Naruto walked calmly through the streets, hands in his pockets and gaze lowered, as if he were simply following the most ordinary path in the world—but inside, everything about him was discipline.
Two years had passed.
It was strange how two words could summarize so much.
For most people, the village was the same as ever: shops opening early, the smell of food drifting from homes, a few ninjas rushing across rooftops, children running around before the academy began. But to Naruto, Konoha felt like a different place. Or maybe it was he who had become something else.
Before, people stared.
Disgust. Anger.
Some even spat on the ground when he passed, as if his mere presence stained the street.
Now, no one stared for long.
They looked away. Crossed to the other side. Erased their expressions, pretending not to see him.
And even when they didn't pretend, what lingered there was no longer open hatred… it was fear.
Naruto noticed it in the rhythm of adults' footsteps, in the way conversations died abruptly, in how mothers pulled their children along a little too quickly. Fear didn't make noise like hatred did—but it hung in the air, heavy, clinging to the skin.
He didn't like it.
Not out of pity. Pity wasn't a useful emotion. But because fear meant something else: it meant caution.
And caution meant vigilance.
If before he was a "problem" they could ignore and cast aside, now he was a "problem" that needed to be watched more carefully.
This change hadn't come from nowhere.
It came from his performance at the academy.
Naruto had been classified as one of Konoha's greatest geniuses—alongside Minato, Kakashi, and Itachi.
Just being compared to those names was enough to silence many who had once despised him.
No one wanted to be the person who spoke too freely about someone the village itself was beginning to treat as a promise. As a talent. As something that might become… important.
But Naruto knew.
He knew very well.
None of those past "geniuses" had been this strong at his age.
Not because he was a better person, nor because fate had chosen him as a favorite. It was simple.
It was math.
He had lived more than once.
He carried an adult mind stacked inside a small body, and that changed everything.
It changed how he learned. How he repeated. How he corrected mistakes.
Over the last two years, Naruto had been relentlessly diligent with training and study. Whether with his main body or with clones, he maintained a daily routine that left no room for true rest.
When the sun rose, he was already awake. When the village slept, he was still reviewing.
It wasn't "dedication" in the romantic sense of the word. It wasn't the glorification of effort.
It was necessity.
He knew what awaited that world in the future. He knew what happened when you grew up "normally" in the Naruto world. He knew how the village swallowed people whole and spat them out as weapons.
And he had no intention of being swallowed.
His chakra control had increased immensely. The sense of flow, once unstable at times, now felt almost natural.
He had already mastered all five elements.
That alone would be absurd for most adult shinobi—let alone someone his age. But Naruto didn't treat it as a "miracle." He treated it as routine.
Repetition. Time invested. Constant correction.
And, above all, clones.
The world could call that genius.
He called it applied advantage.
He possessed a solid repertoire of jutsu in each element. They weren't epic techniques meant to be written into legends, but they were efficient. Useful. Versatile.
Jutsu designed for battlefield control, defense, offense, escape.
Jutsu designed to survive.
Still, what had advanced the most wasn't elemental ninjutsu.
It was fūinjutsu.
Fūinjutsu had become the backbone of his entire structure. Not as a "mystical art," but as a system. As engineering. As a language that, once mastered, granted access to things most people didn't even realize existed.
He had reached the point where he could use the Flying Thunder God.
But, as with everything in life, there was a "but."
He could already carry other people with him—which alone was enough to make the technique useful for transportation and escape. He had tested it carefully, repeated it hundreds of times with clones, documented every flaw, every wrong sensation, every tiny delay that made his stomach churn.
But he still couldn't teleport instantly.
There was still a minuscule "time," a ridiculous interval between intention and execution, as if space itself needed a moment to accept the violation of its rules.
That made the Hiraishin not truly viable in combat… yet.
Naruto didn't deceive himself: in a real fight, one second wasn't "one second."
It was a window to die.
So, for now, he used it for what it could do.
Transportation. Escape. Repositioning. Training.
And he would continue until that "time" disappeared.
Beyond that, he could also use Kongō Fūsa.
Even though he could only form a single chain.
One chain was still little compared to what it could become—but it was enough to prove something: the potential was there. The Uzumaki blood within him responded when he forced his body to remember what it was.
And Naruto already suspected that his Uzumaki lineage was stronger than the original Naruto's…
Because the tips of his hair were red.
A small detail.
A detail no one cared about.
But Naruto cared.
Details always mattered.
He had tested multiple hypotheses on his own, compared memories and descriptions, observed how his chakra "held" longer, how his body endured more exhaustion than it should, how some techniques seemed to meet less resistance.
And when he asked the system about it, he received a simple answer:
**[The fusion of the protagonists' souls with the host may result in certain variations.]**
A brief response, with little explanation.
But it clarified a great deal.
Naruto exhaled softly through his nose as he remembered it, continuing to walk at an unhurried pace. People still glanced sideways, but no one dared say anything.
And he didn't need them to.
He already understood.
Today was Saturday.
And he had arranged to meet his friends for training.
That, too, was a change.
Not the training—Naruto had always trained.
The change was the friends.
Over the past few months, Kiba and Shino had started joining the sessions as well. Kiba was as loud as ever, bursting with energy and eager to prove something to the world. Shino was the opposite: quiet, methodical, with the air of someone who observed before acting.
They were too different to be alike in anything—but they shared one thing in common.
Both were getting stronger.
And Naruto liked that.
