11- Can’t you do something normal for once? You’re not going to kill the mood on the first day!

Minato stepped forward.

“Kakashi Hatake?”

The boy raised his eyes. His gaze was brief, then he returned to his indifferent posture.

“Yes.”

A single word. Flat. Without inflection.

Minato was not surprised. The opposite would have been.

“I am Minato Namikaze. From today onward, I am your sensei.”

Kakashi did not blink. His gray eyes looked at him a moment longer, as if searching for the trap in the sentence. When he found none, he shrugged one shoulder.

“All right.”

He’s ten years old and he talks like an instrument.

Minato buried the observation.

“Follow me. We’re going to the Academy. The other members of the team are waiting for us.”

Kakashi slid off the bench with feline agility. His sandals touched the ground without a sound.

They walked side by side through the streets of Konoha. Morning was here, sunlight filtering between the tiled roofs, casting short shadows on the dusty ground. The air smelled of warmed wood and the noodles from Ichiraku’s stand.

Minato felt the gazes before he saw them.

Two kunoichi in their twenties, posted near a flower stall, followed him with their eyes as he passed. One of them whispered something into the other’s ear, and both burst out laughing, cheeks flushed. An older civilian woman, holding a basket of vegetables, hesitated in her steps and nearly walked into a post. Three young women seated on a bench interrupted their conversation to follow him with their eyes until he disappeared around the corner of the street.

Minato was aware of every gaze, every smile, every whisper.

Well. This body really has something, doesn’t it.

He straightened slightly, shoulders a little farther back, chin a little higher. The movement was unconscious, instinctive—the vanity of a man who knew he was handsome and who, for the first time, fully measured the advantage of it.

Then he thought of Kushina.

The vision of her red hair, her brilliant smile, her fists that had split the wood of the kitchen table the day before—all of it surged into his mind with the force of a punch.

And if she heard that I’d been flirting on the way?

An icy shiver ran down his spine.

No. No, no, no. I’m a dead man walking. I’m a man married to a woman who could lift a two-ton boulder with one hand. I’m not going to ruin that for a couple of passing looks.

He cleared his throat discreetly and quickened his pace.

Kakashi, beside him, had noticed nothing. Or if he had noticed, he didn’t care.

***

Konoha Academy had not changed.

Minato knew the place by heart—the wooden building, the classrooms with their high windows, the blackboard, the desks aligned in tight rows. He had seen these settings hundreds of times, in the anime, in the manga, in the video games. But reality had a smell that images did not possess.

An Academy teacher—a man with a tired face and thinning brown hair—was waiting for him at the entrance.

“Namikaze-san? Suzaku Iwata. I’m the assignment class instructor.” He shook his hand with poorly concealed reverence. “It’s an honor. The students are waiting for you in room 4-B.”

Minato followed him down the corridors. The teacher spoke, but Minato only half-listened. He looked at the walls. The posters. The children’s drawings pinned to the bulletin boards.

“Here we are.”

Minato looked away.

Room 4-B was small. The desks were occupied by about twenty children between the ages of ten and twelve, seated in scattered order, some keeping each other company by affinity, others alone. The door opened and the teacher entered, followed by Minato.

Silence fell.

Twenty pairs of eyes fixed on him. The whispers ceased. The smiles froze. A girl seated in the front row dropped her pencil.

Minato advanced and planted himself in front of the board.

“Good morning. I am Minato Namikaze. Jōnin of Konoha.”

Eyes widened. Mouths opened. A boy at the back of the class grabbed his neighbor’s arm and shook him.

A girl—brown hair, round eyes, pink ribbon in her hair—leaned toward her neighbor with a smile that had nothing discreet about it.

“It’s him! It’s the Yellow Flash!”

Another sighed.

“He’s even more handsome in real life…”

Minato blinked.

He observed the gazes scrutinizing him. The young girls in the class were looking at him with an intensity that made him uncomfortable. No childish shyness—something more direct, more assumed. One of them brought a hand to her cheek, eyes shining. Another bit her lip. A third whispered, loud enough for him to hear:

“I hope he’ll be our sensei…”

Minato coughed.

In my previous life, girls this age played jump rope and collected stickers. Here, they’re evaluating the marital potential of a twenty-four-year-old man as if it were perfectly normal.

