Disclaimer: First Chapter
Story Start!

Kuroka didn't understand it.

For 6 months, she started her days the same way, she was made to meditate under the waterfall until Naruto told her that this portion of her training was over. She was to clear her mind, but at the same time figure out what she was going to gain from this training. She was sure that this had to accomplish something, something she was not understanding.

That was weird though.

She was a Genius at Senjutsu and using Chakra, her Youjutsu skills were in a class of their own amongst most yokai. She might be stupid to most, but when it came to techniques, fighting, and chakra, she was a genius of the highest class. She could learn techniques and gain skills at rates that put her own mother to absolute shame. In her own childhood, she had gained the skills that had taken her mother 10 years to master, and she had mastered them in a matter of weeks in her youth.

"Kuroka, come with me."

Naruto was there, watching her while she trained. When she learned that he actually watched her train from behind the waterfall, he stopped hiding and joined her in meditation as well. She couldn't imagine how boring it must be for him, since he had nothing to learn from this. He was a Senjutsu Master, his experience and skill with Meditation and clearing his mind, body, and spirit of all ill intentions and thoughts were at their ultimate level. To him, joining her meditating had to be extremely boring, and to do it for nearly 6 months had to trying on his patience.

Everyday, he just sat with her, right by her side, meditating.

"Yes Master." Kuroka muttered obediently, not at all angry that she was getting to call it quits early for the day.

She saw him wearing a towel around his waist, and he was holding one out to her as well. She blinked when she saw that despite being naked for the most part, his right arm was still surrounded by bandages that he didn't take off. She had never seen him without them before, even in his sleep be kept wearing those bandages.

"So Kuroka, tell me something, what questions plagued your mind today so far?" Naruto asked her as he led her away, and as she walked, she took her kimono off.

Now naked, she wrapped the towel around her body, covering herself enough to be considered modest while naked.

"... Why do you meditate with me nya?" Kuroka had to ask that question first. "Isn't it extremely boring for you?" She continued her line of questioning.

They were heading towards the hot springs, not just the regular one that she was expected to use for bathing, but instead the private one that Naruto and Himawari would regularly use. The one that was walled off from the one she used, which was open air. She followed Naruto into the walled off area, and she saw the water.

The water was a golden color, but also greenish.

It gave off a very pleasant scent.

"A Master is expected to wait for their student to understand their lessons." Naruto answered simply with a sparkle in his eye, as if what he was saying was some kind of hint for her. Kuroka didn't understand it though, but the scent in the air was so relaxing to her that she found herself wanting to jump right in. "Now Kuroka, it's rude to jump into the bath, first wash yourself off." Naruto told her as he put a hand on her shoulder, and sat her down on a wooden stool next to a small stream of running hot water, with a wooden bucket in front of her.

"Why is the water like that?" Kuroka asked him.

She was being allowed to ask questions, she was going to take advantage of it.

"It's Green Tea-"

"What!?"

"Or rather, this is the time of the year the roses bloom, so I add green tea leaves to the water. See, look at them Kuroka... they are almost ready to bloom. It will be any minute now." Naruto told her as he showed her the flowers at the edge of the water. She noticed that the hotsprings rose bushes growing at the side of the walls, and all of the roses were closed.

Naruto sat at the edge of the water, and allowed his feet to soak, and when Kuroka finished washing herself off, she joined him.

"They're just flowers though." Kuroka didn't understand why she was doing this instead of training.

"These roses I breed here are some of the most beautiful in the world, but for them to grow on this mountain... it takes months for them to bloom, and their lives as roses are short. They work so hard to be at their best, ever patient as they absorb nutrients from the ground. These roses that struggle to survive, only get to show their beauty for a short while." Naruto showed her, and he placed a hand on her shoulder and gestured to one of them.

Slowly, it started to open.

It went from a boring looking bud, and it along with many of the other roses, started to open their petals in unison as if by a chain reaction. These roses were the most vibrant shade of red that Kuroka had ever seen, and the way that their red petals were reflected in the golden/green water below them, as the smell of roses added to the scent of tea and honey, Kuroka felt her mind get put at ease.

