Chapter Text
It’s one of the simplest surnames out there — Akagi. Easy to spell even for an idiot like him who doesn’t know kanji yet, but he knows the meaning can shift if you write it differently, knows he can manipulate it however he wants and no one else would know because he’s always so alone.
Red future, Ryuunosuke supposes, has a certain sound to it. It’d give him importance, he thinks, but his Akagi means red tree regardless.
Certainly he’s not proud of it, but not because it’s a common last name with a boring meaning. There’s just something in the air every time he introduces himself the way Grandma taught him to, when the adults hear that name and they flinch. Or the neighbors who look at him with pity and they ask him if his grandfather is doing alright (he’s not because he keeps talking about the war to his reflection in the mirror, Ryuunosuke tells them) before patting him on the head and leaving.
Sometimes Grandpa tries to convince him the Akagi used to get respect in Konoha, before Ryuhei and Kyo got killed. And Grandpa always says killed, murdered, slaughtered, he never uses the word passed away, earning himself glares from Grandma who insists he shouldn’t say that in front of a child. Ryuunosuke doesn’t know who Ryuhei and Kyo are, either.
Then there’s always Grandma who keeps averting her eyes away from him. She can’t bear to look at him.
She thinks he looks like someone who’s going to die. He has his mother’s eyes and the face of his father — pretty much his everything, even — and God, he’s going to die. She can smell it on him already.
And his only saving grace is probably his touch, soft and comforting and naive, unscathed skin making contact with her own dry and wrinkled one. Even through pink lenses, she remembers the calluses on her relatives’ hands, how roughly everyone would handle things and ultimately what it all meant. Ryuunosuke has none of the bloodshed and scars and violence embedded on him yet.
He’s ductile.
His grandmother can’t judge his personality well because he’s so, so quiet.
She holds out hope he’s going to be the perfect child, and to her the perfect child is one who’s normal. He should know by now that the Akagi consider themselves a small civilian family since recent years, so he’d have to be on the mild and obedient side, and eventually he’d find a job in the village.
Ryuunosuke finds what Grandpa says when he’s rambling to himself neurotically interesting, though, and suddenly he gets a better understanding of everything revolving around his home life. Grandma tries to tell him how Grandpa’s just making up nonsense and sometimes these things happen with old age , and—
Ryuunosuke declares that he wants to be a shinobi.
His grandfather gets that embarrassing sense of pride he always does at the most inappropriate of times and starts parading around their neighborhood, boasting to anyone willing to listen. And they don’t say anything beyond an unsure ‘That’s great!’ because Grandma isn’t the only one who understands these kinds of things and how they end.
Adults get this knowledge and deem it forbidden and tuck it inside themselves like children aren’t deserving of it, but they convince themselves they do it to protect. Ryuunosuke thinks he’s unique because he knows things other kids don’t, says he’s going to get the best grades, says he’s going to graduate early, and has the nerve to claim he’s going to beat everyone who stands in his way.
When her husband is all for something though, Grandma doesn’t oppose him because it’s not often that a man with a deteriorating mind is happy. If anything, she relents easier than expected — she has had sadder days and received worse news.
She would deny it out loud if confronted but a part of her whispers that she never grew fond of him anyway.
Ryuunosuke doesn’t socialize well. He’s a hands-on learner, but it’s not like anyone really approaches him, so instead he opts to observe others without really grasping why they say the things they do. And in the rare moments someone tries to engage with him, he doesn’t quite know how to respond.
No, he takes great care in listening and does his best to apply it just to dodge a scolding from his grandmother who always gives him warnings, claims he doesn’t speak to people in the way he should. Yet it never works.
Ryuunosuke fascinates Aya Tsuji, but no one else. He’s aware of her not because he pays attention to her, but because she’s one of those popular girls in his class, and she’s the girlfriend of Shinji who bullies him but doesn’t really know how to make him cry.
Sometimes she studies him from afar and thinks he doesn’t notice her. When no one’s around though, she comes closer and converses with him, throwing cautious looks over her shoulder like getting caught with him could be incriminating. And she laughs at everything he says — throws her head back and shakes her shoulders — like he’s the funniest guy in the world even when he’s not trying to tell a joke.
It feels good, though, kind of giddy, making other people laugh. That doesn’t help him comprehend her interest in him though, so he leaves it alone like everything else he doesn’t understand.
It’s always Uchiha this, Hyuuga that. (Ryuunosuke doesn’t consider Neji as someone who’s much preferable to himself, but that’s another matter entirely.) Nara, Yamanaka, Akimichi… Then Aburame, Inuzuka, and so on.
