Chapter 6
NARUTO
The car ride was silent.
Naruto could feel the anger coming from Sarutobi. The man’s hands were tightly gripped on the wheel of the car as he drove them home. His face still had that same, serious expression, that refused to give away any emotion, but his eyes revealed true. Naruto made note of that early on in his childhood. Those black eyes were the only indicator on how Sarutobi truly felt.
He felt angry.
Naruto looked outside of the car window, seeing the same green and brown colored neighborhoods he’d seen a million times. He concentrated on taking his mind off of what just happened, but he kept failing at it. He would stare at a convenience store while they stopped at a stoplight, trying to think about what the people were doing inside. But his mind would always wander away and come back to detention.
It was 4:30. Detention hadn’t finished yet; there was still 20 minutes left until it was over. He had forgotten that he was sent there to wait for the principal to finish his work, not because he was in trouble.
I’m so dumb, he thought. Of course, Sarutobi would pick me up before detention was over. He would come the moment he was done with his work.
He remembered when he heard the door open. How the president’s nephew turned around first to see who it was, his face becoming more depressed than it already was. How when Naruto turned around, the principal’s face didn’t have his normal emotion. Instead, he had shown his true emotion on his face. It was subtle, with only his eyebrows moving up ever so slightly, and it was only for a second, but Naruto saw it. He saw Sarutobi’s face. The man was shocked.
As quickly as he showed his face, he hid it, changing his face back to that same cold expression.
“Naruto, it’s time to go,” Sarutobi gravely commanded.
There was a moment where nothing happened. The other two students looked back and forth from Naruto to Sarutobi as if they were witnessing a tennis match.
He remembered that feeling of shame. He had ruined any chance of making friends because of his own stupidity. With his head down to avoid contact with anyone, he slowly followed the principal out of the room.
“I cannot believe this,” Sarutobi murmured, his hands seemingly gripping the wheel even tighter now.
“I’m…” Naruto started but decided not to finish. He was afraid that apologizing would make Sarutobi madder. Every time he would mess up, Naruto found it best to just stay silent. Apologizing only resulted in an argument.
“You’re what,” Sarutobi snapped.
“Nothing,” Naruto replied.
“What? You don’t even have the decency to apologize,” Sarutobi growled. He never raised his voice at Naruto, always opting to only make his words reflect his anger and not his sound.
Naruto didn’t respond. He knew where this was going and didn’t want to deal with this today. This was his first day of school. High school. And so far, it has already been terrible. He didn’t make any friends. Talked to no one except Iruka and the two guys in detention. He screwed up his chance of making friends today by getting caught sneaking out and now they probably hate him because they’re going to get more detention because of him. Naruto went back to staring out of the window, still trying to not think about what happened.
He didn’t want to cry in front of Sarutobi.
“Have I failed,” Sarutobi murmured. He always seemed to murmur that same statement when Naruto was in trouble. The first time he heard him say that phrase was when he was caught fighting a kid in the park back in seventh grade. Back when all he would do is fight. It was this big kid trying to bully a small one and he stepped in to stop it. After a struggle, he finally started to beat the big kid down when his mom came and intervened. She threatened to call the cops unless he told her “his parent’s” number. She gave him Sarutobi’s. After the mom told him that it was Naruto who was bullying her kid, the man looked at Naruto with a mixture of sadness and pity in his eyes, and on the car ride home, the only thing he said was “Have I failed you?”
Afterwards, in the summer of that year, Sarutobi adopted Naruto, becoming his legal guardian. It was weird. The man went from being this guy who would visit once a month to tell Naruto that if he was ever in an emergency, contact him and him alone to becoming his adopted father.
He remembered that day, walking out of the orphanage for the last time, saying goodbye to the staff and them giving praises for finally getting adopted. He didn’t have any friends leaving the place; most of the people he became friends with were all adopted by sixth grade. He was the second oldest kid at the orphanage next to this kid named Reto, but the guy was 17 when he left so they never talked.
After that, “have I failed” became a frequently used phrase in the house. Got detention over missed class, “have I failed”. If his grades were lower than usual, “have I failed”. Parent-Teacher conference about Naruto’s attention during class, “have I failed”. Missing the bus and making Sarutobi drive him to school instead, “have I failed”.
