.
"Konohamaru-sama!" Ebisu howls, diving after him.
They vanish from sight, followed by a crash and a chorus of outraged voices from the alley below.
Naruto and I look at each other.
"Wanna go help?" he says.
"I think anything we do will make it worse," I answer honestly.
He grins anyway, that wild little spark flickering back into his eyes now that the Hyūga tension has moved a few streets over. "So… yes."
We jump.
It's not a big drop. The alley absorbs us in shadows and lantern spill. My sandals skid a little on gravel; Naruto lands bent-kneed and easy, already craning his neck to see where Konohamaru went.
Ebisu is in full lecture mode somewhere around the corner, his voice carrying: "—and your grandfather will hear about this, young man—"
"Oops," Naruto says, not sounding sorry at all.
We slip the other way, threading through a gap between buildings until we come out into a narrow side street. From here, we can still see the main lantern rings overhead, now fully lit, their paper skins glowing soft white and pale gold. The rings themselves are painted in purples and blues, some patterned with stylized eyes, some with waves, some with little crescent moons.
The sky beyond is a deep, dark bowl. The rings float up into it, carried by thin wires or hooks or pure faith, depending on who you ask.
We stop at the mouth of the alley, half in shadow, half in light. The main crowd is a few paces away. Here, it's just the two of us.
Well. The two of us and a small universe's worth of unsaid things.
Naruto rocks on his heels, hands jammed in his pockets. I can feel him getting louder, not in sound but in chakra. It flares bright and orange-gold, jittery sparks dancing off it like someone shook a lantern too hard.
"You okay?" I ask.
"It's… fine." He makes a face. "Just weird. Everyone clapping like nothing happened. Like… like Hinata messing up is just a little speed bump in the big pretty circle story."
"That is kind of the point," I say. "Rinne. The wheel keeps turning."
"Yeah, well." He kicks at a pebble. "Doesn't mean the person under it doesn't get crushed."
I blink at him.
Sometimes he says something that sounds like it fell out of someone twice his age, and then five seconds later he'll trip over his own feet. It's disorienting.
He clears his throat, ducks his head, and then, like a string snapped, drags something out from behind his back.
"Anyway," he blurts. "Here."
It's a badly wrapped package. The paper is wrinkled, the twine tied in three different knots like he couldn't remember which one held best. A little frog charm dangles from the top, carved from cheap wood, eyes too big for its head. The cord it hangs from is a soft, faded pink.
My heart does something stupid.
"What's this?" I ask, because my brain is temporarily offline.
"It's nothing," he says quickly. "It's dumb. You don't have to like it. Just—take it before I change my mind."
He thrusts it at me. The frog charm swings and bounces off my wrist.
I catch the package before he drops it. The paper crinkles under my fingers, soft with too much handling. Up close, his chakra is so bright it nearly hums. Embarrassment glows hot at the edges, making everything a little sharper.
Slowly, I untie the twine.
The paper falls away.
Inside is a brush.
It's not new—there's a little wear on the handle, a faint stain where fingers have rested—but the bristles are intact, coming to a neat, disciplined point. Beside it, wrapped in another layer of paper, is a stack of thin, smooth sheets. Real drawing paper, the kind that doesn't tear when you erase. Good paper. Paper that isn't stolen scraps or the back of old homework.
The frog charm is looped through the cord binding it all together, like it's the one holding the bundle in place.
Maybe that part is a little too on the nose.
My throat tightens.
"You're always drawing on trash," Naruto says in a rush, words tumbling over each other. "And yelling about how the lines bleed, and then you get mad and say it's because the paper's cheap, but then you use it anyway. So, like… now you don't have to. At least for a while."
I look down at the brush again. My fingers fit along the handle almost perfectly.
"What, no lecture about wasting money?" he adds hurriedly. "Because it's my money and Iruka-sensei said I can use it and—"
"Shut up," I say, but there's no heat in it.
The world feels very small for a second: just my thumb on the worn wood, the faint smell of ink from the stall this came from, the way Naruto's chakra is flaring and stuttering like a lantern about to either shatter or settle.
No one in my old life ever bought me art supplies.
If I wanted them, I stole them from myself in minutes and scraps and sleep.
"Do you like it?" he asks, not quite laughing, not quite breathing.
"I hate it," I tell him. "It's terrible. Why would you give me something that makes me obligated to do good drawings, you monster."
His shoulders sag, then straighten when he catches the way my mouth is betraying me. A grin starts at the corners of his own.
"You're welcome," he says.
"Thank you," I answer, soft enough that the drums almost swallow it.
The brush feels heavier now that gratitude's wrapped around it.
My fingers are shaking a little when I tuck the bundle carefully into the crook of my arm. The frog charm dangles from the cord, catching lantern light.
"Your turn," I say.
He blinks. "My what?"
I reach behind me, to where I'd propped my own offering against the alley wall. The board is bigger than his package, and I'd wrapped it in old newspaper, layers taped together with more stubbornness than actual adhesive power.
I set it between us and start peeling the paper off.
Naruto crouches, curiosity dragging him down like gravity.
The last scrap falls away.
He goes very still.