He recalled what he knew of the ninja world. Early marriages. Young engagements. Children who became parents at fifteen or sixteen because war left no time to wait. This world had different standards. Different rhythms. Death was so close, so constant, that maturity arrived quickly—too quickly.

I have to remember that.

He pushed the discomfort aside and concentrated.

“Obito Uchiha. Rin Nohara. Are you here?”

A movement drew his gaze to the back of the room.

A figure leapt to his feet.

The boy stood, shoulders back, chin raised, a brilliant smile plastered on his face. His round glasses shone under the light of the ceiling fixture, and behind the lenses his black eyes shone with an almost painful intensity. He wore his Konoha forehead protector set askew, slightly tilted to the left, as if he had put it on while running.

The image of twelve-year-old Naruto struck Minato with the force of a hammer. He blinked, pushed the comparison away, and smiled.

Obito advanced with a firm step, chest puffed out. Then he stopped, turned around, and held out his hand toward the back of the room.

“Rin! Come on, it’s our sensei!”

The young girl rose with less brilliance, but with a softness that contrasted with Obito’s exuberance. She was smaller, more slender, with mid-length brown hair framing a round face of fine features. Her brown eyes shone with immediate kindness. She approached Obito and placed herself beside him, hands clasped in front of her.

“Nice to meet you, sensei,” she said, bowing.

Obito, who had not yet greeted him, raised his hand.

“I’m Obito Uchiha! I’m going to become Hokage, so pay attention to me!”

Rin sighed.

“Obito…”

Minato laughed—a short laugh that even surprised the students seated in the class. He approached the two children and placed a hand on each of their shoulders.

“Nice to meet you, Obito. Nice to meet you, Rin. Welcome to Team 7.”

He escorted them toward the exit.

They walked down the corridor, Obito talking without stopping—about the time it had taken him to pass the exam, about the fireball technique he had finally succeeded at, about his grandmother who was going to be proud of him. Rin nodded at regular intervals, a patient smile on her lips.

At the end of the corridor, Minato pushed open the Academy entrance door and emerged onto the esplanade.

Kakashi was there.

Seated on the steps, exactly where he had left him. Arms crossed. Gaze straight ahead.

Rin saw him first.

“Kakashi?”

The surprise in her voice was obvious. She stopped, eyes wide, as if she had not expected to see him here.

Kakashi, for his part, did not react—not openly. But Minato, who was watching him carefully, saw the change. An infinitesimal tension in the shoulders. An almost imperceptible tightening of the fingers on the sleeve of his uniform. His eyes, a fraction of a second wider, before returning to their normal size.

He’s surprised. But he’ll never show it.

Obito, however, was not surprised at all. He was annoyed.

“You?” he said, his tone dropping. “You’re part of the team?”

Kakashi looked at him with glacial indifference.

“Apparently.”

Obito pointed a finger at him.

“Hmph. I’m a genin now. I’m going to surpass you, you’ll see.”

Kakashi shrugged one shoulder.

Perhaps another child would have answered. Perhaps another child would have needed to answer, to defend his ego, to prove something. But Kakashi was not another child. Kakashi was a genius who had grown up too fast, who measured the world in terms of competence rather than pride, and who knew—with the quiet certainty of talented people—that Obito would not surpass him.

Indifference was his answer. And it was sharper than any retort.

Rin, for her part, was beaming.

“That’s great!” she said, clasping her hands together. “We’re going to form a team, all three of us? With you as sensei?”

She looked at Minato, eyes shining.

Minato nodded.

“That’s exactly it. And to celebrate the formation of the team, I’m inviting you to eat at my place.”

Obito raised his fist.

“Awesome! I’m super hungry!”

Rin smiled.

“That’s kind of you, sensei.”

Kakashi, for his part, looked away.

“I have other things to do.”

Obito growled.

“Can’t you do something normal for once? You’re not going to kill the mood on the first day!”

Kakashi fixed a distant point beyond the roofs of Konoha, as if the conversation did not concern him.

Minato looked at him for a moment. Then he spoke, in a calm tone that left no room for negotiation.

“That was not a suggestion, Kakashi. It’s an order.”

The word fell between them like a stone into water.

Kakashi turned his head toward him. Slowly. His gray eyes looked at him, searching for the crack, the flaw, the joke. They did not find it.

Minato held his gaze.

Kakashi stood up.

“…All right.”

Obito exclaimed, Rin smiled, and the group set off.