Trying to sneak out of detention just to make new friends for once, “Have. I. Failed.”
They finally arrived back to Sarutobi’s house. The house was big and tall. It adopted the colors of the Sarutobi family, white and brown, as well as grey and black to make the house more complete. Though the house had a modern design to it, the brown bricks gave it a nostalgic feel to it and the white and black really helped complimenting this feel by providing a modern edge to the house’s aesthetic. It had long, slim windows that covered the house everywhere that would allow the sunrise and sunset to illuminate the inside of the home with their warm, orange color.
The house was huge, having two floors and containing five bedrooms, three bathrooms, a comfy living room with a cottage aesthetic, a kitchen, dining room, another living room on the second floor with a more modern design, an expansive garage, and a basement.
He remembered first walking in and being in awe of it all. He had never seen anything like it. Naruto tried sitting on the couch during his early days and he jumped. He had never sat in anything so comfortable. In the orphanage, there weren’t couches, only bean bags and chairs, so when he put his butt down on the couch and it didn’t feel like sitting on bricks but on clouds, it startled him. His bed went from being just a block he slept to a very comfortable mattress! It was too good to be true; there had to be a catch.
The catch was that he had to live with Sarutobi.
Living in a house with man like him is usually silent until something happens. Then, the house explodes into arguments, lectures, and screams.
“It was always Naruto’s fault,” the man would say. “Why are you acting like this,” or “What is wrong with you” are examples of things his guardian would say. It was like Naruto was just some pet to Sarutobi, and when he would get in trouble, Sarutobi would act like a dog owner who was mad at their dog for peeing on the floor. He would look at him confused and then become condescending, like Naruto didn’t understand the words that were being said. And then, it was back to silence. It would be one argument and then it was never spoken about again.
The two never talked outside of arguing, so the house’s ambience was the only sound in the air 80% of the time. Naruto would take the bus home, so that meant he was usually home before Sarutobi. Thus, when Sarutobi got home, Naruto would be locked away in his room either playing video games or napping (though he was mostly napping). And when Sarutobi got home, he wouldn’t walk into his room. Instead, he would take a nap after work. Then, he would wake up, cook dinner, call Naruto down, eat with him with minimal conversation, watch the news on the TV (mostly from Capital NEWS), and then he would go to sleep. During the first days living with Sarutobi, Naruto found it surprising how little of a social life that man had. At the orphanage, that guy would always wear a warm face on his head and be very sociable with the staff when he came to visit, but at home, his expression was colder than ice, and he never left his home once he arrived. The only thing he did was go to work and nothing else. The man even had family working with him, like his nephew Asuma, but they never hung out outside of the workplace.
I guess that’s just how he is, Naruto would think. He doesn’t hate me; he’s just like that with everybody.
They walked through the big, brown wooden doors, and into the house. Naruto immediately went for the stairs. He didn’t want to hear a lecture.
“Naruto,” he said.
The kid stopped in his tracks. I was so close, Naruto thought. I was right in front of the stairs. He turned around.
Sarutobi was looming over the long, dark wood dining table that could seat 10 people but has never seated more than two. The setting sun was shining strongly through the big window next to it, making Sarutobi look more intimidating.
“Sit down,” he commanded and then pulled out a chair from the table. He slowly walked to the other side.
Naruto lumbered over and slumped down into the chair.
It was unavoidable. It was time for a fight.
“Naruto…” he started. “Am I mad?”
“Yes,” Naruto answered, wearily.
“Why am I mad,” he said, calmly.
Sarutobi always asked this, reaffirming Naruto’s presumption that all he was to that guy was a pet; not smart enough to be considered human.
“I know why you’re mad. You know I know; can I just go to my room? I…” his voice was starting to crack but Naruto held it together. Like hell he was going to cry in front him. “I-I had a bad day. Just give me detention or ground me and be done with it.”
Sarutobi’s eyes flared. “Do you think this is just some simple issue,” he scowled. “I am not only giving you detention but also to those two friends of yours. But I’m mad that you tried to help these bad kids who were rightfully punished out of justice. Do you think you can just escape justice?”
“They’re not bad…” he whined.
“They’re in there for a reason, are they not? Naruto, what’s wrong with you? Every day, I think ‘maybe he’ll learn from this’ and then you know what happens? You do something stupid like this! What’s gotten into you? Was it those kids? Are they rotting your brain?”
