Many thanks to the commenter who pointed out the gaffe with Naruto's arms. In the classic tactic of Adam, I blame my loving wife—may she reign forever... Here's a rework
Waking up the next day was surreal.
He opened his eyes as he ended his prayers, eyes fixed on nothing especially. Naruto was gone already, as he always was. Hiroshi had never actually seen the man sleeping.
Hirano was also gone. It was just Takashi that was left.
The boy was up already as well, even though he hadn't made any effort to stand as far as he was aware. He lay on his side, facing the wall. It was almost like there was a physical cloud of depression around him, dragging him deeper and deeper into its pit.
He had to talk to the boy.
But what do you actually say to someone in that position?
You would think that it would be easy to feel sorry for him, but something must have happened before he joined the group that burned all the goodwill that common students should have had towards each other. Even before…
I can't even say it to myself, he thought.
But, as a consequence, the animosity against Takashi was almost total. Even Rei, who seemed to be—if not a friend, then at least an acquaintance, was decidedly cold towards him. Naruto's force of character would keep any overt action on that animosity at bay, but it would do nothing for the boy himself.
And the boy needed someone in his corner.
Did he deserve it?
Hiroshi was sure he didn't. Just looking at the facts and disregarding everything about whatever might have gone on before he joined them, Takashi was, at best, dangerously reckless. His pride and envy made him into the kind of person who was willing to be used by the devil for Momo's death.
But, he was still a human being—one who the Lord came and died for.
And someone he was commanded to love.
After all, the Lord said it best—it is the sick that need a doctor, not the healthy.
In a sense, it didn't matter what he thought about Takashi—not really. Who was he to stand in judgement against him? His place had been clearly defined by the Lord—to show mercy to those who are brokenhearted.
The real question was how.
Lord, how do I go about this?
As far as he was aware, no one had spoken to the boy since Naruto's verdict—not even Rei.
He came to his feet—slowly, so as not to make too much noise. Even so, the rustle of the sheets was almost too loud in the room's atmosphere. He approached Takashi's corner, carrying a chair, and occasionally scuffing his feet to alert the boy to his approach as he thought.
When he was grieving his family, he had nearly been sucked into a bad place. At the time, he turned to the book of Job, trying to understand how the man had coped, and drawing lessons from it.
He had, as a consequence, also learned the lesson of Job's friends—what not to say or do when one is in despair.
As he reached the boy, he placed his seat beside his sleeping bag and sat, simply sharing his presence with the boy.
Job's friends had sat with Job for seven days, silent.
He encouraged himself, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength!
He would start from there, and see how it played out.
Takashi woke up as someone was leaving the room.
Kohta, his mind supplied. He would never have heard anything if it was Naruto.
He remained in his sleeping bag, staring at nothing. No one had spoken a word to him since Naruto's verdict.
Not even Rei.
Their glances—loathing, judging, disgusted—followed him, eventually chasing him to his bed. He lay there, unable to sleep, unable to rest, tossing about, and only stilling as the others came to bed one after the other.
It was, incidentally, the first time he had been awake long enough to see Naruto come to bed.
The weight of his despair pressed down on him, focused on his chest—like a crushing stone, but worse. The fist in his lungs made it hard to breathe.
He'd eventually fallen into an uneasy slumber, flogged by dreams of those things—chasing, laughing, mocking. Sometimes, they wore his face. Sometimes, they wore the face of others. The one that woke him up had him as one of those things, chasing down Rei and his family. He'd jerked awake just before he could rip his mother's throat out.
Even then, he had remained silent. His throat felt like it would not work anymore as hot tears streamed down his face, nearly choking him. Somehow, Kohta did not hear him.
Or pretended not to.
He squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself to sleep again, trying to escape. But even sleep deserted him. The ache in his limbs, the gritty feeling behind his eyelids—his lack of sleep was keeping him awake.
He heard when Mr Nakamura woke up.
