The Journey of Parenthood

SUMMARY: She was supposed to be an unassuming civilian woman, but taking care of an unruly child whose future was to be a shinobi changed that for her. The hilarity that came with her new experience in parenthood was really her fault, though. OC

AN: I've reentered the Naruto fandom.

Chapter 1: I'm Thirty

Marvelously, my birthday was dated on the same day when the Kyuubi had attacked the village. Where I had been expecting a banal card and cash inside my mailbox sent from my parents, what I got instead was a demon fox the size of a mountain razing buildings to the ground and squashing people like ants. And swatting shinobi like flies with its tails because, yeah, I wasn't going to forget seeing that one guy being flung backwards over my head at a velocity of eight-hundred miles per hour.

So I didn't get that stupid card or the extra money on my birthday. Well, I probably did, but all of that was lost under the pile of rubble that used to be my apartment. I had no idea what I was going to do, so I just sat there amongst the flying dust and bricks and feeling sorry for myself.

A shinobi had approached me after a few hours and asked why I had been out of the safe-houses. I had told him that I hadn't been in one of the safe-houses in the first place, and I had later learned that I was of the few civilians who had survived the open destruction.

Maybe this was my birthday present sent to me from the higher power in the sky. My survival. Now I had to put up with monetary losses, finding a new place, reclaiming my job, and taking care of my distraught mother because Dad was dead from the attack.

Then, when that business was taken care of, I had caught wind of an interesting rumor. Apparently, the Kyuubi was still around—the monster was just taking a form of a baby boy so that it could hide away in obscurity. So much for obscurity when everyone and their neighbor knew who this kid was.

It wasn't to say that the rumor was true. The Hokage had told us squat other than how the boy was not the Kyuubi, which he had oddly emphasized this several times, and that he would sentence anyone informing the boy that the Kyuubi had been sealed inside of him, which was jarring. That was all pretty vague and easily misconstrued. What we basically got out of it was: One, avoid the boy; Two, don't talk to the boy.

You'd think that our esteemed leader would inform his citizens the deal with this kid, but, no, he just kept us in the dark instead. So, thus, the rumors were born to compensate the mystery.

I wasn't sure what to believe. The Hokage had said that the Kyuubi was contained within Uzumaki Naruto—that was all he said—and ideas were flying left and right. The Kyuubi, a powerful being of darkness and evil, could be controlling the boy and plotting its revenge. If an entire village of shinobi couldn't handle the beast, then how could a child do any better? These weren't my thoughts, though; I didn't have much of an opinion about these things. It wasn't like I would ever encounter Uzumaki, so why bother?

But when I started running into the same blonde runt for days was when I started to eat my words.

When I turned thirty, I decided to eat cake for dinner.

That was the first time that I met him.

I got off work and was making my way home. There was a bakery that I usually passed by, and, since I just hit three decades of my lifetime (and, boy, did I feel old), I figured I deserved to indulge. Approaching the bakery, I saw standing there was a little boy who had his face pressed up against the window, eyeing the cakes that were displayed from the inside. He didn't pay mind to me when I opened the door, just resumed his staring without break.

Upon my entry, a lady came charging from the kitchen and to the counter and swearing up a storm. "I told you, you brat—!" She then froze when her eyes landed on me and began to apologize profusely for her rudeness.

I was startled by her "welcoming," but didn't press the issue. I supposed that the manager was referring to the boy outside considering the way she was glaring daggers at him who was still squishing his cheeks onto the glass. And whatever beef she had with a kid who barely reached her knees was no business of mine.

"Yeah, I'll have that chocolate cake there with the white chocolate shavings," I selected. A cursory glance over my shoulder, I added, "And that vanilla cupcake too. Please and thank you."

"I hope you're not going to give the cupcake to that wretched brat out there," the manager said, managing to transform the word "brat" into a venomous and deprecating term. Funny—I had a great teacher who used to call his students "brats" all the time, and I came to associate "brat" as an endearment. This lady seriously had issues that I definitely was not going to touch.

But I couldn't help saying, "It's part of my guilty conscience to give tooth-rotting sweets to sad children who disrupt other people's commerce."

She snorted. "It's your funeral."

Why would it be my funeral?

Not going to touch the issue.

After making my purchase, I ambled out the bakery and poked the boy in the neck. The boy unnecessarily freaked out; he shrieked and flung his arms in the air, and then collapsed backwards. His wide blue eyes were watching me, frightened.

Whoa. What a reaction.

"Uh," I said, eloquent as ever, "you like cupcakes?"

He didn't say anything and just continued to stare at me.

