As team 7 headed to the tower to report their latest mission complete, Sakura shuddered as she felt cold eyes glued to her back. She'd been noticing these stares more and more as she started hanging around with Naruto, and they bothered her more the more she got to know him. Naruto could be a bit annoying, but he really was the kindest boy ever. They reached the tower, and Kakashi stepped forward to give Iruka-Sensei their report. Sakura's thoughts turned to a question she'd been mulling over for a while. Naruto had been dealing with undeserved hatred his entire life, and a bit of bullying and boy troubles had been enough to turn her into a bitch, so Naruto couldn't really be as forgiving as he seems right? Without her conscious control, Sakura turned to Naruto and the question spilled from her mind to her mouth.
"Why don't you hate the villagers Naruto?"
"Because they're ignorant".
"Ignorance! That's no excuse."
"No! Listen, it's, it's like a bowl of ramen"
"Ramen?" Kakashi interjected
'Yeah, see, if I saw a lovely bowl that proclaimed itself to be Ramen, I would really, really want it. But if somebody told me it wasn't really ramen- just vegetable soup pretending- I wouldn't want anything to do with that bowl, even though it looks like my favorite food, especially because it looks like my favorite food, it would feel like a betrayal.
Now imagine that someone pushes me into the bowl, a drop lands on my tongue and I discover that it really is Ramen, even if it has vegetables added. Now I'll eat the soup and even like it, but it will never be my favorite.
Now, all this time that I and other Ramen-lovers have spent hating the vegetable ramen, the ramen chef knows that there actually aren't any veggies in it at all. He ( or she, the world could always use more ramen chefs) slipped a sealed bag of vegetables into the same bowl as the ramen in order to smuggle them out of his fridge under the health-conscious eye of his daughter, so the bowl holds both ramen and veggies but the two never touched. So, the ramen really is super awesome best ramen that ever existed ramen, but only the super expert ramen chefs know that, and everyone else thinks its just vegetable soup and won't go near it!"
"Huh?" Sakura knew her face was twisted comically out of shape. Confused was not a good look on her- thats why she studied so hard.
"I'm Ramen! No veggies have ever touched me! But I don't blame the villagers, cause I really don't like veggie soup."
"That, makes sense" Iruka had been listening since Kakashi interjected, and the light of dawning comprehension in his voice only confused Sakura more.
"It does?"
"I'm so proud Naruto! You really grasped the intricacies of complex metaphor!"
The blank look on Naruto's face revealed that he did not, in fact, understand complex metaphor. Sakura was still too befuddled to lord her knowledge over him.
"Hnn, Dobe." Sasuke was much better at hiding confusion.