It was another day at the acadamy, another day of repetition, of drawing all the different symbols, another day of memorising all the different gramatical rules that had been drilled in there heads over the last few months and another day of...math.

Math was a subject that gave everione terrible headaches at first, even shiro struggled to make sense of some things, afterall who would need a zero in...anithing really.

It was made even harder by the fact that there never were any practical examples given alongside the different tasks, some students even dropped out because of that and instead went on to different jobs were they would only have to learn math at a later time.

Like that the numbers slowly were dwindled down, but the more dropped out the easier the classes became, because the teacher had more time for each individual student and no more stupid questions were asked as the class slowly got to a certain standard.

The only exception to that rule was..naruto, it got so bad that every time he asked about another thing the rest had understood ages ago, he got angry glares and Shiro noticed that even the other orphans slowly became hostile to him.

He instead had the opposite problem, everithing was hard at first, but with him going over the learned subjects every day in his free time, he slowly catched up with the reasoning the teachers used and as his body grew bit by bit, seemingly using up all the growth he had missed out on in the past he excelled in all, even phisical training.

A few of the other students were obviusly more talented than him, but as he was bigger he won most fights that didn´t have some obscure victory condition.

Because of these devolopments he was slowly being seen as a...Nerd.

The worst thing was that when he was together with someone, it usually was Naruto.

Seing him, the best student, together with the worst student it didn´t take the kids long to connect the threads needed for there conspiracy.

Of course they weren´t that wrong, Shiro didn´t doubt that Naruto genuenly liked him, but as there learning curves drifted apart from eachother, there conversations often revolved around studying.

Naruto wasn´t really interested in studying, but he still had not given up on it and that coupled with the hostility he experienced day by day motivated him.

Shiro didn´t mind it much and just went along with Narutos wishes, so instead of repeating everithing by himself he instead tried to teach it to Naruto, wich seemed to work alright for both of them.

That day he too escortorted Naruto over to the orphenage.

"Shiro what do you need a zero for in math?"

At that Shiro smiled"I also got curios about that so I asked the teacher, probably when you werent listening again."

Naruto got flustered"Shut up, not my fault when all of you are so boring".

"Basicly it´s used to finish calculations, for example if you have 1 brain cell, but it gets damaged because someone wipes the floor with you again, you could summarise that as 1-1=0.

From then on you could just add however many i have ontop of that and neatly get one number."

Naruto"But couldn´t you just discard the zero completely?Then you don´t need to write it down."

Shiro instinctively tried to answer"No that wouln´t work because....", upon wich he realised that he didn´t have an answer.

"Oh shut up just do as i say and you might actually get some more points on the next test".

Naruto went silent for a bit"You know i apreciate it".

Shiro asked confused"What do you mean?"

"Everyone else avoids me especially when the other orphans made friends with the others in class, this might seem selfish, but im glad that you have some problems with them and don´t spend more time with them then me."

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Shiro looked at the boy for a bit"That is indeed selfish, but Naruto being selfish is no crime, just be sure to not speak so openly to your future friends alright?"

At that the boy smiled with his eyes still flashing with a bit of guilt"Alright".

Then they inevitably reached the orphenage"Well goodbye Shiro".

But Shiro stopped"Naruto actually would you mind practicing some taijutsu with me?"

"What, but your better than me with all those stupid techniques".Naruto exclaimed in a confused tone.

"Yeah maybe, but im not the best and with you not knowing those techniques it´s a good oppertunity to test it out on someone that doesn´t fight like a shinobi"Shiro quickly explained.

Naruto looked at him for a bit, as if deciding where to move a particularly important chess piece, then quickly agreing.

After that they trained for many hours, with Shiro practicing his forms and correcting those of Naruto, future shinobi had a lot more freedoms than others, but as Narutos stamina seemed endless and he trained till he even overwhelmed Shiro often times, eventually his time came and he needed to go back inside.

At first he wanted to ignore his beditime, but then he concidered Shiro and made the decision to instead try and study, afterall he couldn´t let Shiro carry him forever.