All of a sudden, I felt ever so stupid and self-conscious. The manager must be watching this, laughing at this mortifying moment where my impulsive act of kindness led up to the boy eyeing at me as though I would knife him at any time now. What did this kid go through to be able to muster up such wariness in his gaze?

I must have sounded like one of those creepy strangers who'd offer candy to children.

This was a terrible decision, I concluded, and that my ideas of spontaneity should never be followed. I always had this thought whenever I did something spontaneous halfway through, but I sometimes pushed through because the situation would be much too awful to look back on if I didn't. And I know I would look back on it. I just couldn't keep myself from looking back on those humiliating moments of my life, and then I would beat myself up for it.

So I pushed through because the manager was likely to be watching and I really was acting on my guilty conscience.

"It's my birthday today. I'm thirty now," I said.

"Old," the boy whispered.

I winced. "Yeah. Okay, so, since it's my birthday, I have to eat a birthday cake. However, one cake is too much for one person. I'm going to give you a cupcake so that you can help me eat it."

I opened the box and handed the cheap confectionary to him. The boy held that cupcake as though it was made out of freaking glass. Kids his age shouldn't revere cupcakes; they should be cramming in their faces and be demanding more. I was so weirded out by this that I belatedly noticed him looking at me confusedly.

"B-but this isn't the cake you said you got," he whispered again.

"My cake had babies," I lied. "Cupcakes are baby cakes, so I'm giving one of the babies to you."

His eyes became large.

"Eventually, my cake is going to stop giving birth to cupcakes, so, by giving you a cupcake, you are helping me eat my cake," I continued with my elaborate fib.

His lip started wobbling. "I-I d-don't want to eat b-b-babies," he whimpered. He now cradled the cupcake like it was a precious gem.

I was terrible with children—that was a fact. But what did I do? I pressed on. "Okay, you don't have to. But just so you know that if you don't eat the cupcake, it will go bad and it will die."

"Really?" he gasped, aggrieved.

I nodded sagely. "There is one way to save the cupcake, though."

"What?"

"You have to eat it."

"No!" he cried.

"There is a reason why eating the cupcake will save its life," I continued. "A cupcake is a food, and foods don't live for a very long time. If we eat the food, though, the food will then live within us. Then…" I struggled for a moment here. "Then when we, uh, poop the food out, the food that would now be poop will be flushed away in the toilet and then be sent to its new home—the ocean."

"Our poops live in the ocean?" the boy said, doubtful and scandalized. "But we get salt from the ocean. Grandpa says so…"

"We have a machine that makes sure our salt is completely poop-free. Our salt is super clean," I assured.

"Oh…" He looked down at the cupcake a tad mournfully. "I-I have to eat it?"

"Only if you want to. Anyway, I'm going home. Thanks for taking care of the cupcake."

With that said, I left the kid behind and mused over the hilarity of the conversation that I had with him.

It was a good thing I wasn't a mom. I would totally suck at parenting.

The second time I ran into the boy was two days after my birthday.

I was doing the usual routine of going to work from home and going home from work. Naturally, doing said routine would require passing by the bakery.

On my way, that same boy who I had given a cupcake to was crouched next to the corner of the bakery's window, far enough to not be seen by the manager. When he spotted me, he jumped up from his position and did a half-jog towards me. I stopped and looked down at him curiously.

"The cupcake you gave me," he began, trailed off, and then shook his head. He then asked, "Was the cupcake poisoned?"

I felt my jaw go slack. "Poisoned—?" Oh, his parents must have discarded it. I suppose I couldn't escape the scrutiny of the creepy stranger offering children candy. I understood that much, but…it was embarrassing. Yeah, I was certainly unintentionally going to look back on this. I thought I could dodge this one, though. "No. The bakery doesn't poison their food. That would be counterproductive to their business," I said, shifting the blame.

The boy's face pinched in petulance. "I knew that, but Grandpa didn't listen to me. I didn't get to eat my cupcake."

"Oh. Sorry about that."

"Can you get me another one?"

Could I what now? "Kid, I'm not made out of money."

"Does that mean you ate all of your cake's babies?"

"Excuse me?" The conversation that I had with him two days ago suddenly came back to me. I smoothed out my surprised expression. "Oh. Well, I still do some cake left. Not the babies, though, but just the original cake."

"Can I have some cake?" he asked, hopefulness so painfully apparent in that little face of his. "I-it was my birthday too… The day that you turned fifty…"

"Thirty," I corrected. I frowned. "Your birthday was on October 10?"

He nodded. "I'm five!" he announced proudly.

He was born on the day the Kyuubi had rampaged the village? That was sad. I could just imagine the taunts and jeering he must have had received from other children. They probably mocked him about being cursed because he entered the world on the bleakest and darkest day. Poor kid. No wonder he was such a mess before—assuming that was the reason.

