Boruto's pig-like squeals drifted down the mountain path, mixed with Hinata's relentless scolding.
Konohamaru hunched his shoulders and dragged his two dust-covered students along behind them, fleeing faster than a rabbit.
I spat the chewed-up rib bone beside my feet, where it landed on a broken roof tile with a sharp clack.
I smacked my lips. The meat had been stewed until it was wonderfully tender, but those little brats had stirred up a layer of dust over the broth, making it scrape my throat on the way down.
Who would've thought that several years would roll by in a blink amid all this chaotic bullshit?
Konoha expanded like an overinflated balloon, and all those squat, cracked tile-roofed houses were bulldozed flat.
Great skeletons of steel and concrete rose from the ground, while the bluestone streets were torn up and replaced with pitch-black asphalt roads.
Once the early morning sun hit them, a hot, pungent tar smell went straight up your nose.
Sending intelligence used to mean running your legs off or letting a Ninja Hawk shit its way across the sky. Now concrete utility poles lined every street.
Thick black cables stretched out like spiderwebs, and the sheet-metal transformers hanging overhead crackled in the summer heat, leaking puddles of black oil below.
The glass buildings at the foot of Kage Rock dazzled the eyes, with several hundred-inch color screens mounted on their outer walls.
Promotional videos featuring Naruto's greasy old face played on them every day.
The Manor on the back mountain hadn't changed much, but the Railway Bureau had forced a ring-route Lightning Train line through its outskirts.
The green carriages rumbled past, shaking leaves off the mutated apple trees in my backyard.
I'd changed into a pair of loud floral shorts washed nearly white and sprawled shirtless