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The Blessed Realm	By : susanna Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male > Naruto/Sasuke Views: 1746 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: Disclaimer: Naruto, his friends and the world he lives in don't belong to me but to Masashi Kishimoto. I write this story only for my pleasure and I don't make any money with it.

Chapter List
- 3
- 4
- 5
A/N
and thanks
at the end of the chapter

Chapter
One: A Festival

Six
weeks had passed since Naruto's arrival at the town where the
Icha-Icha-series was published. Things had gone well: the
publishing-house had accepted his claim of being Jiraya's heir
without any problems. They had even helped him find a small apartment
and a job, so that he did not have to worry about his daily needs and
had the leisure to explore this place where he had stranded whenever
he was not working.

Life
here was very different from what he was used to in Konoha, and even
from what he had encountered during his journeys with Jiraya, and
most of it still seemed pretty weird to him, even the points that
were rather agreeable.

Weekends
for example. Two days when most people in this town did not have to
work... In Konoha the days of the week had names too, after the
planets that had been known of old, but this only had religious
meaning now, or no significance at all for people who were not
religious, as Naruto and most shinobi of the Leaf. Missions happened
on any day of the week, no matter what its name, and when a mission
was over they got a day off, meaning that everyone had their days off
on different days.

Here
Naruto had found a job as a waiter, meaning that he often had to work
on weekends as well; still he felt the difference between weekdays
and weekends: People were more relaxed on weekends, more patient,
more ready to chat and have fun and less angry when something went
wrong, and Naruto was less exhausted on a Friday or Saturday night,
even though there were more guests and they stayed longer and got
worse drunk. Weekends were definitely something you could get used
to.

What
he had not got used to, and probably never would, was being far away
from Konoha and the people he loved. Sure, he was living among humans
here too, and actually most of them were quite nice, but it was just
not the same, they were not the friends he had loved from his
childhood. Sometimes in the mornings he would sit in his bed and
wonder whether he would ever be able to return to Konoha and see his
friends again, and then the world would turn all white, his thoughts
stopped, he turned all rigid and it took him some effort to shake it
off and get moving again.

It
always got better once he had got up, dressed and gone down to the
bistro on the other side of the street to have breakfast – he
did not care about breakfast on his own, it was nicer to have a mug
of cafe au lait and a croissant and a chat with the waitress at the
bistro... He would turn his attention from Konoha and his loneliness
to his present life in this town, or to the sport pages of the
newspapers that were lying out for the guests of the bistro, or, as
today, to the festival that was to begin in half an hour.

Festivals
were another aspect of this town that he could get used to. There had
been one on the very weekend of his arrival, another one two weeks
later, and now that spring was turning into summer, there seemed to
be one every weekend, with music and fireworks and lots of food and
drinks.

So
far Naruto had not had any time to really enjoy them. The restaurant
he worked at had put up a stand on the site of the festival, where he
had to stay during the festival, selling drinks and takeaway food,
and being allowed to walk around and have a look at everything only
during his breaks. Today however it was his day off, and he would
enjoy it all day. His colleagues had told him that it was one of the
biggest festivals of the year, with music, dancing, street artists
and plays all over the center of town, not to speak of the food
stands, and there was also going to be a parade.

The
only parades Naruto had seen so far were military opes in the capital
of the Fire Country, during his journeys with Jiraya. They took place
every few years, and Konoha normally sent a delegation to participate
in it. Naruto had watched from the sidewalk, growing impatient before
the parade had even arrived, someone had given him a flag to wave, so
he had waved it dutifully and cheered when everyone else cheered, and
turned to Jiraya to ask him to get somewhere else before even the
first mounted troups had passed.

This
parade was going to be different. Naruto had been told that it was
famous and attracted a lot of tourists every year, even from other
countries, and he was eager to see it. It was to begin in front of
the town hall, and Naruto was there in time; still he had
difficulties finding a place from where he had a good view. He met
one of his colleagues, carrying his little daughter on his shoulders,
dragging his girlfriend behind him who was looking at some piece of
paper and not at where she was going.

“Hi,
Naruto, you are watching it too?” the colleague greeted Naruto.
“You'll like it, it's loud and funny and colourful, just like
you!”

“Yeah,
thanks”, Naruto answered. “And you're going to watch it
with your kid?”

“Sure.
She's been talking about it constantly for the last few weeks. Always
about how many sweets she would collect.”

The
girlfriend had caught up. “Let's get somewhere else”, she
said, “where it's not that crowded. I am afraid of her getting
trampled on.”

