The ninetails attack had left Konoha deeply scarred and in need of drastic repair. Many core buildings and thoroughfares had to be redesigned and rebuilt. The Konoha Civil Engineering Department had lost large swathes of urban planners and designers in the path of the kyuubi's destruction. So, much of the burden of drafting new plans fell to the teachers and their students at the Konoha Math and Science Academy.
It had been a terrifying and bleak event for the children of the village. On sweaty summer days, Yasahashi Koizuma, a 14 year old student at the Math and Science Academy, found herself laboring over blueprints in the streets with workers, her teachers, and fellow students. Later she would marvel how, though as unfavorable as the circumstances were, she gained her best chops here as an urban planner. No classroom education could beat hands-on experience. Every day pushed her to her limits.
Professor Ayame was the waifishly built middle-aged civil engineering instructor at the academy. He directed his flock of young designers through the streets, even as he was injured from the disaster. In a thick, croaking accent (as he was a foreigner to the fire country) he attempted to keep morale up by saying daft things like: "Konoha is a special place, hidden in the leaves. Even when a forest fire strikes, new shoots of green come up and the forest restarts!"
The students would just roll their eyes in the chilled autumn air.
"That's too many plant puns, sensei!"
But, his words had an annoying tendency to stick in Yashashi's mind for years.
When the sun was high in the sky, Yasa's two older brothers, Shun and Kimura, both ninja who were helping to rebuild alongside the workers, would come find her with weary but hopeful faces. They'd bring lunches and eat underneath the scaffolding while making plans to visit their hospitalized father before sundown.
Yasa's muscles ached and her blisters stung as she walked through the rubble with her brothers in the evening sun. At the hospital, tears combined with sweat and soaked into the edges of their unconscious father's bed as the three cursed the nine tailed fox. The monitor, though steady, beeped with their anxiety.
Their mother had been away on a mission during the attack. Her and her squad happened to run into some further complications, preventing a prompt return. This left the three Koizuma children to depend upon each other most of the time. Kimura, the eldest, tried to stay strong. But, the attack had left him shaken with a fear which would haunt him for years, even stronger than the trauma he had once faced at the end of the 3rd Ninja war. His trauma was always taken out on Yasa in unfair ways. Shun, the middle child, always found himself the mediator between the two, a skill which would later become his talent.
In the evenings, the three would travel to a part of town that had been spared from the kyuubi's attack, and would stay with their uncle. He would make them dinner and try to crack jokes like their father, though with the same ineffective humor. In more sober tones, the progress of the day was discussed. News of mothers return, shared. They would say thanks and find sleep.
Then, early in the morning before the sun rose, a young Yashashi would head out again to work with Professor Ayame, her classmates, and the builders. Sometimes she felt hopeful, and sometimes she asked herself if they really could rebuild a forest as lively as Konoha was before the nine tails had attacked.
Naruto Uzumaki lived in the apartment directly above her.
Yashashi stirred at the sound of the obnoxious brat upstairs who was shouting out the window about how he was going to become hokage. He didn't do this every morning, but it was frequent enough for her to stop caring. The other tenants of the apartment were less jaded. Old lady Izukai hollered at him from her window to shut up. Yasa rolled over in bed, lazily listening to the exchange.
It wasn't until 2 hours later that she finally rose, mid-morning sun shining down into her one bedroom apartment. She spent a good moment resting at the edge of her bed, staring at a photograph on her nightstand, before finally leaving her bedroom and heading to the kitchenette.
The teapot boiled and she stopped to contemplate the many finished and unfinished home remodeling projects she had laying around her apartment.
There was once a time when she began knocking out a wall between the kitchen and dining room, only to discover it was load bearing and quickly had to reinforce the original, shoddy construction. She should have known that whoever had built this building half a century ago would have put a load bearing wall in such a ridiculous spot. Nonetheless, she'd gotten out of worse situations.
She had replaced the windows in the living room. They previously had leaked during the rain and the window blew through it like cardboard on cold nights. She also was in the middle of changing the kitchen tile and nearly tripped over unopened cans of grout.
