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There’s an apartment in Konohagakure that could belong to anyone, really. Nothing about it is special. It’s a bit of a mess, but that’s not unusual. There’s a stack of instant ramen in the cupboard, but lazy teens and adults the world over like a quick and easy snack. Ninja training tools – blunted kunai and shuriken, a punching bag decorated to look like an Academy instructor, loops of tangled ninja wire – are just lying around, but there are a lot of ninja in Konohagakure and any of them could be responsible.
And then one afternoon, a new arrival collapses all those possibilities down into just one. There’s a pot plant in the corner now, a small succulent of the kind that takes a natural disaster, or black magic, or a decade of neglect, to kill. There might be plenty of similar homes out there, but without Ukki, they’re just not comparable. It’s not just a living space, now, it’s a home.
The plant is called Ukki and the apartment’s owner manages to overwater it to the point of death inside three months. Its successor, Ukki the Second, makes it six months. Ukki the Third, though, that might be the real occupant of the apartment. It spends more time there than the blond kid who killed its predecessors and namesakes, and it doesn’t just survive, it thrives.
Naruto’s sad, and like all his other big emotions, it spills out of him at every opportunity. He’s told half the class about his second dead pot plant already, and the other half is avoiding him so they won’t be on the receiving end of the full thirty-minute reenactment of everything he’s done to try to keep it alive.
In their defence, Naruto’s not a great storyteller. Then again, no seven-year-old is.
An instructor comes to their rescue. “Naruto,” he begins, “you want to be the Hokage, right?”
“I’m going to be the Hokage,” Naruto corrects him.
“A Hokage has to look after the whole village. If you want to do that one day, you’ll need to start by looking after your plants.” The instructor raises a finger. “So rather than running around and complaining, go learn about what went wrong and do better next time.”
At first Naruto wants to shout about all the things he did right, but on the other hand the instructor makes a certain amount of sense. A village is more complicated than a pot plant, probably, so he really should figure out how to keep the third Ukki alive.
By the time Naruto is facing the Academy’s final exam, every windowsill of his apartment has been colonised by Ukki’s descendants. On the outside, he’s attached long but narrow troughs of soil that are overflowing with a riot of flowers. There’s long, slender stalks bowing under the weight of the sunshine-yellow blossoms bursting from their ends. Dense and low silvery-green leaves are speckled with blooms like tiny white stars. Trumpet-shaped flowers – wine-red, and fiery orange, and blue the colour of a midsummer sky at noon – take turns to hang from the drooping vines that let gravity pull them almost to the level of the windows of the apartment underneath.
Such a celebration of flowers draws in insects aplenty, and those attract birds, so the windows look out on Konohagakure but also on a thriving ecosystem conjured out of nothing.
It’s a bright cornucopia of life floating halfway up an otherwise-bare building. It’s impossible to see it and think the gardener responsible is under the influence of a demon.
Naruto moves when he gets the chance. His new house is, if anything, a sliver smaller than his former apartment, but he doesn’t care about that. It’s not what’s inside the walls that drew him here. For the first time in his life, he has his own garden. The first year it looks like nothing special, as he adds ground cover, restores the soil, plants a few nitrogen-fixing specimens and then lets nature work its magic. A few shrubs and saplings take root in strategic spots to hold the soil together in case of heavy rains, and once they’ve grown, they’ll be a living trellis for the other plants he’s planning to introduce.
It’s a disappointment compared to the flowers still adorning his windowsills, and for the first year his neighbours are confused at the contrast. Is he a skilled gardener or not?
When the seasons turn, though, oh, that’s where the square of dirt shows its true colours. All questions about Naruto are laid to rest.
It starts with the first blush of spring, gentle blooms peeking out of the earth. Soft and fragile pink and white crowns herald the start of the growing season. Then a scattering of bright green as leaves and shoots sprout across the breadth of the garden, every living thing desperately reaching for the sun. And the sun comes down to meet them, resting in golden sunflowers that tower above a sea of midnight-blue and sunset-red and sunrise-purple and every other colour of the sky, the rivers and lakes, brick-red houses and silver weathered wooden sheds, the green of glazed rooftiles and the black of asphalt roads. Every colour in Konohagakure is captured and reflected somewhere in that garden.
Bees and butterflies flit from flower to flower, caterpillars hide amongst the leaves and iridescent beetles shine with all the poisonous luster of oil spills. Birds place their nests in nooks and crannies and feast on the insects, and later on seeds as well. Voles and mice scurry around, building their own homes under the leaf litter, and on occasion there’s even a flash of dusty orange as a fox prowls by, looking for dinner.
There’s a figure from Konohagakure’s history that the people whisper of when they see Naruto, and it’s not the Kyubi. It’s said that wherever the Shodaime Hokage trod, flowers bloomed in his footsteps. Looking at Naruto’s garden, it’s hard not to wonder whether they might have looked like that.
Even once he’s Hokage, Naruto tends the same garden. He’s too busy for a larger plot, sad as that is, and besides, the garden’s grown up with him. It’s a slice of heaven, even if it’s a small slice, and maybe it’s even heaven enough for several people.
He makes some space along one border for a few tomato plants and a small cherry tree.
It’s not really a garden if it isn’t shared with the ones he loves, after all.