The man repositioned. Then, for what felt like hours but was probably mere minutes, the quiet murmur of the man praying just beneath his hearing range.
It made him uncomfortable.
The last openly religious person he knew was his grandmother. She stood in opposition to their entire family, always talking about 'her Jesus'.
Then she developed Alzheimer's.
He got a front row view of her deterioration, until she finally died a couple of years later. By the time of her death, she could not recognize anyone in their family.
But she never forgot her Jesus.
Since then, he had always been uncomfortable with religious people. The murmur of their prayers brought with it the memory of his grandmother, reduced and unable to speak, but still clutching her rosary.
It filled him with indignation—to think that a god who claimed to be good could let one of his followers die in such a degrading fashion.
The indignation came back the previous night—the night before his life turned to hell—when he heard Mr Nakamura praying. It had taken everything he had not to taunt him as he reflexively did.
Now, barely a day later, things were so radically different that he might as well be a different person.
Now, hearing Mr Nakamura pray just made him remember his grandmother—and realize how even the sweet old woman would have also rejected him.
Mr Nakamura had been quiet for a while.
A quiet rustle of sheets, and he knew the man had gotten up. A soft scuff of a chair leg as it was placed beside him told him where the man was.
He did not turn his head.
The man sat there, saying nothing. Even silent, his presence was undeniable. The room was too quiet to ignore the man—to pretend he did not know he was there.
So he turned his head.
Mr Nakamura sat, his posture relaxed, and his hands in his lap. He was a stark contrast to himself—his own heart had sped up at the prospect of meeting Mr Nakamura's gaze—with his tightening fingers and chest.
He was not watching Takashi directly, but he must have seen something out of the corner of his eyes because he turned to look at him.
There was no judgement in his eyes. Despite them, there was a weight behind them, as though something else looked out at him through those eyes. It was nearly like, yet almost exactly the opposite of Naruto's gaze.
He could not meet those eyes.
Yet he could not look away.
The moment stretched on, gripping in its intensity. He waited for words, trapped as he was by Mr Nakamura's gaze.
No words came.
It was unbearable.
He tried to speak. Somehow, his voice worked, though it came out hoarse from disuse. "...You got something to say?"
Mr Nakamura looked away.
"No, not really," he said simply.
Takashi swallowed the lump in his throat. "Then why the hell are you sitting there?"
Finally, Mr Nakamura turned his head, looking away for the first time since their gaze met. The cook sighed, his expression a complex mix that Takashi could not completely identify.
"Because no one else will."
Takashi clenched his jaw, turned his face away, and shut his eyes.
What did one say to that?
Kohta sat, back to the wall as others made their way down to the central gym. Naruto had met him in the morning and told him to be here by 11.
Apparently, he was not the only one.
Naruto and Saeko were already there, wooden practice swords in their hands as they practiced against each other.
Well, that didn't really convey what was happening. It was more that Saeko was crashing against Naruto and was being rebuffed time and time again. The clack clack of the practice swords was soothing in a way—a backdrop against which he could just think.
Even if thinking was the last thing he wanted to do.
One of us is dead.
The thought tormented him. It kept him moving until he crashed last night, and kept him moving as he pushed his body in his training.
That moment was frozen in time for him. His mind kept replaying it, adding sounds to the horrible picture-only format of the CCTV. He imagined her scream, beg, cry, curse, and do nothing.
They all tormented him.
He was glad in the chaos that he did not see if she came back a zombie, but his mind was only too willing to supply the gory images.
In a way, he envied Saeko.
A sharp crack of wood jolted him. The sound of Saeko's blade meeting Naruto's echoed through the empty gym, a steady, almost rhythmic beat.
The woman was very dangerous, but very simple—an oddity, as far as he knew.
Or it could be that Naruto is keeping her in check.
Either way, she was definitely the most satisfied person in the group right now.
