Flower

Whether you want it or not, whether you are joyful or sorrowful, it does not affect the passage of time; the next day's sun will always rise as usual.

At five in the morning, as the alarm clock rang, Naruto opened his eyes.

The training began.

Wash up, morning exercise, eat lunch, review the morning's progress, nap, training, dinner, summarize the day's progress, plan for the next day, collapse into bed...

Days passed in this repetitive cycle, calm and without waves.

It was as if the world had forgotten Naruto. During these days of head-down, intensive training, he seemed truly isolated from the world. Nothing came to disturb him, just as if the previous incident of beating up the shop clerk had never happened. Unless necessary, Naruto rarely interacted with others. He was completely immersed in his own world; his eyes saw only training, and all he wanted was to become stronger, stronger, stronger.

Only occasionally, during his morning run, would Naruto brush past two green bowl-cuts.

He naturally recognized who these two were, but Naruto did not go up to strike up a conversation. As they met more often, they would simply nod at each other with a silent, tacit understanding. Sometimes, he might even receive a thumbs-up before they each ran off in their own directions.

Such days were undoubtedly dull and even painful. Naruto filled his daily schedule to the brim, leaving himself not a single gap to catch his breath.

But Naruto never wavered.

Like a precisely programmed robot, he purged all his laziness and distracting thoughts. His only directive was to resolutely execute the tasks he set for himself every day. Even in moments when his body neared its limit and his instincts begged him to give up and rest, he would only grit his teeth, growl, and push through it.

Of course, there were times he failed to push through, but so what? He would just crawl back up and start over; he could always overcome it.

Naruto had not forgotten why he wanted to get out of that movie theater.

Thanks to Naruto's unique constitution, no matter how extreme the training he endured the day before, he could always recover after a night's sleep. Otherwise, he would have been trained to death by the schedule he had set for himself.

Just like that, under such crazy, near-self-destructive training, supplemented by the acceleration brought by Multi Shadow Clone, Naruto's strength was progressing at a terrifying speed. It could almost be said that he changed every day... no, every half-day.

The following are fragments of text where Naruto recorded his training progress:

First morning: Tree climbing training, complete.

First afternoon: Water walking training, complete; first stage of Big Ball Rasengan training complete, successfully burst the water balloon (one-handed).

Third afternoon: Rasengan training, complete; accuracy rate for Ninja Academy past exams exceeded ninety percent.

Fifth morning: Finished reading the books borrowed from Iruka Umino and Hokage, gained a deeper understanding of sealing jutsu.

Seventh afternoon: Borrowed the Wind Style: Vacuum Wave scroll from Hokage, but the training progress was slower than expected.

Summary: The foundation of nature transformation training is not solid; need to adjust the plan.

Fifteen days later.

"Hah! Hah!"

Having barely finished another day of training, Naruto collapsed onto the cracked earth like a pile of mud. His lungs wheezed violently like a bellows, each breath carrying tearing pain. A faint metallic taste rose in his throat, and the soil beneath him was already soaked through with sweat, spreading a large, dark, damp stain.

"Almost died."

Naruto's eyes were unfocused, and he couldn't help but feel a sense of luck.

This was because the number of Shadow Clones he used for training today had reached 90. This was undoubtedly a dangerous number that tested the limits of his body. The moment he dispelled the jutsu, the splitting headache made him think he was truly going to die.

"But as long as I'm not dead, it's fine."

Naruto struggled to get up. The sticky sweat and dust clung tightly to his skin, making him want to rush home for a hot shower and then collapse into his soft bedding.

But he couldn't squeeze out a single ounce of strength; his body felt as if its bones had been pulled out, and every muscle was wailing.

After a few futile attempts with his nerves, Naruto, whose body remained motionless, could only temporarily abandon the idea. He continued to lie on the ground, watching the clouds in the sky being blown back and forth by the wind.

"Speaking of which, in the original story, was there this much time between stealing the Scroll of Seals and the team assignment meeting? It's been almost half a month, and there hasn't been any notification. I haven't even taken my ninja photo yet."

"So hungry, so tired, so sleepy... but I still have to cook, shower, and do laundry when I get home... ah, I want to die."

"The wind-up for the Rasengan has been compressed to 0.3 seconds... but the problem where the Rasengan becomes difficult to maintain once it expands after increasing chakra input still hasn't been solved."

"So, what exactly is the difference between Pervy Sage's Big Ball Rasengan and a normal Rasengan?"

"...Studying alone sometimes hits a bottleneck. If only I had a teacher. Should I find an excuse to ask the Third? Say I want to make the Rasengan bigger?"

"I still can't understand the Flying Thunder God seal. Mainly because this knowledge is prohibited from being spread by the village. I don't even know the basic principles; it's like trying to learn advanced mathematics without knowing one plus one—of course, I'd be confused... but I can't find an excuse to fleece the Third for this one, can I?"

The extremely exhausted Naruto let his mind go blank, various thoughts flying wildly.

Just then.

A shadow suddenly fell over his field of vision, and a slightly puzzled voice rang out.

"Na... Naruto?"

"Ah..." Naruto's unfocused pupils slightly converged, "Ino?"

What entered his eyes first was that brilliant blonde hair. It didn't hang down smoothly but was meticulously tied into a high, fluffy ponytail, hanging behind her head like a bundle of leaping sunlight.

