A KANJI'S MEANING
Fugaku decided to hate him. That was what it had to be despite the boy being only five years old and a small child. The kid seemed to have a massive dislike for him.
Which was unpleasant because the little tyrant has been at Baba-san's for a week now. Also, Minato did not do anything besides start to practice his katakana, which his mother had started to help him to learn. She had also started him on various kanji for colors and how to say his name.
波風ミナト. Namikaze Minato. The first two kanji gave him the most trouble, but he tried his best. His mother told him his name meant harbor and the waves and the wind.
He thought it was beautiful. He loved learning about how names spelled with different kanji gave different meanings. That was how he ended up asking his mother to explain everyone's names when they went to the market. One of the grocers had even indulged them and wrote the kanji and explained it to him. It was fascinating.
Baba-san forced Fugaku to write beside him, and the boy already knew how to read more than Minato. The boy was working on practicing kanji and shodō.
The blonde was jealous. Their elderly babysitter would not let him in one foot of her shodō set. Which was a traditional writing set with various brushes and different sets of papers. But, as soon as it was writing time was about, she sat the other boy down to practice.
"Remember Fugaku, focus your chakra in and stimulate it across your body as you write. Hold that concentration while also focusing on keeping your emotions out of mind."
What was chakra? Whatever it was, Minato could not tell. However, he imagined that he could feel a buzz in the air, but he was sure he was making it up when it went away.
The exercise was very hard for Fugaku to do because he hated Minato's guts with a tiny fury, or he was just simply frustrated. Over and over again, Baba-san called out his lapse in concentration, and the boy ended up pouting and giving up an hour in.
The woman sitting across from them clicked her tongue. "No, you must learn to regulate your emotions. You want to be a good shinobi, yes? You are to be clan head, do not dishonor me by giving up."
It was weird to hear an adult pushing a child like this, but Minato did not say a word. He watched Fugaku sit back down with a red face and pick the brush back up with a quick bow to the elder's words.
He always listened to her without hesitation. Minato eyed the hunched woman tending to her weapons in an elegant arc. Who was this woman, truly? Then a darker thought crossed his mind as she reviewed his limited kanji and katakana: how many men had she killed?
How many children like then had she taught with those bloody hands? It put Minato off more than he wanted to. He was a baby, so he loved his caretaker like she was his grandmother since he did not have one. However, when she brushed his hair and smiled at him, the thought lingered.
How bad was it that he wondered if he would have cared if it was his parents?
Minato liked doing speech revision or when he was corrected. Baba-san had started to correct his speech, and he had the power of his baby brain added to his non-child awareness to understand most of what people were saying. The woman started to explain various particles and conjugations without him realizing it. It was interesting because he thought half in his new language and half in English. It was weird because even though he had not heard English except for his garbled tongue, his mind still thought about it. However, the older he got, the more he started to wonder in this world's language.
Even with his increased knowledge to understand the language, or a burden if you looked at it another way, he still could not speak in complex sentences. The ability of his sentence structures so far was simple and action-given.
Which Minato thought was a good thing. He did not want to stress his parents out by being weird more than he already was.
But back to Minato's new problem.
The angry kid glared at him across the room from where they were supposed to be napping.
Every time he spoke, Fugaku corrected him quickly. Minato did not have enough energy to be angry with him. He was a waddling three-year-old, and he chose the path of avoidance instead of getting his feelings hurt.
There was one positive to the boy's disdain: he felt the need to explain the entire shinobi world to him. It was a cheat code since Minato would sit and listen diligently, nodding dutily. Fugaku took it upon himself to teach him everything about clans that he knew.
It was surprising how much small children could tell you about the world around them.
Fugaku told him about the Uchiha clan the most: about how cool they were and sophisticated. How the village was created partially by his clan. Basically, the kid ranted to him about the greatness of the Uchiha, shinobi, and Konoha, in that order.
He also brought up constantly that Minato was a civilian. That was how he got the theory that Fugaku was mad at him because he was a civilian-born. The blonde also had a theory that Baba-san was someone to be respected, and the fact that she babysat a random civilian child that had no prospects was one that offput the child.
Minato sighed and set down his pencil. He bit the bullet and decided to speak.
"You said I would be killed," Minato said, and he watched as Fugaku glared at him more.
"You sleep like an idiot, and idiots get killed," was all the other boy said. Then, with the dramatic flair he was starting to get used to, he turned over and ignored Minato for the rest of the day.