They say I'm taking the easy road, doing the behind-the-scenes work instead of being where I'm really needed - out there, on the battle grounds. I know what they used to think of me. There's the poor orphaned boy, they'd say, behind my back or sometimes to my face. There's the soft, emotional, weak, teacher. Is what they now think. So much of this shinobi world is weighted by rank, and as a chuunin, I wouldn't say I'm noteworthy. Hell, starving mercenaries wouldn't even bother killing me, my head is worth so little. Despite my non-prestigious heritage and lack of a bounty on my head, I'm not shying from death at any rate. Rank means nothing when you're lying cold and lifeless, struck down and robbed of your future by either bad luck or miscalculation. The hand that dealt the blow and the circumstances of your death hardly seem to matter when the results are the same. I know. And I would know- I've seen enough of it. Still, they hand their children over to me with that look, you know, that knowing look that some day not too far from now, these smiling young kids will outrank me, and I'll still be here, an unremarkable chuunin.
So here I am. I've traded the life of blood, guts, and glory, for this worn out classroom and its occupants who would rather not have gotten out of bed today. Some of the smarter ones, I know, think I'm here because I fucked up some mission and was sent here by the Hokage as punishment, and certainly, it feels that way sometimes… but this is where I belong. In the shinobi world there's no such thing as childhood… there's infancy, and then there's adulthood. Somewhere in the middle, I come in. As a teacher it's my job to mould these young innocents into hard, trained, assassins, because that's what they'll be – killers. Call it what you like. For whatever foreseeable and unforeseeable reason, there will be deaths. They warn you, when you start teaching, about the problem kids and the things that can and will go wrong during kunai and shuriken practice, but they can't prepare you for when your former students come back to the village injured, or worse, in a body bag. That's the world of the shinobi and my existence doesn't change a thing about it. But I'd like to believe that it can. It may sound cliché, but these kids will be the soldiers and leaders of the future. If I can do one good thing and give back some of their stolen childhood, perhaps maybe I'm not just a worthless chuunin after all.
"Iruka-sensei!" Hmm? I must have spaced out.
"Can I go home yet? I've finished copying this chapter 10 times already-dattebayo!" Really? I must have been out of it for a while.
"Sure, Naruto, go ahead."
The real battle, the battle for peace, is won with the head and the heart.