Naruto sat on his bed and sniffled. He brought his knees to his chest and hid his face on top of them. It wasn't fair. It was never fair when it came to him, and Naruto had never understood why that was. He tried his best, dattebayo! He tried so hard but all the odds seemed stacked against him and it was just so difficult at times to keep moving forward.
"Naruto?"
Naruto looked up to see Rihan standing next to his bed, a concerned look in his gaze and one hand resting in the folds of his kimono.
"Whatta ya' want?" Naruto mumbled, his voice muffled by his jumpsuit.
Rihan ignored the question and instead asked one of his own, "What happened?"
"Nothin'. Jus' some jerk at the festival. I wanted a mask an' tried to take it down. But when the stand keeper saw me he got really mad an' threw the mask at me."
Rihan sighed in a quiet, resigned manner before sitting down on the bed, "Are you alright?"
Naruto shook his head, "Na' ah. I'm tired, Rihan. People don' like me much and I get kinda scared som' times. No matta' what I do nobody's ever nice ta' me. 'Cept you, but you're weird."
Rihan's lips twitched upwards into a smirk, "I'm weird, hm?"
They sat there in silence for a while, Naruto clutching his knees to his chest and Rihan sitting on the bed, staring off into the distance.
AN: I want people to know that there will be no bashing in this. It will seem kind of like there is at times, but that's more because of perspective than anything else. Naruto is young and tends to exaggeratethings both because of that and because of his personality. Rihan has an outsiders POV, and different values than many people from the Naruto verse. So if it seems like there is bashing, there isn't.