Shikamaru knew this was coming; he couldn’t escape the events of the last week—not if he wanted to keep being friends with Choji and Hinata. He wasn’t even angry anymore, just tired. Tired of the endless arguments and having to justify himself all the time. If it wasn’t Naruto, it was his parents. If it wasn’t them it was Hinata, Choji’s mother, his teachers.

Practically everyone at this point.

He was tired of being ignored because he was lazy. Nothing he said ever meant anything because everyone assumed he didn’t care about anything but that wasn’t true. He just didn’t care about being a shinobi. No one ever seemed to want to ask what he wanted—it was all about what they wanted him to do.

Despite that, he regretted how things turned out. He didn’t mean to say the things he said. He was just so… angry at Naruto that all the months of his nagging and disregard for Shikamaru’s own opinions came rushing back and he hurt Naruto the only way he knew how. Looking across the room, he saw real anger in Naruto’s eyes. Anger that he was responsible for. His usually kind face twisted into a frown.

He took a breath and stood up, sitting down on the floor and leaning against the bedframe. Now, they were level, and Shikamaru stared directly into his eyes. He wanted to look away, but he couldn’t; something about the intensity of his gaze captured his own.

“You were wrong to insult me,” said Naruto. “Why? I offered help and tried to cheer you up after the loss.”

Shikamaru glared. “This isn’t about the fight or anything else that happened after it. This thing between you and me started way before that—you just refused to see it any other way.”

“Oh yeah?” Naruto scoffed. “So, what then? It’s fine you behaved like a dumbass just because we value different things?”

“No!” He clenched his jaw and forced his voice down to a talking level. “No. I’m saying that you don’t seem to care about what anyone thinks!”

“That’s rich coming from you.” Naruto laughed and he felt the anger starting to boil. “You don’t listen to anyone and you don’t give a shit about your future. There’s a whole world out there with people stronger than the Hokage, never mind you and me. Your life will be in danger just by wearing our village’s symbol on your forehead. That doesn’t matter?”

“I never said it didn’t matter!” He was standing now, his shoulders heaving. His face felt hot and his voice cracked, but he ignored it. “It wasn’t me who assumed I didn’t care it was you, Naruto—all of you!”

The room was so quiet they could hear the birds outside Choji’s window. All the anger fell from Naruto’s face and he sighed, walking over to the window and closing it. He brought Choji’s chair with him and set it in front of the bed.

“It’s obvious this isn’t working, so let’s do it differently.” Naruto sat down on the mattress and gestured at the chair. “Take a seat.”

Shikamaru shuffled forward, unsure of what he was planning, but sat down anyway.

“I’m sick of the two of us being stupid about this,” said Naruto. “You’re right, I don’t get you. The way you think makes absolutely no sense to me—I think you can be really frustrating.”

“And you’re not?”

“Even then, everyone’s frustrating sometimes. Hinata can be way too stuck-up and stubborn to the point that she doesn’t listen. Choji’s sometimes too afraid to say things that need to be said—but I guess he’s working on that. Me? I can get carried away with training because… well, because I’m afraid.”

“Of what?” he asked.

Naruto shook his head. “I’ll tell you later. Again, I don’t get your way of thinking. I never gave it a chance before, but if we’re going to get anywhere, I need to understand why you are the way you are. I think you’ve heard a lot about what I think, but what do you think and why?”

“W-What?” Shikamaru leaned back in his chair, scooting away from him.

For a moment, his brain went completely blank—and why wouldn’t it? No one had ever tried to actually understand beyond what was polite. They always gave up once it got to that point so Naruto might’ve been the first person to ask why he thought and acted this way.

“I… I guess I’d like to start with a question.” Shikamaru stopped looking away from him. “What do you want to achieve by being a shinobi?”

He scratched his chin. “To put it simply: I want the power to live a life free from fear.”

“Exactly. Hinata and Choji also want something from being a shinobi. But I don’t. Everything I want starts and ends with living an average life.” He laughed quietly. “It must sound crazy to you. I’m the son of one of the village’s biggest clans and all I want is to live an ordinary life.”

“No, not strange…” Naruto hummed. “But you know you won’t be able to, right? Just by being the only child of your parents, your major life decisions are all picked out for you. You’re in the Academy, you’ll be a shinobi, and you’ll succeed your father—maybe on both counts.”

Shikamaru nodded. “I know, alright? But my bottom line is that I don’t want to. All I want is a family, a nice house, and enough to enjoy myself. I can’t control how I was born, and I know I have duties to my parents and the village. I’ve never said I won’t fulfil them, but why does nothing I want matter?”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“I…” Naruto frowned and clutched his chin. “Let me think for a minute. If I’m going to be honest, I didn’t expect you to say anything except, ‘Work’s hard, don’t wanna do it. I prefer doing nothing.’”

“Glad to disappoint,” Shikamaru replied, snorting softly.

Naruto took a few minutes, humming to himself and frequently looking over at him in mild surprise—as if he was surprised Shikamaru was still there.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re basically telling me you don’t want to live a difficult life? As in, you want a regular family, regular home, decent position so that you don’t have to worry about anything in life, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re also aware that your environment has made a few of those things impossible.”

Shikamaru nodded. “I am.”

