Year after year passed, and I turned eight. My chakra extraction went smoothly, and I had the best grades in class. I kept up with my drawing lessons, too, but I could never capture my family's faces or expressions to my satisfaction. In the end, all I could manage were a few sparse strokes. I felt lost and afraid, terrified that one day I would forget I even had a family.
One day, a new girl joined our class. Her round, chubby face was adorable. In my memories, I seemed to have been just as chubby as a child, so I took a liking to her. What truly caught my attention, though, was her long hair, which set her apart from the other female ninja and stirred my memories. Mom had worn her hair long like that, too. I found something inside me constantly urging me to make friends with this new classmate.
Her name was Kushina Uzumaki, a female ninja from the Uzumaki clan. On her very first day in class, unwilling to be looked down on, she shouted her bold declaration: "I'm going to be the first female Hokage!" Instead, it drew laughter from our classmates. They thought an orphan from another village, a little girl who had only just arrived, was far too full of herself to start proclaiming that she would become Hokage. Their mockery grated on my ears. I was an orphan, too, and although my grades earned me a measure of respect, no one truly accepted me. I understood exactly how Kushina felt. Besides, I loved the Hidden Leaf Village, the place that had given me a new home, and wanted to protect this land as well. So I stood up and made my own declaration: **"I want everyone in the village to acknowledge