“I wasn’t trying to do anything special.”
Even from outside the venue, Shikamaru could hear Naruto loud and clear. Standing beside the cylindrical ashtray, he let the smoke waft out of his mouth as he strained his ears to catch his friend’s speech.
He’d never been good at gatherings like this. He had to admit that doing anything in front of a full house was such an unbearable drag, he could hardly stand it. This basic nature of his never changed, no matter how old he got. As the Hokage’s advisor, he had set foot in places like this more times than he could count, but deep in his heart, he would always be the boy who thought anything and everything was a drag. Shikamaru could hear that boy cursing about all the annoying things he put them both through.
Being bathed in light was the Hokage’s job. Like Sasuke, Shikamaru worked as Naruto’s shadow; there was no need for him to sit in that meeting hall.
“We all want a peaceful tomorrow. And lasting peace is just a sequence of those tomorrows, isn’t it?” Naruto didn’t try to sound fancy or put on airs in front of the daimyo.
The way you are’s good enough, Shikamaru thought. People who spoke in lofty tones and pretended to be something they weren’t had no passion. Naruto could just be Naruto, the man who had endless, boundless faith in people.
“Families sit around the dinner table, kids go to school with smiles. A ninja’s no different from anyone else. Mornings like this are happiness to us, too. We know better than anyone how seriously priceless such uneventful days are after fighting in the Fourth Great Ninja War.”
During the war, it hadn’t only been the ninja of the five hidden villages who came together under the leadership of the Fifth Hokage, but also the ninja from the smaller nations. All of them had been someone’s father, someone’s mother—they were all parents and children. So many families who were unknown to Shikamaru had been sacrificed in that war, they had people waiting for them to come home. How great had their grief been when no one returned? Now that he was a parent, the full extent of the tragedy the great war had wrought felt painfully real to him. What would Temari and Shikadai do if they got a notice that he was dead? How would he feel if he found out Shikadai had died in battle?
Just the thought of it nauseated him and made his hair stand on end. He couldn’t even stand the mere idea of it. To calm himself down, he lit his second cigarette.
Naruto’s speech continued in the hall behind him.
“Lord Danjo said that ninja can only validate their existence in battle, but I’m telling you that’s not true. It’s precisely because we fight that we want peace. Ninja resist and endure. We never stop believing in the light, never stop moving forward, no matter how tough things get for us. Ninja don’t fight to find the meaning of our own existence. We fight because we seek the light. We fight for peace…”
The venue was so quiet, you could hear a pin drop.
That hopeless boy, the academy dropout, had really grown up. Deep in his heart, Shikamaru was proud of Naruto. He was glad he was the Hokage of his generation.
He looked up at the sky. Snowy white clouds drifted along.
Wonder what’s happening with the family right now. He very much wanted to see them.
✦ ✦ ✦
Three years or so earlier, a large building had been constructed at the crossroads of the village of Konohagakure’s main streets. Once it was completed, a large video screen had been installed on one wall. Most of the time, it showed advertisements for the latest ninja tools or music videos by Land of Fire singers, but that day was different. Today, it showed the hero of the village.
A large crowd had gathered at the crossroads and was looking up at the screen. Shikadai was in their midst, with Cho-Cho standing to his right and Inojin to his left. All three watched the Hokage’s speech intently.
On the screen, Naruto said, “There is some truth to what Lord Danjo says.”
The continental summit brought together every daimyo on the continent. And before such an impressive gathering of personnel, Naruto stood tall and spoke his mind. Shikadai felt like he belonged to a totally different world.
“Ninja are a tool of war. That might be the reality we live in. But if that’s the case, then we should not have ninja in this world.”
A clamor rose up at the continental summit, which came to them through the screen.
“What’s the Lord Hokage talking about?” Inojin muttered. When Shikadai turned his eyes that way, Inojin continued in a reproachful tone, still focused on Naruto, “We’re ninja, aren’t we? And, I mean, the Lord Hokage… He’s a ninja. Ninja shouldn’t exist? What exactly is he trying to do?”
But Shikadai basically got what the Hokage was saying without coming right out and saying it. “Isn’t that what, like, peace kind of is? You know?”
Perhaps it didn’t quite click for Inojin—he merely raised a skeptical eyebrow. Shikadai himself had only the haziest sense of the idea, though, so he wouldn’t be able to offer up a better answer even if he kept on trying to put that vague feeling into better words.
“Shut up and watch,” he said instead and focused on the screen.
“You’re going to vote today on the Land of Fire’s proposition to cede this territory to the Land of Earth. But before you do, I have one more proposal to make, this one from the village of Konohagakure.” Naruto paused, the span of a single breath.
“So, like…” Cho-Cho said.
Shikadai raised his eyebrows and turned his gaze toward her, wondering what she just had to say right now at such a critical moment.
“So my dad says it was your dad who said we should have this whole summit thing in the first place, Shikadai.”
He started, then braced himself so that his comrades didn’t notice his surprise.
“My dad looked really happy ’bout the whole thing. He said that if it wasn’t for your dad, we woulda gone to war ages ago.”
His heart pounded loudly, and goose bumps popped up all over his body.
His dad. The man who spent half his time in the house getting yelled at by Shikadai’s mom. Shirt always off, never bothering to take a bath when he came home in the middle of the night. On his rare days off, he’d sit on the veranda and stare vacantly out at the garden. Shikadai might have been his son, but he couldn’t help thinking that his dad was a huge mess.
And that guy was working this kind of massive job…
He was at a loss for words.
The camera cut from Naruto to show the inside of the meeting hall. Shikadai could clearly make out Mirai and other faces from the village of Konohagakure, but his father wasn’t among them. Why wasn’t his father there? If what Cho-Cho was saying was true, then there was no way his father wouldn’t have been there for the Hokage’s speech.
And yet…
His father had to have been there. He was no doubt watching over Naruto from some corner of the room that wasn’t shown on the screen. Cho-Cho’s father had probably been telling the truth about this whole thing.
“You have to be ready to put your life on the line for whatever it is before you can call that thing a drag. You can’t use the word as an excuse to run. Once you admit that it’s a serious drag, you have to do whatever it takes to overcome that thing. Otherwise, this little verbal tic of ours is just a convenient means of escape.”
His father had told him this. He had faith now.
“That’s like—Shikamaru’s amazing, huh?” Inojin said.
Shikadai couldn’t answer his friend. He felt like he’d start crying if he said a word.