𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐎𝐅 𝐅𝐈𝐑𝐄

𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙵𝚒𝚗𝚊𝚕 𝚈𝚎𝚊𝚛 𝙱𝚎𝚐𝚒𝚗𝚜! : 𝙿𝚊𝚛𝚝 𝙾𝚗𝚎

The Opening Ceremony at The Academy is often the most important event in a student's school calendar.

For the teachers, it happened to set the tone for the rest of the year. The freshmen have their anxieties and wild excitement on full display. The sophomores tend to seek enlightenment to become more diligent and refined and the seniors... pray for graduation to never come. Well, most of them do.

This year was the final goal post for the new batch of senior students and they couldn't mess it up. Sarada couldn't help but radiate her brilliant determination at the assembly point. Despite being at the very last row of the Assembly Line within her year due to the teachers making them stand in alphabetical order she couldn't be happier. Getting closer to the golden dream of being Hokage meant experiencing minor setbacks, even if it involved being unable to view the Hokage from the front row. In one way or another she envied the Akimichi girl, standing around with her pom poms sticking out like radio antennas as she couldn't gather the energy to open her eyelids.

Metal Lee seemed to be shaking up an earthquake just by standing at attention. Sarada rolled her eyes at the back of his head. That green boy really needed to chill. Inojin wasn't even looking up, the blonde boy already had his stretch book out and the Uchiha could tell that it wasn't an impromptu portrait of the Seventh Hokage.

Just as the spectacled girl made up her mind to signal the clueless blonde to stop his infuriating actions, she felt her body go stiff temporarily. Her head was forced to look to the ground where she saw a black mass escape from her shadow into Shikadai's. Once her body relaxed, she shot the ponytailed boy with an angered look to receive a worried look from his eyes as he pointed to the spot behind her.

She furrowed her brows as she tried to view what Nara was trying to say from the corner of her eyes. Her eyebrows relaxed once she realized there was no one behind her but maybe that was the point. Someone was supposed to be there, someone like Boruto!

Sarada turned her attention back to Shikadai and shrugged. She hadn't seen the Uzumaki since their little get together at the Training Center last week. Did he feel so entitled that he didn't feel the need to show up? The least the brat could do was support his father as he gave his speech up on stage. All his absence was doing was making Shikadai worry further and itching the part of Sarada that made her want to meltdown in rage.

The girl took a deep breath and smiled; she wasn't going to let that kid bother him. The chances of her being grouped up in the same team as him was low meaning when graduation hit, he wasn't hers to worry about. Out of sight out of mind.

She had bigger fish to fry at home, figuratively and literally. What kind of future Hokage didn't know the origins of her clan? Sarada was certainly going to start doing some digging through family records when she got home that night.