September 11, morning.
In Fourth Year Class 1, right in the middle of the lesson, two figures appeared at the doorway, one tall and one short.
Yuuya-sensei paused his lecture and walked over. After a brief exchange, he led the shorter figure to the podium.
In an instant, every pair of eyes in the classroom focused on that small silhouette.
One boy's gaze brightened slightly.
Minato.
As for everyone else, most of their attention was locked on Kushina's hair, full of curiosity.
In this shinobi world, red hair was extremely rare. With Mito's red having already faded, Konoha had almost no redheads at all anymore.
Being stared at by the entire class, Kushina looked timid. Her eyes darted around, and she did not dare meet anyone's gaze.
Seeing her fear, Yuuya-sensei patted her shoulder and introduced her to the class.
"This is the student officially transferring into our school starting today, her name is…"
Before he could finish, the timid Kushina seemed to force herself to be brave. She suddenly lifted her head, squeezed her eyes shut, and shouted.
"I'm Uzumaki Kushina!"
Maybe because she had been keeping her head down for so long, or because of her accent, her introduction came out a little sharp.
The moment her own name left her mouth, Kushina blushed and covered her lips.
Her voice set off an explosion of laughter.
"Look at that hair color, no way!"
"How do you even get it that red? That's so weird!"
"That round chubby face and red hair, she looks like a tomato!"
"It's my first time seeing hair like that. With that accent, she's not from the village, is she?"
"Huh? No way. I don't want to be in class with an outsider. Other classes will laugh at us!"
…
Fingers pointed. Mocking voices slipped into her ears.
Kushina's pride took a direct hit.
She had wanted to get along with everyone. Now she reacted instinctively, about to blurt out something bold so no one would look down on her.
Then a single voice cut through the room, and the entire classroom fell silent.
"So noisy…"
The words were light, almost casual, yet they hit like cold air seeping into bone. The students who had been talking loudly all shuddered, clamped their mouths shut, lowered their heads, and tried to erase their presence.
That scene also doused Kushina's anger. She turned toward where the voice had come from.
At the very back row, occupying a desk all by himself, Yami rested one hand against his cheek and held a pencil in the other. Like someone interrupted mid problem, he lifted his head and swept his gaze across the room.
His ice-blue eyes met Kushina's deep blue eyes.
A few seconds later, Yami looked away and lowered his gaze again.
"Sit here."
Yuuya-sensei's eyes lit up.
He smiled at Kushina. "Kushina, sit next to Yami. He's the top student of the fourth year. If there's anything you don't understand, you can ask him directly."
Then he turned to Yami. "Yami, look after your desk mate."
Yuuya-sensei understood that Yami was just awkward and hard to read, so he had no worries about seating them together.
But the classmates who did not know Yami at all looked at Kushina with pity.
Sitting next to the demon king.
What a miserable fate.
"I… I understand."
Kushina, now full of curiosity toward the boy who had spoken up for her, answered quickly and jogged to the seat beside Yami.
As she moved, she did not notice a gaze following her the whole way, warm, gentle, and laced with a rare trace of regret.
Sitting beside Yami, Kushina immediately tried to be polite and introduced herself again.
"H-Hi. I'm Uzumaki Kushina."
The response she imagined never came.
Yami only glanced at her, lifted his pencil, and pointed at the neatly stacked books beside him.
"Notes from last semester. Read them yourself if you want."
After that, he did not acknowledge her again.
So cold.
Now that she was close enough to meet his eyes, Kushina finally understood everyone's reaction.
White hair, white brows, and those eyes were already cold enough.
But that gaze and that voice carried pressure.
If Yuuya-sensei had not said he was the top student, Kushina would have thought Yami was the class delinquent.
And yet, her curiosity about him only deepened.
Because his appearance and his earlier help were such a sharp contrast.
A cold personality, but a surprisingly kind action.
It felt like he had a story.
And after being laughed at, Kushina only felt goodwill toward Yami. More than anything, she wanted to understand this desk mate of hers.
Still, she could not find a topic to start with, so she could only sit quietly.
Since she was in the back row, and everyone's backs faced her, Kushina finally had the courage to look around at the class.
The next second, she met someone's eyes.
With everyone else facing forward, that one head turned around to secretly look at her stood out like a torch in the dark.
Not knowing whether he had just been mocking her too, Kushina simply glared at him.
Minato flinched and quickly looked away.
On the surface, Yami kept his head down and worked on his reading comprehension.
In reality, he had been watching the whole time, and he almost broke his persona laughing.
A plot-knowing interceptor really was unstoppable.
By cutting off the "destiny resonance" between them, Minato's chances of drawing Kushina's attention again were basically gone.
In the original flow of things, Minato and Kushina barely interacted during their academy years. He only watched from the shadows, like a male version of Hinata.
And when Kushina noticed him, she took it as him laughing at her.
Without the Cloud incident and the dramatic rescue, it would have taken Minato a very long time to change Kushina's impression of him.
Now, with Yami, someone who understood Kushina's personality, sitting right there, the moment Minato finally gathered the courage to approach her, what would greet him might be an ANBU warning.
As he wrote, Yami thought calmly about the next step.
How should he treat Kushina?
What kind of approach would raise her feelings quickly, yet not trigger suspicion from the higher-ups?
Yami did not know that while he focused on his notes, someone else was also watching him.
In the Hokage's office, Hiruzen, still in his "shinobi hero" era, had already formed the habit of smoking a pipe, calmly exhaling smoke.
Through the Water Crystal Telescope Technique, he observed everything, from Kushina's entrance to her seating arrangement in Fourth Year Class 1.
Hiruzen stared at Yami inside the crystal, eyes narrowing slightly behind the haze of smoke.
"Sō and Rei's child, huh…"
(End of Chapter)
[Check Out My P@treon For +20 Extra Chapters On All My Fanfics!!][[email protected]/euridome]
[Thank You For Your Support!]