Was Konoha's Department of Education strapped for cash?

Kind of a random question without context, I guess, but you'd think Konoha would at least spare a few extra ryō to get real wooden tables instead of a cheap plastic veneer. Did it actually matter? Not really, but holy shit did it bother me. It looked like they'd let loose at fucking ninja-IKEA, or something. I mean, come on. The tables don't have to be wooden, you dig? How about some nice metal? At least be upfront about it if you're going to be all stingy.

I picked at the peeling corner of the table as parents clung desperately to their children, rather than letting them just fucking sit down like our teacher clearly wanted them to. Speaking of our teacher, he seemed kind of familiar… Was he a Nara? He had that hair, but Naras tended to be paler than he was. Maybe mixed, then. Or a canon character? He did give me that I-surely-know-you-but-I-don't-know-how short of feeling. Yeah, yeah, he was definitely canon; his scar was super distinctive.

Said teacher cleared his throat, interrupting my speculations. The parents must have cleared out (or been cleared out) while I was thinking, because the kids were all more or less seated, and our teacher was writing something on the board. His name, probably. Uh… It started with an U? Umi.. Umino… Oh! Umino Iruka! Like Naruto's teacher!

Iruka-sensei turned around to face us and smiled, dusting his hands on his pants. "Good morning, class! I'm Umino Iruka, and I'll be your teacher all year, so you'd better be good." The class tittered, and he smiled wider. "You're going to be with your classmates all year, too, so we're going to go around and introduce ourselves."

He grabbed a piece of paper off his desk and frowned at it, before sighing and putting it back. "Why don't you all come on down and form a circle on the floor?"

As we streamed down, he stepped back closer to the board so we could gather in the space in front of the seats. Eventually we sat in a more or less round configuration, and he picked the piece of paper back up.

"Okay. Uh, Aburame Shino, stand up and… tell us your favorite food and color."

A boy in a huge jacket with a comically high-collared shirt stood up and pulled his jacket down a bit. "My name is Aburame Shino. I like winter melon and green." He quickly sat back down, and the class clapped somewhat awkwardly for him.

"Thank you, Shino! You don't really need to say your name, though. Akimichi Chōji?"

We went on like that for a while, with kids standing up and and talking. I didn't pay much attention past noting the Rookie Nine kids and listening for my name (coffee jelly and, ironically, blue, if you're wondering). Interestingly enough, there was no Hinata. There was a Hyūga Nikkō, with the same temperament and looks, but Nikkō was a dude as far as I could tell. This did posit some interesting things, but quite frankly I didn't care. Or, at least, not enough to try and figure out how I would even get to the bottom of that anyway.

Once we were done, Iruka-sensei directed us back to our seats and turned back to the board. "A lot of this year is just going to be learning the basics, so you can expand in them later." At the top of the chalkboard, he wrote "chakra" in big letters.

"Now, who can tell me something about chakra?"

"Well, well, well. Look who it is."

Before I could turn around, a hand clapped me on the shoulder. "What's it like being a ninja, butch?"

"Come on, Surudoi," a lighter voice laughed. The gravely voice from before huffed and the weight was lifted from my shoulder as I turned around to scowl at my aunt's beau. "I told you that's not how it works."

"Now that I'm a ninja, you can't do that anymore," I said, ignoring Auntie's long-suffering sigh. "'Cause I might hurt you. Since, you know, ninja reflexes."

"'Since ninja reflexes.'" Surudoi snorted and ruffled my hair, as if it wasn't already a black, curly mess. "That's totally legit."

"It is." I batted their hand away and scanned the crowd on tiptoe, looking for a couple of familiar places. "They're at work?"

"Sorry, Hinoishie," Auntie said. "They wished they could be here, but you know how it is."

"Yeah. Busy with work, right?"

"If it makes you feel any better, they both have pretty long breaks coming up. But, uh, do you wanna get out of here, or what?" Surudoi shivered exaggeratedly. "I'm not used to being surrounded by so many little murder-gremlins. It's like if I make a wrong move, I'm going to have a bunch of tykes stabbing at my thighs with shuriken."

"Sure." Auntie and Surudoi started walking, and I darted in front of them and turned around so I was walking backwards (one of the benefits of living in Konoha was that walking backwards was totally socially acceptable). "You know you don't stab with shuriken, right?"

"What do you stab with, then?" Surudoi asked, crossing his arms.

"I mean, lots of things. Swords, kunai… Don't you work at the morgue?"

