Sakuragachamon!

Pt1: The ninja candidates are going to be a headache!

I started the new year feeling good. I was going to be in Ino's class, along with her childhood friends-slash-required-limpets, Chouji and Shikamaru. I liked Ino, and Chouji too from the times we'd met at her birthday parties. Shikamaru I was reserving judgment on, since we never really talked and I knew better than to trust a preteen's opinion on boys. I knew half the people in my new class, but the rest would be from Ino's old class, which included a lot more famous names from our history lessons than mine.

I finally remembered where I knew the teacher with the scar, Umino Iruka-sensei, from. I'd seen him year after year, every tenth of October, at the memorial for Nine-Tails' victims. Specifically, the memorial for ninja casualties. The matron took me and some other kids there on the day, back when we were younger. He wasn't that much older than me, so he must have lost family to it. I hadn't been to the memorial on the anniversary of the attack since I'd gotten my own place and scheduling freedom. Too many people.

I reached the Academy as the bell was about to ring like always, fresh from my newspaper run. Everybody was already there or loitering near the door. Entering, I sought out Ino and found her sitting next to, unmistakably, Uchiha Sasuke. She was completely absorbed, talking to him. That's right, she had the biggest crush on him. There were no empty spaces next to her and, honestly, I wasn't looking forward to being next to my best friend as she tried to get a man's attention. I could be a wingman but...

I surveyed the girls that would be my classmates. Was Uchiha catnip or something? Ugh, preteens.

Instead, I climbed up to my usual row, at the very back. "Is this seat free?" I asked a boy sitting alone.

"Y-yes. G-go ahead." He stuttered out. I caught a glimpse of white Hyuuga eyes. It had been a while since I'd seen those. I hadn't known there was a guy from that clan in our year.

"Thanks." Actually... " Hey, you... would you know a boy that just graduated, Hyuuga Neji?"

"N-n-neji-nii-san?" He startled, head lifting from the collar of his jacket. It was adorable and I also wanted a nice jacked like his. "H-how d-do you k-know N-n-neji?"

"He's in the same team as my friend Lee. I've never actually met him, honestly. Just got curious."

I was going to keep the conversation going, but Iruka-sensei chose that moment to shoo in the kids outside and close the door behind him, signaling the start of classes. The bell rang, right on time.

We started with introductions. Name, favorite subject, a personal detail. I noted all of those down, of course, because Suzume-sensei's lessons had taught me well. I would never be a social animal and crap at engaging most people, but I'd become surprisingly detail-aware. And these little things people told you without meaning too were a lot easier for me to gather and parse than trying to weedle out of them by directing conversations. We were supposed to start with Aburame Shino, from a clan that I tried not to think too hard about, but Inuzuka Kiba interrupted because his ninja puppy Akamaru technically came first. I forgave him, because Akamaru was a ruffly, adorable, fluffy ball of hidden murder. Shino absolutely didn't.

We were almost at my name, which was in the later half of the syllabary, when the classroom's door rattled and opened, letting in a blonde and orange cannonball.

"I'm not late!"

... He so was.

Uzumaki Naruto. Hard not to have heard of the biggest troublemaker in the Academy. I vaguely remembered he'd been in one of my classes in the very early years of school. I did not remember him being so... loud. Uzumaki was the bad orphan example. When we behaved badly, and only when we behaved really badly, that was the one they would compare us to. We were behaving just like that Naruto. We didn't want to be like that Naruto. It felt almost prejudiced, but aside from his bright hair he didn't look like any different from most people in Konoha, already a diverse group. On the other hand, the punk was yelling in front of the whole class and I could already feel a phantom migraine.

Oh, and of course that triggered counter-yelling. My eye twitched.

The excessively loudmouth ninja prankster... and the perfectly brooding ninja idol (plus entourage). I let my forehead thunk against the desk's top and ground it left and right. I hoped this was not an omen. Then I remembered that part of this year's focus would be team exercises. Group projects.

Hyuuga was probably looking at me weird when I released a low moan of "Nooooo..."