“But even then, you want to do… not the bare minimum, but just enough?”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Do you want me to be honest?” asked Naruto, his eyes going from curious to grim.

“...Yeah?” He sat up and eased on the apprehensive frown. “Do you have a problem with anything I’ve said or something?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“Remember when I said I work hard out of fear? It’s because the village has a lot of enemies. There’s Orochimaru of the Sannin, and sure he’s been pretty quiet for years now, but what about that lunatic Itachi Uchiha?” Naruto’s smile was brittle. “I’m ignoring so many other things as well. There’s the Stone, who hates our guts, and the Sand.”

“The Sand? Aren’t they our allies?”

“You passed Economics with flying colours and the answer to your question’s right in front of you. Hidden Villages are sustained by trade and missions. The Sand trades pretty frequently with the Land of Fire, but they’re falling on hard times because it’s quickly becoming their primary source of income. How are most missions funded?”

Shikamaru frowned. “Well, you’ve got actual paying clients like regular people, nobles, and businesses, but they make up a minority of the actual mission requests and are mostly low-rank ones assigned to genin and sometimes chunin. Missions above C-rank are paid for by the Daimyo, but a village’s Kage decides what the actual mission is. Kage-decided missions make up the bulk of a hidden village’s mission income.”

Naruto nodded. “The answer to my question wasn’t a massive section in the school textbook, so if you don’t know, I’ll just tell you.”

“...No, I remember reading about it.” He pinched the bridge of his nose to help gather his thoughts. “When the Sand lost the Great War and Lord Third forced them into an alliance with us, the Wind Daimyo requested us for a lot of high-rank missions, not the Sand.”

“And there’s your answer.”

His stomach dropped. “Oh—oh. He did it to strengthen the alliance between us but that’s bullshit—he just doesn’t trust the strength of his country’s shinobi because they lost the war!”

Naruto spread his hands and shrugged. “So where does that land our alliance with the Sand? I bet its people—the shinobi in particular—blame us for their poverty. Why wouldn’t they? It’s a lot easier than committing treason.”

“...They wouldn’t go to war with us, would they? That’d be the same as inviting the Stone to try something and boom—world war.”

“I don’t know, man.” He leaned back on his palms. “I don’t know—and that’s why I’m afraid. The world is at peace right now, but it’s not a stable peace. It was always one enforced using the Fourth Hokage as a deterrent—and when he died, things started going downhill. A world like that? It won’t let you take things easy. Are you sure you want to roll the dice on your dreams like that? On your family or your potential wife and kids?”

Shikamaru looked away, unable to hold the genuine concern in Naruto’s eyes.

It was easy to gripe and groan about the burden of expectations, but sometimes, when was alone at night, his mind asked questions his tongue was terrified to utter. Questions he could ignore by pretending they didn’t exist—he hadn’t spoken them, and no one had asked him to answer. Now, his friend sat there, not only asking those questions but placing them beside actual reality.

His problems—the things he felt angry over—what chance did they stand? And yet, he didn’t feel an ounce of the burning anger coursing through his veins when his mother and father brought up their arguments about reality and consequences.

Naruto leaned forward and intertwined his fingers in front of his face. “I get where you’re coming from—at least, I think I do. It wasn’t really about the hard work more than what it meant you had to do. And honestly? Your dreams are great.”

“Um… thanks, I guess?”

“Just don’t forget that you exist in a world with all of us—people. Some of them won’t hesitate to kill you and everyone you care about. They’re not a distant threat millions of miles away. There might be people in our village who are willing to do horrible things to us. You never know.”

Shikamaru looked down, strangely accepting of the idea. “I guess… I guess I want to be free to choose. To see whether or not what I want will work out.”

“I hear you. We all want different things out of life.” He grimaced and looked away for a second. “...Listen, I know I can get pretty forceful about things. It might have come out of concern and care but I ignored your feelings and thoughts so I’m… I’m sorry for that.”

…There it was. The consideration nobody had thought about giving him before today.

That was why he wasn’t angry.

“For what it’s worth,” Shikamaru sighed, “I’m sorry for… being a dick. I shouldn’t have shot you down like that. …Not by aiming at something I knew was a sore spot. Your timing was atrocious, but that ain’t an excuse for me to lose my cool over offered help instead.”

Naruto smiled and nodded in satisfaction. He stopped and fixed his shirt, going over to the door and opening it wide. “Great—I’m glad we’re on the same page.”

He twisted his neck. “So, we’re cool now, right?”

“I might get annoyed at your laziness now and again.” Naruto chuckled. “That’s just who you are. I know why you’re like that now, and I’ve… mostly accepted it. But yeah, we’re cool.”

He closed the door behind him.

Shikamaru didn’t know what to think for a moment. To have his entire worldview disassembled and restructured to him was… an experience. By the end of it, he was slightly more aware of where he sat in the world.

Where his dreams sat in the world.

His father said it best: people made their own choices in life and whatever came from those choices, the burden of consequences—good and bad—wasn’t just a choice, it was a responsibility. His lack of ambition, no matter what anyone said, remained. But now, reality sat at the edge of his mind.

He wasn’t sure how, but maybe one day, he’d find a balance. One where his dreams and the world sat equally on a scale.