I knew from the time that Dad told me that I had to attend the academy that it would be a drag. The other children my age are all so excited to be shinobi, so excited to have superpowers. I wonder how many of them are aware of the cost. None of them probably - don't even know the cost really.
Our teacher's name is Nao-sensei. Which I remember for all of a minute and a half before I mark it as 'vaguely important' and put it aside until I need it. I'm not sure when I'll need it, but names are always good to know. Mom whispered that it was a good way to pretend to care and Dad agreed with her (by smiling because he was pretending he couldn't hear her).
Even with Choji sitting here I wonder who it was that Dad was making strange remarks about meeting. Presumably it's the Ino of the Ino-Shika-Cho, but I've never met them. I'm not even sure if the Ino of the group is a girl or a boy.
Maybe the blond boy at the front of the class? Maybe that girl with blonde hair already surrounded by other little girls? Maybe the girl with pink hair? It's hard to tell because usually a kid looks like their parents, but not always.
Like the family from this morning. They were weird. Their dad... Shoichi? was super weird. Maybe he was just stressed? I can't be sure really. Either way the kids all looked pretty different, only the oldest kid looked much like his dad, and even then, they didn't look that similar.
Maybe it's because clan kids look more like their parents? Like Choji looks like his dad (expect that he has a different hair colour) and I look like my Dad (minus the scarring) and I don't remember hearing about a Sakurai clan. I'll hold onto the idea and see how well it sticks, three points of information really isn't enough to draw a conclusion.
Speaking of the family from before, the girl, Asa? Sano? Something like that. She's sitting the row ahead of me. She seemed really nervous considering she has two brothers already attending, if anything I should be the one who's nervous since I know nothing about attending the academy.
Funnily enough, much like myself, she's not exactly paying attention. Admittedly the only thing that's happened so far was the blond boy was late. (he's probably not the Ino of the group, most clans would never let their kid be late - though each clan is different so who knows. Mom would never let me be late.) Sensei introduced himself and told us that we'll mostly be doing book learning for the next six months. (Not in those exact words of course.)
"Alright class, now we'll each take a turn to introduce yourselves. Say your full name, and one interesting fact about yourself."
I would love to take a nap right now, but I think it would be best if I waited a few days to pretend I'm a good student first. Sensei seems like a new teacher so he might not know that Naras always sleep through lessons.
"My name is Ino Yamanaka and an interesting fact about myself is that I can do a handstand for five minutes!" After an appropriate pause for oohing and aahing the class moves on. I guess I found my Ino.
I'm not entirely sure we are compatible at this point in time. I'll give it a shot of course, but at eight years old we are still going to change a lot before we are actually on a team together. So it's not the end of the world if we can't be friends yet.
I mostly zone out for most of it. Obviously I'm cataloguing all the names like I forgot to during the assembly, but I'm not particularly listening until it gets to the girl from before.
"My name is Asano Sakurai and I have three siblings." The kids from civilian families don't see what's so special, neither for the clan kids really. "Both of my parents reached the rank of chunin." She adds, and the clan kids take a moment to pause. Her parents aren't famous, or jonin, so she's not likely to end up on teams with any of them unless she gets top marks. Nonetheless, it's hard for female ninja to have children. Having three siblings is a pretty interesting fact to the clan kids at least.
It passes around to a few more kids before it's my turn.
"My name is Shikamaru Nara and I can remember everything I hear," I lie. It's not that I have anything against the kids in my class, but it doesn't set a good precedent as a shinobi to be overly truthful. And it's not far from the truth. Eventually will be able to remember everything I hear, once I master the Shadow Archive, officially the lamest clan technique of all time.