~ Gentleness ~

On your first day, you accidentally broke down a door.

Kenjirou-San had scolded you for that and kept telling you to be careful when pushing them open. Also, that, when a door was locked, you should realise it and leave it be instead of pushing until the wood cracked. Most people couldn't do that, anyways, he had said with an exhausted sigh.

Another two doors had to be broken until you finally got the hang of it, though.

Careful. You had to be careful with everything, lest you wished to break it. It didn't take a genius to figure out that you were stronger than everyone else, despite your lanky and lean frame- that uncanny strength was something that actually put you at a disadvantage when it came to trivial chores and errands.

But you were doing better. You could finally learn how to eat with chopsticks, since you didn't snap them in half right away.

Slow. Not that you were the fastest thinker, but you had to take everything even more slowly if you wanted to get it right. It felt like your hands didn't quite do what you wanted them to and soon, you found out that this kind of thing was called 'clumsiness'. So you stuck to thinking about what to do for minutes before actually doing it, sometimes staring off into space while wondering if it was worth it. This kind of behaviour seemed to irritate other people, but you could never quite fathom as to why that was.

Drawing was something you could do quickly, though. Surprisingly, you were good at it.

Quiet. In the almost empty house, it didn't feel right to interrupt the silence. Not that there was much to say, either way. You spent your days thinking about this and that, finding that none of the things in your head held enough importance to them to be voiced aloud. Or at least, they probably were far from interesting to most people.

At least, you never spoke out of turn. Because you only ever answered when asked something, others started to think that you were dumb.

Polite. It wasn't like Kenjirou-San had a lot of visitors. But when there were people coming over, you always found yourself exhibiting only the best of manners. You bowed extra deep to compensate for your awkwardly tall body, you greeted formally with little obnoxious emotion and held up casual conversation just as boring as expected of you. When someone asked, you were a foster child in the Tateyama household and your name was Konoha. Frankly, that was about everything you knew about yourself, anyways.

After all, there was an obvious gap in your memory, leading up to whom you were today.

Kind. Society valued patient and kind people, it seemed. In all those TV shows that you watched in the afternoons, the guys liked the kindest girls most, and the girls, in turn, liked the kindest guys, even though they sometimes got led astray. This discovery made you wonder if you were a kind person, too, and if there would be someone to like you one day. Your lack of interaction with people made it hard to determine.

And one day, you asked if you could go out to play.

Emotional. Sure, your face and voice hardly reflected your feelings, but that didn't mean that you weren't just as sentimental as everyone else. Admittedly, there were a lot of things you didn't understand yet, but you knew the joy that you felt when you finally managed to write your name or when you got to eat your favourite kind of barbecue, as well as the unexplainable sadness when your favourite character from an anime died or when you realised that there was no more ice-cream left in the freezer. It felt only natural to cry when the team you were on while playing with the neighbourhood kids lost. They were always a bit shocked because, really, you were so much older than them (you supposed) so you shouldn't be crying. But when you were sad, you just couldn't help but let out your tears.

The children would hug you, then, and tell you that it was just a game. You only wished that you could be a good loser as well. You felt like you had betrayed them every time.

But, finally, you just had to be all of these things to function properly alongside everyone else. You knew that you weren't the same as them, yet you didn't really see any reason for thinking too much about who you were and why you were that way. Instead, you'd rather occupy yourself with taking a nap, never seeing a single dream to haunt your mind.

'Gentle' was what you wanted to be, ultimately.

You supposed that it was because there was so much strength piled up inside of you that there was no need for you to become any stronger. Instead, you wanted to be someone who didn't need to use any force to reach a goal. You'd be patient and supportive, if that was what the situation required, and afterwards, you would just stand by and enjoy the day.

There was still too much left for you to discover in this world- you knew that.

With a tiny smile, you looked up at the sky and wondered if this world didn't like a gentle person better than a strong one.

Maybe those two were the same.

A/N: Second person! I don't know, I wanted to do it like this. It's a choppy read, though. Mostly because my writing is very choppy, lately. I 'unno.

Ah, my baby~. I seriously think that Konoharuka is like, the most percious thing to exist. I love him so much, it's not even healthy.

Also, you've probably noticed it already, but my headcanon for Konoha is that he is a huge thinker ["tada tada kangaeteku atama" aside] and only seems so slow because he has too much going on in his head. And also that he can't read really well and only knows Hiragana.