(April, year 52 AK)
"This is my home now, huh..." Yuta said while curiously looking around his new tiny apartment that he was given by the academy as an orphan student.
...
After completing the academy entrance test, he was accepted formally as a Ninja Academy student. Afterwards he briefly returned to the orphanage with Chitose and others to pack their things, Kenta, Kiyoshi and Saki were all accepted into the academy as well. A little later they all went back to the academy led by Chitose and applied for the academy's housing and allowance program for orphan students.
Shortly after that Yuta found himself inside his new tiny apartment located in one of the chunky five-story budlings of this residential area that was quite a distance from the center of the village, it was slightly outside of the village's central area, about forty minutes of walking distance from the academy.
After Yuta and the others applied for the academy's orphan program and was given keys and addresses of their new houses and a monthly allowance of four thousand Ryo, Chitose bid them farewell and left them to do whatever they want from now on.
Yuta was surprised how big was the group of orphans that was applying for the program alongside with him, it was up to a hundred kids, among the five hundred or so new students this year, one fifth of them are orphans, that is quite a high number Yuta thought.
After they were left to their own devices, Kenta, who was nearby, enthusiastically said, "Let's go to some fancy restaurant to celebrate with some good food, guys! Yuta, you should come with us too."
"Why are you asking him, we are not friends!" Kiyoshi said irritated.
"But all four of us are from the same orphanage, we should stick together don't you think?" Kenta replied sheepishly.
'Four thousand Ryo a month, it would be barely enough to scrape by, I can't waste a good chunk of it on a first day for just a good meal...' Yuta thought after hesitating for a split second.
"I'm tired, you go without me." Yuta replied and immediately left to check out his new home.
...
As Yuta looked around his new apartment, he saw an open area, that begins from the entrance, it has a small kitchen and a dining table, kitchen has a sink, a fridge and a gas stove, as well as a few kitchen cabinets.
'Still can't get used to it...' Yuta thought as he was looking around the kitchen, 'This is a feudal society with nobles, samurai and shinobi, but there is also this, a modern appliances like fridges and gas stoves and electricity... But there are no computers and internet, damn it!'
...
'Well, there are something like an early version of computers exists in this world I think, but it will be decades before anything like a PC would be available for the people, if ever... A shame.'
...
There were also two doors in there, one leads to the small room with a bed and a desk, and behind the other door was a bathroom.
'Quite minimalistic.' Yuta concluded, 'Sparse furniture with only essentials, the space is quite small, maybe twenty/twenty-five square meters at most, and that including the bathroom.'
Yuta went outside to buy some stuff like a toothpaste and soap, as there were none at the new place, as well as the other stuff, like a new set of clothes, as the one that was on him is all that belongs to him at the moment, and this clothes looked old, with a lot of sewed parts visible, and Yuta didn't want to look like a beggar during his first day as an academy student tomorrow.
As he went through a bunch of stores to find the cheapest prices and bought everything he needs at the moment, he spent 1500 Ryo in total.
'2500 Ryo left for this month...' Yuta thought dejectedly on his way home, 'I don't think I could afford three good meals a day with just that... Buying cooked food or eating at the food stalls or restaurants is out of the question. I have enough to buy rice for a month and barely something to go along with the rice, maybe...'
As Yuta returned and stashed the things he bought, he went out again, wearing the new clothes he bought, it was plain looking cheap clothes, but at least they were in good and new condition.
He went to the groceries stores and checked the prices, as he expected, eating rice would be the most affordable option, one kilo of rice costs around 150 Ryo, and that should be enough for him for three days or so. As Yuta looked for some protein to add to the rice, he found that the most affordable thing would be the chicken eggs for a 100 Ryo for a dozen eggs.
With that Yuta concluded that it should be doable to live on this amount of money for a month, it wasn't much, just rice with some eggs, but it was much better than Naruto's diet of instant ramen each day with occasional normal ramen at Ichiraku.
He bought some rice and eggs and returned home.
'I'm home, huh... Feels weird...' Yuta thought, 'Well, with that my basic necessities are covered for the foreseeable future.'
He prepared two portions of rice with fried eggs while struggling a little in the kitchen with his short height of a five-and-a-half years old body, as the stove and the cabinet surfaces were on his shoulder level. Afterwards he had a fulfilling meal, stored the rest in the fridge, and went to sleep.
In the morning Yuta woke up in high spirits, excited about attending the Ninja Academy and finally starting to learn shinobi stuff, as Manabu didn't teach him anything besides chakra basics.
He washed up, brushed his teeth, had breakfast with the leftovers from yesterday and left for the academy.
Yuta came to the academy and found the information board with names and classes, he found his name, Yuta Arai, on the class 1-A column, there was about forty names on that column, as Yuta scanned the board he saw there are ten classes in total, each starts with "1-" and follows by the letters of the alphabet, each class contains from forty to fifty names in total.
'Hm... is "1-A" means that I'm on the top class I wonder...' Yuta thought excitedly, 'Well, my performance during the test was good, I probably outperformed all the no-clan kids who wasn't trained by clan's shinobi from the young age, and even outperform some of clan kids as well, although there was quite a number of the clan kids who shown much better results than me...'
Yuta briefly scanned the last names of his class and found that more than a half are the clan names, and most of them are big clans at that, only less than a half are presumably from lesser-known clans and from civilian backgrounds.
'Kenta, Kiyoshi and Saki aren't on the 1-A list, although there are two names without the last names, probably orphans like me I assume...'
...
Then Yuta finally noticed something he wasn't expecting to see.
"Itachi Uchiha?!" Yuta blurted out surprised and attracted a bunch of confused glances from kids who came to look at the board as well.
As Yuta hurriedly left to look for his classroom, being overwhelmed by conflicting emotions, he thought, 'I am in the same class as Itachi!? The same Itachi that slaughters his whole clan, including children, women and elderly... Including his own parents!'
...
'Calm down! He didn't kill anyone yet! Yea, with the emphasis on the word "Yet". What do I know about Itachi anyway, beside the clan-slaughtering that is?'
...
'Well, he graduates from the academy in one year, all because he was spotted using the Shadow Clone jutsu, that only Jonins usually could use. Then he joins a mediocre team with mediocre Jonin instructor, spends a few years on that team and unlocks the Sharingan by witnessing his teammate being killed, then he was finally allowed to participate in the Chunin exam and sets a new record during it, then he joins Anbu team led by Kakashi, that's about it.'
...
'And after that he was manipulated by that scum Danzo and given an ultimatum by him, that either he eliminates his own clan and there would be peace afterwards, or he doesn't and there will be internal strife, weakening of the Konoha village and then the war will start immediately after that...'
'Yea, right, like eliminating the strongest clan with strongest bloodline is not going to weaken the village bad enough already...'
...
'What a joke! I can understand that Itachi was loyal to the village and he values peace, especially after he was dragged by his father Fugaku to the battlefield at the end of the last war, he was four years old at a time.'
'But what I can't understand, is how you could kill your own family and clan, and you do that just based on the words of that absolute trash Danzo?! What a naive fool you are! And that after your best friend Shisui suicides because of that power-hungry freak Danzo!'
...
'Maybe I should do something about this whole clusterfuck...' Yuta thought as hesitation and conflicting emotions on his face was gradually replaced by determination and excitement.
--- AN ---
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