▸ Column · Hidden Leaf Village — a twentieth-year Ninja Academy class reunion.
NARUTO UZUMAKI replies.
Replied to by Naruto Uzumaki, with a rebuttal from Sasuke Uchiha.
The letter
A lacquered invitation scroll arrived by messenger hawk last week — my Ninja Academy class is holding its twentieth-year reunion — and I haven't slept right since. From my first year through graduation, a girl named Reika and her circle made a sport of me. They mocked my patched gear and secondhand sandals, passed notes I can still recite, and once dumped my whole kunai pouch into the training-ground mud while a sensei found something else to look at. I'm forty now, a shinobi with a posting I'm proud of and a wife who loves me. But just seeing those names in the RSVP thread turned me straight back into the kid who ate lunch crouched behind the supply shed. Part of me wants to walk in polished and untouchable, to prove I made it. Part of me knows that stepping into that hall means smelling the chalk and the practice-mats again and feeling eleven. Do I go and take something back — or is wanting them to finally see me just one more way of letting them keep the power?
Naruto Uzumaki replies
Man, I read your letter twice. The crouched-behind-the-supply-shed part? I ate alone too — every day, the whole village looking right through me, and I'd have traded anything for one person to save me a seat. So I know exactly the smell you mean. But here's the thing, ya know? You already won the only fight that counts. Somebody loves you. Somebody SEES you — the real you, not the kid with the busted sandals. Reika and her crew never knew that kid. They knew a target. Walking into that hall to make them finally see you is just handing them a scoreboard they don't deserve to hold. They don't get to grade you.
That said — don't slam the door on going. If you go, go for the eleven-year-old behind the shed. Walk HIM through it, let him see the guy he grew into. That's the bravest thing there is. And Reika? She was probably some scared kid acting out herself — that's hers to figure out, not yours to fix. You don't owe her anger OR forgiveness. Just don't leave that little you stuck back there. I'm not gonna let you. Believe it.
— Naruto Uzumaki
Sasuke Uchiha weighs in
Naruto wants to walk your younger self through the door. Sentimental, and beside the point. Hear the truth you wrote without meaning to: you want to arrive "polished and untouchable, to prove I made it." That is a performance staged for the people who broke you — which means they still direct it. I spent a life perfecting an entrance for an audience I hated, and stood in the ashes of it feeling nothing. Reika does not need to see you. The instant you need her to, she owns you again. So don't go to be seen. Go only if her face has already stopped mattering — and if it truly has, you won't bother going. Hn.
— Sasuke Uchiha
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