As she sipped her tea, she stood over her drafting table and studied papers and designs she had been working on, scribbling now and then. She continued to work like this for another 30 minutes, and then got dressed, throwing on a ratty pair of clothes and pulling her long, messy blond hair back into a low ponytail. Then she fastening a bandana around her forehead to keep her bangs out of her eyes and got to work for the next couple of hours: laying down tiles and grout in the kitchen while kneeling on a folded rag.
After putting down the last tile, she stood and stretched, getting a kink out of her shoulder, then headed out the hall to the communal bathroom. She ran into a couple of neighbors.
"Koizuma-san, how are you? Would you mind replacing the windows in my apartment before winter comes? I heard from Mitsuri-san that you did hers."
"Sure, I'll let you know when I have the time," Yasa waved, not stopping to talk.
When she came back from the bathroom, she got accosted by Old man Kazashi, "That Naruto is always shouting in the evenings and mornings, and it drives me insane!"
Yasahashi nodded her head in empty solidarity and then quickly closed her apartment door behind her.
It was almost like they thought she was the landlord or something, even though she had only lived there for a little under a year. The actual landlord was a snivy old woman who managed a handful of old properties in this district, and from what the tenants had gathered, would only come out to fix stuff if the building itself was falling down.
"Guess someone around here's gotta fix stuff up," she muttered to herself as she shuffled through her closet for a bag, "Outta knock down that load bearing wall, maybe then she'll come out here… Seal the windows… Sheesh."
In her closet, she glanced at a dusty set of shuriken, a ninja pack, and wraps in the back corner. She narrowed her eyes at them, found her bag and shut the door.
With only a few errands to run, Yasa slung her bag around her shoulder and left. A glimmering puddle in front of the building caught her eye, showcasing the jaunty facade and silhouette of the apartment building. She smirked, "What were they thinking?"
Of course, Yasahashi had specifically picked the worst, most obtuse apartment complex in the village for herself to live in. One that had been there even before the nine tails attack, untouched by her or the civil engineering departments for decades. It was gross when she moved in. It had mice and roaches, mold problems, weird creaks, and paper-thin walls. And, of course, the insane kyuubi kid living in it. It was perfect.
It was a unique experience to walk through a city full of buildings and roads you had designed and built. Whenever the 25 year old urban planner recognized the lines of a building she drafted, she was suddenly hit with oddly specific memories from the time and place she designed it: the dusty air of the civil engineering office, and the taste of whatever weird tea she drank while bent over that oak drafting table.
Yasa saw her life's work in action constantly. Her shortcomings and successes played out all around her. As she stepped through the afternoon light, she passed by a building she did after she had just graduated. On that one, a person opened the window and was hanging some laundry on a line. The clothes blocked another window and it's owner stuck his head out to complain. This was a design flaw.
Yasahashi clicked her tongue disappointedly. She could never live in a building she had designed. It would drive her nuts.
Coming up to a tree-covered pathway, something in the dappled light caught her eye. She stopped in the middle of the road to look at the side of a municipal wall she had erected. Other pedestrians passed by it and scoffed, for on the wall, sloppily painted graffiti announced:
NARUTO UZUMAKI IS THE GREATEST NINJA OF ALL TIME! BELIEVE IT!
"That kyuubi-kid. What're we gonna do about him?" came the voice of a passerby. Yasahashi only smirked and kept walking.
It was almost as if the beast was still trying to destroy the city from inside that hyperactive preteen boy.
At the end of this road was where Yashashi needed to go, though as Yasa caught sight of the building, her stomach tensed. She never liked to go to the ninja academy.
But, she would be in and out, she told herself. Just had to drop something off at the teachers office, a favor for her mom.
She passed by a class of squirelly students who were out sparring in the field, their high pitched voices shouting energetically as their fists and kicks met. Yasa grimaced and quickly walked past them, into the main doorway.
