In Konoha, This Naruto Has Decided To Take It Easy

"Naruto!"

Just as he was about to enter the Hokage Tower, Naruto was suddenly called out to. Turning around, he saw the new generation of the Ino-Shika-Cho trio.

The three of them stood outside the Hokage Tower, seemingly waiting for someone.

Shikamaru leaned against the wall, lazily waving at him. He's dressed in his usual mesh undershirt with his signature dead-fish eyes.

Ino stood aside with an uneasy look on her face, distracted, while Choji was still the same as usual, holding a bag of potato chips in his arms and crunching the food into his mouth.

"What are you guys doing here?" Naruto, familiar with the three, didn't bother with formalities and reached out to grab some snacks from Choji's bag of potato chips.

Crunch. Naruto took a bite as Shikamaru, without even glancing at him, looked up at the sky and sighed.

"Asuma had something come up last minute, so we're just waiting for him here."

After saying that, Shikamaru asked Naruto, "You know about that thing, right?"

"Which thing?"

"That guy who calls himself the Shinobi God. He's spoken twice now, and the village is in chaos because of it."

"Oh, that thing." Naruto scratched his head and said with a bright smile, "I thought it was just someone's prank!"

"How can the ability to let the whole village receive the message be an ordinary prank?" Shikamaru complained, holding his head, "Naruto, you're too dense."

"But the Shinobi God must be a super pervert. He was talking about things like long legs and shrine maidens in short skirts."

"No one will believe it anyway, it's just nonsense." Naruto said dismissively, then looked at Choji.

Choji raised his eyebrows, bit off a potato chip in one bite, and said naively, "The last chip is my ninja way."

"Only someone as clueless as you wouldn't believe it, Naruto." Shikamaru said, "The stuff about the Hyuga Clan is true."

"What stuff?" Naruto asked, pretending not to know.

"It's about…"

"Shikamaru, Asuma-sensei is coming out!" Choji suddenly shouted.

"Naruto, let's talk about it next time. We have to go first!" Shikamaru glanced toward the Hokage Tower and saw that Asuma had indeed come out.

So he waved at Naruto and followed after Choji and Ino, who had started walking away.

Ino didn't say a word to Naruto the whole time, not even looking at him. Naruto didn't mind and turned to enter the Hokage Tower once the trio was out of sight.

The building was in chaos, with Anbu and regular Chūnin carrying various documents and rushing around. Occasionally, Naruto could hear them nervously discussing the Shinobi God and he could occasionally hear words like Hyuga.

Tilting his head, Naruto went upstairs quietly and familiarly to go to the mission hall to take a D-Rank mission. Kakashi punished him to complete twenty D-Rank missions, and he could not return to Team 7 before that.

D-Rank missions weren't particularly difficult. As Naruto climbed the stairs, pondering what today's mission might be, he suddenly heard someone coming down, swearing loudly.

"They want me to find out in one day?! Where am I supposed to investigate? That damned Shinobi God, if I get my hands on him, I'll torture him thoroughly!"

The scar-faced brute named Morino Ibiki went downstairs with his men from the Torture and Interrogation Force and just passed by Naruto who was going upstairs.

"Scary." Naruto shivered, more determined than ever to hide his identity as the Shinobi God. There must be no evidence linking him to it.

He felt a deep-seated fear of the head of the Torture and Interrogation Force, Morino Ibiki. It wasn't that Ibiki was particularly strong, but this man was a true pervert!

Standing at nearly 1.8 meters tall and built like a muscular neighbor from a Japanese movie, Ibiki was secretly a masochist. His interrogation techniques not only tortured enemies but also inflicted pain on himself.

Just the thought of it made Naruto shudder. The image of a burly man with a pained yet pleased expression was so disturbing that it made Naruto want to end it all.

"This is the mission scroll, please take it." The staff at the mission hall handed the mission scroll to Naruto with a good attitude.

"Um."

Naruto walked out of the Hokage Tower and opened the mission scroll. The mission was to pick up trash.

'Where was there so much trash to pick up in Konoha?' Struggling for a while, Naruto reluctantly set off to pick up trash. In the sweltering August heat, the scorching sun quickly wore him out.

He hid under a tree's shade, staring blankly at the blue sky. After a while, he threw down the trash bag and wandered off by himself.

"Ah! So refreshing!" Naruto bought two ice creams from a convenience store and left with a swagger, ignoring the shopkeeper's puzzled look.

As soon as he stepped outside, the heat hit him like a wave.

Naruto, who had nothing to do, simply squatted in front of the convenience store and ate both ice creams, making the kids next to him cry with envy.

Naruto turned to look at the four kids standing in the sunlight, tanned and dirty. With a slight shift in his eyes, he called out to them.

"Come here."

Seeing the blonde who had just eaten two expensive ice creams calling them, the kids looked at each other in confusion.

In the end, they were drawn over by the sight of Naruto licking two ice creams at once.

"Want some?" Naruto waved the ice cream in his hand.

The four kids are only a few years younger than Naruto, and consisted of three boys and a girl. They should be eight or nine years old, with unkempt hair and clothes. From this, it was obvious they were Konoha's orphans.

"Yes." The leading boy said.

"I can buy each of you an ice cream, but you have to answer a question first," Naruto said.

The children hesitated for a moment and then nodded one after another.

Naruto narrowed his eyes and scanned the four people, wondering if one of them might be the protagonist from some orphanage story.

"What's the meaning of 'YOLO'?"

The four kids looked at each other, none of them knowing the answer.

Seeing no one could answer, Naruto showed a disappointed look but still went back into the store to buy five ice creams, one for each of them, including himself.

The four kids and Naruto squatted at the store entrance, licking their ice creams without a care in the world.

"Do you want to eat ice cream every day?"

"Yes!"

"Yes!"

"Yes!"

"Yes!"

Four pairs of bright eyes stared at Naruto, who smiled and said, "Then you have to do me a favor."

As the orange sunset slanted across the sky, Naruto lay on a hammock with an eight-year-old girl fanning him intermittently.

Three boys were running towards him, sweating and carrying trash bags, shouting happily, "Boss, we've picked them all up!"