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"You see dead ninja all the time! And you do au- you do autop- you cut them up! And you have to figure out what killed them. So you should at least know that shuriken slice, not stab."

"Autopsies? Yeah, I do them. Pretty big word for a four-year-old, huh?"

"Don't be cond- don't be condescending." I scowled at Surudoi. "I'm a very smart four-year-old, so you can hush." Well, I was a teenager of more or less average intelligence, but they didn't need to know that. They also didn't need to know how many more colorful phrases I would have substituted for "hush" if I'd had the vocabulary.

"Hinoishie, where'd you learn about weapons?" Auntie asked, frowning. "Your mom didn't know that kind of stuff until she was, like, already a genin."

"Well, you guys grew up in the dark ages of Konoha, so it's not really her fault. Was there even an Academy? Did you guys ride dinosaurs?"

"We're not that old," Surudoi said, mock-frowning. "Your parents totally are, though."

"Uh-huh. They're actually graying already, but they cover it up with ninja-dye," Auntie laughed. "You can ask them about the dinosaurs later, though. Oh, uh, we're here." She reached down to shuffle through her pockets, and I turned around to face whoever was guarding the compound today.

"Hi, Mazaa. Nice lipstick."

"Thank you, Honorable Granddaughter." The older woman smiled and brought a hand up to gently brush against her buttercup-yellow lipstick. "It was your first day at the Academy, wasn't it?"

"Sure was." I ducked to let Auntie and Surudoi put their ID cards on the counter-thing in front of the guard booth. "You know, it's not as cool as people told me it would be."

"Good afternoon, Aarashi, Surudoi." I stayed down until Mazaa passed their cards back, then stood back up. "Well, you can't expect them to do too much on the very first day of the Academy, can you? Most of the kids don't know much about chakra; certainly, the non-clan kids don't. Or maybe you're just too smart?"

"Probably," I agreed, smiling. "See ya later!"

"Take care."

She beamed and waved as we walked through the gates. On the first day, the younger kids got out around one in the afternoon, so most people were finishing up their lunches rather than milling about on the streets. We could've found a restaurant to go to, but by the time we were seated most of the workers would be on their lunch breaks, and nobody wanted to be the jerk who interrupted that. The people at the cafes, though, would just be finishing their breaks. That's where everybody went after lunch, anyway. Hell, it was more like lunch was where people went before a café, you dig? I couldn't imagine finishing a day without a hot cup of chai and some sandesh, but lunch was totally negotiable.

"Whaddaya want to eat, butch?" Surudoi asked , looking down at me. I hummed thoughtfully and looked around, before turning back to them and shrugging. "Stubborn as usual, I see. How about you, Ara?"

"Um, I don't know if I'm hungry. Do you just want to grab a coffee?" Auntie glanced down at me, then quickly corrected, "A coffee and a chai for Little Miss Ninja, that is."

'Fuck. Coffee-blocked again, I see. Well, they'll take it all back once I grow up and I drink so much coffee it's literally flowing through my veins.'

Or maybe that was why they didn't want me drinking coffee in the first place? I was pretty sure they knew about addiction here; maybe they didn't want to jettison me onto the fast track. After all, there was a certain vibe that coffee-fanatics gave off, even if they hadn't been allowed to have any yet.

"Sure thing," Surudoi agreed. "What's that one place with the killer tart?"

"That really old one? By the smith?" Auntie frowned and bit her lip. "Um, Hiruki, I think. You mean the one with the deck, right?"

"Yeah, I think it's Hiruki. Is that alright with you, Hinoishie?" I nodded at Surudoi, and they smirked down at me. "Cool. If you're good, I'll buy you coffee jelly."

"Surudoi, I would move a mountain grain by grain all the way to Iwa if it meant I would get coffee jelly." I held their black gaze with my own orange one until they snorted and looked away. "You lose. Again."

"I did. Tell you what- I'll buy you ice cream with your jelly, in honor of your terrifying little baby glare. Congrats, I guess?"

"One day," Auntie laughed, "that 'terrifying little baby glare is going to be a terrifying… big mercenary gaze, and you won't be laughing then. Neither will I, I guess."

"Not a mercenary. A scientist, maybe. Or a mobster?" I paused and thought on it for a moment. "Yeah. A terrifying big mobster glare. Is this our place?" They followed my finger to a slightly rickety-looking wooden building on the riverfront, a couple shops down from the clan smith.

