Naruto: God of Shinobi

Chapter 24: A Month Later

One month had passed.

Naruto had not missed a day.

Neither had Lee.

They were both on the ground now, moving in the same rhythm without having agreed to it, up and down, up and down, the earth close enough to their faces that they could smell the wet grass. Lee was counting. He was always counting, loud and cheerful, like the numbers were something to be celebrated rather than endured.

"One hundred and seventy three! One hundred and seventy four!"

Naruto did not count. He just moved. His breathing was steady, measured through his nose, out through his mouth, lungs cycling without complaint. A month ago, this would have been the part where his arms started to shake. Now his arms did not shake. The weights sat on him like old friends, familiar and heavy and constant, no longer an imposition.

He had not removed them once. Not to sleep. Not to bathe. He had found workarounds for both.

His body had simply... absorbed them. His posture had shifted to compensate. His stride had changed. He caught himself, sometimes, moving through the village and realizing his legs were hitting the ground differently, each step more deliberate, more grounded, like he was pressing something into the earth instead of just walking across it.

"One hundred and seventy eight! One hundred and seventy nine!"

He talks too much, Naruto thought without irritation.

But he had not missed a day. Not one. And in a world where almost everyone Naruto had watched train eventually found a reason to take a morning off, that meant something. He did not know what it meant exactly, but he respected it the way he respected a sharp blade: not with warmth, but with recognition.

Sakura arrived at the same time she always did.

She told herself it was because the training field had good flat ground. Good light in the mornings. She had been telling herself variations of this for three weeks and had gotten very good at it.

Lee noticed her first. Of course he did. His head came up mid-count and his whole face rearranged itself, the competitive focus melting into something that could only be described as sunrise.

He sprang to his feet.

What followed was technically gymnastics. A backflip that had no reason to happen. A cartwheel that transitioned into a handstand that held for exactly long enough to make a point before resolving into a landing so clean it should have had a score attached to it. Lee was grinning throughout. His eyebrows were heroic. His green suit caught the morning light in a way that seemed physically impossible.

"Good morning, Sakura! The day is young and full of youth!"

Sakura was not looking at him.

Naruto finished his set. He stood up, rolled his shoulders, and dusted off his palms. He glanced at Sakura. Then at Lee, who had moved on to a series of increasingly elaborate flips that were being performed for an audience of one and missing their target entirely.

"I'm heading back," Naruto said.

He started walking.

Sakura followed him immediately. She did not say goodbye to Lee.

Lee landed mid-flip. His feet hit the ground and he stood there for a moment, watching them go. The grin faded. Something else moved across his face, brief and complicated. Then he ran after them.

The road back to the village ran through a long corridor of trees, the canopy thick enough in places to break the morning light into pieces. Naruto walked at his usual pace. Sakura was beside him, close, almost matching his stride.

He let the silence run for about thirty seconds.

"Naruto."

He did not slow down.

"I see your affections have changed. From Sasuke to me."

Sakura stopped walking.

The color arrived in her face fast, starting at the neck and moving up. She had rehearsed this conversation in her head. She had considered a dozen different ways to start it. None of them had involved him saying it first, flatly, like he was reading a mission report.

Naruto stopped. He turned to face her.

"Well."

He looked behind her, at the sound of running footsteps coming up the road.

"Here is the thing. He is interested in you."

He tilted his head toward the distant shape of Lee, still sprinting to catch up.

"So why not just go for the guy who already likes you?"

Her mouth opened. Closed. She looked at him and something in her expression shifted, the embarrassment curdling into something more fragile.

"Why are you like this?"

Naruto looked at her for a moment. His eyes were not unkind. They were just very clear, in the way that things are clear when there is no fog left to make them comfortable.

"Let's see."

He took a breath.

"Despite how it may look, Sakura. Despite everything I have watched you do this past few weeks and months, taking the work seriously, actually training. I am not interested in you."

She flinched. A small movement, barely visible, but he saw it.

"Despite whatever you may think I am, I am going to be honest with you. I will not be here for long. I am not a nice person. You will not change me."

He paused. Chose his words.

"However wrong or creepy it may seem. I like oppai. Breasts. Girls with more to them. Some weight, some curves. And most importantly, oppai. I like oppai."

Sakura stared at him. Her eyes had gone red. Tears were forming along the lower lashes, not spilling yet, held by some last effort of will.

"I know that is not what you wanted to hear. But I would rather say it now than give you something to hold onto that was never real. I am comfortable with who I am. I like who I am."

He let his gaze drop to her chest for exactly one second. Then back to her face.

"I like melons,"

he said simply.

"Not bean stalks."

He turned and continued walking.

