"Thank goodness for Iruka-sensei... Iruka-sensei is different from everyone else."
"And luckily, I have lots of companions..."
Naruto had barely begun to continue when Tobirama Senju cut in at once.
"Iruka-sensei?"
Iruka Umino answered immediately in the chat. "Lord Tobirama, I am Naruto's teacher at the Ninja Academy."
"Answer me," Tobirama said coldly. "Were you different toward Naruto from the very beginning?"
Iruka fell silent.
"...No, Tobirama-sama. At first, I resented Naruto just like everyone else. But I am a teacher. I know very well that hatred like that should never be placed on a child. On Naruto..."
Tobirama did not let him finish the thought before pressing on with ruthless precision.
"So someone guided you. Someone kept nudging you, telling you again and again that you had to be good to Naruto?"
Iruka's answer stumbled out awkwardly. "Th-this... no. It was because I truly came to understand the Will of Fire, so I finally woke up."
Tobirama stopped there. There was no need to ask anything else.
In a situation like that, even if Iruka failed to change, then a second Iruka would appear. And if the second failed, then a third. So long as the role existed, someone would eventually step into it.
At that moment, Hashirama Senju popped back into the conversation as if the atmosphere were not grim enough already.
"I see," Hashirama said brightly. "Fourth Hokage, your son is an outstanding child. He understood the meaning of comrades very early on."
"Shut up!" Tobirama snapped.
"Tobirama... let me finish~"
Tobirama was just about to bark back when another old fox jumped in first.
Onoki laughed loudly. "Hahaha, Lord Hashirama, you really haven't changed at all."
"But the truth is sitting right in front of us. If we keep dodging the real issue, that's just lying to ourselves."
"How was the Jinchuriki's identity exposed? Isn't that such a difficult mystery to solve? How could a child that young know so much, or think that far ahead? When a person is most helpless, they'll cling to the last straw they can find. And that's even more true for a child."
Onoki's tone grew sharper with every word. "If you ask me, it won't be long before Hiruzen Sarutobi's old face shows up on that giant screen too. Hahaha!"
"Yes, yes, that's exactly right!" the Fourth Raikage immediately chimed in.
Inside the Raikage's office, Mabui rubbed her forehead and sighed helplessly as she watched the Raikage laugh his head off.
Meanwhile, in the Pure Land, Kushina's long red hair had shot straight up.
One spike. Two. Three... all the way to nine.
Her anger was already so fierce it was right on the edge of exploding out of control.
After spending so long talking in the chat room, Kushina had gone completely berserk. Her eyes swept wildly through the surrounding souls, searching for Minato Namikaze.
In her fury, she had forgotten one very important fact.
Minato was inside the belly of the Death God.
"Asura..."
Within the Pure Land, the Sage of Six Paths murmured softly.
Then he raised a hand and waved it once.
In an instant, all the souls around Kushina were shifted elsewhere. After that, he simply shook his head, and the Pure Land quieted again.
***
Konoha Hospital.
Naruto lay on a hospital bed with dried bloodstains still clinging to his body. The surface wounds had been cleaned, but the medical ninja's treatment had been rough—so rough that anyone with eyes could see they already knew the rumor that Naruto was the demon fox.
He closed his eyes and drifted into a heavy sleep, not even knowing how he had returned from the street to that moldy little room he called home.
When he opened his eyes again, hunger had woken him.
Still dazed, Naruto sniffed the air and immediately caught the scent of food. He scrambled up and searched the room until he found a meal left on the table.
It was already cold by then. A little spoiled too.
Naruto did not care at all.
He sat down and devoured it with both hands, eating with desperate speed, as though he were afraid the food might vanish if he hesitated. Even if it tasted off, it was still something he could swallow, and that was enough.
"Fishing... I think I know how to do that. I'll try tomorrow."
Some half-remembered voice from his hazy state the day before drifted back into his mind.
So the next morning, Naruto ran straight to the back mountain behind Konoha.
"I can't keep being sad," he told himself. "If I still can't find food today, then I'll just have to go hungry again."
