[Konohagakure — Hokage Tower Plaza, November 7th, 6:02 PM]
The scroll announced category fourteen at six in the evening on a Thursday, which was the most ordinary possible time for an announcement that turned out to be nothing like ordinary.
"Category fourteen," the scroll said. "This category does not have a title. The title will be provided by the recipient of first place, after the ranking concludes. The scroll has its reasons."
The plaza stared at the empty announcement.
Then the chat happened.
Naruto: Wait so we don't know what it's called.
Sasuke: That's what it said.
Naruto: We find out at the end.
Sasuke: Also what it said.
Naruto: That's very dramatic of the scroll.
Tobirama: The scroll is being deliberately withholding and I am officially registering my objection.
Hashirama: Tobirama it's exciting!
Tobirama: It is structurally irregular.
Hashirama: EXCITING.
Tobirama: Those are not the same thing.
Madara: What is the category? There must be observable patterns in the placements.
Kushina: Ooh! A mystery ranking! I LOVE mystery rankings!
Minato: There haven't been any other mystery rankings.
Kushina: This is the first one! That makes it MORE exciting!
A: I don't like not knowing things.
Mabui: Lord Raikage, none of us know things.
A: I don't like it FORMALLY.
Mei: Lord Raikage and I are in agreement for the first time in recorded history. Mark this day.
A: I want that stricken from the record.
Mei: It's in the chat. It's permanent.
A: MABUI.
Mabui: The chat is permanent, Lord Raikage.
A: I know that, Mabui.
Mabui: I'm confirming it.
A: MABUI.
Naruto: THIS IS THE BEST SCROLL ANNOUNCEMENT EVER.
Tobirama: It absolutely is not.
Naruto: Look how much is happening and we haven't even started.
Tobirama: ...
Tobirama: That is, fine, a fair point.
The ranking opened at sundown. No title. Just placements.
TENTH.
The portrait formed and the chat went immediately from chaotic to focused.
Teuchi.
The Ichiraku ramen shop owner stood at the front of the plaza, as he had for every ranking, with his apron on and his arms folded, and received the portrait with the expression of a man who had not expected anything and was recalibrating rapidly.
The citation: "Has maintained the same counter without change for thirty years. Has never turned away a hungry child regardless of ability to pay. Has said 'welcome back' to the same person thousands of times and meant it each time."
Ayame, standing beside him, immediately began crying. She was not performing it. She was Ayame, and Ayame did things completely.
Teuchi looked at the portrait. He looked at the plaza. He looked at Naruto in the front row.
He thought: Thirty years of the same ramen. I never thought about it as a category.
"The usual?" he said, to Naruto, from across the plaza.
Naruto: "Yeah, old man. The usual."
NINTH. EIGHTH. SEVENTH.
Iruka at ninth — for twenty years of student records that were warmer than official records had any business being.
Shizune at eighth — for the documented pattern of handling exactly what needed handling exactly when it needed handling, without announcement or recognition, for fifteen years straight.
The Third Hokage's secretary at seventh — a woman named Sumire who had served three Hokage and organized their offices and never missed a filing deadline and was now standing in the plaza with both hands pressed to her cheeks saying "me? me?" quietly to herself.
The crowd was starting to understand the category. The chat was figuring it out too.
Sakura: These are all people who showed up every day.
Naruto: What?
Sakura: Look at the pattern. Teuchi. Iruka-sensei. Shizune. The secretary. They're all people who showed up every day and did the thing. Without rankings. Without reward.
Naruto: ...
Naruto: That's what the category is.
Kakashi: The scroll is ranking the people who held things together quietly.
Naruto: The people who nobody noticed.
Kushina: Oh.
Kushina: Oh that's —
Kushina: Minato.
Minato: I see it.
Kushina: That's the category.
Minato: Yes.
Kushina: The people who showed up.
Minato: Every day. Without the scroll. Before the scroll. Whether anyone was watching or not.
SIXTH. FIFTH. FOURTH.
Each placement landed differently. A field medic from Kumo who had worked for twenty years at a border station. A retired chunin who had taught the academy's cooking class for three decades because someone had to and he'd said yes in 1971 and never stopped. A woman from the Konoha civilian district who had, for sixteen years, left food outside the door of apartment 301 without being asked because the boy who lived there forgot to eat.