With people who hail from clans everything’s always about The Clan, but in Konoha that’s never the Akagi clan. His last name means red tree and it bleeds into the leaves, loves the village that’ll never love it back. Now he’s the one getting shunned and hopefully after him, they’ll disappear altogether.
And finally there’s Haruno.
And Haruno isn’t a special last name because Sakura Haruno comes from a completely civilian background, which intrigues him. He hasn’t ever talked to her and he doesn’t think he ever will. She’s a year younger than him and he barely sees her, even in the hallways.
Technically he has no reason to think about her at all, but sometimes the boys who like to pick on him shove his head into hard surfaces and then proceed to tell jokes about the correlation between huge foreheads and baldness. It must be hilarious because most of his classmates laugh.
The first time it gets brought up, he replies, very seriously, “I’m not bald. I just have a buzzcut.”
Aya snorts at that way harder than at the original remark, but it’s still not a joke.
When it comes to similarities though, that’s the only one he can draw between himself and Sakura. How she has a high hairline and he’s, well, he’s hairless. But she’s pretty — the pink and the green shouldn’t work, but somehow they do, and when he catches sight of her, sometimes his eyes trail afterwards.
And he doesn’t see himself as cute because he just isn’t. Not even because it’s effeminate. It is though and he’s already insecure about how he’s a bit too thin around the wrists and how his punches don’t hit half as hard as they’re supposed to, but there’s also the thing his classmates mock him for the most, which is his appearance. So no, Ryuunosuke Akagi isn’t beautiful and he doubts he ever will be.
His biggest weapon is his bluntness. When he says something wrong, he goes like, oh, it’s just my personality , the way most children do when they don’t want to take the blame. He doesn’t think he has the bravery to tell Sakura he thinks she’s beautiful though, so he never does, and he thinks he’s doing her a favor.
She probably likes Sasuke Uchiha (everyone does), and Ryuunosuke doesn’t blame her. Considers himself chivalrous because he’s sparing her the horror of receiving a compliment from that creepy ugly guy no one likes and moves on with his day.
Ryuunosuke doesn’t know if Sakura is shallow, but he definitely is, he realizes.
He doesn’t like their house.
It’s big and haunting and gloomy. The walls are falling off because there’s no one to repaint and repair them with just him and his grandfather and his grandmother. It’s obvious such a large building was meant for more people to live in, but they’re only three.
Ryuunosuke wouldn’t say he believes in spirits, but sometimes he can feel them roam and fill the vacancies and his hairs stand on end, and to him it’s a ghost house. There’s only so much space Grandma can take and chase them off while doing the chores, and Grandpa is worthless as usual.
Instead he hangs out in the garden and reads the books his grandma used to hide from him. He gets an inkling she doesn’t care anymore, though.
The sun is hot on his skin and he breaks out in a sweat. Ryuunosuke knows he’s going to get sunburned like he always does because he’s so pathetically sensitive, but he doesn’t want to retreat. Being afraid of the abstract is one thing he’s willing to handle, however, he can’t stand it when Grandpa’s rants about how he was attacking people ‘back in the day’ interrupt his studying.
Something blocks the blinding shine and he’s a little thankful for the intrusion, though he already knows. When he looks up, it’s Aya who’s standing there. She always looks so, so curious.
She asks him, “Are you learning ninjutsu already?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s cool. I don’t think anyone in our class knows anything besides the basics.” She switches to sitting next to him now, scooting closer.
“Neji does.”
“Well, maybe,” she says, an attempt at pandering towards him. “But! I like you better than Neji.”
He quirks an eyebrow at that. “Weren’t you telling everyone you have a crush on him a few days ago or something?”
“Sure, but I was only doing that to make my boyfriend jealous. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Have you ever considered that maybe you lose all your boyfriends because you keep spreading random rumors about yourself?”
There’s a silence, and she makes a contemplative look she gives everyone when she’s pretending to be stupid that he knows is fake. “No, I would’ve never guessed.”
Ryuunosuke doesn’t ask her to elaborate because he doesn’t care about her petty reasoning. He can tell she wants something from him, and he’ll give into her request. He’s not isolated enough not to question her whims, but Aya is just so nice to talk to him when no one else does and obviously, he wants to please her.
She starts whispering her newest plan because she can notice when she has him. Explaining some transgression in which her boyfriend had been disrespectful towards her, she asks him to use his new jutsu on Shinji.
He levels her with a weak glare.
"Come on. If you don't do it, I'll never talk to you again." She whines it out like an empty threat and clings to his shoulders but the thing is, he's afraid. The thought of her leaving under such frivolous circumstances makes him afraid and unimportant.
So he agrees, but not without making a stink out of it.
