The next day, Ayaka corners him again, grinning wildly at his startled face and repeats her words from yesterday.
Again, Naruto is wary. Like a boy who has touched fire and been burned once before, he knows better than to trust the glow of the light. Looking at her skeptically, he asks, with a jut of his lips, that doesn't quite hide the hurt underneath it, "Why do ya wanna be friends with me?"
Alba cocks her head, thinks about what will gain her a more entertaining, and thus satisfactory, answer, before she remembers her plan. Telling him she wants to be friends to anger the caretakers probably will not end well, she thinks. So, instead, she says, "I'm bored, you're fun! Yesterday was fun, wasn't it?"
Yesterday, they wrestled in the ground, tiny fists flailing against each other, to the soundtrack of his growls and her echoing laughter. Ayaka grins, while Naruto looks at her like she is crazy.
"You're crazy," He breathes out, eyes wide.
"Hey, we live in a ninja village!" Ayaka points out, with a but of a pout. "We're supposed to like fighting."
Strangely, this actually seems to makes sense to Naruto, as he slowly nods. "I guess…" Then, his eyes start to light up as he eagerly asks her, "Do you wanna be a ninja too?"
"Well, duh!" Ayaka answers, her own eyes glittering as she announces. "I wanna do some awesome fire jutsu, obviously."
Naruto nods faster, as he adds eagerly, "Yeah! And lightning jutsu, and wind jutsu-and all kinds of cool jutsu!"
The two share a grin then, and just like that, in the easy way that children have, even children who have been broken and made wary through a world that cares little for them-they are friends.
-o-
A lot of kids in the orphanage look up to and dream of being ninja. It makes perfect sense, considering they live in the middle of a ninja village, where ninja are glorified as heroes and the Will of Fire is something even the most clueless of civilians know well.
But more that that, being a ninja is their ticket to a decent life. It is hard to find success as a civilian when you're an orphan. If you want to work, you need to have some knowledge or skills that people want to pay for, or at least enough connections to powerful people that such things won't matter as much. When you are a poor, nameless orphan, that doesn't give you many opportunities.
Though the civilian school is also free, it only teaches the absolute bare minimum of knowledge, like math, language and history, none of which will help you get a job. For that, you'd need to get an apprenticeship or study at one of the technical schools. The first one requires a lot of natural talent and someone willing to be a mentor, while the second is very expensive.
So, most orphans who take the civilian route end up on the streets once they age out of the orphanage. If they are lucky, they might get jobs as unskilled labourers or extra manpower every once in awhile, but these will be odd jobs, and will never be enough to sustain even a frugal lifestyle. Some, resort to thievery and crime, which will inevitably land them in jail after getting caught by the Uchiha police, whose eyes and training will easily allow them to catch even the most talented civilian thief. Most, just end up hiding out in the dirty alleys and dilapidated corners of the village, as beggars and vagrants, ghosts that haunt at the edges of society, barely alive.
-o-
When the caretakers see the two of them being friendly, they react rather expectedly. They send alarmed looks at each other before the disapproval comes off them in waves.
Ayaka has to hide an devilish smirk at that, but clearly doesn't do it well enough if the somewhat confused and suspicious look Naruto sends her means anything. All it takes is a quick change of topic to get him beaming again though, and Ayaka cannot help but smirk a little at how easy it is.
Of course, that only makes him question her again, and they fall into a ridiculous cycle that only gets broken when the caretakers, who are not so easily distracted as a five-year-old boy, decide to intervene.
"Ayaka-chan," One of the caretakers calls out to her, tone sickly sweet, but brown eyes flashing in warning. "Why don't you come over here and play with your friend Kaoru?"
The boy in question is busy playing by himself on one of the swings. His wild reddish-brown hair flutters in the wind as he swings high into the air, his face is pulled into a laugh, his dark brown eyes scrunched nearly close. Ayaka has hung out with him a few times before. He's a bit of a crybaby, but he also laughs easily and usually goes along with whatever she says.
Normally, Ayaka would not mind the words much, beyond the usual prickle of annoyance at being order to do something, even if it's just to play with someone. But now, she has Naruto, and an opportunity to make the caretakers especially angry that she does not want to let go of.
So, Ayaka only cocks her head, the picture of innocence as she points out, "But I'm playing with Ruto-kun right now."
The woman, Lin, sputters at this, and even Naruto looks askance at her, likely at the sudden nickname he has developed in the span of two meetings. Ayaka resists the urge to laugh or send her new friend a wink, because that would break the portrait of innocent naivete she is trying to paint right now. Of course, considering the kind of stunts she's pulled in the last two weeks alone, pretty much no one in the orphanage who isn't a baby actually believes Ayaka is anything like innocent.
Because Ayaka is not at all innocent, she knows that now is the moment to cut and run, before the caretakers decide to forcibly separate them again, this time because they are not hurting each other. Grabbing Naruto's hand, she quickly drags them away from the cluster of adults, missing swiping hands by mere inches. The two of them run, Ayaka laughing none too innocently, into the relative safety of the forest that borders the orphanage. She knows from experience that the caretakers will not chase them there, fearful for some reason she doesn't quite understand and isn't curious enough yet to question.
-o-
Nearly all of the orphans are civilians, because clan children who lost their parents typically get cared for by other clan members. A few are children of first-generation ninja, while a few are unacknowledged bastard children that are the result of an affair between a clan member and civilian. But most, are children of civilians, with completely unremarkable aptitudes for ninja. Even so, should they choose it, they will likely succeed in become ninja.
The Academy is subsidized by the government and completely free so long as they graduate and become a genin. They don't need to be particularly talented or well-connected to do so. Even if they fail most of your classes or are at the absolute bottom of the class, they will still be able to graduate and become part of the Genin Corp, because all they really need are able bodies who are loyal to Konoha and willing to die if the situation calls for it.
Having had its forces decimated by wars, and then by the Kyuubi attack, Konoha is in somewhat dire need of more manpower to maintain its position on the world playing field, even if it's just bolstering the Genin Corp with sheer numbers.
The overcrowded orphanage, with all the disposable, moldable children inside it, are an obvious solution.
-o-
Sometimes, Ayaka dreams, of strange metal contraptions that shoot out tiny pieces of metal only slightly bigger than a needle but so much more lethal and effective. She dreams, of ugly, boxes of destructions and weirdly shaped objects that fly in the air and rain destruction down from the skies. She dreams, of sallow-faced children with hands outstretched, desperate for the smallest coin. She dreams, of the crunch from broken bones and a pale face stark with bruises, wavy blonde hair dirty and matted with blood.
In any world, there is violence and death, the kind of ceaseless, pointless fighting that consumes mankind.
There will always be children caught in between, disposable and moldable to whatever higher causes have gripped the powers of the world next.