"Yeah. Yeah, Hiruki." We walked inside and sat down at a charmingly worm wooden table with some condiments and an ashtray. Soon enough, a pretty young woman sidled up to our table and quietly took our order; two coffees and a piece of honey toast for the shithead adults in my life, and a cup of their spiciest chai and some coffee jelly with their most expensive ice cream on top.

"So, what's it's like, being Konoha's first mob boss Academy student?" Auntie asked, once we got all our food. I took a hot, hot sip from my chai and frowned at the table contemplatively, trying to pretend my face didn't feel like it was melting off.

"Boring. All Iruka-sensei did was tell us what chakra is and yell at the loud kids." Auntie hummed and drank from her coffee as I tried to think of something else to say. "I liked his scar though. Right across his face." I drew my fingers across the bridge of my nose, like I was trying to pantomime it. "Very cool. I don't know who he's trying to fool with that ponytail, though."

"That's pretty much every Academy teacher, isn't it?" Surudoi snickered. "Forty-somethings acting like they're nineteen."

"I meant he looks like he wants to be a Nara. He's actually pretty young. Probably is nineteen, now that I think about it." I put my spoon in my jelly to take a bite, then paused. "Since when did you go to the Academy? You're not a ninja."

"Yeah, I think I would've remembered seeing a cute face like that if you'd been in the Academy," Auntie said, smirking.

"Stop. Auntie, how come you don't wear a forehead protector if you're a ninja?" I deflected before Surudoi could say something gross. "Did you drop out?"

"Something like that." She grimaced and scratched at her neck, glancing at the napkin dispenser. "I did graduate. I left my genin team before I could get chūnin, though. The ninja life wasn't really for me, I guess."

"It took you," uh, the Academy took… "six years to get that?"

Auntie laughed dryly. "Mostly I was there because your mom was too. By the time I graduated, I had friends that I was sticking around for instead. Actually, I'm pretty sure she only joined for some girl a couple years older than her. Uh, you know—" She grimaced again. "On second thought, you probably don't."

All of a sudden, the atmosphere at the table got really uncomfortable. Surudoi had drawn his face into some kind of long wince, and Auntie looked like she was going through a micro depressive episode. I'd never been good with nuance, but a about year fully aware and present in this world was enough for even me to tell that whoever this was was dead. Probably a friend, too, or they would have said it outright.

Auntie sipped her coffee and made a face. "I think mine's gone cold," she sighed, even though we hadn't been here that long and my chai was still warm. "Hey, butch, how about we head back to your place?"

"Sure. I guess." I finished my jelly and got out of my seat. "Let's go."

The burbling of the river seemed to wash away the weird tension as we walked. Right by the steps to our place, Auntie sucked her teeth and wiped a hand down her face. "Sorry, Hinoishie. About earlier, I mean."

"It's cool." I patted her hand, then Surudoi's just in case he felt bad too. "I get it."

Surudoi snorted and tugged at my hair gently. "You're too calm, kid. I probably would've had a tantrum if this happened to me when I was four."

"What did I tell you? I'm very smart."

Dad was sitting at the kitchen table reading a gardening magazine and eating something (fried rice? It smelled like fried rice.) when we stepped in. Without looking up, he set the magazine down and brushed some rice off his shirt before smiling at me somewhat apologetically. "Hi, Ina."

"Hi Dad." I pulled my shoes off and smiled back. "How was your day?"

"Very good, thank you" he said, picking me up and planting a kiss on my forehead. "How was school?"

"Boring. Is that fried rice?"

"Yep. We stopped by that Akimichi place. Bought some for you too." He set me back down and patted my head, before frowning at the wall that separated the kitchen and the family room. "I think Mom has the bag with yours in it. Go ahead and ask her," he proposed, giving me a gentle push towards the doorway.

I stepped inside and spotted Mom sitting on the couch with a paper bag to her left, a book on her hands, and a toddler in her lap. As I stepped in, she looked up and smiled softly before turning to rummage through the bag.

"Hi, Mom." I climbed onto the couch and pulled Konohamaru off of her. "Hi, Konohamaru." He giggled and tugged at my jacket happily. "What have you been up to?"

"Mommy read book," he burbled. "Bad book."

"Oh yeah? What book?"

"The Love Suicide at Amijima," Mom answered, trading him for a takeout box. "I'm not sure he gets it."

"You're not actually reading it to him, are you? Isn't he too young?" I opened the box and took the fork she handed me. "Even I don't really get it."