Akagi. It’s a common username, dull even, and he fits the stereotype.
He always practices jutsu in the backyard since the old furniture is dusty and fragile, and he doesn’t want to play any part when any of it shatters, more than happy to leave the blame on Grandpa’s clumsiness. Instead he watches the electric butterflies flap around, fluttering artificial wings.
They always follow his gaze and when he gets distracted, they always run into each other and explode. It’s so— so uninteresting, to the point he gets embarrassed. He knows when he concentrates, they still don’t last long until they disperse into nothingness bit by bit, and to make it worse they’re not very useful.
He knows why he hit one of his classmates in the face with them (because Aya asked him to and it’s Shinji so he couldn’t really resist the temptation), but the more he mulls it over, the more unjustified it seems. But yet again that hit was easily avoidable, so the guy doesn’t exactly have Ryuunosuke’s sympathy.
When the counselor scolded him on the day it happened, he struggled to understand how he was in the wrong. Aya’s boyfriend often goes on tirades against him, so he feels like it was warranted. As a warning. Because everyone in school forgets Akagi is still a shinobi clan and underestimates how much he’s capable of until they push and push and push him to the end of his patience.
And Aya had been beyond pleased with him, kissed him on the cheek even, and held him tight when she gave him a hug. That’s when he realized something wasn’t right.
“Ryu,” Makoto Hasegawa addresses him. It’s odd because he has talked with her maybe ten times before, but apparently she feels comfortable enough to call him by a nickname, the one Aya uses for him and no one else knows. She can be cold, but she can be warm, yet she never comes across like she’s trying to hide any ulterior motives, which is so bizarre.
Out of the norm for the way his conversations with people go, even.
“What?”
“Is it true that you know Lightning jutsu?” she asks, with a sort of begrudging respect in her voice. Her eyes are big and dark and it’s like they’re black holes trying to suck him in, but then he’s back in the Academy and he has to answer her question.
“Kinda,” he settles on. It’s the closest he can get to the truth because her description of it isn’t quite right and he doesn’t like to lie because he’s so tragically bad at it and, well, when he’s not good at something, he doesn’t do it.
She glares at him all of a sudden and he has to wonder about the mood switch. “It’s a yes or no question,” Makoto presses, even though he already knows, leaning over his desk and leering down at him somewhat ominously. The idea of her punching him becomes very, very real, but he has to keep his composure.
“I did give him the scar, yeah.”
Shinji has a dent in his forehead now, where the butterfly hit him a few months ago. So in conclusion Ryuunosuke is a big fucking idiot who can’t make decisions for himself and now Aya’s boyfriend walks around showing it off unintentionally, doing his best to act like a victim because the evidence will always be there.
Makoto scrunches her nose, crosses her arms, and walks away. He thinks maybe, just maybe, that she’s frustrated, but for the life of him he can’t figure out the reason which serves as exhibit B of why he’s a massive moron.
Ryuunosuke is twelve turning thirteen soon when they have them all lined up in the yard, in a crowd. And Sakura is there— well, everyone else is there and anyway he shouldn’t even care because that whole thing was stupid and he’s… uh, being thirteen is different from being eight or nine or even ten, so it shouldn’t matter.
It doesn’t, but he notices that her hair is longer than it was the last time he saw her in the hallways (Ryuunosuke wasn’t staring and does not stare ever because Grandma tells him it’s ‘off-putting’). And she’s still the prettiest girl he has seen in his entire life, in her own weird little way, pink hair and green eyes and red clothes that definitely shouldn’t go together.
Iruka and then even The Third drone out about something in the background, but he’s focused on broadening his shoulders a bit and trying to stop himself from slouching. Aya watches him like he’s insane. She knows he shouldn’t have anyone to impress, but he doesn’t pay her any mind when he’s briefly entertaining the thought of whether Sakura would like older men (by one year, but still). And Sasuke, God, he’s so much taller than Sasuke.
He’s stupid like that, in the way most children are, even when he deludes himself and tries to believe that he functions like a grown-up.
Sakura catches him staring and the first thing on his mind is his grandmother, obviously, which makes him realize he’s being creepy. He snaps his head back and stares ahead. Then he realizes he’s blushing and it’s always so visible when he does, so he snivels back into himself and pretends his toes are interesting even though they’re honestly kind of disgusting.
Aya doesn’t need to hear her say it, but she sees Sakura blink at him for a little longer and nudge Ino, whispering “Weirdo.” at her. Aya claps Ryuunosuke on the back and she laughs at him mockingly, though this time he can tell why.
Mid ear-picking, Makoto turns back and scowls at them. “Can you guys be quiet when the Hokage is giving a speech…?”