I cleared my throat. "Well, I'd be fine with that, but I don't know if I should. I mean, if your grandpa threw away the cupcake, then he wouldn't be happy about you having cake, right?"

"But—but—" His bottom lip trembled. "I never had cake before, though!"

Disbelief was the first thing that I registered. What kid hadn't had cake before? Unless he was an orphan residing in a low-income orphanage, and he could possibly be, but he mentioned having a grandfather. Unless said grandfather was an awful man and would do awful things like not letting his grandson experience the wonders of dessert goodness. Or he could be a health nut and would do healthy things like not letting his grandson grow obsessed on sweets. With that in mind, I was reminded just how subjective the world was.

The second thing that I felt was dread. This boy was about to burst into tears. People would be staring and it would be entirely awkward and crying children was something that threw me out of my loop. I did what I could only do to remedy the situation in my time of panic.

"Alright! You can have cake!"

The sorrow that fogged his eyes cleared up instantly. In contrast to the scared nervous child that I had initially encountered, the boy now was practically a radiance of joy—it was like staring directly at a tiny ball of sunshine and rainbows. It hurt my eyes. Was he really that happy about getting to eat cake?

"Yay! Cake! Cake!" he cheered, throwing his skinny arms up and did a victory dance.

"Right," I muttered.

I tried not to drag my feet on my home as the kid tottered after me. Once we reached my door, I told him to wait outside. He looked at me askance, but gave a hesitant nod. I rolled my eyes. He actually thought that I'd slam the door right in his face and not give him what he wanted? He really wanted to eat that cake, didn't he?

"Why can't I come inside?" he asked.

"Because I don't think your grandpa would like it if you entered the home of a lady who you just met."

"I-I don't think he minds!"

"But you don't know that for sure, do you?"

He frowned and lowered his eyes.

"Thought so. Wait here."

I closed the door behind me, but didn't lock it, thinking that would assure him that I would indeed give him the cake. As I went to my kitchen and rummaged through my fridge, the door opened and I heard a "He wouldn't know that I was in your home, though!"

"Then I'm not the one who's comfortable with kids waltzing inside like they own the place," I snapped, quickly marching out and ushering the boy along. Jeez, this kid.

I presented the half-eaten cake to him, sitting on a plate and covered in a plastic wrap. I pushed it to his grubby hands and was prepared to retreat, but then he said, "Wh-where are the candles?"

"Candles?"

"It's a birthday cake. There has to be candles," he whined.

"Technically, your birthday was two days ago. It's not a birthday cake anymore. It's just cake."

He looked like he was about to cry again.

"Okay, okay," I groaned.

I headed for my closet in my bedroom and excavated for what I hoped to be the candles that I had kept three years ago for—for whatever reasons. Why did I bother keeping the candles? Whatever—I had them now, and the important thing was that they would pacify the kid.

"Here, candles," I said. "Do you want me to stick them on the cake?"

He nodded vigorously.

I opened the packet. There were seven candles with four of them broken into different sizes. I jabbed five of them into the cake anyway, daring the boy to make a fuss about that. He didn't. He was gazing at the cake with excitement gleaming in his eyes and a broad smile that split across his face.

"Now the fire!" he exclaimed, looking up at me expectedly.

"I don't own a lighter. Ask your grandfather."

He wilted. "But… But…"

So, again, I ended up catering to his desires to avoid the baby tear-explosion. I was starting to get really fed up with this, but I took an extra candle and lit it with the fire from the stove. It went out four times before I could make it outside. Finally, I gave up and had the boy enter my home. He made thrilled squealing noises, and I had no comprehension as to what he could be overjoyed about.

I set the cake on the dining table and went for the stove again.

"Don't burn out. Don't burn out. Don't burn out. Don't burn out."

With a trembling hand, I lowered the flickering flame onto the candles and managed to light all five of them. Deeply satisfied, I then swiped the candle in my hand in the air and watched as the flame dispersed into wispy smoke.

"So, how'd you like it?" I asked him.

"It's so cool!" the kid whispered.

"Alright, close your eyes, think of a wish, and then blow out the candles." And leave this place.

"Wait! Can you turn off the lights?"

Anything to get you out of here faster, I thought. I turned off the lights and the room was now settled in relative darkness. The evening glow filtered through my windows, but the candles were the brightest thing here. It illuminated the boy's face, amplifying the returning gleam in his eyes.

He squeezed his eyes tightly and kept it like that for a minute. When he opened his eyes, he breathed in, his chest inflating, and blew out the candles. I turned the lights back on.

"Okay, now that's done—"

"Can I cut a slice?" he cut me off.