It was taking all of his strength to not tear up. Naruto suppressed his sadness. He opted to only reveal his anger.
“I said I’M SORRY!”
“You never even apologized! What, do you think that if you yell something that it’ll make it true!”
That managed to piss Naruto off.
“What am I to you? A DOG? Why did you adopt me if this is how you’re going to treat me! OK, I didn’t say sorry, but look I’ve had a bad day and I DON’T WANT TO DEAL WITH YOUR BULLSHIT!”
“Oh, here you go. That same speech. We all have bad days, Naruto! Do you not know who I am?!”
He knew full well. He always reminded him of who he is.
Hiruzen Sarutobi, principal of Sarutobi High, a school he founded 16 years ago in ’92.
Before that he was the legendary commander of the infamously disgraced military team called “The Sannin”.
“You know what I did what I did during my time in the military? Even before my time as a Sanin? I’ve had close friends die, Naruto, and you want to talk to me about ‘bad days’, huh. You think your day is bad because what, math was boring?” Sarutobi scoffed. “I cannot believe this is what I’ve raised.”
“What you raised?! I was NEVER raised by you,” Naruto snapped.
Sarutobi chuckled. “Appears so,” he said condescendingly.
This made him even more mad. Naruto angrily got up, pushing back his chair in the process.
“Where are you going,” his guardian questioned.
“I’m done.” Naruto began to storm off towards the stairs. Suddenly, he felt the air move around him and then grab him. The air then dragged him back to his chair.
“We are not done here. You leave when I say you leave,” he growled.
Naruto got up again. “I said, I’M DONE,” he yelled. He ran to the stairs again only to be knocked back by a gust of wind. Naruto slid across the wooden floor.
“Naruto,” Sarutobi sighed. “Let’s not play this childish game. Sit down.”
But there would be no stopping Naruto now. He was committed.
Again, he sprinted towards the stairs. Again, he was knocked back.
“Only an insane person does the same thing multiple times expecting something different,” Sarutobi quipped.
Naruto was becoming angrier by the second. He ran again.
This time the wind knocked him down instead of back. It pushed him to the ground and then kept pressure on top of him to keep him there.
“I’m not going to let you move unless you agree to come back to your seat.”
“Let me go!” yelled Naruto.
“Did you not just hear what I said? Only if you agree to come back to your seat.”
Naruto tried to push himself up against the pressure. He finally got an inch of the ground when the pressure increased, pushing him down again.
“You’re not getting out of this, Naruto.”
The boy started to think. He needed an escape plan. He was going to have to outsmart if strength wasn’t going to work.
“Just sit down, god, why do you have to make this so hard,” Sarutobi complained.
Naruto then made a clone of himself.
“Are you going to behave now,” the man asked.
Ding-dong.
Sarutobi let go of Naruto and turned to the front door. Immediately, Naruto dashed up the stairs.
“Who is it,” he heard Sarutobi say as Naruto ran up the stairs. He was already in his room when the front door was opened to reveal that it was nobody.
“Naruto!” Sarutobi yelled from downstairs. “Come back down here!”
Then there was brief pause.
“Naruto, come back,” Sarutobi said, this time less energetic.
Then, it was silent.
Naruto put his head into his pillow and let it out. He started to bawl his eyes out into the pillow, making sure to not make any noise. He didn’t want Sarutobi coming back
He thought high school would be different, but it was the same as every other school. Again, he was alone. Nobody to talk to. It was like this in junior high. It was like this in the orphanage. It was like this in elementary school. Nothing’s change except the time and location.
Is it too much to ask for change, he wondered. What have I done to deserve this? Were my parents so bad that I had to be punished too?
“I’m tired of this,” he whispered in between quiet sobs. “I’m tired of being lonely. I’m tired of Sarutobi. I’m tired of…” he began to cry even more so he crawled into his blanket and pulled it over his head. “…I’m tired of this. Why does this have to happen to me?”
He felt equally sad as he did angry. He was still angry about the argument. He was angry that he can’t make friends. He was angry at himself for screwing up his only opportunity at making friends.
“…I’m tired of being so stupid,” he whispered after the sobbing died down. “I’m…tired…”
The boy then fell into a deep sleep.