Despite the fact that it was summer, and an awfully warm one at that - the heat making me wipe the sweat from my forehead with my sleeve – I went to the portable fireplace, which I had placed in the middle of the room, and lit a fire. Being as experienced as I, all it took was a single Tiger hand sign, a deep breath, and soon the fire was roaring in the little room, casting an orange glow on the spiderweb that hung under the plain woodened dining table, one of the chairs, and next to the fridge in the kitchen area, where there also was an oven and a sink, a single unwashed plate having been there for a long time.
This wasn't my apartment, nor had anyone else lived there for years. The original owner was Naruto, who was my son, though in blood only, as I had never known him, nor been a true father to him.
It is twenty-one years since I became the fourth Hokage, twenty since I sacrificed my life to save Konoha from Kyuubi, sealing the beast into Naruto, who, if he still lived, would also have been twenty years old.
Furthermore, it is three years since I was resurrected by the Shinigami, and allowed to live once again. But what a hollow life that has been. All of the people I had loved, Kushina, my students, Jiraya-sensei, Sandaime-sama, are all dead, and while the streets are bustling with activity, the houses full of families, the village seems to me a deserted place. The absence of Naruto in particular have stricken me.
It is amusing, that the man famous for his speed arrived too late. I was restored to life, when there no longer was a possibility to save Naruto, or even to get to know him properly.
Perhaps that is why, I come here occasionally, hoping that this place will help me understand him, the stranger that was my son, but all it does is giving more questions.
For example, I look at the chairs, and wonder if anyone besides Naruto ever sat in them - if he ever had visitors at all, which I rather doubt, knowing the reports of his early childhood.
I look at the plate in the sink, which is smeared with brown sauce, and wonder why it was abandoned like that. Was it because Naruto was a slightly lazy child, who had decided to postpone the chore of cleaning the dishes until the next day, or was it because he had been in the middle of doing exactly that, when they knocked on his door and took him away, and placing that plate in that sink was the last he did, before he opened the door and left this apartment behind forever?
I am not sure, but there is one thing I do know: I have resumed my position as Hokage, leaving thousands of citizens depending on me, and for their sake, I must put the grief behind me, and be the Hokage I have sworn to be.
That is why I have gone through all that has been said to me about Naruto, and the precious few files there are about him. I will attempt, for the very last time, to get a complete picture of Naruto, from beginning to end; what he experienced and felt and did. But above all, I wish to know where, exactly, it went wrong for him.