Time stopped.
Asahi stared at the octopus-shaped sausage resting on his rice ball. It was red, shiny, with a smiling face drawn in yellow mustard. It looked absurdly cheerful, a tiny invasion of happiness in his gray, functional world.
His brain—the same one that had spent the past seventy-two hours remapping his neuromuscular connections—was now running at full speed on a different problem: threat analysis.
'Motivation,' his paranoid mind demanded. 'What's the motive?'
Option 1: It's poison.
'Absurd. He's the Hokage's son. If he wanted to kill me, he wouldn't do it in a classroom full of witnesses with food his mother prepared. Risk of cross-contamination.'
Option 2: It's a prank.
'Possible. A cruel joke. "Look at the orphan eating from my hand." But… doesn't match his personality. Naruto is quiet, not sadistic. Not canon Naruto, but also not a bully.'
Option 3: It's a mission.
'Kushina. He heard her. Or Iruka-sensei told him the sad-looking orphan doesn't eat. It's an act of… pity. They're "managing" me.'
Option 4: …It's just a sausage.
This last option was so radical, so opposed to his eight years of fundamental cynicism, that he almost dismissed it entirely. Kindness without motive? Sharing food without expecting anything in return? A concept as alien as chakra control had once been.
Naruto shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Asahi's silence was dense, heavy.
"It's… it's good," Naruto murmured, pointing at his own bento. "My mom always makes too many. She says the Uzumaki instinct to 'feed people' is hard to turn off, ttebane."
Asahi looked at him. Naruto was blushing, avoiding direct eye contact. He didn't seem like a master manipulator. He seemed… a shy kid trying to follow his mother's orders.
Asahi inhaled slowly, a deliberate, measured movement.
He moved his right hand and picked up his chopsticks. The motion was rigid.
Asahi picked up the octopus sausage.
He examined it one last time.
'Okay. If it's poison, my endurance training could at least buy me a few extra seconds.'
He put it in his mouth.
The flavor hit him instantly. It was perfectly cooked, salty, smoky, and the mustard added a sharp kick. Objectively, it was the best sausage he had ever eaten. The orphanage rice ball, in comparison, tasted like wet cardboard.
'…Damn.'
He swallowed. The warmth of the food spread through his chest. He felt… good.
"See?" Naruto said, with a small smile, as if he'd won a minor victory. "Good."
Asahi said nothing. He simply nodded once, a short, abrupt motion. Then, to fill the silence and fake normalcy, he took a large bite of his own rice ball, chasing the flavor.
"You've… been practicing a lot," Naruto said, nodding toward the leaf fallen on the desk.
Asahi tensed again.
"Just… what Iruka-sensei said," Asahi replied, his voice rough from disuse.
"My brother couldn't do it," Naruto repeated. "Arashi. He tried last night after Dad told him. He was yelling at the leaf for an hour." Naruto mimed his brother. "STICK, TTEBAYO!"
A mental image of Arashi, red with anger, shouting at a piece of flora, crossed Asahi's mind. Despite himself, the corner of his mouth twitched.
"It doesn't work like that," Asahi said, almost reflexively.
"I know," Naruto said. "I told him that. It's like… like writing—that's what I thought at first."
Asahi raised an eyebrow. "Writing?"
"Yeah." Naruto seemed a bit more animated now, in territory he understood. "When you make a brushstroke in calligraphy, you don't use force. If you press the brush, the ink spreads and the line is ruined. You have to… let it flow. But if it flows too much, it drips. That's how it is."
Asahi looked at Naruto. 'Damn. He's right.'
The Hokage's son, the Yin Jinchuriki, the protagonist, had just given him the best analogy for chakra control he had ever heard. Better than Iruka's recalibration, better than his own theories and hypotheses. Just using an analogy about calligraphy.
'Of course. The Yin-Kyuubi. Awareness, perception.'
"You're strong," Naruto said, pointing at Asahi's arm. "But you press the brush too hard."
Asahi was speechless. This quiet kid had observed him for a day and arrived at the same Jonin-level diagnosis as Iruka, but with a more elegant metaphor.
'This world… I'm not in the class of fools. I'm in the class of geniuses.'
"Try… not to press," Naruto suggested, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.
Before Asahi could formulate a response to that exasperating simplification, the bell rang, sharp and shrill. Lunch was over.
"Oh," Naruto said, standing and picking up his nearly empty bento. He seemed relieved that the forced interaction had ended.
He paused for a second, as if wanting to say something more.
"Uh… thanks for… sitting with me," Asahi said, forcing the words. It was socially correct. 'Return the courtesy.'
Naruto looked surprised. "Oh. Sure. Uh… see you."
He left as quietly as he had arrived, leaving Asahi alone at the desk.
Asahi stared at the space where the three-tiered bento had been. The smell of grilled fish and soy sauce still lingered in the air.
He felt… strangely exhausted. More than after a squat session. Social interaction was an entirely new type of exercise, one he had absolutely no training for.
There was no malice. No deceit.
'Or… he's the best eight-year-old intelligence agent in history… or he was simply kind, as a protagonist should be.'
Asahi didn't know which of the two options was more terrifying.
He looked at the fallen leaf. He picked it up. Stuck it to his palm. Took a deep breath.
'Don't press the brush.'
Click.
It fell.
Asahi rested his head on the desk, gently banging it against the wood.
'This is going to be hell.'