"Well, you're only four. And I'm not reading it to him so much as he demands to see it, then gets mad when there's no pictures."

"Bad book," Konohamaru repeated.

"Don't let him eat your rice. He has his own box," Mom said, pulling him back in her lap and tucking a brown lock of hair behind her ear. "How was school?"

"Boring." It struck me that I didn't know how to say any synonyms for boring. Dull, drab, bland; none of them. Did they make thesauruses for little kids? I probably needed one. "Isn't it supposed to be fun?"

"Not really. I mean, it's school, you know? But you're a clan kid, so you'll probably know a lot of the stuff they're teaching you. It gets interesting in your second year, though. That's when you start taijutsu."

"Iruka-sensei said we were doing taijutsu in a few months, though."

She snorted and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, if you can call stretching and doing laps taijutsu. Anyway, you're going to be getting a tutor, so don't worry about being bored."

Wait, what? This was the first time I'd heard about a tutor. "Why? Am I already doing bad in school?"

"No, no. Don't worry about that. It's just that we..." She paused and frowned. "It was decided that since you're such a smart cookie, teaching you extra stuff and having you go to school wouldn't be too much for you. It's only stuff you wouldn't learn there, anyway. Literature, religion, things like that. I doubt it'll be heavy on the religion, though. That sort of thing hasn't-" She huffed as Konohamaru climbed off of her and onto the floor to have some grand toddler adventure. "We don't really teach religion anymore. You'll probably just read old books."

"Old books? Like yours?"

"Boring old books. Mine are cap-" She took on a thoughtful expression, like she was thinking about how to express something. "My books aren't boring, okay?"

"You're just saying that because you can't come up with a reason why they're not."

"No, I'm saying that because I can't explain it to a four-year-old. Don't you have homework to do?"

My pride demanded that I tell her that I was fourteen, but thankfully logic overcame it and I opted to blow a raspberry at her instead. She rolled her eyes and I hopped off the couch, since I'd clearly worn out my welcome.

"We don't get homework in the first year," I told her, as I walked out of the room.

'And I could totally have gotten it,' I added on silently. But I had to at least sort of pretend to be a little kid, and reading classic literature was hardly conducive to that. Maybe one day, though.

Well, would you look at that? It's a new chapter! And it's an actual chapter, not just an apology note. How novel!

Anyway, sorry for the hiatus. I'm back now, at least. There wasn't much to change, but I did make some pretty major changes, so I'm going to list them here:

Kōmori is now Hinoishie. I'm not actually sure why I named her Kōmori, but I do have a reason for Hinoishie. Since Konohamaru is named after the village, I sort of ran with the patriotic theme and named Hinoishie after the Will of Fire. Or, rather, I literally named her "Will of Fire." It's a little long, but so is Konohamaru. I imagine they were going for a sort of patriotic theme with their kids, since they're the Hokage's grandchildren. Thus, we have one named after the Will of Fire, and the other is named after the village itself.

Tabiki and Sasayaki are now Kuma and Kiku respectively. The names are kind of similar, but I do have a reason for them. It's not directly plot-related, but I do want to keep them a secret for now, so... spoilers? They're also both still trans, in case you were curious.

I guess this is plot-related, but it's not really a spolier, so I'll go ahead and tell you: Hinoishie doesn't become fully aware of herself until just after Konohamaru's birth. It was a gradual thing, so she doesn't quite realize it, but that's why I'm starting at the Academy rather than birth. Quite frankly, I think describing the main character's birth has been overdone. Like, creative freedom or whatever, but we get it. It's wet, it's slimy, and being a baby sucks.

Speaking of names, some of the ones mentioned in the chapter clearly aren't Japanese. This is because... well, I just don't think it's realistic for an entire continent to share two cultures. So, I gave the countries their own cultures, then regions, then it bled here and there where populations might have changed or moved. Konoha was literally a bunch of clans joining together, and I figured the other villages aren't that far off, so logically those clans' cultures would follow along. And those cultures would differ depending on where the clan originated, so villages are basically a melting pot of cultures, right? It's not gonna be a huge deal, but I figured I should get that out of the way.

That's about it for updates, I think. Once again, sorry about the absence. I promise I won't let it happen again! Or I'll do my best, anyway. Constructive criticism is, as always, greatly appreciated, and follows/favorites earn you my eternal gratitude. I hope you all had a happy holiday, and that your New Years are even better. Thanks for reading!