Next morning, Arata was sitting in the classroom of the Ninja School, with dark circles under his eyes. On his right was Shikamaru, and Naruto was sitting on his left.
"You bastard, you actually left without paying the bill yesterday!" Shikamaru gritted his teeth and said angrily, unlike his usual lazy self. "Let's forget the bill for the moment; did you have to make weird excuses?"
"Weird excuses?" Naruto looked puzzled.
"What weird excuses? Can you believe this guy? I lost all my integrity for his mother yesterday, and this young man not only did not believe me, but he is even blaming me," Arata replied with a pained expression on his face.
"Who the hell would believe you? My mother was fine at home yesterday!" Shikamaru's head was filled with black lines. "Did you have to lie to me like that just to escape from paying the bill?"
In fact, last night Shikamaru had really believed his words.
After eating the barbecue, he rushed to his house and looked for his mother to check if there was something wrong with her. He even asked if she was feeling like she was going to explode.
And naturally, he received a 'reply' from the enraged woman who felt her son was cursing her to die. Even now he was feeling buzzing sensation from the pain in his head.
"What you see with your eyes may not always be the truth. You are still too young, Little Maru." Arata rested his head on his arms and replied with a sagely look on his face.
"What the hell is Little Maru? I told you not to call me with those weird names!" Shikamaru groaned at the boy, feeling his head aching even more. 'Why did I become friends with this troublesome guy?'
While they were talking, the classroom started to fill up one by one; the rest of the students had already arrived.
"Hey, that stinky guy seems to be looking at us!" Naruto pointed right at Sasuke, who had just entered the door, and shouted in a rough voice.
"Hmph, dead last idiot." Sasuke turned his face and snorted coldly.
"What did you say, you bastard Sasuke!" Naruto stood up and said angrily.
"It's you I'm talking about, idiot," Sasuke replied without looking back at him.
"You bastard, I see you are courting death!" Naruto raised his fist and was about to rush to hit him.
"Calm down, calm down." Shikamaru pulled Naruto by the back of his clothes to prevent him from rushing forward. He looked at Arata and said helplessly, "Hurry and help."
"It's good to be young." Arata looked indifferent and even held his chin with one hand, as if waiting for them to fight.
"Sakura!" A pale pink figure appeared, attracting Naruto's attention.
Hearing someone calling her, Haruno Sakura turned her head and glanced at Naruto, then turned her gaze to Arata in the middle. She frowned and started chatting with her best friend Ino beside her. "Did you hear, we are getting a new teacher this year."
"Well, he said he wants to teach us to understand the Will of Fire." Compared to Sakura's indifference, Ino slightly nodded to Arata as a greeting.
"I don't know what he looks like."
"Probably the gentle and polite type."
The two girls sat in the front row of Arata and the others as they talked; their voices were not low and reached the boys behind them.
"Arata, do we still need someone to teach us about the Will of Fire?" Naruto asked in a low voice.
Wherever the leaves are flying, the fire is endless...
This sentence was taught to him by the third-generation Hokage when he was a child, and he would always repeat it whenever they would meet. By now he had almost memorized it.
"You know the text of Will of Fire, but do you understand what it means?" Arata opened his dead fish eyes and yawned, adding: "Even if you did understand something, it will be your own understanding, not the meaning school wants to teach you."
"Ah?" Naruto scratched his head and said, "Is there more than one meaning of Will of Fire?"
"What the school teaches are the beliefs that the higher-ups of Konoha want to instill in your mind. They want to tell you that this is the only explanation of the Will of Fire; what you figure out yourself does not mean anything," Arata said lightly, as if he was talking about normal things, but he failed to see the serious look appearing on the face of the boy sitting beside him.
Naruto frowned, his expression thoughtful.
"Arata, don't speak anymore." Shikamaru reminded quickly. He knew his words could cause the boy immense trouble if they reached the higher-ups.
"Okay." Arata stopped talking, closed his eyes, and began to rest.
"Arata, don't you recognize the Will of Fire?" Kushina's voice rang in his mind.
"It's a deceptive trick." Arata's answer was concise and to the point.
"Aren't you being biased when you say that?" As the wife of the Fourth Hokage, Kushina quite approved of the Will of Fire. In any case, her husband had once devoted himself to the Will of Fire.
"Think about Naruto's situation, and then think about the children who were sent to the battlefield before they were ten years old during the Third World War." Arata's tone was still gentle, but his words were full of aggression. "This is all a result of the Will of Fire you mentioned."
Kushina suddenly stopped talking and fell into silence.
Clatter, thud!
The sliding door of the room opened, and a man wearing Konoha's standard vest entered the room and closed it. He walked up to the podium. He had short silver-blue hair that reached his ears, a bandana tied on his head, and a gentle smile etched on his face.
It was their new Will of Fire teacher.
Arata narrowed his eyes slightly and recognized this teacher who had once appeared in the original Naruto anime.
"Hello everyone." The new teacher politely wrote his name on the blackboard and introduced himself with a smile: "My name is Mizuki, and I hope to get along with all of you from now on."
"You're quite handsome, this Mizuki-sensei," Sakura exclaimed.
"Yeah, he's indeed the warm-hearted type." Ino nodded in agreement, happy that she had guessed correctly.
"I don't think he's handsome." Naruto, who was sitting in the back row, muttered in a low voice, "He looks a bit weird."
Although Naruto felt that his voice was very low, it was still clearly heard by Sakura, who had keen hearing. Turning her head, she glanced at him fiercely. "Shut up!"
"Oh." Naruto didn't dare to retort and lowered his head with a sad look on his face.
"Does Naruto actually like this type of girl?" Kushina, who saw this scene, spoke again, her tone not pleased at all. "I don't think this girl is suitable for him."
She did not have a good impression of the Sakura; she was not an Uchiha, but she sure had their arrogance.
"There's nothing I can do about it. I have tried to stop him, but he is too smitten by her for some reason. He goes after her like a licking dog," Arata sighed and said, "It seems he still doesn't understand that he is living in Gotham."
"Gotham?"
"That place is full of clowns."
"Pfft, you little boy!"
"You just laughed, right? You are his mother! How can you still laugh at your own son?"
"Shut up; whose fault do you think it is?" As soon as Kushina finished speaking, she suddenly felt Arata's body freeze in place. "What's going on? Did something happen?"