The first episode had occurred six months earlier.
He was pretty sure it was his second night of no sleep in a streak of all-nighters—maybe even the third. He’d had new ordinances to enact and a meeting of the Five Kages all in the same week. It was a busy time. He hadn’t been feeling well for a few days. He was dazed, sluggish, and maybe running a slight fever, but above all else, he wasn’t sleeping, so he figured he was just out of sorts from sleep deprivation.
“Naruto, sorry. Could you give us another doppelganger?”
It was after two in the morning when Shikamaru came into the Hokage’s office, deep, dark circles under his eyes.
“The institute made some last-minute progress with the chakra research,” he said wearily. “That in and of itself is great, but now the numbers for the meeting have changed, and we basically need to redo all the documents. And we do not have enough people to do it.”
“Yeah,” Naruto answered just as wearily and lifted his face from his computer.
His eyes were tired and dry from glaring at numbers in a spreadsheet. He leaned back in his chair, rubbed his eyes, and blinked repeatedly before weaving signs without thinking about much of anything. Just like always.
Instantly, an intense bolt of pain shot through his chest, like his torso was being ripped in two.
“Aaah?!” He fell forward, his head hit his desk, and he dropped to his knees on the floor.
“Naruto?!” Shikamaru cried.
After a second or two, the pain disappeared like a wave receding, and all that was left were the tingling aftershocks.
“What’s wrong, Naruto? What hurts?” Shikamaru peered at him, brow furrowed.
“Oh. For a second there, my chest, it was like...” Naruto staggered to his feet.
What was that? He’d never experienced that kind of pain before. Was it because he was weaving signs?
Nervously, he locked his fingers together once more.
Poof!
A doppelganger appeared.
“Huh.” He stared at it. “There it is.”
“What just happened there?” Shikamaru asked.
“Yeah, it was like, I dunno, this serious pain was like, shrrrmp.” Naruto described the pain with a noise that didn’t sound particularly painful.
“High blood pressure?” his doppelganger teased, patting him on the shoulder. “It’s ’cause all you eat is ramen.”
“Shut up!” Naruto snapped. “I’m not that old, you know!”
“. . .”
Shikamaru watched the two carry on with a hard look on his face. He was aware that the burden on the Hokage was too great with the current administrative system. He’d submitted proposal after proposal to the daimyo to revise and improve the system, but resistance to change was strong because it meant going against tradition. Any debate over these proposals had been postponed time and again since it was not considered an urgent matter.
Naruto had been pushing himself too hard for way too long.
And yet, Shikamaru couldn’t just tell him to take some time off. But watching him struggle was hard to bear. Theoretically, the Hokage was the leader of the institution responsible for defending the Land of Fire, the shinobi village. But during the long years of endless war, the entire nation had come to depend on the shinobi for more than just defense and looked to them for community leadership. The authority of the Hokage consequently grew in proportion, beyond the bounds of defense. The Hokage became the leader of the military force of the shinobi village, but he also supervised administrative matters. It was a complex and delicate position that required disciplined discretion of the individual himself. And so it was hard to simply redistribute some of the Hokage tasks.
“This won’t make you feel better, but drink it anyway.” Shikamaru tossed Naruto some herbal medicine mixed up by the medical team.
Naruto drank down the energy drink, got himself back on track, and focused on his duties, and before long, he had completely forgotten the flash of lightning that had raced through his chest.
The second time the pain came was two weeks later.
He was out on the training ground with his son, Boruto, one evening. The meeting of the Five Kages had ended without incident, and he was watching Boruto train to make up for time he hadn’t spent with his son in a while.
“Ha! Ho! Da! Hiyah!”
The shuriken that Boruto launched one after the other spun neatly through the air and struck the targets to the north, east, south, and west. Thok! Thok! Thok! Thok!
He was doing shuriken and kunai throwing practice, his worst skills.
“Yesssss! I got ’em!” he cried.
“Whoa, nice work,” Naruto said. “Okay, next we’ll practice an even tighter curve.”
“What? Tighter than that? I want to practice Rasengan though.” Boruto looked back at Naruto reproachfully and sulked. “I mean, I got Sarada on my team, y’know? I can just let her do the shuriken stuff.”
“Listen, you.” Naruto looked down at his son. “Once you’re a chunin, you won’t be teamed up with the same people all the time.”
“But, like, I don’t know what to do with the curves. Isn’t there a trick or something?”
A trick …
Naruto put his hands on his hips and thought about it.
“Right. Can you put a curve on Rasengan?”
“A little,” Boruto replied.
“I feel like it’s kinda like that.”
“Meaning?” Boruto’s blue eyes shone with expectation as he looked up at Naruto.
