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He always knew he was different from the other students at the Academy. A lot of kids were orphans or half-orphans, like him, but that was a common fact of life in a ninja village. To lose one parent wasn't so extraordinary. But it seemed like no matter who in their family tree was living or dead, everyone else at least knew where they came from. He himself had a mother who everyone seemed to know, since she was one of the most respected kunoichi of the village and belonged to what was arguably the best non-ANBU team in the current roster. But no one ever talked about his father.
It didn't bother him too much until he made genin and was placed on a four-man team.
He didn't feel much of anything when he heard the names called out for "Team 9." The others were a boy named Rikyu and a kunoichi, Akiko. He knew them both from a distance, though neither had been friends of his. His best friend Isamu was a year younger than him and wasn't done at the Academy yet, so regardless of whose names were called for Team 9 he wasn't going to get excited about it. Yoshio didn't get excited about much to begin with – it was a bad habit for a shinobi.
Rikyu was well-known in his class for being obnoxious and mean. He didn't have any friends and wasn't a very good ninja in most respects, but he had a mean kick to his taijutsu that tended to leave deep bruises on his opponents for weeks. Akiko was more than a little odd. She didn't seem to have any friends at all, but she also didn't seem to notice. Because her face was typically buried behind a book, the only part of her that was easily recognizable was her bright red hair. She probably knew more ninjutsu than the rest of the class put together, but from what Yoshio had seen of her she wasn't much of a fighter.
Yoshio knew his classmates' traits because he himself was one of the better ninja in his class. He didn't think he was the best by any means, but he usually landed second or third in the rankings on any given test and had placed first more than once. Moreover, he always knew what he was up against. His mother had taught him how to judge the skills of other ninja, and he'd made a habit of cataloguing his classmates' strengths and weaknesses. He knew the knowledge would come in handy eventually. His mother had already explained to him how it was never too early to start getting the information you could use in the chunin exam.
His sensei was another matter. When this jonin had first walked into their classroom, Yoshio and everyone else had recognized him instantly, and Yoshio couldn't help but feel a spark of pride when the man was assigned to his team. He didn't miss the jealous looks from the rest of the class either. His sensei was one of the best-known and most talented jonin in the village, and his notoriety went much farther than the village border.
But if Yoshio had any expectations from this jonin's reputation, they changed drastically that first day when he stood side by side with his other genin teammates as they watched their sensei pick through his pockets with increasing frustration. He started to take off articles of clothing and shake them out in a wild search for something. "They were just here – I could have sworn I had them here. Hang on, did I put them in my shoe? Hang on a second…"
Five minutes later, the respect and awe they felt for the most notorious member of the Rookie Nine had dwindled. Akiko had given up waiting and had sat herself on the ground and pulled out a book. Rikyu was chucking kunai at a tree, trying to nail a squirrel. Only Yoshio was still standing patiently when their sensei's eyes lit up as he pulled out two cheap-looking, unimpressive bells and dangled them in front of his team. "Found them!"
Akiko looked up from her book and raised an eyebrow.
"What's so great about bells?" Rikyu asked.
"Um, nothing I guess… never mind that! This is a test!"
"Another test? I thought we were done with those when we graduated," Rikyu whined. But Akiko suddenly looked interested. She even seemed to be considering putting down her book.
"What's the test, Naruto-sensei?" Yoshio asked.
His teammates' eyes snapped to him immediately, as if they were shocked to hear him speak. Yoshio knew that other people in his class thought he was quiet, but they didn't actually think he couldn't talk, did they?
Yoshio's respect for his sensei had recovered slightly several hours later, after Akiko had been freed from the log, Rikyu had accidentally knocked over their bento boxes, and Naruto had declared that he would treat them all to ramen as a reward for having passed his test.
Rikyu stuck his nose up at it and sat glowering with his arms crossed across his chest. He was loudly embarrassed to be seen in public with either of the other genin on his team. Akiko politely told the girl serving them that she was allergic to ginger and went back to reading, although she allowed herself to pick at a bowl of miso ramen between pages. Naruto-sensei kept the smile plastered to his face through everything and had finished two bowls of ramen before Yoshio was halfway through his first. Yoshio didn't especially like ramen, but he ate it without argument because he felt kind of bad for the way his teammates were acting.
Naruto had spotted another one of the Rookie Nine across the street and had run over to talk to him (or maybe, Yoshio thought, just to get away from his weird genin) when Rikyu asked, "So what's your deal?"
Yoshio looked up at the boy next to him. Akiko was still glued to her book, but Rikyu was staring at him with that sharp gaze he used to size up opponents. "What do you mean?" Yoshio asked calmly.
"You barely said anything to anyone back at the Academy, but everyone thinks you're so great. I've seen you in action now and I don't think you're much of a ninja."
Akiko lowered her book and looked at them, drawing Rikyu's attention. Her eyes glinted darkly at Rikyu and she opened her mouth, but what she said was, "Can you pass me a napkin?"
Rikyu did not pass her a napkin. He turned back to Yoshio. "You're not from a clan like I am. You don't even have a family name. So who do you belong to?"
Yoshio couldn't figure out what Rikyu ws getting at. When Naruto-sensei had asked them to say something about themselves earlier that day, they'd each given their answers. Akiko had told them she liked reading novels and wanted to learn at least a thousand jutsu like Hatake Kakashi and use them to make lots of money. Rikyu had said he wanted to be able to beat up all of his classmates and relatives. Yoshio had said he just wanted to be a good ninja. Apparently that wasn't enough for Rikyu. Rikyu was part of the Matsumoto clan, and ninja from his family had served Konoha for many generations. They didn't have any bloodline limits, but they were famous for their heartless obedience. He supposed Rikyu just wanted to know whether he had a clan like that.
