Unlike the widely spread impressions, I don't even hate people that much. How much hate could a twelve year old have toward the world, when he hasn't even seen hate in others yet?

It has only been five years since I've left my village and my previous lives to wither and burn. Such a brief time has passed and already I feel like an old man, musing, nursing his childhood memories and sour mistakes with a forgiving chuckle for such innocence.

Only I find no humor in the kind of mistakes and foolishness I made.

Time and perspective make a strange pair of lovers; they give either distance or proximity to the past, putting grave and petty things behind us all. It took some time and much experience, but I learned to smile once again, to enjoy the big and little things. And realize that I had already lost everything, so how much more could I lose by trying to reach for the moon?

Time and perspective make a strange pair of lovers, because sometimes, they have the most violent of altercations.

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Lately, I've been waiting for something.

For someone, actually. According to the lovely Miss Feng, my attention is lax, as is my teaching. And she's right, it's barely as if my own students were doing the teaching. Repitions I made were often remarked, dates were forgotten and my gaze always drifted to the glass paneled doors while I recited my lectures.

One afternoon, finally, Miss Feng knocked lightly at my classroom's door; there was a man wishing to see me, rather urgently. I readied myself to see an angry and concerned father questioning my teaching abilities, and in walked Naruto Uzumaki.

I can't tell how many times I had played a similar scene in my head for the past few years, expecting joy, tears and merriment… before chiding myself for such fantastic delirium. Such wishful thinking.

My immediate reaction was less comely; my eyes widened as I literally dropped my two heavy books on my right foot.

Naruto simply stared back at me unmovingly, his face white as chalk. He blinked several times without saying a word, cleared his throat. "are you sure this is the psychology department?" he faintly asked my confused assistant.

- Yes, yes this is Mr. Inoue, he's the-

- Oh no that's alright, we've met.

I cleared my throat.
- Miss Feng, would you mind giving us a moment?

For a while after she left, Naruto and I simply looked at each other, scrutinizing our every detail. I drank in so much of his presence that for a moment, I thought I would drown.

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