He didn’t go home. Or more precisely, he was heading home for Family Day, but it was early morning, the sun still rising up into the sky. He’d have to sleep through until evening once he made it to the house, and the whole day would be wasted.
Naruto staggered through the deserted residential area, feeling almost drunk. But he hadn’t been drinking; he was just utterly and overwhelmingly exhausted.
“Hah…aaah.” A large yawn spilled out of his mouth, and tears welled up at the corner of his eyes. How many days had it been since he’d slept? He’d been working so hard lately that the answer was hazy. Simply going over all those documents was a lot of work; once merchants had found out about the establishment of Family Day, they’d flooded into the Hokage’s office with requests to set up stalls and kiosks. Spots had to be secured, security assigned. He’d only finished up an hour earlier.
As Naruto was getting ready to head out at last, Shizune, unable to just stand by and see him in that condition, had offered Naruto a pill to help him stay awake. But the pill smelled like a dirty fish tank, so he’d politely declined. Thinking about it now, however, maybe he should’ve simply accepted it instead of being so fussy.
Somnolence was serious business. The piles of garbage bags on the sides of the road looked cozily comfortable, perfect for a nap, and Naruto was excessively jealous of a cat he spotted sleeping on top of a wall, looking too content.
According to his master, Jiraiya, anything related to the “three desires”—alcohol, money, women—ruined a ninja. So even if he succumbed to this overpowering desire for sleep, he would still be a respectable ninja. It would be entirely within his rights as a ninja to clap his hands in front of the snoozing cat, startle it into wakefulness, and then gloat, “Gotcha!” The lack of maturity of such an act, however, was another issue entirely.
As he silently apologized to the cat, his house finally came into view, looking like a two-layer cake with a bucket on top. Some said it was too modest a residence for the Hokage given that he governed the entire village, but if they’d built some luxurious mansion that screamed extravagance, his dearly departed master would have taken him to task for “drowning in a lust for money.” And that sort of house wasn’t what Naruto actually wanted, anyway.
“I’m home,” he said as he opened the door to the house quietly so as not to wake his wife and children, who were likely still asleep. (And he didn’t have the energy to produce anything louder anyway.)
However, his utterance of “home” was louder than he’d intended. Or somehow his intended greeting turned into something more like a question—“I’m hooome?”
“Himawari?” For some reason, his daughter, Himawari, was sleeping in the entryway. “Hima? Hey, you okay?”
She was wrapped tightly in a blanket, so he didn’t think she’d collapsed there because she was sick, but… He shook her shoulder and her small eyelids lifted slightly.
“Oh, Daddy. You’re home.”
“What’re you doing sleeping here?”
Himawari, bleary-eyed from waking up, and Naruto, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, looked at each other. The answer to both of their questions seemed to be that they were both equally drowsy.
“Hmm?” Himawari rubbed her eyes, still lost in sleep. A crumpling sound came from her clutched fist. “Oh!” she said, a sharp light growing in her eyes. “Daddy, here! Buy this!”
A hand extended out from beneath the blanket as she unfolded the ball of paper—a flyer—and pushed it toward him.
“Nine Tails…Kuraa-ma…” Naruto read the enormous round text out loud. In addition to the words, the flyer also featured a photograph of a long, slender egg alongside a cutified illustration of fox with an abundance of fluffy tails.
A fox with many tails given the name Kuraa-ma…
His mind started to ask the question, but there was something more important at that moment. He looked down at the blanket pooling onto the step into the house. “Did you maybe…wait here just so you could show me this?”
“Uh-huh.” Himawari nodded. “When she went out yesterday, Mommy said you would be home soon.”
“Unh…” The innocent words were a hook digging into his heart. It was true, he had told his wife, Hinata, that he’d try to finish up with work and come home the day before so that they could enjoy a leisurely Family Day together.
“Sorry. I had all this work… It just never ended.” He ran a hand over his closely cropped hair as he made his excuses. And then he frowned. “Did your mom go out?” He peered into the house above Himawari’s head. Second floor, bedroom, living room… He couldn’t sense Hinata anywhere.
“Uh-huh. Yesterday morning. She said she was going to Grandpa’s.”
Two people fell into the category of Himawari’s grandfather. Naruto’s father, Minato, had passed on over thirty years earlier, so the grandpa that Hinata had gone to see was Hyuga Hiashi.
“She went to Grandpa’s? What, again?”
Hiashi was the head of the Hyuga family. Had she been planning to pop by and see him? Yesterday morning was a whole day ago. She hadn’t said anything about being out of the house for so long.
Actually, it had been none other than Naruto himself saying he would be home last night. Hinata had merely taken him at his word, which was exactly why she had decided to leave the kids to him. In other words, he had betrayed his wife’s trust.
Aah, I really stepped in it. Naruto slumped down in the entryway, head hanging.
“Daddy, are you okay? Why are you like Mr. Turtle now?”
“Oh… It’s nothing. Really…” He staggered to his feet and waved a hand. “Are you okay, Himawari? Mom’s been gone since yesterday morning, yeah? What’d you do for food?”
“Mommy made breakfast and lunch for me. There was no supper, though.” Himawari glanced over her shoulder at the second floor. “So Boruto made supper for me.”
“He did?” Following Himawari’s gaze, Naruto also turned his eyes toward Boruto’s room. He could hear a faint snoring.
That kid… He’s really got the big brother thing together, huh?
“Heh heh. That right? Boruto cooked?” Naruto rubbed the bottom of his nose, trying to hide the grin spreading across his face. “What’d he make?”
“Ummm.” Himawari hung her head and thought hard for a minute. “A fried egg thing and a fried meat thing! Oh, and rice!”
“Yeah?” Although she responded not with the name of the dish but the ingredients, he still managed to get the basic idea. The important thing was that Boruto was watching out for his little sister. So it was all good. Probably.