Behind him, Sakura stood very still. The first tear tracked down her cheek in silence. She did not move to wipe it away.

Lee arrived at a full sprint and had to slow hard when he saw Sakura's face.

His eyes moved between her red eyes and the wet line on her cheek. Something happened to his expression. The open earnestness closed into something harder and simpler. His jaw set. He ran past her without a word and planted himself directly in Naruto's path.

"Naruto! You must apologize to Sakura for whatever you did to make her cry!"

Naruto looked at him. He did not break stride. He stopped only because Lee was directly in front of him and moving around him would have required effort he was choosing not to spend.

"Back off, Rock. This doesn't concern you."

"Oh, but it does!"

Lee's stance shifted. Feet apart. Back straight. His face was completely serious, which was somehow more alarming than his face when he was doing unnecessary backflips.

"When a precious flower of the Leaf sheds tears, it is up to the hero of the story to comfort her!"

Naruto stared at him.

"Are you for real?"

"Naruto!"

Lee pointed at him with one finger, and the gesture managed to be both ridiculous and somehow dignified. "That is not how we speak to a woman! Women should be protected and coveted! For they are the bearers of our youth!"

Naruto looked at him. At the green suit that had been worn every single day for a month without variation. At the bowl cut with its absolute geometrical commitment. At the eyebrows, which were doing something intense and furious that eyebrows had no business doing.

He felt something pushing up through his chest. He pressed down on it hard.

"Whatever you say, man. I have to go shopping. I'm buying melons."

He stepped to the left.

Lee was there.

Not in a blur. Not visibly. He had simply moved between one moment and the next, and now he was standing exactly where Naruto was trying to walk.

"I will not let you pass until you apologize to Sakura!"

Naruto stopped. He looked at Lee. He looked at the outfit again. At the eyebrows. At the completely, genuinely, whole-heartedly sincere expression of someone who had decided this was a matter of honor and intended to die on this specific hill.

The laugh got out. Short and sharp, punched out of him almost against his will.

"Dude. Sakura wants a boyfriend. You want a girlfriend. You obviously like Sakura."

He spread his hands.

"Why the fuck am I in the middle of any of this?"

Lee went red. The color started at his ears and moved inward, consuming his face in roughly three seconds. But he did not move from the path.

"It does not matter what is going on! Whatever my feelings might be, Sakura chose you! And despite that, I must ask you for her honor!"

Naruto looked at him for a long moment.

Then he took a slow, deep breath, the kind a person takes when they are about to do something they will not apologize for.

He looked past Lee at Sakura, still standing down the road, one arm across her chest, eyes cast down.

He looked back at Lee.

He exhaled.

"Oh look,"

he said casually.

"A naked Sakura."

Lee spun around.

The spin was instantaneous. His entire body committed to it. His face, when he turned, was a picture of horrified scrambling, the kind of expression worn by someone who desperately does not want to be caught looking but also absolutely needs to confirm or deny what they just heard.

"Where?!"

The space behind Lee was empty.

The grass where Naruto had been standing was not even flattened.

Lee turned back. He looked left. Right. He looked up at the trees, which offered nothing. He looked down at the road, which was also unhelpful.

The silence was total.

The understanding arrived slowly, the way deeply embarrassing things do. It crept in at the edges. It filled the middle last.

His face went red for an entirely different reason.

"NARUTO!"

The shout went up into the canopy and scattered something out of the upper branches. A bird, probably. The trees did not respond otherwise.

"Falling for such an obvious trick! An awful, awful trick! My youth has been dishonored!"

He stamped one foot. Then the other. It did not help.

Down the road, Sakura was watching him.

Her eyes were still red. The tear tracks were still on her face. But her expression had shifted slightly, something uncertain moving through it, caught between two different responses that did not know which one to be.

She did not laugh. She did not cry.

She stood there for a moment longer, looking at the empty space where Naruto had been.

Then she looked at Lee, still shouting at nothing, one fist raised at the sky.

She could not decide what any of it meant.

She turned and walked home alone.

The market district was busy by midmorning. Naruto moved through it at an easy pace, hands in his pockets, the weights invisible under his clothes but present in every step.

He stopped at the fruit stall near the east entrance.

The melons were stacked in a neat pyramid. Large. Round. The kind that caught the light.

He looked at them for a moment.

He bought two.

The vendor handed them over in a cloth bag. Naruto took the bag, tested the weight of it, and walked on. His face was blank. His eyes, briefly, were not.

"Shopping,"

he said to himself as he turned toward home.

"See. I wasn't lying."

---

Next Time: The Annihilation of the Uchiha - Who is Itachi Uchiha?

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