Katsumi woke up obscenely early that morning and for good reason. She was finally moving out of the orphanage. She hopped up out of bed, using her unnaturally good night-vision to maneuver around the dark bedroom to gather the remainder of her belongings.

For the most part, she packed up all of her things the night before. But she had left certain objects out because she had to, you know, use them the next day. She threw her hair into a messy braid for the day. She looked at a clock by her bed. 6:30 am. Naruto was coming by at 7 to help her move everything before the streets got super crowded and the day got exponentially hotter.

Katsumi flitted around the room like a hummingbird on amphetamines; brushing her teeth as she systematically packed up the rest of her things into a large bag near the door. None of her roommates woke up to wish her farewell which she was fine with. Most of them were jealous of her expedited freedom anyways so she didn't take their cold-shoulders personally. She finished packing with five minutes to spare before hauling her stuff to the front door to be moved across town. Kagome was waiting for her with a peculiar look on her face.

"Did you pack your toothbrush?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Your favorite sandals?"

"Yes, Kagome."

"Did you—" Katsumi closed the distance between them with wrapping her skinny arms around her caretaker's waist tightly.

"I'm fine, Kagome." The woman in question crushed the child to her in one of the tightest hugs Katsumi had ever been in. Not that she was complaining.

"I know," she sighed. "Come by to visit once a week so I know you're okay, alright?" Her voice was tightening with what Katsumi thought was restrained tears. She nodded against her, still hugging the only parent she'd ever known.

A knocking sounded out making them jump. Kagome laughed at Katsumi's startled expression and hugged her one more time before letting the girl go. "That must be Naruto," Katsumi said, awkwardly, not really knowing how to deal with the influx of strong emotion.

If she was being honest, she was quite conflicted at her decision to fly the nest, mostly because of Kagome. The woman had taken care of her since she was a baby and did one hell of a job. She never went to bed hungry, she always had a decent place to sleep, and usually had hot showers. It wasn't a bad set-up to say the least. She loved Kagome like she thought most kids loved their moms. But, it was time for her to leave her childhood behind in favor of the life of a shinobi. It was hard work, but it would most definitely be worth it to be strong enough to protect her and everyone else she cared about. It was time for her to go. Katsumi knew it and so did Kagome.

Kagome reached behind Katsumi to open the door in order to welcome her friend in, which was surprising considering her general dislike of Katsumi's friends. Katsumi figured since she was moving out, that Kagome would let it slide. Naruto tumbled in, entirely too bright and loud for such an early hour but that was to be expected. He greeted Kagome somewhat politely to which she gave him a strained smile in return. He turned to Katsumi.

"Is that everything, Katsu-chan?" He gestured to her three overstuffed bags. She nodded and hauled one over her shoulder. The weight making her arms hurt already. Thank Kami she didn't have any furniture to bring since all of it was property of the orphanage, but still, the bag was heavy as hell. Naruto had made a clone to carry the third bag, of which Katsumi was intensely thankful for.

She gave her caretaker one last glance and bid her farewell. "I'll come by on Sunday if that's alright with you." Kagome nodded and ushered them out the door.

"Now you both hurry up and get her things moved before the streets get too busy, okay?" Katsumi and Naruto both agreed then headed down the front porch steps, ignoring the beginnings of an ache in their arms. Katsumi was free.


Katsumi moved into the second tiny bedroom Naruto had in his small apartment. She didn't have much in the way of physical objects but Naruto claimed the house had enough for the both of them. He was right. He had all the standard furniture and had plastered movie and ramen posters haphazardly along the walls, as well as random trinkets lying around without any order on different flat surfaces. She thought it was messy. He called it 'character'. They agreed to disagree.

The living room looked hastily cleaned like he only tidied it up the morning of. He probably did. His tiny two bedroom apartment had one bathroom, a kitchenette, and a small living space. Which, all things considered, was way more space than she was used to. She had her own room and only had to fight one person for dibs on the bathroom, which was a huge plus if you asked her.

The kitchen and pantry were depressing though. It was full of junk food and instant ramen which wasn't surprising in the least. Of course, now that the both of them were living there, they had to buy more food. Katsumi refused to subsist solely on junk no matter how good it tasted.

