If Naruto gripped the acceptance letter any harder, it would fuse to his palm. Sweat slicked the ridges of the campus map that peeked from his backpack's outer pocket, beads pooling along the knuckles of his other hand, the one curled around the metal tin. He kept the tin pressed flat against his thigh, as if the cold from its surface could cool the surge of heat rising through his body. Students milled everywhere, pouring off shuttles, dragging duffels, laughing or screeching in packs. Above the noise, banners rippled in autumn wind, orange and crimson, the Leaf crest of Konoha Elite College stitched along every flag, every blazer, every discipline pin. Naruto stood at the main gate, wild hair untamable even by industrial-grade gel, lips pressed white, blue eyes too wide.
Naruto's stomach twisted as he watched clusters of students laughing together, their backpacks still crisp and unworn, their futures stretching before them like an open field. His own future had collapsed seven months ago when Kurama's dorm room was found empty, bed still made, laptop still warm—right here on this campus where everyone else saw opportunity, Naruto saw only the last place his brother had existed.
Iruka hovered a full step behind, pretending not to hover. He'd dressed as if it were a parent-teacher night, though his shirt strained at the shoulders and his tie sat slightly askew, as always. Kakashi loitered beside the registration booth, face buried in a paperback, but Naruto could feel his stare anyway: the dry crackle of judgement, softened by genuine anxiety, projected through the single visible eye above the book's spine.
"Promise me you'll take them every morning, Naruto." Iruka's voice pitched low, meant for Naruto and no one else. The hand he placed on Naruto's shoulder was soft and trembling, but the squeeze at the end had iron in it. "Even if you don't feel—if you think you can handle—just take the dose. It's not a weakness. Please." His voice tripped over the word, caught and hung in the damp air.
Naruto rolled his shoulders back, as if a straight posture could fill the hollowness that had opened in his chest. He snapped the tin open with a practiced flick. Inside, rows of white tabs lined up with obsessive precision. He didn't meet Iruka's gaze. "I'll take them. I'm not an idiot." The joke fell limp between them, too many memories cemented in the way Iruka's eyes watered.
Kakashi drifted closer, snapping the book shut with a single finger. "Your alarms are set on every device?" He didn't bother with the pretense of a hug or handshake, but the way he glanced from Naruto to Iruka and back again made Naruto feel like a case file with a high probability of disaster. "No excuses for missing a dose."
"I know." Naruto snapped the tin shut and shoved it in his pocket. "It's just college. Not a warzone." He regretted the words instantly; they sounded brittle, a rehearsed bravado from someone else's mouth.
Kakashi's eyebrow arched. "Campus is more dangerous than a battlefield, sometimes." He nudged Naruto's duffel with a pointed toe. "Don't pick fights. Don't skip meals. Don't talk to strangers unless you want to get poisoned, blackmailed, or seduced."
Naruto snorted. "Like anyone would want to seduce me." He tried for a crooked grin and failed; his lips barely twitched.
"You're more appealing than you think," Iruka said, voice gone watery again. "You—" he cleared his throat, searching for words, "—you're special. You don't have to prove it to anyone here, okay?"
Naruto nodded, throat tight. The three of them formed a strange tableau on the edge of campus: a foster son, a Beta with teacher's hands and a heart too big for his chest, and the lean, inscrutable Alpha who'd somehow become family. Naruto hated that he needed them. He hated that leaving them felt like removing his own ribcage.
He scanned the courtyard, using the spectacle as an excuse to turn his face away. The population sorted itself instantly, as if invisible borders had been spray-painted on the concrete. At the top of the food chain: Alpha families in tailored suits and gold-trimmed school blazers. They walked in pods, tall and glossy-haired, eyes direct. Behind them trailed Betas in business casual, shoulders hunched, hands clutching portfolios and electronic tablets, always making space for the Alpha vanguard to pass. On the edges—never in the center, never straying too close—clusters of Omegas in neutral sweaters, many with silver monitoring bracelets flashing faint blue. The Omegas never looked up; they drifted like ghost schools along the quad's perimeter, careful to avoid collisions.