She did something complicated with her sword, flowing from one stanace to the other in a beautiful display of ability. Against anyone else, she would have pushed them back. Against Naruto, it was like pouring water on a rock. He simply floated away, somehow able to weave through her movement in a display that was no less impressive.
Saya and Momo joined them, with Ms Hayashi and Ms Marikawa appearing only a mere moment later. Rei slumped in at the very last minute—just in time to witness Naruto go on the offensive for the first time since the bout started. In under a minute, he had disarmed Saeko and had her in a hold, her face on the floor and facing away from him, and his knee on her back, trapping her arms against it.
He had a front row view of her face. It was nearly red, and a manic gleam illuminated her eyes. Her lips were parted in exhaustion.
Or arousal, his treacherous mind supplied.
The bout finished, the two disengaged. Kohta watched them begin their cool down stretches, and by the time it was 11, all were seated in one form or the other, looking at Naruto.
Seated like this, he could not help but notice their number. Ten, and not eleven.
It had only been one night, but everyone was avoiding talking about them—Takashi, or Momo.
How could we do anything else?
"So, I called us here because of last night," began Naruto, drawing Kohta out of his spiraling thoughts. "To be honest, my concern is something you might find quite hypocritical."
He scratched his head. "I am concerned at how easy it was to suggest that we kill Takashi."
A beat of silence as they all processed the sentence.
The accusation.
Saya was on her feet in an instant. "I don't want to hear that from you, Naruto." She pointed at him. "Even if no one here knows who you are, never forget that I do."
Her explosion was predictable—she had always worn her heart on her sleeves. Yet, the reaction from both the adult teachers was, in a sense, more surprising. Ms Marikawa's gaze sharpened just a shade, weighing the man she beheld against something. Ms Hayashi's face on the other hand was twisted into a sour knot, as though she just tasted something foul. Saeko could not be bothered if she tried, and Rei had a complicated expression on her face.
For his part, he simply listened. He had never known Naruto to lead him astray from the first day he knocked on his office doors two years ago.
Naruto sighed, shaking his head. "You do not understand, and I'm not smart enough to explain it to you. I'm not accusing you all—not yet. I am trying to draw your attention to something I have noticed we are always doing mentally without any understanding of the repercussions."
Kohta's heart did a horrible little flip. Was there something they had done that led to…
He tilted his head, thoughtful, his fingers tapping against his knee. The silence stretched, weighted, before he finally spoke again. "If in the future a scenario came up where we had to trade one of us for an advantage—either by letting them die, or sending them to their death, how would you decide who to use?"
"What kind of question is that?" asked Ms Marikawa, all hints of levity gone from her. "Takashi didn't trade a life. He got someone killed. That's not the same." Resentment sat heavy in her voice, as though the line of questioning was insulting.
Because it is. It sounds like Naruto is accusing us of something.
Naruto chuckled, a cold mirthless thing. "They are exactly the same thing," he insisted. "I am asking you what the value of a human life is. But more specifically, what the value of our lives are."
He gestured, taking in the entire room.
"Notice who I called here," Naruto began. "None of you know the weight of taking a life. I don't just mean triage, Shizuka, or hypothetical scenarios, Saya. I mean the real cost of the blood on your hands—of having to explain to distraught mothers why their children will not be coming home."
Kohta felt his hands tremble a bit. For all he tried to be strong, he simply had not let himself stop and think about all of what had happened.
Naruto's words were threatening to put his face to that mirror.
Naruto was shaking his head, almost as though in disbelief. "You should not so willingly be ready to spend one of our lives."
A long, heavy silence stretched between them. Somewhere in the distance, a door creaked. No one spoke, but the atmosphere felt charged—a far departure from how this meeting started.
"Takashi made the mistake he made because of a lot of reasons," Naruto continued. "But his major issue is that he did not know the value of a life. He moved carelessly, and life took the worth of what he uncovered from us, without asking our permission."
He met their eyes. "He did not know how to spend our lives."
