Title: Shodou and Cooties

Words: 1,230

Characters: Naruto, Sakura, OC's

Timeline: Naruto age 7 (civilian school)

Pairings: Gen


If there was one thing Naruto liked least about his schedule, it was school. The classes were boring (except for physical education, art, and music) and the teachers didn't really like him. He guessed it must have something to do with his inability to sit still, but he couldn't help himself. Mayu-obaasan had told him once he had so much chakra within him that he was like ten whole children on a sugar rush (he was rarely allowed sweets with lots of sugar so he wasn't entirely sure if she'd been telling the truth).

Most of the teachers ignored him, often leaving him till last by going alphabetically. That meant he rarely ever got a chance to do things like try out certain instruments or read any of his papers out loud. He didn't so much mind that he didn't have to read aloud . . . a lot of the other kids were jealous he got to avoid it as they hate, hate, hated it themselves.

Lectures were the worst, even if the teachers did try to make things interesting and often included activities that involved filling out work sheets or making things during them. Naruto couldn't help focusing on the task in front of him, often having to sneak a peek at one of his neighbors—a quiet pink haired girl named Sakura who he liked due to her brightness and a dim brunette boy named Manabu whose parents owned a clothing shop—just to make sure he filled everything out correctly.

It was easier to just learn the subjects they went over from the books with Iruka-niisan or someone else in the evening. Sometimes he even practiced his calligraphy by copying the information down. It wasn't as if the books had a lot of hard words or anything; they weren't nearly as hard to understand as the books he saw Iruka-niisan and Sumiko-chan read.

They had physical education once and recess twice, but even running laps and doing exercises for an hour wasn't enough activity for him (physical education for pre-academy age children was strictly regimented in the civilian schools till the age of twelve to provide a good bade for any children that decided to apply for the academy). He wasn't the only one who had "too much energy for their own good" as his math teacher had yelled at them once. There were a few other bright students who also got scolded on occasion for their inability to sit still . . . they didn't have near the issues Naruto did though.

The other reason he didn't like school was because most of the children didn't like him. Naruto didn't understand how or why he'd ended up being labeled a troublemaker within the first few days of school . . . but the title had stuck. Really, though, the only trouble he could remember causing was knocking over a cart of books the second day in his rush to go outside to play. He helped pick them up immediately and missed most of the playtime!

At least his grades weren't too bad, most of the time. The teacher that taught them grammar and how to spell new words actually complimented him once on his writing. At least he didn't get knocked off his homework for the teacher not being able to read it.

Manabu was one of the few kids in the class who talked to him on a regular basis. He most often got paired up with him for in class projects . . . although once in a while he ended up with Sakura instead. She was really quiet and shy though.

Today he was working with Sakura on work sheet where they had to rewrite an incorrectly written sentence. She didn't seem to be too enthusiastic about working with him, but she didn't complain. At least not until she was done writing the answer to the first one and he took the sheet in order to sign his own name and fill out the next one.

"What are you doing?" She squeaked out. Her voice was sharp, but quiet. It was the loudest he'd heard her speak, ever. "You can just tell me how you spell your name!"

Naruto blinked up at her, pausing in the middle of his first name. He frowned. "Why?"

"Because boys have bad hand writing!"

"We do?" Naruto blinked down at the paper.

"Yes!" She pursed her lips at him and then followed his gaze down to his name.

He'd been working on calligraphy for nearly a year now and he had most everything down pretty solid when it came to the larger sizes he'd trained in with the calligraphy equipment. Working with a pencil was slightly different, including writing so small, but not so much that it had any major effect on his writing. The symbols that made up his name were clear, nearly perfect, even, and in a straight line whereas hers, although neat, looked messy compared to his.

Sakura blinked, green-blue hazel eyes going wide as she snatched the paper for him. Narrowing her gaze she stared at him. Everyone always said girl's handwriting was ten times better than boy's! "Did you practice writing your name a lot?"

"A little," Naruto smiled sheepishly and scratched the back of his head. "Iruka-niisan made me use it for one of my exercises a few months ago."

"Exercises?" She frowned at him.

"Yep!"

"What for?"

"Calligraphy," Naruto said the word slowly and clearly. He'd had some trouble saying it for a long time and wanted to make sure she understood him.

"Calligraphy?" Her frown deepened. She knew that girls took calligraphy classes in the special courses they took for the pre-academy kunoichi hopefuls. It filled the void in their traditional skillset that girls going to the academy would miss if they ended up becoming genin—unless they were trained specifically for espionage and seduction—instead of taking the post-primary civilian school classes. Sakura had no idea why a boy would be learning calligraphy. "Why are you studying calligraphy?"

Naruto's smile brightened, eyes practically beaming at her. "Sumiko-chan said that if I get good enough she'll teach me how to make awesome exploding tags!"

She blinked and then her eyes widened at the implication. Something snapped within her, "Baka!" and a moment later she was staring startled at her hand.

"Ow," Naruto grumbled, rubbing the top of his head. She could hit really hard for such a shy girl. Blinking at her, the smile returned to his face. "You're really bright and strong! You should become a ninja!"

Before Sakura could say anything in reply, their disapproving teacher strode up and forced them to split up to work with different partners. It was the last time they worked together and Sakura was moved to the other side of the room.

The change in seating seemed to work out pretty good for her, the girl she ended up sitting next to—another bright girl with blonde hair named Ino—stood up for her against those mean girls that always made fun of her forehead and teased her on the playground.

Naruto hoped she would become a ninja like he wanted to be, maybe then they could go on missions with each other and protect people! He knew she'd be strong one day; he had the bruises to prove it!


Fin


Note: I'm skewing canon a bit when it comes to the kunoichi classes . . . but I never liked the idea of them for during academy hours anyway. So it's an extra class done outside of the academy. Kunoichi do have to hit standard level of knowledge in that area via the class . . . but it's not considered part of the academy curriculum. To be fair the boys take some classes geared towards "traditional" civilian male jobs as not only a taste of civilian life before becoming genin, but to help on missions if they need to make up a cover story.

This was also rather short . . . but I wanted to give a taste of how things were in civilian school for Naruto before the academy years and Sakura wrote herself in. This is gen and outside of the crushes various characters have in canon, serious relationships won't happen till mid/late teens. Also, don't ask for specific pairings . . . that bugs me.

Each section will be over 1k words but will vary in length. Eventually I'll go through and fix the small spelling errors I've noticed.

Thank you everyone who has alerted this story and those that have favorite it. As always thank you for reading, I'm glad you enjoyed it!