Naruto exhaled, slow. The air tasted like something he'd never have: privilege, power, immunity. He forced his breathing to slow, then faster—always at war with itself, in and out, like a warning siren in his own lungs. He'd spent years practicing the lie. Three breaths in, two out, shallow enough to avoid the scent of Alpha pheromones, strong enough to prove he wasn't scared. That was the theory, anyway.
Someone yelled his name—"Naruto!"—from two rows up at the check-in table. He recognized the voice: the Beta from Admissions, cheeks puffy and eyes glassy with sleep deprivation. He waved, drawing more attention than he wanted, but it gave him an excuse to break the parental huddle.
"Gotta go," Naruto muttered. Iruka hugged him, hard. Kakashi ruffled his hair, expression unreadable. He didn't look back. If he did, he'd freeze and maybe never move again.
At the table, the Beta grinned. "You made it!" She handed him a color-coded folder—red for "unaffiliated," blue for "legacy." He noticed the subtle differences in folder thickness. "Orientation's in Hokage Hall. This map is already marked with your routes. Dorm assignment is in the back. Oh! And you're eligible for a meal plan upgrade if you sign up today."
Naruto nodded, tuning out everything except the map. The main quad looked like a circuit board, every path a wire leading to critical nodes. He clocked the Omega Support Center at the far end, next to the infirmary and campus security. Of course.
Naruto's eyes lingered on the Support Center as sweat prickled at his hairline. Naruto thought of his official second gender—the Beta designation that had saved him since that first terrifying heat at seventeen, when his body betrayed everything he thought he knew about himself. The mandatory second gender tests at thirteen had missed something crucial in his late-blooming biology, and he intended to exploit that mistake for as long as possible. No one could ever know what he really was.
His chest squeezed. The tin in his pocket pressed hard against his leg, a cold little planet of anxiety orbiting every step. He didn't want to take the pill. He didn't want to need it. He wanted to find his brother, break the system, graduate top of his class, maybe punch an Alpha in the jaw if the opportunity presented itself. But mostly he wanted to belong, even if it meant lying to everyone, including himself.
He straightened his posture, rolled his shoulders once, and walked toward Hokage Hall. Each step hurt a little less. Behind him, Iruka and Kakashi watched—Iruka with a tissue at his face, Kakashi with a book opened again but never really reading. Naruto didn't look back.
He was already halfway down the path, flanked by strangers and possibilities, when he realized he still held the letter. He stuffed it into the front pocket of his hoodie, leaving a corner visible, like a flag.
The main quad should have felt like the start of a victory lap—admission to the best school in the city, new shoes, new hoodie, just enough money loaded onto his ID to get a real lunch instead of instant noodles. Instead, every step toward Hokage Hall ratcheted the tension in Naruto's neck, so tight it threatened to snap him in half. His breath steamed in the morning chill, sharp and rhythmic, but it wasn't enough to cool the heat that kept crawling up the back of his skull.
A bike bell jangled too close to Naruto's ear. He jerked sideways, stumbling off the sidewalk as rubber tires whispered past his elbow. The cyclist shouted something—apology or accusation, he couldn't tell—but Naruto barely heard it over the sudden roar in his ears. His lungs seized. The world tilted, edges blurring, and he was nine years old again, trapped in twisted metal as rain hammered against shattered glass.
Rain hammered the windshield in a staccato fury. Headlights. Red and blue, everywhere. The car was sideways, seatbelt biting into his shoulder, the world tilted at a thirty-degree angle. His father's hand flung across his chest, rigid and trembling. "Hold on!" his mother screamed, and then the shriek of brakes, the tectonic crunch of metal and bone, glass turning to dust in the air. Naruto remembered how slow the moment had been, how he'd watched the silver mesh of the cupholder in front of him collapse into a fist-sized crater. The scent of blood—hot—had filled the car, and then everything went black.