“I told you. When you wanna bend the Rasengan, you go like—” Naruto suddenly stopped. This was an action he performed through feel and instinct, like how he moved his arms and legs. He tried to articulate the process in words, but he couldn’t find the right words.
“You gotta go gah, and then bam. You know.” He himself was aware that his words conveyed no meaning.
But surprisingly, Boruto nodded. “Ohh, I get it. Go gah, and then bam. Huh. Like that, okay.”
Definitely my kid.
Naruto was tickled and tousled Boruto’s spiky blonde hair.
“Huh? Quit it!” Boruto swung back and forth and shrugged his shoulders to evade Naruto’s hand, but for all his annoyed gesturing, he seemed pretty happy. “Okay. Practice start. You make some obstacles with Earth Style, Dad, and I’ll avoid them to hit the targets.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Boruto turned his back to Naruto and readied his shuriken.
Naruto brought his hands together. Just like he always did, he went to weave signs and knead his chakra.
Thump!
Suddenly, his heart pounded hard. A familiar dizzying pain spread out in his chest.
“Nnnngh!” On the verge of screaming, Naruto gritted his teeth. He pressed a hand to his chest and let out a long breath. With his back turned to his father, Boruto hadn’t noticed anything.
“Boruto … Sorry.” Naruto mustered his strength to keep his voice from shaking and worked hard to act like he was fine, that everything was fine. “Looks like your dad … has an emergency to take care of.”
“Whaaat? Again?” Boruto said unhappily and turned around.
But Naruto was already kicking at the ground. Hyoo! He left so fast, it looked like he had simply vanished.
The ground was ringed with woods for training purposes, and now Naruto raced through those trees, hurrying toward the old city.
His heart was thumping and pounding faster and faster. This was not normal. He had to get to the hospital—get Sakura to take a look at him.
Thump!
Electric agony drilled into his body, and Naruto flipped over and collapsed on the spot. He dug his nails into the earth and somehow managed to sit up, but he couldn’t find the strength to do anything more than stay slumped over.
“Ngh!”
It was no use. There was no way he could make it to the hospital. Desperately, he crawled forward and managed to make his way into an aviary in the woods.
It had been built a long time ago to raise falcons for communication purposes and was still in use at the time of the Great War, but it had sat empty for several years now. The walls, exposed to the wind and the rain, were on the verge of crumbling. Screws flew out of the chicken wire when Naruto pushed against it, and it tumbled with him into the small building.
“Haah … Ngh … Ugh …”
The inside of the aviary was also in a sorry state. Old feathers stained with rainwater strewn across the floor emitted a rank smell. Naruto pulled himself on all fours across the rotten sawdust that covered the ground and curled up in one corner.
No matter what, he couldn’t let the people of the village see him like this. Not this sniveling, pathetic version of the Seventh Hokage who was supposed to protect the village. It would only cause worry.
“Ngh. Ah, ah, aaah!”
Waves of pain washed through his body, so intense that he could hardly breathe. He couldn’t stop the shaking that came up from deep in his core.
“Ngh … Unh. Unnnh!”
How long was he there like that, covered in mud?
Naruto leaned back against the wall and looked up at the ceiling with boards missing. He took a deep breath.
When the pain finally subsided, his face was covered in tears and sweat and saliva.
“I didn’t get to finish Boruto’s lesson.”
He was talking to himself, but a voice inside his head answered.
This is not the time to be bothered about that.
“Huh, Kurama?” he said, surprised. “You’re awake?”
When my vessel moans and groans so dramatically, it does tend to wake me up.
Despite his usual post-awakening grumpiness, Kurama’s voice was clear.
I was convinced you were under attack. Naruto, what happened?
“No idea.” He wiped his face with his sleeve, pressed a hand to the wall, and got to his feet. “I tried to weave a sign, and my chest suddenly started hurting.”
A sign?
“Yeah. Last time too. The second I went to weave a sign.”
Naruto. Kurama’s voice grew even more serious. If you wish to be free of regret, assemble trustworthy comrades and begin to investigate immediately.
“Investigate?”
Yes, Kurama continued slowly. When the old Sage was staying in the Land of Redaku, he had the same symptoms. He managed to recover somehow. But, Naruto, I don’t know if that will be the case for you as well.
Outside of the traditional sweets shop in the old city, there was a sign that said, “Strawberry daifuku are finished for today.”
Tami, the owner of the shop, was sitting on the bench outside, wearing the same cherry-pink jacket her staff wore. The enormous bun on the top of her head was quite conspicuous.
“Lord Hokage.” She stood up thoughtfully when she noticed Naruto and turned a smile on him.
“Hey, Tami!” he said. “Closing early?”
“We did good business again today. It’s getting to be time I opened a second shop.”
“I wish you would. My son was grumbling about how your daifuku are impossible to get.”