"The innocence of childhood is like the innocence of animals." ~Clint Eastwood


TWO

Ripples and Eddies


The first time Uzumaki Naruto saw a dead girl was in the village's playground. He didn't quite know yet that the girl had already died at the time (although in all fairness she had been standing and breathing and appearing, for all intents and purposes, very much alive), and she was smiling at him – an arm stretched towards him and a dainty little hand held open – and asking if he wanted to be her friend.

It had taken Naruto an inordinate amount of time to understand her question, to comprehend the implications and wonder if the girl's intentions were genuine. After all, Naruto didn't lack friends because nobody offered – he lacked friends because he'd been offered friendship many times and those offers all turned out to be fake.

He was the common toy of the village children, and they all found it hilarious that he kept believing that their offers of friendship were genuine, because who would want to be friends with a demon?

"Why would you want to be friends with me?" he asked the strange girl, his demeanor leaking suspicion.

He'd been expecting her to say something about loneliness, to say that either he or she felt lonely so she wanted to be friends with him. He'd heard it all before from the kids who made fun of him. From the kids who offered him something they never wanted to give in the first place. 'Because you look lonely,' some of them said, or 'because I'm lonely.' It was always about loneliness with the fake offers – he didn't know if that was a trend or if he really looked that pathetic – and although he foolishly fell for it every time before, this time he was a touch more wary. He didn't know who she was, hadn't met her before, and he never saw her play with the other kids in the playground. This was his first time meeting her, his first time seeing her, even, and she was ignoring all the other gaping kids around them and smiling at him and offering him friendship as if she really wanted to be friends with him. Him. The demon child and abomination. The monster of Konoha. And that can't be true at all, can it?

A small (large, very large) part of him, however, still hoped that she was being truthful. It was the pathetic part of him, he supposed, the sad and optimistic one that was admittedly stupid and shameless, that hoped she would see something in him worth being friends with. Something that wasn't the monster that everyone else saw.

What she said in reply surprised him.

"Well, I guess you can say it's networking."

He frowned. "Netwhat?"

Her soft smile didn't falter, didn't evolve into the usual sneer that the other kids did when they realized he didn't know difficult words. "Networking," she repeated slowly. "Meaning, making connections beforehand so you can use such connections in times of need. It's simple, really. I want to be friends with you because you will be the Hokage one day. I want powerful friends."

And the way she said it was so blunt, so honest and no-nonsense. She didn't talk about loneliness or wanting to help him. In fact, she didn't talk about emotions at all. But for all that her words were cold and business-like, her words also seemed… kind. Like she understood that he didn't want her to play his emotions against him. And she just smiled there and said that he will become Hokage one day as if it were the most obvious truth and that doubting it would be stupid. She sounded so sure… no, that would imply that she was reassuring him of something, and her tone insinuated that reassurances were unnecessary. Like… like the sun setting and how people didn't need to be reassured that it will rise again because it was… natural. That was the word. She sounded so natural. She just said it like the way others would talk about natural things. Nice weather. I'm going to water the plants. You will be Hokage one day.

Her honesty and faith in him was refreshing.

Naruto couldn't help it: he laughed.

When he was done laughing she was sporting a full grin, her grey eyes sparkling with mirth. "So," she said, "Does that mean you accept?"

He nodded excitedly, unable to wipe the ecstatic smile off his face. "Of course! And I'll even make you my right-hand woman when I'm Hokage!"

She chuckled at that. "I just realized we don't know each other's names."

Naruto paused, then smiled and scratched his head awkwardly. "I'm Uzumaki Naruto, and I'll become Hokage one day, believe it!"

"I believe it, don't worry," she giggled at his enthusiasm. He replied with a sheepish laugh. With a playful bow she added, "Hoshino Rei at your service, Hokage-kun."

And so a friendship was born between them, a friendship that Naruto knew would last forever, with that absolute certainty only ten-year-old children can have.