A campus shuttle bus whooshed past, spraying Naruto's jeans with icy droplets from the sidewalk. He gasped. The world slammed back into place, trees swaying under the banners, the static drone of incoming freshmen all around.
Naruto counted his breaths like currency, each inhale a debt, each exhale payment against the panic. The world gradually sharpened back into focus—trees, banners, students—but the crash was only the beginning of his nightmares. What followed had left deeper scars.
"You'll be placed with a family who understands your needs," the social worker had said, her office lined with dull trophies and photos of other, luckier children. "He'll be just two bus stops away. You can visit every week."
Kurama had met his gaze through the glass partition at the orphanage. He'd been taller then, with the same wild hair, but his face had softened when their eyes locked. "Listen," Kurama had said, pressing his palm against the glass. Naruto matched his hand on the other side, feeling the cold between them. "No matter how far apart they put us, I'll always find you. Always protect you. Got it?" Naruto had nodded, throat tight. He'd simply watched as his brother's silhouette shrank behind the closing doors, clinging to the warmth in his palm where their hands had almost touched.
For eight years, Kurama had materialized like clockwork, appearing at new foster homes before Naruto could even unpack. He'd show up with a backpack full of convenience store snacks and bus transfers crumpled in his pocket, having navigated three different transit systems just to spend two hours with his little brother. When they begged to stay together, the case workers would shuffle papers and mutter about "different surnames complicating placement." Behind closed doors, Naruto overheard one say, "Honestly, it's just not worth the extra forms," while tapping ash from her cigarette.
Iruka and Kakashi became Naruto's foster parents when he was fourteen, but by then the system had already labeled Kurama as "aging out." While Naruto unpacked his duffel bag in a real bedroom with actual posters on the walls, his brother was filling out college applications in a group home across town. They'd spent years planning how they'd reunite at Konoha Elite—same dorm, same cafeteria table, same life again—but Naruto should have known better. The universe had a special talent for dangling happiness just within reach before snatching it away.
Seven months ago, the phone had vibrated at 2:47 a.m., shattering his half-sleep. Kurama's name pulsed on the caller ID, sharp as a blade. Naruto accepted the call without a word.
Kurama's face filled the tiny screen, every pixel grainy with tension. He wore a hoodie with the drawstring yanked tight, shadows filling the hollows of his cheeks. His eyes darted offscreen, as if checking for pursuers.
"They're doing something to the Betas," Kurama whispered. The background was silent—no roommate noise, no city sounds. "Don't come here. Don't let them know about you. Please, Naruto." His mouth twisted, a flash of something like guilt or terror. "Promise me."
Naruto opened his mouth to answer, but the screen froze. Then it pixelated, warped, and went black. He tried calling back, fifty-seven times. It rang, but nobody answered. The number went dead two days later.
Naruto had replayed the call so many times the words had lost all meaning. Sometimes he heard panic; sometimes, he heard something like resignation, a pre-emptive mourning.
His hands shook. He jammed them in his pockets, the acceptance letter crumpled nearly beyond recognition. He focused on sensory details: the squeak of his sneakers, the burn of cold air inside his nose, the way the banners rattled against their poles.
At the steps of Hokage Hall, a Beta in a campus windbreaker held open the door. "Welcome!" she chirped, her voice bright and practiced. "First-years to the left, transfer students to the right."
Naruto hesitated at the threshold, vision swimming again, but forced himself to step over it. The air inside was warm and smelled faintly of printer ink and cinnamon. He let the sensory input crowd out the ghosts in his head, at least for the moment.
As he blended into the stream of new students funneling toward the auditorium, Naruto squared his shoulders. His lungs ached. He wasn't sure if it was from the memories or just from holding his breath for so long.
He reminded himself: I'm here for a reason. I'm not weak. I'll find Kurama, and I won't let them do to me what they did to him.
He repeated it until it sounded almost true.