Gua followed silently the whole way.
Naruto never noticed Gua at all. He seemed completely immersed in his art.
All he did was stop to paint, then take off running once he was done.
Along the way,
when someone came out too quickly, Naruto would leave his painting half-finished, grab his paint bucket, and run like mad.
He was tiny, but he ran fast.
Those people cursed him out, but none actually chased Naruto down to beat him up. After all, if they really wanted to chase a little kid, quite a few of them were shinobi,
so catching Naruto would have been easy.
That just went to show that most of the villagers were still pretty kind.
Gua didn't run after Naruto either. He simply followed at a leisurely pace from a distance.
He also wanted to see what Naruto spent his day doing.
As Gua followed Naruto, the two went farther and farther.
The cursing behind them gradually died away.
Sometimes, Naruto had already painted little figures on three walls of a house, and still nobody came out.
Gua knew they had left Konoha's central district.
The farther they went, the fewer people there would be. They couldn't be bothered to fuss over things like this, either.
Gua even saw several houses with Naruto's little figures painted on their walls. The paint had faded somewhat, so they looked fairly old-probably a few months, at least.
Nobody had bothered to clean them off.
Naruto was still running ahead with his paint bucket.
Gua glanced in the direction ahead.
They seemed to have reached the very edge of Konoha. A familiar place lay just beyond: the Fire Memorial Cemetery.
The Third Hokage had once given Naruto, little Hinata, and Gua a lesson on the Will of Fire here.
Naruto showed