How To Break a Mask (Sasunaru)

Prologue

How to Break a Mask

Author: Kinomi Akai

Disclaimer: If I owned Naruto, Orochimaru would die, Kabuto would turn into a pokemon, Lee and Guy would trim their eyebrows and donate them to Gaara, Itachi would slap Sasuke for leaving Konoha, confiscate ALL of his clothing, and send him back where he would get together with Naruto - And everyone would live happily ever after :P

Summary: An incident at the festival on Oct. 10th reveals that there is a lot that everyone doesn't know about Naruto. Smart!Naruto, Sasunaru/Narusasu, Rated M to be safe

Pairings: Sasunaru/Narusasu, mentions of KakaIru, as of now.

Warnings: Shonen-ai, yaoi, boy x boy, whatever to want to call it. Sakura "bashing" in earlier chapters.

Author's note: New chapter every day! There will be a total of 14 chapters. This is a repost from ff.net - it was started in 2006 & took 10 years to finish (oops)! (Edit: This takes place years after the Naruto series, if I haven't made that explicit; I hate that I have to clarify that they are not 13 but good lord people they are not 13. Everyone is of age.)

"Blah" – talking

'blah' – thinking

'blah' – Kyuubi talking

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Prologue

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It goes without saying that many things were concealed in a ninja's hidden village. Every village had their own secrets, and each ninja held their own within them. Konohagakure was no exception to this rule; if anything, they held more secrets than most. Many of these secrets centered on a particular ninja - being raised within them, it was no surprise that Uzumaki Naruto had a few secrets of his own.

It had been a rough life for Naruto. No memories or pictures of any family, no indication as to why the villagers seemed to hate him on sight, Naruto did the only thing he could to survive: he put up a mask. An idiot that never stopped smiling, no matter what happened - perhaps if he glued on this fake smile everyday, one day it could be real.

But each day passed, and still, no human knew the real him.

'Oi kit, time to get up,'

Naruto felt his eyelids slowly open. They felt particularly heavy this morning, but with a yawn, he dragged himself out of his warm bed and towards the bathroom, but on his way there, he caught sight of his calendar. He froze.

Today was October 10th.

His birthday. Oh no.

'Kit, at this rate you'll be later than usual.'

'...do you think I should really go to training today?'

'Probably. It wouldn't be good if your teammates started asking questions. Just be sure to avoid the villagers extra carefully today.'

When Naruto was very young, Naruto spoke to a voice in his head. He became friends with this voice; they were his friend. This voice helped him through his childhood, helped him to hide his true feelings from the world and never let anyone know what he was truly thinking. Maybe he was crazy, but as long as no one else knew about the voice, it was all okay, right?