Kyoko snorted. "And you do?" She was truly annoyed—her voice was utterly composed, but a stray vein stuck out on her forehead. "You think that you have the qualifications to decide who lives and who dies?"
Naruto snorted. "With all due respect, I have the power to tell anything that comes for me to go fuck itself. I don't need to spend your lives—but you do."
There it was—blunt, unambiguous. But he was not done.
"If I tell you to do a thing, best believe that I am prepared to ensure your protection to the limits of my power as long as you stay within my instructions. None of you are truly mine—I do not have the right to spend your lives because you have not handed them to me."
He looked directly at Saya as he continued. "But that also applies to all of you. None of you have the right to spend any of our lives because we have not given them to you. When you are making plans, you must take this into consideration."
"What exactly are you saying, Naruto?" asked Rei. "I want to believe that you're not trying to stand there and preach to us—because that would be insulting. We may not be you, but we still have our pride. We still have the right to defend ourselves."
He sighed and muttered under his breath. "I am saying that Takashi was acting as though he could spend our lives for whatever reason—no matter how reasonable it seemed. I am saying that we must not do the same thing—spend lives as though we have a right to do so. This is not an army or military group—we're just people who have banded together to try and survive, and we must take this into consideration. Even I, who can kill anything that threatens me—threatens us, I do not have that right. And none of you do either."
Naruto's words settle like a weight in the room. No one speaks. Even Saya, still visibly angry, looks uncertain. Miku's arms are folded tight against her chest, her lips pursed. Kohta watches the wheels turning in their heads—Naruto's words are landing, even if they don't want to admit it.
He spread his arms now, as though trying to take them all in. The sight of his sleeve dangling halfway along its length provided a poignant punctuation of his credentials. For a moment—just a moment—he didn't speak, as though allowing his words to settle. "In this new world, you will each build your own mountain of corpses. I don't want you to suddenly look back and discover that you are suddenly standing over it without knowing exactly how you got there."
Koohta's heart clenched at that, remembering Momo.
And we would have added Takashi to that…
She watched him, her resentment drowned out by his words.
They had a weight to them—a certain gravitas that would have been missing if any of the other adults had tried to bring up the matter.
If we could even realise that there was any issue to address.
That was the real rub. The cook had been the only one close to arriving at what Naruto was trying to say—even if he got there by approaching it from the other end.
Try as she may, she just couldn't imagine Hiroshi with blood on his hands.
Rika had hinted—no, outright told her that Naruto was a killer. A killer in a class of his own, even among other killers.
It was easy to forget, meeting the man. He didn't look harmless—not in the least. But you just didn't associate him with prolific killing.
But more pressing was her cold realisation that knowing that about him only made him more attractive. She had started to doubt her sanity—could she really be that kind of woman? Or was the stress of everything getting to her.
That Rika was serious about essentially bullying him into a harem only made everything worse.
She processed his words, turning them around in her mind.
But she could not get past Rika told her.
How did he do the things he did? He moved in ways that she simply refused to accept were possible—even if her eyes saw them. She had medical training, and was one of the best at what she did. There was simply no way to account for the sheer physical ability of the man.
To the untrained observer, Saeko and Naruto might seem similar. Both were exceptional—absolute masters at their craft. But Saeko had to be at the top of her game to produce such exceptionalism. Naruto on the other hand barely seemed like he had gotten out of first base.
The curiosity was killing her, drowning out whatever introspection she might have gained from his words.
She had to know.
"Naruto," she began. He shifted to look at her. That was one thing about him, when addressing any of them, he always gave the impression that he was focused directly on them. He never seemed absent minded or like he was merely going through the motions.
His charisma was scary sometimes.
Her silence had become weird.
"What—no, who are you exactly?" she blurted.
The atmosphere shifted from pensive, reluctant introspection to naked curiosity.
Everyone, even Saeko, sat forward, intent on getting an answer to a question they all surely had.
