Blonding

Chapter 4 : Boruto

If there was a competition for the world's crappiest father, Boruto Uzumaki was content with the fact that he knew - just knew - that his was at the top of the leaderboard.

Hell, if he saw the Seventh Hokage - the real Seventh Hokage - for more than twenty minutes on any given day, it was a victory in his books. Why the hell was it so damn hard for his dad to make time for his own family?

Granted, Boruto knew that he was the only one among his family that seemed to really care. His mother appeared to tolerate his perpetual absence, his sister pretty much did whatever their mother did, and Dad himself; well, he was a self-centered ass. Of course he'd side with himself.

He was fighting an uphill battle. Why couldn't anyone see that the Hokage cared more about the damned village than his own flesh and blood? His own clan?

Boruto grimaced at that word. He hated the concept of clan superiority. His best friend, Shikadai, tended to try and pull that card all the time to get out of doing things he was supposed to be doing. To the blond-haired Uzumaki heir, he'd rather saw off his own right arm than take the mantle of his father once he finally kicked the bucket.

His heart stopped for a second, as he stood in front of his bathroom mirror, toothbrush hanging lackadaisically out of his mouth, shirt somewhere under a pile of other miscellany behind him in his room.

'Did I really just wish my father was dead?'

He blinked once, then twice, then scowled at his reflection.

That was cowardly. The man may have been... tiresome, to borrow a phrase, but that was no reason to think something like that.

He still loved his father, after all.

Boruto's expression softened a little, as leaned forward a bit over his sink and spit the contents of his mouth into the now-running water. After wiping his face with a towel, then rinsing and setting his toothbrush back in its rightful home, he made to leave his bathroom to start his day properly, when his golden reflection in the mirror drew his attention once again.

He froze in his place, strangely transfixed at the boy that looked back at him. He never really cared too much one way or another how he looked; girls weren't exactly anything to be scoffed at, and most tended to be more obsessed with him and clingy than he would like, so he basically just did the bare minimum and left it at that. Regardless, he raised a thin eyebrow at what he saw in front of him.

His blond mop of hair was still slightly damp from his morning shower, and a few drops of perspiration due to the humid air within the bathroom began to drip down his forehead, down his face. His eyes moved to the rest of his body, and he flexed a little bit in smug admiration - being an actual genin apparently did have its perks after all. All that training hadn't been for nothing, it would seem.

His eyes shifted from his arms to the small metal rod attached to a string around his neck. He softened considerably at that, remembering its history. He was wrong when he said that girls were annoying - well, not all girls at least. There was one girl in his life that meant more to him than he'd ever care to admit, least of all to his parents. They'd just get all sappy and embarrassing - that was, of course, if his father was even around. Who knows, maybe he'd send a shadow clone to mock him.