Once she made more money, she could get her own place. But until then, she was just gonna have to bunk with Naruto which she was fine with for the most part. After they finished organizing her room, a task that took less than an hour, they sat on his old couch and talked about interesting topics, mainly their new team.

"What do you think of Kakashi-sensei?" Katsumi asked Naruto. He sat cross-legged and he screwed up face up in thought.

"He's really strong. I wanna be as strong as him one day," he answered, tapping his chin. "Whaddabout you?"

"He's irritating. But strong like you said. Did you see how he stopped Sasuke after you got tied to the stump?" she recounted. "It was like he was toying with us the entire time. If he wanted to, he could absolutely destroy us in, like, one hit." Naruto frowned.

"He's weird though. What was he reading?"

"No idea. Maybe we could ask him?" Naruto made a noise of agreement. Katsumi checked the clock on the wall and was happy to see that they could go into town to get some breakfast.

"Alright, Naruto. We have a couple things, including, but not limited to, grocery shopping and maybe training. I dunno. If there's anything else we need to do today, feel free to stop me at any point." She stood up from the couch and moved towards the genkan to her shoes. Naruto followed suit. "But first, let's grab some breakfast."


"No."

"Please, Katsu-chan?"

"Absolutely not."

"Why not?"

"You already have over seventy-two packs of ramen at home! And yes, I counted." Katsumi argued, placing her hand on her hip and leveling him a look. Naruto took one look at her and scoffed. She strode forward to the stall with the tomatoes and picked out a half dozen ripe ones.

"There's no such thing as too much ramen."

"Yes there is," she said, turning to narrow her eyes at him. She should've gone grocery shopping alone if this was what she was gonna get every time they visited a market. She turned back around to hand the merchant the money to pay for their vegetables. So far, she'd picked up a couple heads of lettuce and red onions, a couple pounds of protein in the form of fish and chicken, as well as a couple fruits to hold them over for the next couple weeks so that they didn't get scurvy or something. Scurvy was bad, right?

For the most part, Katsumi had never really been grocery shopping on her own. Usually, she would accompany Kagome a few times a month, so this was a learning experience. Katsumi looked down into her wallet for the remains of the grocery budget. They had done well and still had enough to grab lunch afterward. Satisfied, she placed the tomatoes in the bag and thought about what they could eat for lunch.

"Hey look over there," Naruto nudged her in the ribs. She looked up and over to where Naruto was pointing and stopped. "Sasuke-teme's over there."

'He's alone…' she felt her heart twinge in sympathy for her second teammate. He apparently had the same idea she did and was grocery shopping. His pale face was pulled in a scowl as he tried to barter with the merchant in charge of the stall selling fish.

"Naruto, could you make a couple clones to take the groceries back to the apartment? I wouldn't want anything to go bad." Happy to show off his new skill Naruto puffed out his chest. He promptly did as she asked him without any resistance.

After the two clones took off with their bags, Naruto paused. "Why aren't we taking them back ourselves?"

"Because we're going to go get lunch as a team," she strode over to Sasuke and Naruto hurried behind her though grumbling about Sasuke being a 'stuck up Uchiha'.

"Hey, Sasuke." The boy turned around and looked at the two of them, his eyes narrowing slightly.

"What do you want?" He was dismissive and readjusted his bag on his arm. Katsumi almost rolled her eyes at his attitude.

"Naruto and I were just about to go to lunch. You wanna come with us?" His eyebrows raised slightly but then furrowed.

"No."

"Let me rephrase that," she said, giving the brunette an overly saccharine smile which Naruto grimaced at. "You're coming to lunch with us. I was only asking to be polite. You don't really have a choice. Call it team bonding." With that, she experimentally grabbed his wrist and dragged him towards Ichiraku. To her immense surprise, he let himself get tugged to the ramen shop with an odd expression on his face. Counting it as a victory, all three genin plopped down on stools and waited for someone to take their order.

"So Sasuke, I was just asking Naruto his opinion on Kakashi-sensei. What do you think about him?" Looking at the menu even though she could have recited it from memory. Naruto looked at her in confusion because of it, but didn't say anything. As confident as she acted with Sasuke, she didn't know him very well and felt awkward in his presence. She honestly needed something to do with her hands to stave off her social awkwardness until she felt comfortable (or as comfortable as one could get around the prickliest Uchiha ever) around him.

