Chapter 2 New Life

"Beep beep beep beep…!"

I rolled over to turn off my alarm. Life on my own was not as bad as I expected to be. I guessed I was use to it since I lived on my own on my previous life anyway. It has been almost a year now since I left the orphanage and moved into the apartment that the Hokage provided for me. Life has been good and exciting. It had fell into a routine.

Wake up at 7am

Make/eat breakfast

Pack my lunch

Do some reading or meditate

Leave the apartment at 8am

Academy until 2pm

Training until 6pm

Make/eat dinner

Read/review

Go to bed at 10pm

I learned so much about this world. Everything was so new and very much unlike the previous world that I lived in. Technologies and Science were not as advance when compared to my previous world. I had a hypothesis about this. 'Chakra' was the major cause for lack of science and technologies in this world.

I closed my eyes and began to focus on my chakra. I started to move the chakra to flow from my stomach to different parts of my body. This was not an easy task at the beginning. It took me almost 4 months to be able to freely flow my chakra to where ever I wanted it to be.

Wherever my chakra flowed to, my senses enchanted. I started to become more aware for my surrounding; I could even sense the present of the people around the apartment complex. Suddenly I stopped and opened my eyes. I knew it was time to go to the academy. The two familiar presents had just arrived. When I finally abled to send my chakra outside of my body to my surround, I noticed these two presents on the roof top of the building next to mine. I wouldn't dare to continue; I knew they were observing me.

I worked really hard to make my presence as unnoticeable as possible, I was there but I could be easily forgotten and faded into the background. I lived in a shinobi village after all. 'The nail that stuck out the most would be hammer down' I understood that concept.

My time at the academy was fun and exciting so far. I learned a lot about this world, I made some friends. I also noticed a pattern, the children from civilian families didn't want to be friend with me, but most of the children from shinobi families were neutral to me. 'Was this one of the reason why the Hokage wanted to send me to the academy?' Another piece fell into the puzzle of Uzumake Naruto. 'Why would other adults dislike me, a normal orphan child?' 'What was the cause of their resentment, fear, and even some hatred?'

"Naruto! Are you even listening?!"

"Sorry Chouji, what were you saying?" I turned to the chubby boy munching his potato chips.

"Seriously, sometimes you are even more worse than Shikamaru."

"Hey!" Shikamaru reacted when he heard it.

"He is in another level when it comes to 'head in the cloud' situation" Shikamaru continued.

"That's new, coming from Mr. 'everything is too troublesome'" I laughed.

"So now that you are back with us, I was asking about how you think you did on today's ranking exam?" Chouji asked.

"I think I did ok, based on today's sparing and written exam, I should ranked in the middle of the class or a bit higher" I replied.

After I said that I noticed Shikamaru gave me this questionable look but quickly changed to his usual 'too troublesome' to find out look.

Life was good, and peaceful for me so far. Going to school to learn all basic tools necessary to become a shinobi, and training on my own seemed to be the norm for me now. However due the two unknown presences that followed me most of the time, I couldn't really be to experiment more with chakra. I tried my best to act that I was not aware of their presences; I would show them what I wanted them to see. Only the one year, I had carefully crafted this imagine of a normal young child with a kind smile, who worked hard but not that talented, of myself to this village.

There were just too much secrecies in this world, too many unanswered questions surrounding me. I wanted to trust the Hokage but 'why would he send two anbu guards to follow me?' 'What were his reasons?' 'What's so special about me?' I knew that the Hokage truly cared for me because I could see it in his eyes but there were also worries, guilt and fears from time to time. Before I could sense the two-anbu guards around me, I tried to mold my chakra to break through the first tenketsu point, right after I broke through, I got a surprise visit from the Hokage in the academy during that week.

Even though the purpose of his visit was to check up on the new class of students but I always had the feeling that was not that simple. My hypothesis was proven correct when I could sense the two-anbu guards around me.

I started to notice the pattern of when I was not being watch, when I was in the academy, and when I was home after training. During those times, I started to experiment on how to send out small about of chakra wave to sense my surrounding, and to practice suppressing my chakra to make my presence less noticeable. After a year of practice, I could now suppress my chakra to the point where I could hide in plain sight, and I could send out the smallest amount of chakra wave to sense my surrounding of 20-25 meters radius without being detected.

This world is a dangerous place; the very fact that the leader of this village sent two-anbu guards to watch over me did not make me feel any easier or safer. If the anbu guards were for my own protector, that meant I was in danger and in need of protection. If the anbu guards were sent to surveillance me that meant I was a threat to the village and not to be trusted. Both possibilities made me feel uneasy. I needed to protect myself, to mold myself into the norm of this village. I could not too excel nor could I be too behind. Only in the middle would be the safest.

After 1 year of hard work, I could see it slowly being paid off. The fear from most of the adult's eyes was slowly disappeared. In their eyes, I am just a normal 7 years old child that worked hard, smiled, and with a positive attitude. Though the resentment was still there but that also could be change in time.