Yoshio shrugged. "My mother doesn't have a family name or any living relatives." His mother's parents had immigrated from a country where only the very rich had family names, and his grandparents had died years before he was born.
"So what about your father? Is he a ninja?"
Yoshio concentrated on twirling noodles around his chopsticks. "I don't have a father," he said.
"What, he's dead or something? Did he get killed by enemy ninja?"
Yoshio opened his mouth to respond when it struck him: he didn't know. He really didn't know. Of course, he'd always assumed his father was dead, but the few times he'd asked her, his mother either refused to talk about it or changed the subject. He had thought of asking other people before, but somehow it just didn't seem right. No one ever mentioned his father. No one saw him sparring and told him he took after his father; instead they watched how he threw kunai and told him he took after his mother. As far back as he could remember, there was not so much as one clue to who his father actually was.
This was all old news to Yoshio. What shocked him was that for the first time, he really wanted to know. He wanted to have an answer to Rikyu's question, and he felt strange and awkward not having anything to say. Instead the only response he could give was, "It's none of your business."
"So that's it, huh? Poor little Yoshio, his daddy was killed in battle… like that's so different. Half the kids in our class have parents stupid enough to die on missions. That's no big deal," Rikyu said bitterly.
"I never said that."
"So if that's not it, what is it? Your mother was a whore or something?"
Yoshio turned to look at Rikyu stonily. Before Yoshio even had a chance to respond, however, he heard a sudden thwack, Rikyu's eyes rolled up into his head, and he fell backward off of his stool.
Akiko shook her hand out and met Yoshio's gaze. She shrugged, then went immediately back to her book. "Well, you weren't going to do it," she mumbled, sounding annoyed.
Yoshio noticed that this had gotten Naruto's attention. Kiba, the ninja he'd been talking to, smirked at him and asked, "What was it you were saying about teamwork?" Meanwhile Naruto-sensei grinned uncomfortably and scratched the back of his head.
It was preying on Yoshio's mind when he walked home that night: who was his father? Why did no one ever mention him? It was a question that had drifted in and out of his mind for years, and he didn't know why it should bother him so much now. He supposed it wasn't what Rikyu had said, but the way he'd said it, as if the matter really made a difference to who he was. Rikyu's father was a ninja, and even though Akiko's parents had almost certainly been civilians he supposed that at least she knew who they both were. Yoshio's father could be anyone, dead or alive, for all he knew.
He made up his mind to ask his mother about it that night, but when he walked in the door of their apartment he saw that she wasn't alone. She was sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea with an old friend of hers, one that Yoshio had grown up calling "uncle" even though he wasn't a blood relation – by a long shot. He was a Hyuuga.
"So how did it go?" his mother asked him.
He shrugged after nodding hello and went to the fridge to get a soda. "Okay I guess. Naruto-sensei gave us a test and said we passed."
He didn't miss the amused glance between his mother and her teammate. "What?" he asked.
" 'Naruto-sensei.' I never thought I would live to hear that," Neji said.
"Do you feel old now?" Tenten asked him with a smirk.
"No. But I am wondering what this village is coming to."
Yoshio knew his mother had worked with Naruto before, and as far as he knew, Naruto lived up to his reputation, at least in the field, although he hadn't made such a huge impression today. "I thought he was supposed to be a great ninja," he said.
"Of course he is," his mother said, grinning at him. "Neji's still bitter about Naruto beating him when they went head-to-head in their first chunin exam."
Neji shot her a dirty look, although he was still smirking. She stuck her tongue out at him. Then she looked back to Yoshio and her forehead creased with concern. "What's that on your arm?"
Yoshio rolled his eyes, walked over, and stuck his arm out, knowing he wouldn't be able to get away from her. "It's just a scratch," he said. He was still kind of embarrassed about getting scratched with his own kunai while trying to attack his sensei to get a bell. If his mother knew it had been his own kunai, he would never live it down.
"How come you didn't clean it right away? It's getting infected."
"Naruto-sensei took us out for ramen after practice. I didn't have time."
"Well, you should have taken care of it. You can't just ignore it. What if this happened during a mission and you got sick in the field?"
"It's fine, Mom, it's not even that deep. It's just a scratch."
"Maybe you should go to the hospital."
"Mom…" he groaned.
"He's fine," Neji said, smiling at him. "He's a genin now. He can take care of himself."
Now Tenten shot Neji a dirty look. But Yoshio silently thanked him and escaped her grasp. "I'll clean it up," he said, leaving the kitchen and darting to the bathroom before she could stop him.
He could hear their bickering even when he was in the bathroom, but he knew them both well enough that he wasn't bothered by it. When they argued with each other, they always did so with grins on their faces. Yoshio might have been twelve, but he certainly was no innocent. He was already learning to see underneath the underneath, and he knew a lot about the world that most kids his age didn't. He knew, for instance, about his mother and Hyuuga Neji. Even though she went through a lot of trouble to make sure Yoshio never saw her teammate in the mornings, Yoshio had figured it out long ago. He didn't know why she still tried to keep it a secret from him – or from the rest of the village, for that matter.
He knew that out of all the people that might be his father, most evidence pointed to Hyuuga Neji.
In spite of that, he was sure beyond a doubt that Neji wasn't his father. He didn't have to look far for proof: it was right there in front of him in the bathroom mirror when he closed the door to the medicine cabinet. His eyes were brown, like his mother's. Not white.
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Author's Note. Just a little experiment I'm trying. Let me know if there's interest for more.