Thinking of this, Tokiju took the initiative to introduce himself. "Hello, I'm Tokiju. We'll all be classmates from now on, so please take care of me."
After speaking, Tokiju also amicably held out his right hand to Uchiha Itachi.
Seeing this, Uchiha Itachi smiled faintly and reached out to briefly clasp Tokiju's hand. "Hello."
After shaking his hand, Tokiju noticed Uchiha Itachi's thoughtful furrowed brow and sighed inwardly.
He was already thinking about all sorts of things at such a young age? No wonder he'd grow up to be like that.
When someone thought too much as a child without enough life experience to support those thoughts,
even the most beautiful ideas were nothing but castles in the air, and they could easily be led astray or misinterpreted by others.
In the original story, the Third Hokage had once told Uchiha Itachi, "You're a boy with the mind of a Hokage."
That was a form of verbal manipulation, guiding the young Itachi to consider things from the Hokage's perspective.
Of course, that wasn't to say the approach was wrong. After all, Uchiha Itachi was a genius, and everyone wanted to recruit him.
But Itachi was far too young at the time. His mind and judgment were still immature, making him prone to forming fixed ways of thinking that would be hard to change even as an adult.
This was a problem for many ninja. They experienced too much before they were mature, and their thinking became more extreme than the next person's.
So, if he wanted to change Itachi's way of thinking,
he had to instill sound ideas in him—or, rather, teach him how to think properly—before the Third Hokage brainwashed him with the Will of Fire.
Otherwise, nothing anyone did would make a difference.
But changing Itachi's way of