Not long afterward, he managed to put together a crude fishing rod.
He did not know where the hooks and line had come from. In his heart, he vaguely guessed they had probably been left behind by someone else who came there to fish before.
Splash—
As though beginners really did receive some blessing from fate, Naruto caught three fish on his very first try. Each one was about as long as three adult fingers laid side by side.
Everyone watching the screen wore a different expression.
What a coincidence.
Was it really luck?
Or had someone deliberately arranged things from the shadows?
Then again... why weren't the fish struggling much? Why did they look so easy to catch? Could someone have hooked them from below beforehand? The thought rose in more than one sharp mind at once.
The sun shone high overhead, and before long it was noon.
Hungry again, Naruto copied the bits and pieces he remembered and went off to gather firewood. Before he had been thrown out by the Sarutobi clan, someone had impatiently taught him a handful of survival basics.
When he finally managed to get the fire going, a bright smile bloomed across his small face.
He skewered the fish with sharpened sticks and waited for the flames to die down into charcoal before setting them over the heat.
With no seasoning at all, the taste was naturally awful by any normal standard. But to Naruto, it was still food, and food meant he could keep going one more day.
So for the next several days, he repeated the same routine.
He still didn't know what could be eaten and what could not. No one wanted to come close to him. When his ball rolled away, no one would help him retrieve it. Sometimes even the children who might have done so were chased off by others first.
It was as if the entire world had rejected him.
At night, Naruto would secretly curl up under his blanket and wipe his tears away where no one could see them.
There was one rainy day when hunger finally drove him into a ramen shop with nowhere else to go. That was the first time in his life he learned what it felt like to be cared for.
That single scene nearly drove Kushina mad in the Pure Land.
Every time Naruto raised a hand to rub away his tears, it felt to her as though someone were carving into her heart with a blade.
Time passed.
Then, one night, someone stepped into Naruto's world.
Darkness settled over the back mountain. Naruto placed the last fish he had onto the charcoal fire.
Sizzle, sizzle—
A thin layer of oil slowly surfaced on the skin, and the smell of roasted meat drifted into the night air. Naruto, however, seemed almost numb to it by now.
He sat there blankly, staring into the flames with empty eyes.
"Smells delicious."
The frail, aged voice rose out of the darkness so suddenly that Naruto jerked in fright.
"Ah?!"
He fell backward onto the ground, then hurriedly twisted around.
An old man with white hair was walking out of the darkness toward him.
There was a kind smile on the man's face. More importantly, unlike the villagers, this old man did not seem to radiate that same sharp, hateful malice that Naruto had learned to recognize.
Even so, Naruto stayed on guard. "Who are you?"
"Me?" The old man chuckled. "Just an old fellow passing by."
The one standing there was none other than the Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi.
His eyes drifted toward the fish roasting over the fire. At almost the same moment, his stomach gave a very timely growl.
The strange, tense atmosphere broke at once.
The old man and the child stared at each other for a beat—then both of them laughed.
If this scene had appeared without any of the context shown before it, it would have felt warm. It might even have looked touching.
But after everything that had already been revealed, the taste of it had changed completely.
"Grandpa, here. Eat one."
This was the first time Naruto had ever met someone who spoke to him with such kindness. Without hesitation, he generously offered over one of the grilled fish.
Hiruzen did not stand on ceremony at all. He took it and started eating immediately.
"Thank you very much! This fish looks delicious!"
"I caught it myself," Naruto said happily as he picked up one for himself. "So it definitely tastes great!"
The fish were still hot, and Naruto had not cooked many to begin with.
In the blink of an eye, two of the three fish were gone—both eaten by Hiruzen Sarutobi.
Everyone watching fell into silence.
Old man, do you have no shame at all?
There were only three fish total. And that was the child's dinner.
After they finished eating, the old man and the little boy sat by the campfire together, looking up at the night sky thick with stars.
Then Hiruzen spoke slowly.
"Look at the stars in the sky."
The instant those words came out, several people's expressions changed.
Onoki's gaze sharpened at once.
Tobirama Senju's eyes did too.