She
showed the piece of paper she had been looking at to her boyfriend,
and Naruto could also have a look at it: It was a map of the center
of town with the course the parade was going to take. There was also
a second map with numbers on it, and on the side the numbers were
listed again, with the name of the stage or the stand at the site of
the number.

“Where
did you get this?” Naruto asked.

“It
was in today's newspaper”, she answered. “In the Morning
Messenger.”

The
little girl on her father's shoulders was getting impatient. “When
does it start?” she asked. “I want to get somewhere where
I can see!”

Her
parents apologized for having to leave. “You want to join us?”
Naruto's colleague asked, but Naruto declined: Seeing this little
family made him feel lonely and sad again, regretting not only the
lack of a caring family during his early childhood but also the loss
of his second family, the villagers of Konoha...

He
tried to shrug it off and luckily the parade started now: With groups
of people on foot, and with carts, pulled by oxen or horses,
sometimes four, six or even eight of them. The horses were adorned
with a lot of ribbons, and the carts were painted in bright colours
and decorated with balloons and little flags, and people were
standing on top of them, throwing sweets. The people on foot were
throwing sweets too, they waved at the bystanders and these waved
back and cheered, and their cheers were genuine. Sometimes it
happened that a person standing at the side saw an acquaintance
marching in the parade, ran into the street, embraced his friend and
for some minutes walked with the parade until he decided that he
would watch again. A lot of the people on foot, but also those on the
carts were wearing fancy costumes, often men dressed up as women or
women dressed up as men, but others just wearing what they perceived
as sexy, showing a lot of naked skin and sometimes a lot of naked
belly. Others just wore their everyday clothes and looked like
ordinary people.

Naruto
was not sure what to think of it. It was not what he had expected,
though he was not sure what he had expected. Maybe more dignity, the
participants of the parade showing more self-respect and not dressing
up as caricatures of themselves, fulfilling every popular cliché.
On the other hand the parade was meant to be fun, and so Naruto
decided to blend in and cheer and scream as everyone else did. He
even caught some candies, then he remembered that they were meant for
little children and that he should not run for them.

He
watched till the last cart was gone, then he turned to the central
market place where the festival itself was going to take place.
People were busy putting up tables and benches for the visitors, the
technicians were testing their amplifiers and loudspeakers, and some
stands had already begun to sell food.

Naruto
found one that was run by some fanclub for Lesbian Utopian literature
which sold really good cakes, so that he bought some and sat down to
eat it even though he was not interested in that kind of literature
at all. Having finished his cake he went on and got stuck at the
table of an anti-AIDS-initiative which offered books and brochures
too, but Naruto was far more fascinated by the condoms that were on
display, not only in all conceivable colours but also in different
flavours, most neatly rolled up, but some spread over bananas,
cucumbers or the narrow ends of pears, which Naruto thought a bit
obscene.

Jiraya
had told what condoms were, “a protection you wear again
illnesses you catch from prostitutes”, and Naruto had imagined
some weird kind of armour, or some ninja garments with some weird
symbols of protection, but certainly nothing that was as trivial as
some thin plastic foil that served as a physical barrier, and a
little bit too obvious about how it was to be used, at least for
Naruto's taste.

“You
want some of the coloured ones?” the woman at the stand asked
him. “They are the same as the transparent standard quality
ones of the same firm, just coloured, you won't feel any difference.”

She
was a middle-aged lady, rather plump, wearing normal, rather boring
clothes and looking all in all as if she was a hard-working woman
with a job and three kids in puberty who gave little thoughts to
wearing fancy costumes as the ones worn by the participants of the
parade and who probably had little opportunity to use the items she
sold. (Naruto was wrong with this last supposition; she was a married
woman after all.)

“Or
what about these boxes, to give it to your girlfriend? We sell them
with content, but you can refill them, of course, and she can carry
the box in her handbag without anyone suspecting what's inside.”

Naruto
imagined Sakura's reaction if he presented her with one of these
boxes. Probably she'd beat him up and call him a pervert.

“Or
one of these plushies? They have a zipper on their belly, and you
have to keep them filled with condoms if you want them to look cute.”

There
were mice and kitten and a little dog. Maybe, if I ask her, she will
also have a frog with a zipper, Naruto thought. Or a fox.

“I
don't have a girlfriend”, he said.

“Oh,
I am sorry, but we cannot help you in that matter”, the woman
said. “You will have to find one yourself. But I am convinced
that you won't have to search for a long time.”