He didn't want people around him who existed only as background figures.
He wanted allies.
Allies who chose to be there—because forced alliances broke, and voluntary ones endured.
But the greatest change by far had been Sakura and Hinata.
Sakura still liked Sasuke.
That hadn't disappeared. It hadn't evaporated like in stories where feelings change for convenience. She still looked at him sometimes as if he were a goal, as if he were a prize.
But she no longer tried to draw his attention constantly.
She didn't chase him. She didn't humiliate herself. She didn't turn every day into a desperate effort to be noticed by someone who barely seemed to see her.
And Hinata…
Hinata was still shy.
But it wasn't the same paralyzing shyness as before.
Perhaps from spending so much time with Ino—and with Naruto himself—she had begun to lose some of that constant fear. Not completely. Sometimes she still froze. Sometimes she still blushed until she looked like she might faint.
But she began to speak more.
She began to lift her eyes more often.
She began to exist with fewer apologies.
And that was significant.
Naruto kept walking until he reached the training field. The grass was slightly damp, the ground marked by old kunai scars and footprints, and the wind carried that simple scent of packed earth—a reminder that, in the end, ninjas were just people fighting on dirty ground.
He stepped into the field and looked around.
Only Sakura was there.
She sat on the ground, leaning against a tree, knees slightly bent, staring off into the distance.
Lost in thought.
Naruto paused for a moment.
A small smile formed on his face.
It wasn't wide. It wasn't flashy.
Just small. Subtle. Almost invisible.
But genuine.
He moved silently.
Sakura was so distracted she didn't notice.
Naruto approached from behind, leaned in, brought his mouth close to her ear, and whispered:
"Thinking about Sasuke?"
Her entire body reacted as if someone had thrown cold water on her.
Every hair stood on end.
She jumped up in an awkward but quick motion, screaming:
"AAAAAH!"
Naruto couldn't hold it in.
"Hahaha."
The laughter came easily, naturally.
Sakura turned, face red with anger, a vein throbbing on her forehead, and lunged at him with her fist raised.
"NARUTO!"
Naruto simply dodged.
Effortlessly.
No need to block.
He tilted his body to the side, and her punch sliced through empty air.
Still laughing, trying to catch his breath, he said:
"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you."
The vein on her forehead twitched harder.
*If you didn't want to scare me, why did you sneak up behind me without making a sound, idiot?!*
The thought was so clear on her face that Naruto almost heard it.
They stood in silence for a few seconds.
Then Naruto realized something.
Sakura wasn't just irritated.
She was contemplative.
The anger was only the surface.
Beneath it was something else.
Naruto tilted his head, curious.
"What are you thinking about?" he asked.
Sakura hesitated.
As if the question had touched something she didn't want to expose.
But she answered.
"What should someone do when they care about another person… but that person doesn't care about their existence?"
Naruto remained quiet for a while.
Not because he lacked an answer.
But because her words dragged memories to the surface.
Not Naruto's memories.
Nexus's.
Memories of being ignored. Of being treated as nothing. Of watching people exist in groups while he existed alone.
He looked at Sakura, and for a moment, the light smile faded, replaced by something more serious.
"Everyone deals with situations differently," he said slowly. "But if I cared about someone who didn't care about me… I'd stop caring."
Sakura blinked.
As if that answer were too simple.
Or too harsh.
Naruto paused before continuing, as if weighing his words.
"Only water what helps you grow. Do you know what that means?"
Sakura thought for a moment and shook her head.
Naruto continued, his voice calm—not lecturing, but not softening it either:
"It can mean different things. But here, it means… we should care about those who care about us."
Sakura fell silent.
Her gaze dropped—to the ground, to her own hand, to the soil.
She reflected for a few seconds.
Then murmured quietly:
"I see."
They stood there in silence.
The wind rustled through the leaves.
For a moment, the training field felt larger, as if the world itself had stepped back to make room for that exchange.
Naruto kept his eyes on Sakura, but his mind drifted despite him.
To plans. To threats. To the things he had seen in the eyes of adults who pretended not to see.
To the system. To future lives. To the future he intended to build with enough strength to break the original script.
Sakura lifted her gaze and noticed he was lost in thought.
An idea came to her.
Quick.
Mischievous.
As if, for a moment, she wanted to pull Naruto back from that overly serious place inside his head.
She crouched down and scooped up a handful of dirt.
Looked at Naruto.
He was still distracted.
Then she approached quietly, holding back laughter.
When she got close, she called out:
"Naruto."
Naruto looked at her immediately.
And the only thing he saw was dirt flying straight at his face.
The handful hit squarely.
For a second, he froze.
Surprised.
As if he needed to process that it had really happened.
Sakura burst into laughter.
It was free laughter—almost childish—as if all the tension had been thrown away along with the dirt.
Naruto wiped his face slowly.
He didn't say anything at first.
Just looked at her.
And when Sakura finally stopped laughing, clutching her stomach, Naruto said a single word:
"Run."
Sakura's smile froze.
For a moment, she thought it was a bluff.
Then she saw the glint in his eyes.
It wasn't real anger.
But it was a promise.
Sakura bolted instantly, as if her life depended on it.
Naruto chased after her.
Fast. Light.
And to anyone watching from afar—anyone who saw only two children running across a training field—the expression on his face wasn't the coldness of a genius, nor the weight of a jinchūriki, nor the distance of someone who thought too much.
It was just a genuine smile.
(Early access chapters: see the bio.)