"You're a Hyuga, aren't you?"
Naruto's question was rhetorical, a calculated confirmation of what his eyes had already processed. The lavender hue of her pupils and the vitriol of the bullies left no room for doubt. More importantly, he had been observing her for a long time. In the grand chessboard of Konoha, the Hyuga Heiress was a piece of immense latent value—and a girl who desperately needed a tether to the world.
Hinata gave a shallow nod, her fingers performing a nervous dance against the hem of her jacket. "Y-yes," she whispered.
Seeing her retreat into herself, Naruto adjusted his posture. He planted his hands on his hips and puffed out his chest, projecting an aura of unshakable reliability. It was the "Little Sun" persona, dialed to a frequency of pure, heroic sincerity.
"Listen!" he declared, flashing a grin that seemed to challenge the winter chill. "If anyone ever picks on you again, you come find me."
He jabbed a thumb toward his chest. "I'll settle the score. I never go back on my word—that's my ninja way!"
The bluntness of the promise acted like a surge of warmth through Hinata's system. She opened her mouth to decline—to offer the polite, self-effacing protests she had been taught since birth—but the words died in her throat. Looking at the blond boy who stood before her, radiating a confidence she had never dared to imagine for herself, she simply couldn't refuse.
A faint blush crept across her cheeks. She lowered her head, her voice trembling but soft with genuine gratitude. "Th-thank you."
"No problem!" Naruto's voice grew even more resonant, ringing with the absolute certainty of a man who already saw his future written in the stars. "After all, I'm going to be Hokage, y'know!"
He paused, letting the weight of the title hang in the air before continuing with a logic that felt both innocent and terrifyingly precise. "A Hokage's job is to protect the people of this village. If someone bullies a villager without cause—even if that bully lives in Konoha—it's a violation of everything we stand for. In my eyes, those who hurt their own aren't true shinobi until they repent. Tell me if they come back; I'll drag them back onto the right path while I'm looking out for you!"
It was a masterful stroke of rhetoric. He wasn't just offering protection; he was defining the moral landscape of the village. For years, Naruto had performed these declarations of the Will of Fire for the invisible eyes in the shadows—the Anbu observers dispatched by the Sandaime. Initially, it had been a survival tactic, a way to convince the leadership that the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki was a loyal tool of the state.
But as he looked at Hinata, Naruto felt a rare flicker of authenticity. He didn't believe in the Third's diluted version of the Will of Fire—a philosophy that had allowed the village to send children to the front lines and shun its own guardians. He believed in his own vision.
"O-okay..." Hinata breathed. The seed of his conviction had found fertile soil in her heart. To her, Naruto wasn't just a boy in the snow; he was a source of light.
"Heh-heh!" Naruto's grin widened, showing a flash of white teeth. But the heroic moment was abruptly punctured by a resonant, ungraceful gurgle—glu-lu-lu—emanating from his stomach.
The sound cut through the silence of the alleyway. Naruto's laughter stopped dead, and he sheepishly scratched the back of his head. Training had been brutal, and his meager breakfast had long since been incinerated by his metabolism.
"Ahaha... well, it's almost dinner time, and it's freezing!" He clapped his hands together, his eyes sparkling with a new kind of enthusiasm. "How about some hot ramen? Ichiraku is the only place worth eating at in this whole village."
Without waiting for a formal acceptance, he reached out and took her hand. His grip was firm and warm, pulling her toward the scent of miso and steam.
High above, hidden within the snow-dusted eaves and the skeletal branches of the surrounding trees, several masked figures exchanged silent, professional glances. An Anbu operative wearing a cat-motif mask flickered out of existence, racing across the rooftops toward the Hokage Tower.
Inside the office of the Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi sat enveloped in a cloud of blue tobacco smoke. Before him sat a crystal ball, the Telescope Technique shimmering on its surface. He had watched the entire exchange: the snowball, the clones, the ringing declaration of duty, and the invitation to ramen.
When the Anbu messenger arrived and delivered his report, Hiruzen merely nodded, his eyes never leaving the boy in the crystal.
"Understood. Dismissed."
The operative vanished. Hiruzen exhaled slowly, the smoke curling around his weathered face. Naruto's performance had exceeded every metric. The boy was growing into exactly what Hiruzen had hoped for: a bright, loyal shinobi who viewed the village as his family.
Yet, as the Third watched Naruto pull the Hyuga girl along, a detail pricked at his conscience. Naruto's sleeves were inches too short. His pant legs left his ankles exposed to the biting cold.
The child has outgrown his clothes, Hiruzen realized, a pang of guilt sharp as a needle. It wasn't that the boy was careless; it was the long-standing Anbu reports detailing how the shopkeepers refused to serve the "Demon Fox."
The realization brought a headache laced with political helplessness. He tapped his pipe against the edge of his desk, knocking loose the ash of his own indecision.
He would increase Naruto's living stipend immediately. The boy was at an age where social bonds were critical; he needed more than just survival—he needed the means to be a child.
"Tonight," Hiruzen murmured to the empty room, "I will deliver a new winter coat myself."
It was a calculated move. A personal gift would serve as an excuse to praise the boy for protecting a comrade, further cementing the bond between the Jinchuriki and the Hokage. In Hiruzen's mind, it was a gesture of grandfatherly love; in the grander scheme of things, it was another layer of the "Little Sun" mask Naruto was so carefully cultivating.