Sleep, There's Still Much to Do Tomorrow

Come to think of it, he had lived with Hirohiko before!

Chiaki, who had just closed his eyes, slowly opened them again. Staring at the ceiling in the darkness, images drifted through his mind, and a familiar feeling surfaced in his heart.

He suddenly remembered the time after the battle with Yagura Bi, when Hirohiko had moved into the hospital to make it easier to care for him.

Back then, he could barely move. Even when reading the Medical Insights scroll, he needed Hirohiko to help shift it around. Hirohiko would sit beside him, reading novels or manga while never forgetting to adjust the Medical Insights scroll for him.

Thinking back, he truly owed Hirohiko a great deal. If Hirohiko had not kept him company while he read every day, that period would probably have been wasted.

He also owed him for investigating beforehand. Otherwise, he could not have accurately learned about Danzo's confinement of Kushina. At the time, whether they could rescue Kushina at all would have been a question.

In the blink of an eye, three years had passed. Time truly flew by. He was already ten years old in this Naruto World.

Hirohiko was ten too...

Yet he still seemed much the same as when he was seven. Was it because he had matured early? Come to think of it, the students in his year all seemed rather mature for their age. Aside from Obito, there was very little childishness in any of them.

Was it because of the war? They, himself included... in other people's eyes, they were probably fruits ripened prematurely by war.

No, perhaps the entire Naruto World had such prematurely ripened fruits whenever there was war.

Even the original work seemed to carry that sense of being "forced to mature." Compared to Naruto's