That last one made Naruto sit down.
Not dramatically. He just sat down, cross-legged, on the plaza tile, because his legs had made a decision without consulting him.
He thought: sixteen years. She left food outside my door for sixteen years. I didn't even know her name. I thought it was the building manager.
The chat scroll at his hip was very warm. His hands were in his lap. Sakura crouched beside him. She did not say anything. She was learning, from him, that sometimes the right response was just presence.
THIRD.
Iruka, who had already been ranked at ninth and was now appearing at third.
"The scroll notes," the scroll said, gently, "that Iruka Umino appears at two positions in this category. He is not ranked twice for the same thing. He is ranked at ninth for the years of student records. He is ranked at third for something different."
The third citation: "For the decision made on a hillside in a forest outside Konoha — to stand between a forbidden scroll and a child and call the child his student, when neither the rank nor the situation required him to claim that relationship."
The plaza was quiet.
Naruto was still sitting on the tile.
"Iruka-sensei," he said. Not to the chat. Just said it, to the air.
Three rows back, Iruka Umino pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes once, quickly.
"Eat dinner after this," he said, in the direction of the front row.
"Yeah," Naruto said. "I know."
"My place."
"Yeah."
SECOND.
The portrait formed and the plaza recognized it immediately. A woman in her thirties with a long red braid and the kind of eyes that had seen everything and decided to be warm about it anyway.
UZUMAKI KUSHINA.
"Second place for the years spent containing the Nine-Tails with nothing but will and love and the specific Uzumaki stubbornness that treats impossible things as inconveniences. She showed up every day. She showed up even the days she did not want to. She showed up the day she could not anymore, and made sure it counted."
Kushina: MINATO.
Minato: I see it, Kushina.
Kushina: I'M SECOND.
Minato: Yes.
Kushina: FOR SHOWING UP.
Minato: Yes.
Kushina: I SHOWED UP.
Minato: You showed up every single day, Kushina. For thirty-five years.
Kushina: ...
Kushina: I'm going to cry.
Minato: I know.
Kushina: In the chat. In front of everyone.
Minato: It's all right.
Kushina: DATTEBANE.
FIRST PLACE.
The scroll paused.
The plaza waited.
Then: "First place in this category is not a single person. It is, the scroll notes, the first time it has awarded a first place to a collective. The placement goes to everyone who has done the ordinary things — the daily things, the unremarkable things, the things that held the world together without a ranking to say they mattered."
"The category title," the scroll said, "will be provided by first place. Since first place is everyone, anyone may name it."
The chat exploded.
Naruto: I WANT TO NAME IT.
Sasuke: Then name it.
Naruto: OKAY.
Naruto: ...
Naruto: I don't know what to call it.
Sakura: What does it feel like.
Naruto: It feels like — every person I didn't notice doing something for me. Every time someone showed up without being asked. Every time the ramen was ready when I got there. Every time the door wasn't locked. Every time someone left food and didn't put their name on it.
He was quiet for a moment.
Sakura: What does that feel like.
Naruto: ...Home.
The chat was very quiet.
Then Naruto typed: "Category fourteen. Most Likely to Have Been There All Along."
The scroll read the submission. Its gold brightened once, warmly.
"Category fourteen," it said. "Most Likely to Have Been There All Along."
The plaza held the name.
Teuchi, at the front, looked at his apron. Iruka pressed the heel of his hand to his eyes a second time. The woman from the civilian district who had left food at apartment 301 for sixteen years — standing at the back of the plaza, having come because someone had told her there was a ranking and she was curious — read the category name and put her hand over her mouth.
Naruto stood up from the plaza tile. He was smiling.
Not the big performed grin. The real one. The one that was slightly quieter and meant more.
"Okay," he said. "Now dinner. Iruka-sensei's."
He turned and walked, and Sakura and Sasuke fell in behind him, and the plaza emptied around them the way plazas emptied after something real had been said — slowly, people lingering, not quite ready to let the air go back to being ordinary.
The scroll floated above it all, warm gold, resting.
Having been there all along.
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