"They're pretty."

"They are." Naruto agreed with her, and he sank himself into the water. "Green tea baths are not only good for the roses, but they help to detoxify the body as well. It eases the mind, heals the body, and allows us to reach a more relaxed state." Naruto explained as he got into the bath, and he gestured to Kuroka to join.

She did so with far less suspicion than before, now more relaxed as she just watched the rose petals gently be pushed around by the wind.

"They spend all their lives... preparing for their deaths."

"No, a rose spends it's entire life, waiting for the day it can show how beautiful it is. These roses that struggled, I think they are the most beautiful ones." Naruto just watched the flowers, and he poured himself a cup of sake. He didn't give any of that to Kuroka, considering her age and the fact he himself didn't believe she should drink until she was at least 20, but he enjoyed the sweet taste of it.

Kuroka leaned back and sank deeper into the water, she looked at Naruto's eyes and saw his blue eyes reflected the gold of the water and the red of the roses. Both colors conflicted with his eyes beautifully, and her gaze was drawn back to the roses.

"It worked so hard... she worked so hard to get to this point, to become a beautiful rose and still failed as a stu..." Kuroka stopped talking when her thoughts went from the rose, to her mother, and she looked at Naruto in the hopes that he didn't hear her.

He glanced her way, and he smiled.

"Fujimai didn't fail, not really... she had a daughter who she passed all her skills down to. She herself might have failed, but she knew that you had more potential than her. I have no doubt, whenever you mastered something that took her years, she felt nothing but pride in you. Your mother was happy you were better than she was, that you could do things she couldn't." Naruto didn't need to be there to guess what Fujimai must have felt at the time. Seeing your child able to do something easily that took years of effort for you, that was a feeling he had personally experienced, and any loving parent would feel nothing but pride and adoration for their child.

Fujimai would have felt blessed that she birthed such a child.

"... and here I am... resenting her-"

"-and there isn't anything wrong with that either." Naruto interrupted her, and Kuroka was shocked by that words.

"There... there isn't?"

"There was a time, I thought I was going to die for my son, my daughter, my village. I figured I would be resented by my children for dying, but so long as they could grow up happy, and live, I was happy with that. If you want to resent your mother for dying, I'm sure she would forgive you for it. You still love her?" Naruto asked Kuroka as he turned his head lazilly, still smiling, and looked down at her as she blushed.

She nodded her head.

"Of course... but... she was horrible. She fell in love with my father, an evil man... he didn't care about her at all, he just used her-"

"We can't help who we fall in love with, not all love stories happily sadly. Fujimai fell in love, and though her love didn't return her feelings, I know she was happy to have you and your sister." Naruto explained to her.

Kuroka frowned.

"But-"

"Parents love their children Kuroka, it's what we do, your mother made a mistake... that mistake was not loving your father. That mistake was picking him over you and your sister... the only thing she did wrong." Naruto spoke of her mistakes as well, and Kuroka was surprised that Naruto also aknowledged her own point on the matter. Before now, Naruto had only been explaining to Kuroka where she was wrong, or where she needed to learn.

Now he was agreeing with her?

"You agree?"

"Fujimai loved you both very dearly, but if a parent must chose between their lover or their child, they should pick their child. Fujimai was a great student, and a loving mother, but she wasn't a perfect mother. You are well within your right to resent her for what she did." Naruto explained how Kuroka was right and wrong.

"But?" Kuroka asked, wanting the other side of the coin.

"No buts, she nor I will fault you for resenting her. I love both my parents dearly as well, but I can't say I didn't resent the mistakes they made. You can resent something a person did, or some part of them, and still love them a lot and respect them. What do you respect about her?" Naruto asked Kuroka, and she had to think about it for a second.

Kuroka thought about it as she stared at the roses.

