Tale of the Setting Sun.

Arc 1: Shinobi I

Chapter 1: "Hope and Ambition"

By the time Uzumaki Naruto had turned five years old, he had come to realize that a good majority of the people in his village hated him.

It was not an immediate realization: As the haze of colors and sounds called infancy slowly but inevitably passed, he first came into the awareness of his individuality. Looking down at his stubby toes and observing how they wriggled at his every command, he saw that he was his own person – his body and mind belonged to him and only him, and as far as he could tell, every other person that he saw possessed this right. All of the people in his village were the same as him in this regard.

However, he gradually began to see differences between these other people and himself. When Naruto first visited the village playground at the age of four, he saw many other children running around in the dust. Another young boy was chasing them making threatening sounds, and Naruto felt rather frightened – however, the other children were laughing as if they were having fun. When he asked another child what was going on, he looked at Naruto strangely and asked him if he'd never played 'tag' before.

When Naruto returned to his home that evening and asked his caretaker – a stern-faced woman with dark hair – about the game, she merely slammed a bowl of rice down on his table and told him to stay away from the other children. He didn't understand why the other children could play 'tag' together and why he couldn't, but his caretaker's hand was even faster and sharper than her words, so he shut up and ate his dinner.

But from then on, though he didn't approach the other children, Naruto did start going out more by himself. He was starting to get sick of the tattered book of folk tales that he had thumbed through since he was two, and felt that he was a bit too old for the cracked old wooden blocks he'd once fondly stacked for hours before. He was a whole five years old, after all. And besides, he quite enjoyed the feel of the sun and wind on his skin.

The few times Naruto had been out in public before, he had usually been with his caretaker, who always insisted on him covering his head and lower face with a scarf. She'd told him it was so that he wouldn't pick up any diseases, but now that he was exploring the streets of his village, he was beginning to have second thoughts.

Because wherever he went, inevitably, he was followed by an intense storm of heated whispering. He hadn't realized at first; even following the realization of his individuality, he'd never thought of himself as particularly unique. He'd read before in his book of folk tales that no two snowflakes were alike; and as such, so were people. But in the winter, when snow covered the village, there were so many snowflakes that he couldn't possibly distinguish between them. This, he realized could be the same for himself, and for everyone else.

And yet somehow, these people managed to point him out – a single snowflake in a flurry of snow. They pointed him out with barely disguised grimaces, they ushered their children away from him, admonishing them for walking too close to him, and chased him out of their stores.

The first time this happened, Naruto wondered if they wanted to play 'tag' with him and was about to open his mouth to ask...when they slammed the door in his face, sending dust flying in his face. Before he could get up, he heard a spitting sound, and he felt a warm sensation on his face. When he touched his face and looked at his hand, it was wet.

He immediately returned to his home afterwards. Ignoring the dinner his caretaker had left out on the table, Naruto crawled into his bed with the lights off and the blinds to his window closed shut. He stared into the darkness for the rest of the day, trembling.

All of the following days that he went outside ended quite similarly. As time went on, even the other children began to notice him – and unlike the adults, they went out of their way to taunt him.