The afternoon's academic lessons were ordinary enough. Neither the material nor the teachers' explanations had changed much since the previous semester, and their dullness made it hard to feel motivated.
After school, Naruto did not head straight home.
As usual, he began his daily Taijutsu training. He was not worried about dinner, since a Shadow Clone at home could handle the cooking.
By the time he finished training, dusk had fallen.
Drenched in sweat, Naruto did not go straight back. Instead, he sat alone on the bank of the Naka River. The setting sun stained the river orange-red, and the water murmured as it flowed.
He watched the endlessly rushing waters of the Naka River without expression. The bright, sunny smile he had worn during the day had vanished completely, replaced by a stillness beyond his years-and even a trace of weariness that was difficult to detect.
A person's demeanor was a mask.
Every demeanor came with a mask, and every mask came with a way of life.
He reflected silently.
Whether cheerful and outgoing or modest and polite, they were all masks worn to adapt to one's surroundings and achieve one's goals.
And once a mask had been worn long enough, it became difficult to take off. Sometimes, even the wearer forgot what they had originally looked like.
He let out a long breath, feeling the coolness as the evening breeze carried away his sweat.
Keeping that smile on every day, playing that upbeat, optimistic role... was exhausting, too.
Only in moments of solitude like this could he allow himself to shed all his disguises for a while and reveal the true weariness deep within his soul.
Thinking back, he had actually enjoyed smiling in his previous life, too.
Back then, he had already learned to turn the hardships of his past into nourishment for his own growth.
He knew full well that dwelling on pain was pointless, so he had chosen to face life with a smile and a positive outlook.
But now, watching the waters of the Naka River, a clear, cool-headed thought surfaced in his mind:
Suffering itself had never deserved to be glorified.
What it brought was mostly trauma and exhaustion.
As for "finding joy amid suffering," Naruto saw it as nothing more than a defense mechanism-an unavoidable means of finding relief and keeping oneself from falling apart when hardship could neither be avoided nor escaped.
Yet ever since coming to this world and becoming Naruto Uzumaki, he somehow seemed unable to recover the mindset of his previous life, when he could find his own pleasures even in adversity and make the best of suffering.
Perhaps the malice this body had endured in childhood had been too pure and direct. Perhaps it was the heavy shackles of being a Jinchūriki, or perhaps the loneliness of someone who had crossed into this world...
All these factors intertwined into an invisible weight, leaving the psychological defenses he had honed in his previous life somewhat ineffective here.
He still smiled, but except when he was with his friends, those smiles felt more like a carefully calculated performance and strategy than a genuine emotion from the heart that could help him heal.
"Naruto?"
A familiar female voice came from a short distance behind him, carrying a hint of uncertainty.
Almost reflexively, the contemplation and weariness on Naruto's face vanished without a trace. His trademark bright, sunny smile appeared before he even thought about it, and he turned toward the voice.
Standing on the riverbank in the sunset's lingering glow was Ino Yamanaka, holding a small bunch of fresh flowers.
She seemed a little surprised to find Naruto here, too.
"Oh, it's you, Ino!"
Naruto spoke lightly, as though the lonely person lost in thought a moment earlier had not been him at all.
"What brings you out here so late?"
His smile was flawless, perfectly concealing every genuine emotion.
"I came to look at the daisies here."
Looking a little embarrassed, Ino pointed at a patch of wild daisies growing untended by the river.
"They're working so hard to bloom. Someone ought to appreciate them. I thought you were admiring the flowers, too."
In truth, Ino had come to the area to pick flowers and enjoy their fragrance.
Wildflowers smelled much sweeter than cultivated flowers.
Cultivated flowers were fertilized and watered by hand, with their care adjusted to local conditions and just the right amount of sunlight provided.
Under people's attentive care, they grew lush and produced larger flowers that were lovely to look at.
Wildflowers grew outdoors and could not choose their own growing conditions. With no special fertilizer added and no one to prune their leaves and branches, they generally grew in tangled profusion, with vigorous stems but smaller blooms.
Yet the flowers they produced had a wonderfully sweet fragrance, stronger than that of cultivated flowers.
Ino's family ran a flower shop, but she still liked going out to pick flowers.
Ino walked over to the flowers beside the Naka River and crouched down, gently breathing in their fragrance.
Watching her intent profile, Naruto suddenly remembered the packet of flower seeds from earlier that day.
"Did Uncle Inoichi like those seeds?"
Ino's hands paused, and the tips of her ears reddened slightly. "Father said... they're a very rare variety."
She stole a glance at Naruto. "Where did you find them?"
"I met some merchants from the Land of Grass around New Year and bought them from those merchants."
The traveling merchants in Konoha only cared about money. As long as they were paid, they did not care who Naruto was.
That was why Naruto liked doing business with them.
As for flowers, Naruto knew nothing about them. He had simply bought a fairly expensive packet of seeds at random.
Naruto brushed over the matter, his gaze settling on the ends of Ino's hair, gilded by the setting sun.
The quiet reminded him of an afternoon long ago, when he had still stopped to watch a falling maple leaf.
It seemed he had not had time to notice the scenery around him in a very long while.
Ino suddenly stood and drew a pale purple bellflower from her bouquet. "This is for you. Bellflowers can bloom in even the poorest soil, just like..."
She abruptly faltered and hurriedly pushed the flower into his hand. "Just as tough as you!"
With that, she ran off, clutching her flowers.
Naruto stood for a long time in the deepening twilight, holding the bellflower. Finally, he let out a soft laugh.
This time, some of the carefully performed brightness faded from his smile, giving way at last to a little genuine warmth that even he did not notice.
He lowered his head and gazed at the pale purple bloom, a strange feeling stirring within him.
Across both his lives, this was actually the first time anyone had given him a flower.
Whether in the busy, pragmatic world of his previous life or this Shinobi World full of strife and scheming, receiving flowers-a gesture of romance or simple goodwill-had never seemed to be something meant for him.
The memories of his past left him wistful.
During one exhausted late night, he had even thought with a trace of self-mockery: The first bouquet I receive will probably be a funeral offering lying quietly before my cold gravestone.
Yet now, this vibrant bellflower had suddenly, warmly found its way into his palm, carrying a girl's clumsy encouragement and the resilience of life.
That tiny act of kindness was like a pebble dropped into the lake of his heart, sending out ripples unlike any he had known before.
Perhaps the Shinobi World wasn't so bad after all, was it?