"Mom was... she sucked as a mom, but she tried her hardest to make me and Shirone happy when she could. Seeing her try and fail... and only succeed after many failures... She always seemed so strong to me, but also so weak too... I wanted to be better than her... at everything. If she took a year to learn something, I wanted to do it in a day." Kuroka whispered as she sank so low into the water that only her head was outside of it. The scent clearing her mind the closer she got to the water.

Naruto smiled wider.

"I see, what traits did she have though, that made you feel so weak and inferior? You have a superiority complex, but yet... you can never escape from her shadow. A shadow that only you see." Naruto pressed deeper into her mind.

Kuroka spoke before thinking about the answer.

She wasn't answering Naruto's question either, she just spoke.

"She's a failure, but hearing those stories of how hard she tried, how long she worked... how could anyone ever be so strong to work so long on something? How much patience could a person have? To work so long and have nothing at all at the end. She spoke proudly of her time here, but she was a failure in the end... why is a failure like her so proud?" Kuroka spoke without nyaing even once during the entire speech to herself. Her eyes tearing up in anger as she clutched her knees to her chest.

She was shaking.

"You envy her."

"I'm better than her."

"You admire her skill."

"I'm far more skilled.

Naruto and Kuroka weren't having a conversation, Kuroka was having a conversation with herself as she answered back her own statements with the truth. The conflicting thoughts in her mind came out, and so did the tears as well as she looked at the roses.

They live their entire lives, becoming beautiful, just to die.

"You know Kuroka, I lied about these roses. I planted these roses when you arrived on this mountain, and I figured out what kind of girl you were." Naruto stated, stopping Kuroka from speaking to herself, and she looked at him in shock. She didn't expect him to lie to her, but he rubbed the top of her head with a grin. "This is why you've been meditating, you've been waiting for this day. Everyday, I had you training to clear your mind, because I knew you would never understand the lesson if I just simply taught it to you. You're too thick headed for that... so I decided to plant these roses to teach you what you were missing... what Fujimai had that you envied so much." Naruto explained as the two of them returned their gazes to the roses.

"What she had that I don't?" Kuroka asked him.

Why did she ask?

"Clearing your mind is impossible for you Kuroka, or at least... it was before now. I purposely gave you a task that you would never achieve, no matter how much you trained. You've too much pent of feelings to ever clear your mind and heart. Now, you've spent 6 months, struggling to do something... you've been a failure for 6 entire months, just like your mother."

Kuroka smiled at his words, before she jolted when she realized she had smiled.

Naruto's lips stretched into a smile.

"I've... she was so strong, because no matter how much she failed, she kept trying. I've... never failed at anything. I'm a genius who achieved everything easily... but for 6 months now... I've been struggling... just like her. I'm... I'm not a genius... I'm just like her... the reason everything is so easy for me... is because of her." Kuroka realized... no she didn't realize it for real. This was something that she had realized awhile ago, but she refused to admit before now. Looking at the roses in front of her, hearing Naruto's words.

Naruto stood up and gestured for her to follow him.

Kuroka followed him.

They walked, until they got back to the waterfall that she had been training under, and Kuroka looked at it as Naruto gestured to it.

"You've been struggling like your mother, you've attained the very thing that you loved and hated about her so much. You now understand the difference between you and your mother, how your genius was only possible because of her hard work... Kuroka... clear your mind and meditate under the waterfall, tell me what this first lesson was about." Naruto gave her a gentle order, and she walked on the water and back to the hot waterfall.

She didn't even feel how hot it was as she sat down, and took up a meditating position once more, the same position that she had been taking up for 6 months.

She closed her eyes.

Her mind was clear.

Patience.

The patience to keep working, to keep failing but also keep trying, as you attempted to reach a goal. She, a genius, had never had to be patient before as she just attained everything in short periods of time. Her mother, who worked herself to the bone and to near-death itself, had been so patient that her determination had been refined to a point that even as a child, Kuroka couldn't look at her mother as anything but strong... despite how weak her mother had been, she had still been so strong to her.

She, Kuroka, had gained the very same strength that her mother had, had. A strength that she had never even thought of as strength before, but could only now appreciate for what it was worth.

The strength to keep failing until you succeeded.

Chapter End!
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