My shoulders sagged. "Yeah, sure."

The woman from the bakery was right. He really was a brat.

I admit, he was cute in that obnoxious sort of way, but I had a limit in just how much obnoxiousness I could tolerate. Or how much I could tolerate children in general. Yeah, I just kept running into him.

The third time we met, it was a week after we had held his pseudo-party. Because of my act of munificence, he developed an unwavering attachment to me.

I returned to my apartment complex after doing a bit of grocery shopping. That day's errand had gone strangely. People in at the marketplace had been staring at me funny. The grocer had stared at me funny. As I had walked home, those who I had passed by had stared at me funny.

I checked my shirt to see if I buttoned it wrong and rubbed my cheeks if there was any food residue sticking, but I was in the clear. Then I craned my neck over to inspect my rear if I miscalculated my menstrual cycle, but no red splotches were to be seen.

Musing over the weirdness of the day, I stopped short in my train of thought once my eyes landed on a head full of blonde hair. The kid turned around and grinned.

"Hi, Lady!" he said, waving at me.

And for the rest of that day, I did what I could to make him dislike me. I told him to beat it, to scram, to get lost. He was not deterred. Although, when he became visibly hurt by my words, I promptly faked a laugh and said that I was joking. He smiled at me and stuck around until the sun set.

Babysitting on my day-off? Not what I planned in mind.

Then there were the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth times we met. It just became a routine for him to wait for me in front of my door and hang around. That was it. He just wanted my company.

I was contemplating on having a talk with his grandfather. If a little boy found solace in spending time with a solitary woman of whom he had yet to learn her name, then this was a serious issue. How could this geezer allow his grandson to do this? The kid was a talker, that was for sure, and there was no way that he would keep this to himself.

I came up with the decision that I would ask the kid if his grandfather and I could meet.

That, until, I was called from my cubicle and to my boss's office.

"We need to talk," my boss said, speaking those same words that I had rehearsed in my head when I was playing through my imagined conversation with the kid's grandfather.

And, yes, we did talk.

I got fired. I also learned the reason why people were staring at me lately.

So, because of my unintentional involvement with the demon container, I lost my job. Oh, it just didn't end there. I went home and saw that my landlady had taped a letter to my door that contained a long-drawn-out message of how I was being kicked out. I was, ahem, disturbing my neighbors and the general community due to my questionable associations.

So, I lost my job, my home, and the anonymity that I had as a citizen. Now, everyone knew who I was. Why? Because I was the so-called caretaker of the Nine-Tailed Beast that had terrorized the village five years ago, committing an enormous massacre, and bringing everyone to their low.

At that time, I was wondering, "Who the hell is the demon container?" Frankly, I wasn't a sociable person. I didn't have many friends. There wasn't anyone new who I recently started talking to—

The kid.

I was such an idiot.

My ninth encounter with the kid was also my first encounter with his grandfather.

So, here I was, packing away my things and wondering how I should approach the matter with Mom. "Hey, Mom, I don't have a job and a place to stay, so can I live with you for the time being until I manage to alter my identity and resume living my life in peace? Thanks."

I hauled out a box and chucked it out through the doorway, which was a mistake. In my defense, I was venting out my anger, so I couldn't be faulted for hurling a huge box at a wrinkly old man.

"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry," I said, hastily taking the box away.

And what did you know? That wrinkly old man was the Hokage.

I dropped the box like hot potatoes.

"Hi, Lady." The kid—Uzumaki Naruto—popped out from behind the Hokage. He was being strangely timid in contrast to his usual upbeat self, like how he had been when we first met.

"So, this is the miss who you have been spending time with, Naruto-kun," the Hokage said. Under his hat, he eyed me what I could determine was speculation, but he was basically unreadable. I was unnerved.

"Yeah…" Naruto said. "She's really nice, Grandpa!"

"So you've told me."

"Uhh," I said.

"May I invite you over for tea, Miss?" the Hokage asked.

"I, um, gotta pack up my things. There's—there's a deadline," I replied dumbly.

He waved dismissively. "I'll send people to do that for you."

What else could I do other than accept his invitation? I followed the Hokage all the way to the Hokage Tower and to his office, fixed in a stupor. I snapped out of it once I found myself seated before the Hokage's large desk.

The Hokage came behind me, setting down two cups.

I swallowed, taking notice that it was just him and me. "Wh-where did the kid go?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Naruto-kun? I sent him outside. I was hoping that the two of us may have a talk."

That was what I wanted to tell him!

Holy cow. It was coming to me in frightening clarity: Naruto's "Grandpa" was the Hokage!

"I wish to discuss about Naruto," he said.