"Fuck off." That word, that voice, his voice. Naruto had never heard someone use that phrase as a goodbye before.
Naruto Uzumaki had already experienced a horrible day when he was sent to the principal's office. The day had started off with awful weather, by the time he got to school he was wet to the bone. When he walked into the classroom he was 20 minutes late. The teacher was furious and Naruto's punishment was no lunch.
"The whole school system is fucked!" said Naruto after the lesson. He and his gang walked outside. The rain had stopped, but the sky was still gray. There was nobody around. As he and his friends walked down some stairs he stumbled into a boy. The boy fell down the stairs made of stone, down to the ground.
Naruto said nothing, not even looking at the person. He simply did not care, instead he just walked by him. His friends laughed at the boy laying on the floor.
"Hey, fuckface! Aren't you gonna apologize?" the boy laying on the ground said. Naruto and his friends turned around.
"What did you say?" Naruto said with a low voice. The boy stood up.
"You heard me, stupid bitch!"
Naruto lost his temper, with quick steps he walked up to the person and punched his jaw. With brutal force he kept punching and kicking the boy all over his fragile body. Naruto's friends backed off, a fight with Naruto had never escalated like this before. They tried to stop Naruto's actions.
"N-Naruto, maybe you should sto-"
"Fuck off!" said Naruto.
"Come on, man. Let's get out of here before anyone sees us."
Naruto stopped punching the boy.
"Whatever" he scoffed. He looked down at the boy. "If you tell this to anyone, you're dead." The gang went back in, leaving the boy on the ground.
Some hours passed. Naruto was hungry and since he wasn't allowed to eat school lunch today, he was all alone during the lunch break. He sat on a bench in the corridor, scrolling through his instagram feed. Suddenly, the loudspeakers on the school walls said with a serious, female voice: "Naruto Uzumaki to the principal's office, NOW!" Students around Naruto looked at him and started whispering to each other. Naruto's heart started pumping faster. This could not be happening, he never got in trouble. Usually when fights got serious everyone was too scared to tell anyone, let alone the feared Naruto and that's why he was the school's bad boy. "That little shit must´ve exposed me!" was his first thought. With heavy stomps he walked into the principal's office. And what did he see? Not the boy from the morning, something even worse. His friends. His best, and only friends.
"What is this about?" said Naruto with confusion in his voice.
"Quiet!" said the angry principle who sat on his chair. "I don't want to hear any word spoken by you ever again, Naruto Uzumaki!"
"But sir, I-"
"Give me a reason why I shouldn't expel you!" said the man and banged his fist on the desk. He picked up a document and fixed his glasses. "Let's see here... you've done vandalism, fights, bullying, arrived late many times or even worse, not even coming to school at all! And today you injured a boy so much that he had to go to the hospital!" He was red in his face out of anger.
"But sir... I can get better!"
"Yes, you can. You can walk out of those doors and never come back again."
Naruto looked at him for one second with despair, then he walked out immediately. He ran outside and the cold air hit his face.
"The poor boy has nowhere to go!" a loud voice shouted behind him.
He turned around. It was his friends who now were his ex-friends.
"You bastards!" he cried, "Why did you do it?! I thought we were friends!"
"Hah! Friends? We've always hated you, Naruto. The whole school does. We all longed for this very special moment."
"But we're not even yet!" said one of them.
"What do you mean?" Naruto said with a shaky voice.
"To get even, we need to beat you up!"
The boys laughed together.
"No! Please!" Naruto screamed while they got closer to him. They forced him down on the ground and one of the guys took up a knife from his pocket. He cut three scars on each cheek on Naruto's face. The pain was real.
"This is because you're nothing more than a pussy!"
Naruto could feel tears streaming down his face into the new wounds, it hurt so bad. "Make it stop, make it stop" he thought. He felt more punches hit his face, but he did not care anymore, all he wanted was to curl up and die. He could feel himself getting dizzy and in the corner of his eyes he could see black spots forming.
"That's enough" someone said. The gang walked away and one of the gang members spit on him.
Naruto's clothes were dirty and his whole body ached when he arrived home. Iruka saw him through a window and ran to the door and opened it.
"Naruto! What happened to you?! I got a call from your principal saying you got expelled! Can you imagine how worried I got when you didn't come home straight away! And you didn't answer my phone calls!"
Naruto shivered. He was cold and he didn't have the strength to talk.
"Oh my god! What happened to your face?" Naruto started crying and Iruka ran towards him and pulled him in for a hug. "Who did this?! Come on, you need a bath."
Naruto laid in the bathtub, staring at the wall. He raised his fingers to his face to feel the scars.
"Ouch!" he whispered as he felt a stinging sensation. He climbed up from the bath and reached for a towel. He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. His face was hideous. He looked like a fox with the scars. A lying, sneaky little fox.
He went to the bedroom, then he fell on his bed and started sobbing quietly. The door creaked and Iruka walked in slowly.
"Naruto... are you asleep?" He asked quietly.
"No...leave me alone"
"You know I can't leave you like this! Naruto, we need to talk."
"B-but you w-wouldn´t understand!" Naruto wailed.
"I don't need to know exactly what happened. I just want you to know that I care about you and I don't want you to fail school. I know you can do better than this."
Naruto stayed quiet. He didn't look at Iruka.
"The only option now is to send you to the boarding school."
"You mean Konoha high?" said Naruto and turned his face to Iruka. Iruka nodded.
"It will cost, but you know I'll do anything for you. Please don't let me down this time, Naruto." He walked out, closed the door and the room got dark again. Naruto hated school, but he really didn't want to disappoint Iruka. It was time to get better. No more fights, no more trouble. He wanted to get a life, get real friends and fit in. Naruto fell asleep thinking about how lucky he was that Iruka had adopted him. He couldn't have asked for a better father.