The dark haired boy shrugged, staring intensely at the table. Seems like she wasn't the only awkward one. "He's strong. Really strong. Infuriating though." Katsumi snorted at his keen but brief observations. Sasuke cut his eyes at her and turned to look at his own menu.

At this point, a slender brunette teenager came over to them with a smile on her face. "Hi, Naruto-kun! Hey Katsumi-chan. Ooh, is this the third member of your team?" the civilian girl asked, eyes widening in interest. "Uchiha Sasuke-kun right?"

Sasuke opened his mouth to say something presumably rude but Katsumi cut him off. "Yeah, that's him. We're Team 7 as of yesterday," she gave her a look that said 'what can you do'. Sasuke scoffed and stared pointedly at this laminated menu.

"Ayame-nee, look at this!" Naruto exclaimed, pointing eagerly at his hitai-ate.

"So you're finally a shinobi, Naruto-kun? Tell you what, ramen's on the house in honor of the formation of Team 7," she said, ruffling his hair affectionately. Naruto whooped and started rambling off food orders. Katsumi winced at her friend's volume but said nothing. It wasn't every day that adults were kind to Naruto because of their aversion to his furry little problem. 'Are chakra foxes furry?' she thought before throwing the question out. Katsumi was glad he had good people in his life so when he got like this, she just grinned and bore it. She wouldn't be the one to burst his bubble.

Once Naruto stopped talking a mile a minute, Katsumi and, surprisingly, Sasuke placed their orders as well. By the time lunch had finished, Sasuke had genuinely laughed once which Katsumi was secretly proud of. Although it was at Naruto's expense for spilling hot broth all over his pants in an unfortunate area, Katsumi wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth. The boy was entirely too serious. He needed to have fun more. Plus, he wasn't all that bad once you got past his abrasive, perfectionistic exterior. When they parted ways, Sasuke's posture was markedly more relaxed than it had started out. His parting words were slightly sharp, but significantly more dulled than they could have been. He had a good time.

Team 7 had survived their first meal as a team which hopefully wouldn't be their last.


The rest of the day was spent training and finally painting Katsumi's new room.

"I liked the orange," Naruto called from the kitchen. Katsumi was in her room ('my room,' she thought giddily not for the first time today) painting the wall a pretty yellow color. She snorted at his comment while dragging the brush along the drywall.

"Yeah, you would. Personally, I don't want to hurt my eyes everytime I enter my room," Naruto turned on the kitchen sink and shouted something that got lost in the sound of running water. Katsumi assumed it was some quip about the color yellow but said nothing.

Until the paint dried, she was going to be sleeping on the living room couch which was fine by her. She'd been accidentally falling asleep on that couch since she was five years old so purposefully falling asleep wouldn't be much different.

They had been doing this for the past couple hours since getting back from training ground nine. The sun was beginning to set so they called it a day and dragged their sweaty, aching bodies home. Since she was the only person with some knowledge of making non-ramen foods, she was going to be making dinner that night so she wanted to finish up before then.

Naruto was being a grade-A prep chef while she worked by cutting and washing the vegetables she was going to cook. Honestly, once you got past his lax definition of clean, he was a pretty good roommate. Katsumi was happy to be living with her friend and she could tell he felt the same. Though the apartment was new to her and the freezer would leak if she didn't press it shut all the way... and the window in her room didn't close completely... she felt like, for the first time in her young life, that she was home.

"How do you feel about tempura?"


A/N: Heyyyyy this one was pretty short, not gonna lie. But I thought about these scenes in the shower and I couldn't let it go. Baby dai-nana-han is my life and I'll be damned if they don't bond. Also yes, I know that Naruto's apartment doesn't have a spare bedroom but if we were going by what Kishimoto created, Katsumi wouldn't exist so… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Thanks to everyone who's been reading and reviewing and giving me ideas. Back when I was a passive member of this site, whenever I'd read A/Ns where the authors would write something along the lines of "Every notification makes my day" I would think they were exaggerating and that it was corny. Nah, it's pretty true. I literally yell when I get a notification. I lose my mind and I love every single one of you who's given this story a read. So yeah, now that that gross bit of emotional vulnerability is done, onto the next!