The redhead scratched his head in a sudden fit of embarrassment, laughing a bit. "Really, Shizuka? A man can't give up all his secrets surely?"
She smelled something there.
To go after it or not?
Her smile sharpened, her decision made. "Oh come on. Don't be shy."
Somehow, every other person had ceded control of the conversation to her, waiting to see what she could pull forth from the man.
Naruto exhaled dramatically, leaning back on his hands. "Fine, fine. Since you all look like you want to jump on me…"
The tension ratcheted up even more.
He let them stew for a moment, shifting his weight from one foot to the other while he sat. He was always a charismatic bastard.
So suddenly it was like he teleported, he was on his feet.
He stamped his foot heavily on the ground. The resulting DON! is startling—Miku nearly left her seat as she jumped in surprise. He spread his legs into a sort of exaggerated power stance, his hand held above him and fist clenched. He demanded attention—chest puffed out, chin high, and eyes wild with theatrical mischief.
Huh?
He snapped his fingers, the sound surprisingly loud, before snapping his arm forward theatrically, his palm facing outwards while his hand moved in an exaggerated half-circle—like a Kabuki actor delivering a mighty proclamation.
Suddenly, a large paper fan was in his hand. He flicked it open a snap! before spinning it dramatically and tucking it behind his back.
Huh?
His voice rang out, loud and booming. "Bear witness! The great Naruto takes the stage!"
Huh?!
Shizuka was tempted to look around, to see if anyone else was seeing what she was seeing. But she was too glued to move.
He moved forward, his feet shuffling and never fully leaving the ground, giving the impression of flowing through the air. His shoulders bob as he walks, keeping a rhythm heard by only him. His arm swept in large frantic arcs, as though conducting an invisible orchestra. His empty sleeve danced wildly, somehow getting incorporated in all the… all the…
"Huh?"
He thrust his arm high again, fingers splayed, and froze in place. His face contorted into an intense, exaggerated scowl, lips curled and brows furrowed.
"The gallant Sage of Uzushio arrives! Foxes and women swoon!"
He widened his eyes theatrically, suddenly breaking into a wide, mischievous smile.
His fingers snapped again, somehow surprising them again. Miku even did the entire jumping thing. Throwing back his head, he roared in laughter, booming and reverberating all over the gym. Somehow, he had ended up standing in just the right place for the gym lights to hit him from behind, highlighting his figure until it was nearly larger than life.
"Some whisper my name with reverence… Others scream it out in ecstasy."
With exaggerated slowness, he curls his fingers into a fist, leaving his pointer finger extended to the heavens.
"I am Naruto Uzumaki! Sage of Uzushio!"
Silence.
His empty sleeve waved lazily beside him.
"Huh?!" "What?!" "A roleplayer at this age?"
Shizuka herself is kind of dumbfounded.
The sheer shamelessness to do that with a straight face…
Lone applause broke out.
Everyone turned to look at Saeko, who was on her feet and applauding, her cheeks red.
"That was masterful, Naruto," she said, true sincerity in her voice.
"Hoh hoh!" Naruto chortled, his voice still booming, but quietly somehow. "A woman truly after my heart, with a taste for the finer things."
Shizuka was still dumbfounded.
Saya was decidedly not. "Really? Naruto, that was utterly shameless."
He turned away from Saya, talking to Saeko. "Alas! My fair lady doth beyond my fate. My tale is one of woe! Of trial! Of sacrifice! Of unspeakable suffering at the hands of…"
His voice dropped to a whisper that everyone could still hear.
"…tsundere women."
I resent that performance.
Naruto nearly froze, barely able to keep up as he joked around, deflecting all other follow-up questions for all he was worth.
Could it be…
You're insufferable when you are in this mood.
His stomach was finally betraying him!
And you are still a fool, brat!
He exhaled, willing his hand not to shake. The noise of the others faded into the background, drowned out by the familiar presence pressing against his mind.
He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry.
I missed you too, Kurama.