It's not perfect. I see every flaw: the way the proportions are slightly off, the cloak hem not quite even, the ink line that wobbled when my hand cramped. The pigments are cheap, so the reds and golds aren't as deep as they should be. The board has a knot near the bottom left corner that I didn't sand down enough.
But.
Naruto stands on the Hokage Rock, in the picture.
Not any of the old faces. Not the Fourth. Not the Third.
Him.
His hair is wind-messy, his grin big enough to split his face. The cloak around his shoulders is white, flame pattern licking up from the hem drawn in swooping strokes of red and orange. I've left the kanji on the back blank for now; I don't like copying someone else's name onto him.
The village sprawls beneath him in stylized lines: rooftops, trees, streets. Tiny ring-lantern motifs drift in the sky behind, echoes of the real ones above us. One of his hands is stretched back, out of frame, like he's reaching for someone who's just behind the viewer.
My hand.
Anyone's hand.
"It's you," I say, because apparently my brain wants to narrate the obvious. "As Hokage."
He doesn't answer.
Lantern light and painting light blur together for a moment. The rings strung across the street glow in the corner of my eye. The ones I painted behind his head glow too, different pigments, same idea.
"You—" His voice cracks. He swallows. "You drew me?"
"You're the one who won't shut up about it," I say. "I just made it harder for you to back out."
He looks like he's been hit.
Not in a bad way. Just… knocked sideways.
"You think I can really…" He trails off. His fingers hover over the board, not quite touching the paint. "I mean. You think I… could actually…?"
The thing buzzing in my skull hums again. The same certainty that had settled in my chest back at the orphanage, watching him snore with his hair doing its best impression of a disaster.
I shrug, because too much sincerity at once might physically kill me. "You're the only idiot loud enough to pull it off."
He huffs out a breath that might be a laugh, might be a sob. "That's not how Hokage works."
"You say that," I say, "but I already drew it. So now it's legally binding. You have to catch up."
He finally touches the board, fingers resting on the edge where the paint is dry. He holds it like it's something fragile, like he's afraid if he grips too hard it'll vanish.
"I'll do it," he says.
The words land like thrown kunai. Sharp. Certain. "I'll make it real. Promise."
"You better," I say. "I am not wasting good paper on a liar."
He snorts. "You used trash paper to wrap it."
"Trash paper has its uses."
We're both grinning now, which is dangerous, because that's how my brain likes to take snapshots—sudden, stupid joy etched in.
Behind us, the festival reaches its peak.
The ring-lanterns along the street are all lit now, a chain of glowing circles receding into the distance. A group of Hyūga bow in front of the basin, the surface of the water reflecting rings within rings. Fireworks aren't really a thing in Konoha yet—not like the stories from other countries—but someone sets off a handful of small sky-flare tags, and lines of light write brief, bright arcs overhead.
The crowd gasps. Kids squeal. A baby starts crying and is quickly soothed.
At the edge of it all, I spot Hinata again, tucked half behind an elder, mostly forgotten now that the crisis has been smoothed over. Her shoulders are still small and hunched, but she's looking at the sky, not the ground.
Her gaze flicks, just once, toward the alley where Naruto and I are.
We're half in shadow, but Naruto's hair is hard to miss. His laughter drifts out as he tries to figure out how to hold the painting and not drop it and not look like he wants to hug it.
Hinata's chakra flutters. A strange, soft color rolls through it—hope tangled with something like envy, something like awe. It hurts to look at.
Neji follows her line of sight. His mouth presses thin, his chakra tightening like a ring drawn smaller and smaller. He turns away.
On the far fringe, Sasuke hasn't moved much. He watches everything with that cool, distant gaze: Hyūga drama, lanterns, villagers, us. The ring of his chakra stays closed. I have a brief, ridiculous image of three little circles spinning on some cosmic wheel: Naruto's wild and orange and expanding, Sasuke's tight and dark and inward, mine somewhere between, carrying a piece of the moon that never asked to be here.
The ring-lanterns float above us all, pretending the world is a gentle, predictable loop.
Beside me, Naruto shifts, standing straighter.
"Hey," he says.
"Yeah?"
"Thanks. For… this." He glances down at the painting, then at my new brush sticking out of my bundle, frog charm dangling. "For… y'know. Seeing me."
The words hit harder than they should.
"No refunds," I say.
He laughs, full and bright and stupid.
We sit down together at the edge of the alley, backs against the wall. He keeps the painting propped carefully against his knees. I tuck my new brush into my sleeve like it's contraband. The frog charm bumps against my wrist every time I move.
Ebisu's voice floats faintly from somewhere behind the next block, scolding Konohamaru about "propriety" and "future Hokage behavior." Konohamaru squawks something defiant back. The drums keep playing. The lanterns keep swaying.
If the world really is a wheel, like the elders say, like the Hyūga paint on their scrolls and the monks carve into temple bells—maybe it'll drag us through wars and funerals and betrayals and all the other terrible, sharp-edged things that are waiting.
But sitting here, with Naruto's shoulder warm against mine, cheap sweets in my stomach, good paper under my arm, and circles of light climbing into the dark, it's hard not to think:
If we have to come back to the same places over and over, let some of them be like this.
Let there always be, somewhere in the loop, a rooftop, a festival, and a boy who hasn't yet learned how to give up.