Now let me tell you, most of us took exams more seriously than anyone else, mostly for the sake of competition. We were after all, children of some of the greatest men and women in the village, only made sense we got a little competitive. Even our dads were making bets on who's scoring higher.
In terms of ninjutsu and Tai jutsu, we were all decently skilled, academics however was something we were always fussing about. We were in silence throughout the whole lesson, just paying attention to Iruka as he yapped on and on. Now, in the past I hated history, but come on, I'm in an anime now, ninja history is way cooler than whatever the heck the black death was.
Not just us, the entire class was focused, no more relationship drama, no more beef over football. EVERYONE wanted to pass.
I could hear Shikamaru sigh.
Well, almost everyone, but Shikamaru had a mother almost half as scary as mine so he had no choice but to put effort, but at the end of the day. Shikamaru will always be Shikamaru.
Aside from my posse, the commoners worked hard. I mean, who wants to go back home and farm when they can be a shinobi?
The rich kids... some of them cared, some of them didn't, the semi-rich ones did but the rich rich posse had fathers with so much money they couldn't give a damn.
The bell rang. Instead of running out like a pack of hungry lions we waited for Iruka to finish for five minutes. We'd then walk out of class.
"Bet you all I score highest" Sakura grinned
"Well duh. Your forehead clearly has at least an extra terabyte of extra storage and ×2 more gigahertz" Ino jabbed
Sakura groaned "can we go a day without poking my forehead out? Seriously"
"Oh come on Sakura" I grinned "I heard some cultures love foreheads, I heard that some men dream of nothing more than just rolling a finger down a woman's magnificent crown"
A fist was incoming, and I ducked narrowly, just to be punched in the gut.
"oof!" I chuckled, clutching the side of my ribcage "Sheesh, I have a feeling one day you'll be as scary as my Mom"
"Well if I was your Mom, I'd wanna kill you too" Sakura said with a touch of annoyance.
I looked to Sauske for help.
Hey smirked at me "You know Sakura, Menma might be right, there is probably a man waiting for you who can appreciate your unique features"
Well, there goes her bad mood. She just scoffed weakly as we sat down.
We sat down and began eating our Bento.
We chatted about our most recent hangout last weekend. The bell rang, we returned to class, did a basic revision class exercise and went back home.
****
Naruto was unusually quiet this walk back home.
"What's going on with you?" Naruto blinked and snapped out of his deep thoughts.
"You haven't said a peep ever since school ended, what's going on?"
Naruto sighed. "I just... I'm worried about letting Mom and Dad down, especially Dad, I overhead him once talking with Mr. Fugaku, he's so confident in us and I..."
"Feel pressured" I chuckled "I know Naruto, me too but... at the end of the day, we're writing these tests for ourselves, not Dad, not like he's the one about to become genin"
Naruto sighed "You always seem so eased, it's a little more different for me"
"Trust me, on the outside I may seem cool as a cucumber. But I'm always panicking inside. Besides, even if we don't beat Sauske and the Ino-shiga-cho trio, it'll be fine as long as we do well. Sometimes Naruto, the only opinion you gotta worry about is your own"
"But how?"
I sighed but grinned. "Your always one the toilet alone ain't you? It means, when sh!t goes down, at the end of the day you're all alone."
Naruto snorted and punched my arm playfully "Do you ever take anything serious... but you're right, at the end of the day, you're the only one who's gonna spend the rest of your life with you no matter what"
"That didn't make sense"
"Oh shut up, not everyone can just start spitting deep knowledge like you" Naruto said with a laugh, at least his mood was better, and I'm sure he was a lot less worried about expectations.