Because of these reasons Shiro was left alone with no one left to accompany him.

As he looked deep in the night around him he felt some guilt, he had not trained with Naruto merely to get them both in shape, it was more of a goodbye gift.

These last few months he noticed that he was very good at pumping pure knowledge down his mind, he wasn´t very talented in...well anithing to put it it bluntly, but his learning speed seemed to be alright.

He wasn´t sure if this would translate over to Ninjutsu, because it didn´t in taijutsu, he could only excell in that because he was older than the others.

But he was sure of one thing, right now it was the best time to skip classes, shinobi had to fit a normal education alongside solider training, this was the reason why they started there lessons so much earlier than the rest.

Even now he was unsure if his taijutsu skills would be enough, this would only get worse in the future as normal lessons would decrease towards the end, with taijutsu and chakra training being prioretised to all those that actually seemed able to become shinobi.

In the future he would need to catch up on a lot of schoolwork and work even harder on his taijutsu to keep up in his studies.

In short there wouldn´t have much time for Naruto and certainly no time to help him with his studys.

Finished with his contemplations the guilt in Shiros eyes finally vanished and he focused on getting home marching trough the snow.

He took his time slowly going back, the orphenage was quite far from the village, but since it allowed him some time with naruto he normally just ignored it and now he admired the night that now had firmly fallen on the world, reminding him of his life in the forest when he stayed up in the night in fear of predetors.

As he advanced trough the streets he heard a muffled sound, he was curiuos and enjoyed his time inspite of the cold, so he choose to investigate.

Getting closer to the sound he saw a small girl in the snow crying her eyes out while dressed in a Kimono way to thin for the current weather.

"Hey are you alright over there?"

The girl flinched turning her eyes towards him.

"You know with those kinds of clothes you shouldn´t be out in the snow"Shiro said.

"I..I kn-know"the girl finally responded still crying.

Shiro looked at her,she had white pupils and black hair and seemed to be about 3 maybe even younger than Naruto.

"Could you tell me why your out here?"Shiro asked.

The girl looked at him trying to calm herself down,

then resonding

"I went away from home".

Shiro looked at her seriously, if a young girl was crying alone in the snow you usually assumed she would just be lost and nothing serious was going on, but her response implied that whatever waited for her at home was worse than the cold she must have been in right now.

"Do you mind telling me why you ran away from home?"

The girl looked at him then deciding to tell him truth"My Nee-samas Father died".

"EH your brothers father? So your dad died?"Shiro asked in a confused tone of voice.

"No"she said smiling at his confused expression then getting more serious again

"He isn´t my brother i just call him that, but yes he´s related..that means my uncle is dead"

she voiced out seemingly about to cry again.

Shiro"Im so sorry to hear that, that must be terrible for you, but you still should get out of this cold" Then he undressed from his outermost layer of clothes, giving it to her instead.

"Your right"the girl replied in a timidly tone of voice glanzing over at him.

Shiro then followed her home trying to comfort her while walking.

"He will never be replaced, but you need to focus on yourself, afterall im sure your uncle wouldn´t want you to be sad!"

She tried to force a smile at those words, but soon it disapeared from her lips and her eyes redenned again.

They slowly got to her place, were Shiro said goodbye to her, but when he got his jacket back they heard a voice.

"Hinata!"

"Father"hinata weakly responded.

"Hinata you are an important part of the family. For your sake many people made the ultimate sacrifice, what are you doing running around in the snow? It´s about time for you to hold up your dutys."

"Please exuse her, Sir. She just was sadenned by the death of her uncle."

The man looked at Shiro after he spoke up, then answering"And what will her uncles life have been worth if she dies now of some preventable fever?"seemingly talking more to Hinata than Shiro.

"You are dismissed young man and Hinata, you should hurry inside now."

Hinata once again glanzed at him then quickly following her father inside.

Shiro was looking at them as they left, then he shuderred from the cold, so he quickly changed in his jacket amd then huried home.

As he went inside his room he put the key to it´s usual place and quickly made himself some rice and eggs.