Naruto watched carefully from his window as his parents went through some basic taijutstu katas with his three siblings - Mito, Naruko, and Meenma. Naruto would've loved to have someone go through some katas with him, but his parents never showed him anything. Ever since his first birthday, his parents mostly neglected him and focused on his younger siblings
Eventually, he taught himself to read, and read through half of his fathers library over the course of a couple months, burying himself into books for hours on end, while his parents and siblings were blissfully asleep. Eventually he reached the section of the library detailing seals. There were a few books for beginners, no doubt meant for his siblings as soon as they learned to read. Naruto took to seals very well, and began
His siblings were learning to fight before they learned to read, mostly because their parents were concerned that someone would try to kidnap them. Naruto doubted that they would care if someone kidnapped him.
Naruto vastly preferred fuinjutsu and ninjutsu to taijutsu, but he couldn't use those to avoid civilians attacking him on the streets. This happened more often that he liked to think, but he usually outran them using chakra, ducked into an alleyway, and used Earth Style: Hiding Like a Mole Technique. Shinobi never attacked him, not because they didn't hate him, but because they feared the wrath of his father. Naruto knew that if they ever learned about how little his father cared about him, he would have to leave the Village Hidden in the Leaves in order to survive.
As it was, Naruto got by. He sold seals to Higurashi's Weapons under a henge, and used the money to buy food for himself.
Naruto walked into Higurashi's Weapons under the henge of a short, inconspicuous, old man, hoping to sell some seals.
"You're under a henge," said Mr. Higurashi as he walked in the door.
Naruto smiled in an amused manner. "Indeed I am."
"You should note," said Mr. Higurashi, "that Academy students are only allowed to purchase blunted shuriken and kunai, and sealing scrolls."
"Well, how much are the sealing scrolls?" Asked Naruto.
"Five hundred yen each,"
"And the explosive tags?"
"One hundred yen each," said Mr. Higurashi, "but academy stude-"
"I'm not an academy student in disguise," said Naruto, "and I'm actually here to sell seals."
Mr. Higurashi looked surprised, but quickly got over it.
"So… how much are you selling them for? Can you please drop the henge?"
"I'll take fifty percent of the cuts, and no."
He always had a catche of money and sealing supplies on him, in case he was kicked out of the house. As Naruto's sealing progressed, he eventually placed several summoning seals around the village, and placed a corresponding one on himself. The civilians had made him paranoid, if anything got in a meter radius of his heart that he didn't have a special counterseal on, he would instantly be teleported to a seal located in one of his underground hideouts. He also used this as an alternative to escaping using the earth style: hiding like a mole technique.
Naruto created many underground hideouts. His hideouts were a dozen cubic meters of space where he placed his valuables, a reverse summoning seal, and some medical supplies. He created them using earth style techniques, and the hideouts usually consisted of a tiled stone floor, wooden ceiling, and dirt walls, with many support beams holding the ceiling up. He placed light-emitting seals on the ceiling, heat-emitting seals on the floor, as well as chakra suppressing and byankugan blocking seals all over the outside of the hideout. He even designed the hideout to look like boulder from the outside, so if someone else dug deep enough into the ground, they would just find a large, stone, boulder-shaped object.
Naruto tried to keep this one of his trump cards, as he wanted to seem weak, so people would underestimate him. Weak people were not threats. Weak people were not evil demon containers. Weak people were didn't know how to reverse summon themselves as a means of escape or have hidden bases located all over the village.
His siblings weren't much better in the eyes of the public, and, from what he could see, were beaten severely whenever the villagers managed to corner them. Naruto wondered about what caused this endless hatred, but he eventually reasoned that it was because they disliked his mother, Kushina, but because she was too strong for them to hurt, they went after her children.
Naruto helped his siblings as much as he could without revealing his abilities to them, be that shoving his siblings behind a trash can and giving the mob false directions, making clones of them and then making them run a different way, or sending out a pulse of chakra to notify nearby ANBU.
Naruto's pre-academy days were full of mastering the art of sealing, improving his hidden bases, escaping mobs, and avoiding his parents.
But it was not to last...