The muffled sound of classes in session echoed through the ninja academy hallways. Yasahashi smelled the familiar scent of chalk and was hit with a wave of nostalgia. She hurried past the classrooms to the teachers lounge, where she could hear the scritching of wet ink on parchment paper coming from one of the desks which were arranged in a large circular formation. In the middle of the desks was a thick pillar. Yasa laughed inwardly, that pillar was egregiously in the way.
Near the door, a youngish, spiky haired chunin was stamping papers and whistling lightly to himself. He looked up when Yasa approached him.
"Excuse me, can you tell me which desk is Nakamori's?" she asked him.
Iruka nodded in surprise, "Oh, he's" and he craned his neck around the central pillar and pointed at a desk attached to the wall by the window, "that one."
Yasa nodded and pulled out an envelope from her bag. She placed it on the desk.
"Do I know you?" asked Iruka, "You're… Koizuma, correct?"
"Yeah, that's me."
"Right!" The man laughed, leaning back in his chair, "It's me, Iruka! The boy you and your friends used to pick on all the time."
Yasa studied the man. She vaguely remembered a boy named Iruka from her youth. Then she noticed the scar across his nose and immediately recognized him. "Ah. I remember you now. Sorry, I don't think I ever got your name back then. You were just that spiky brat with the mouth."
Iruka laughed nervously, "Okay, I remember I probably said stuff too, but you were all so mean!"
She cracked a smile, "I guess we were. Sorry."
"Oh, don't worry! It's water under the bridge."
She was about to head out, but another teacher walked in: a tall man with medium length silver hair.
"Oi Yasahashi-chan, what are you doing here?"
She groaned, "Hello, Mizuki. Just dropping off a letter for one of my mom's students."
"Oh, you two are acquainted?" Iruka asked curiously, looking between the civilian woman and his silver haired colleague.
"She's friends with my wife," The man grinned.
"The other one who used to pick on you with me," Yashashi added.
Mizuki seemed amused by that, "No kidding! You bullied lil Iruka here back in the day?"
Iruka blushed a bit, "Yes, but we're all adults now, so that doesn't matter."
Mizuki and Yasahashi both shared a laugh and the silver-haired chunin looked to his wife's friend, "Are you still coming to dinner tomorrow night?"
"Yeah, yeah. I'll be there."
"Oh! Speaking of notes," he rooted around in his back pocket and pulled out a letter, "Kaeda had this note to give you. I didn't peek, I swear!" Mizuki grinned in a way that made Yasahashi doubt his sincerity on that.
She read it: it was something about getting off her ass and doing shit again. Kaeda's usual pushy shit.
As she was busy with that, Mizuki turned to Iruka and started discussing one of their trouble students.
"Yeah, so I don't know what to do with Rock," he said.
Iruka nodded, "He still can't mold chakra, is that correct? We can't pass a ninja like that… no matter how impressive his taijutsu is. We should let him know that so he doesn't get his hopes up."
Mizuki sighed. "I mean, do you want to be the one to tell that kid, though? He's so self-destructive and dramatic. I almost have second hand embarrassment."
Iruka seemed pained by that statement and covered his face with one hand, "Yeah, I know what you mean. But, a ninja that can't do ninjutsu…"
"You should pass the kid," Yasahashi butted in. She was crumpling up the note from her friend, balling it up in her fist.
Mizuki got a look of recognition on his face, "Oh! That's right. You were the same, weren't you Yasahashi? Couldn't do ninjutsu."
She ignored her friend's husband and looked at Iruka, "It's not like he's going straight to the battlefield when he's passed. Maybe the worst that happens is that he stays a genin all his life and does low level missions." She threw the wadded up paper across the room and it landed in the trash with expert precision, then she walked a few steps and exited the classroom, waving to the two men wordlessly.
Iruka looked at Mizuki at a loss for words. The silver-haired man just laughed and shrugged. "Oh, don't take offense. That's just how she is sometimes. But, and I've told her before, she really should just stick to what she's actually good at, honestly."
"And that is?" Iruka asked, wondering more about his old bully and what became of her.
"Oh, she's an urban planner."
