"Ah, I'm stuffed!"
Not long after nightfall, Naruto walked out of Ichiraku Ramen with a satisfied look, patting his belly.
The moon shone brightly in the deep night, while Konoha was brilliantly lit, already settled into its nighttime rhythm.
With the development and research of applied ninjutsu, Konoha's boundaries had continually expanded. It had practically become a large city and was developing toward becoming a city that never slept.
Naruto was especially happy today because he had finally officially become a ninja. To someone who longed for recognition, it meant more than anything.
Though he was no longer the dead last from the original story and had made a few people at the Academy he could call friends, most of the villagers still looked at him strangely and held a faint but unmistakable hostility toward him.
He even knew that after returning from the catastrophe involving Otsutsuki Kinshiki, some ninja had privately sighed that it would have been better if that guy had never come back.
Naruto pretended not to know about such behind-the-scenes remarks, but he buried them deep in his heart. He did not know why people hated him, yet the more it was like this, the more desperately he wanted their approval.
Fortunately, he was a ninja now and one step closer to his goal of becoming Hokage! No matter what anyone else thought, Naruto truly believed that in his heart.
As he followed the street home and turned into a sparsely populated alley, a black-clad ninja wearing a fox mask suddenly appeared.
The instant the other person appeared, Naruto instinctively stepped back. His eyes turned solemn in an instant as he assumed an attacking stance.
The newly appeared ninja silently praised him. Reactions like that were rare even among Genin who had trained for several years.