The girl wore a purple sleeveless top. Her face was pretty, and although her cheeks still carried the roundness unique to a child, those clear, light blue eyes already possessed the charm that would captivate others in the future.

Naruto looked at the suddenly appearing Ino in a daze, his voice hoarse:

"Why are you here?"

"I was about to ask you the same thing."

Ino held a large bouquet of blue flowers in her arms, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

"Naruto, why are you here, and why do you look such a mess?"

"I came to the training ground to train, obviously. I just finished and was lying down to rest for a bit." Naruto tugged at the corners of his mouth, struggling to force a smile.

"Oh..."

Ino remembered the scene she had stumbled upon at the grocery store a while back. She paused, deciding not to bring it up, and instead teased, "So how much longer are you going to lie there? Do I have to keep hunching over just to talk to you?"

"Sorry about that..." Naruto gave a bitter laugh. "I want to get up, but I really can't move. I don't have an ounce of strength left."

"Training that hard? For real?"

Ino looked surprised. Only then did she notice the surrounding environment: the ground was riddled with craters and spiderweb-like cracks, and dozens of trees as thick as bowls had been snapped in half, their jagged stumps looking gruesome.

"Did Naruto cause all of this just from training?"

Ino felt a secret shiver of shock. She pulled a flower from her bouquet, crouched down, and used the thin stem to poke Naruto's neck.

"Poke."

?

"...Seriously, man?" There were too many things Naruto wanted to retort with, all of them stuck in his throat, leaving him momentarily speechless.

"Poke again."

Ino refused to believe it. She used the flower stem to tickle Naruto's face as if she were teasing a kitten or a puppy. Seeing that he truly couldn't even be bothered to lift his eyelids, she tilted her head and sighed.

"Wow, so you really did train yourself until you had no strength left. That's amazing."

"...Haha."

Naruto didn't know how to respond, so he could only offer a few dry laughs.

It turned out that Naruto had gone far too long without engaging in this kind of pure, "everyday small talk" with another human. Both his stiff smile and his hollow response were permeated with an inescapable sense of awkwardness.

Although the cinema had taught him many things, the one lesson of interacting with people could not be learned without practice.

Looking back at Naruto's past, even excluding the dozen years he spent alone in the cinema, he had been a loner at the Ninja Academy with no friends to speak of.

Because he had always been on his own, Naruto really didn't know how to get along with others; he didn't even know how to respond to a compliment.

(Shikamaru and Choji accompanying Naruto is an anime-only setting; this text does not adopt it.)

"..."

As if sensing the awkwardness in Naruto's tone, Ino rolled her eyes. Seeming to remember something, she changed the subject.

"Ah, I forgot to answer your question. I'm here because a customer wanted to return an item, so my mom sent me to the customer's house to pick up this bouquet. On the way back, I saw someone lying in the training ground—actually, I guessed it might be you, Naruto, since you have the same hair color as me."

"So I was curious and came over to check, and it really was you."

"So, this bouquet... are you taking it back to resell?"

"No way!" Ino, still crouching, used the flower stem to gently poke Naruto's forehead. "Even though that's what the customer suggested, we at the Yamanaka Flower Shop would never do something like that!"

"Sorry..." Naruto wanted to scratch his head, but since he still lacked the strength, he could only tilt it to the side.

"And let me tell you, the reason the customer returned it wasn't because the quality of our flowers was bad or anything. It's because the customer's husband is a total fossil. When he got home and saw these flowers, he started ranting about how blue is unlucky and insisted on returning them to get the money back. The customer had no choice but to bring them back. Ugh, it makes me so mad!"

As if opening the floodgates, Ino threw a few punches at the air, looking thoroughly annoyed, before glancing at the flowers in her arms with a look of pity.

"It's just such a shame, these little ones were growing so well... I don't know if Mom will just throw them away when I get back... Oh, right." Ino suddenly cautioned, "I'm just telling you this, don't go telling anyone else that I badmouthed a customer's husband, okay?"

"..."

Naruto watched the girl quietly as she rambled on, her cheeks slightly puffed out in anger. For some reason, his heart felt much lighter, and he felt a long-lost sense of relaxation.

He couldn't help but pull at the corners of his mouth, revealing a faint smile that was far more natural and sincere than before. His voice was gentle.

"Mm, don't worry, I won't tell anyone." Naruto's gaze fell upon the bouquet of deep blue flowers, his eyes filled with genuine appreciation. "These Nigella are truly beautiful. I think that customer's husband just has no taste."

"Eh?"

This time, it was Ino's turn to be stunned. She hadn't expected Naruto to know the name of the flowers.

The golden afterglow of the setting sun spilled down gently, casting a warm, hazy halo over the girl's delicate profile and the swaying blue flowers in her arms. The star-shaped blossoms, softly wrapped in velvet-like bracts, swayed gently in the breeze, and a faint, hazy floral scent permeated the air.

Driven by an inexplicable impulse, Ino blurted out, her clear eyes filled with curiosity and a hint of imperceptible anticipation as she looked down at the boy on the ground:

"Then, do you know the flower language of Nigella?"

Under the setting sun, Naruto met Ino's gaze.

If these flowers hadn't been Nigella, Naruto certainly wouldn't have been able to answer the question, but as it happened, he did indeed know the meaning of the flowers that shared the color of his own eyes.

"Fresh love," Naruto said softly, "and endless longing."