The
words did not cheer him up but made him sad, not because he missed
having a girlfriend but because he was far from home. Actually he had
difficulties imagining finding himself a girlfriend here, and then
being torn between staying with her in this town and returning to
Konoha whenever the situation had changed so that he could live in
Konoha without being a prisoner.

The
woman was preparing to show him more of what she sold, and just to
stop her he bought a Valentine kit, a cubic box already wrapped up in
pink paper with little white hearts and some fancy ribbons.
“Everything you need for a romantic evening with your partner”
it said on a sign next to the box.

Naruto
also took some brochures that were given away for free: He had
realized that he needed to know far more than what he had learnt from
Jiraya, be it in person or from his books. The kit was rather
expensive, but the woman told him that most of the money went to some
foundation that supported AIDS-patients.

He
went on, deciding to finally get the Morning Messenger with the
festival programme inside. Newspapers were also a novelty to Naruto,
though not completely: They had a newspaper in Konoha, a rather thin
one, which was mostly read by old people who wanted to know who had
died and who had had his birthday. (Old meant older than thirty.
Ninjas often died on missions and those who had retired from active
service needed to know about their friends and acquaintances.) Then
there were reports about the annual meeting of the rose gardeners'
association or the chicken breeders' club. In the capital of the Fire
Country the newspapers actually contained some pages about politics,
as the newest announcements of the Daimyou, and who among the
noblemen was rising or falling in his favour, and there were two
newspapers one could choose from.

Here
there was a great variety of papers and magazines, and even papers
from other countries were offered, for example those of the Capital
of the Fire Country, and even newspapers from countries beyond the
ocean the mountains and the desert, where people had no idea about
ninjas and spoke a different language. The newspapers contained news
about everything, not just deaths and birthdays.

Naruto
had taken a liking for the sports pages and the mixed news of the
Morning Messenger, which he read either at the bistro where he had
breakfast or at the pub where he worked. Everyone here was interested
in sports and you simply had to be up to date about the failures and
successes of the local football team if you wanted to contribute to
the conversation on Mondays.

So
he went to the kiosk on the other side of the market place with the
intention of buying the Morning Messenger with the festival programme
inside, but when he was about to take it out of the rack another
newspaper caught his eye: On the front page was a picture of the
re-erected Hokage Tower of Konoha, rebuilt at a site where the wall
of rock was still intact, and they were already busy cutting the
portraits of the Hokages into the wall – the newest one had
been the first to be finished.

Naruto
read the head line above the picture: “New Hokage: Konoha to be
again the Number One of the Ninja World”, and below it, in
smaller letters: “Military spending rises by fifty percent as
defence becomes the first priority. Yet according to rumours the
kyuubi's jinchuuriki is still missing.”

Naruto
took the newspaper out of the rack to have a closer look at the
article. He did not notice that someone was approaching him –
only that suddenly an arm was around his shoulders, He suppressed an
impulse to shove the stranger away, as this was considered impolite
in this town.

“Bad
news, isn't it?” he heard the voice that belonged to the arm
around his shoulders. Naruto, unbelievingly, turned his head: Sasuke
was standing at his side.

A/N:

SneakyFox:
Thanks for your compliments! I think that this chapter has now
answered the question about Kakashi's intentions when he told Naruto
to introduce himself to the publishers of the Icha-Icha-series.

The
place Sasuke's team is dreaming about – my beta-reader called
it some kind of heaven...

ItaNaruLover:
Thanks again for your enthusiasm! (Wonders
whether she deserves it...)

I am a
Sasuke-fangirl too – I am pretty sure that he will turn up
again in the canon whenever the present fight is over – I think
that after so many chapters about Naruto and Konoha we are entitled
to some news about our favorite character too. But I don't think he
will interfere in the present fight.

Guessing what
Kishimoto's plans are: Actually I try to use as much of the canon as
possible, and to be aware when I deviate from it – well, I
certainly do with this chapter. I see my story as a response to the
manga, not only speculation about what could happen, but also about
what should happen... I did it too with my last long story, the
Canalized River, where I took even less liberties. It is now more
than a year old, and now it is fun to watch where my guesses were
correct.

Sasuke's plans
concerning Konoha: I think that they one of the big mysteries of the
manga. Some people (the Sasuke-haters) take it as a given that he
really intends to destroy it, others (the Sasuke-fans), are confident
that he will only kill those who ordered Itachi to murder the clan.
Time will tell who was correct – for my story I have chosen to
remain ambiguous about it.
- 3
- 4
- 5
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