Great Lakes 35 excerpt- Patreon only

He had barely left the relative safety of Rejina-hime’s office before his eye was assaulted.

“Hello, Hatake-kun. How was Rejina-hime? You know, after I rolled all over her paperwork for thirty minutes, she finally said she bet that she could bounce a ryo off my ass and agreed to go out to dinner with me.” Genma grinned as he leisurely flexed his biceps, perched on someone’s cabinet.

‘Truly, you are a barnacle and a wretch.’

Kakashi just stared. Regrettably, Genma wasn’t moved whatsoever. The office staff, however, had disappeared again.

‘Tragic. I’ll have to find Keiko-san later to catch up. I miss our talks.’

The woman herself had briskly walked into the men’s bathroom and locked the door when he’d arrived. An increasingly desperate-looking chuunin had been trying the handle for at least a minute.

“Romantic, huh?” Genma tried to elbow him, but he shunshined out of the way. “I assume you’re here to receive my verbal approval, huh? Everybody wants it.”

Genma looked him up and down. 

“...It might help if you weren’t so twitchy and wearing oversized uniform parts.” He squinted. “Uh. Your hair has great volume.” He stepped back and held his hands up. “That’s all I have. You’re not giving me much to work with. You don’t even have any smoulder.”

Kakashi quickly left the den of sin and fled back to his apartment, opening the files he’d been given. 

It was incredible how much Naruto looked like Minato-sensei- or not. Kakashi rubbed at his own face, a near carbon-copy of his father’s. 

The roundness in the cheeks was more like Kushina.

‘Hard to look at.’

He put it back down and flipped open the other. 

“Uchiha Sasuke.” He didn’t look terribly much like his brother, but was certainly identifiable as an Uchiha. And the boy that Rejina-hime had had sleeping on her couch at least once. 

‘Probably her investment in this. Maybe Naruto as well- Jiraiya-sama was his guardian.’

She’d obviously personally prepared these- the handwriting was clean and very, very deliberate.

The little Uchiha was evidently doing well in school, and she’d included some personal assessments as to his interests. 

‘I don’t know much about medical jutsu.’ he flipped the page, ‘but taijutsu with Gai? ... I could work with that.’

All in all, he didn’t seem like a troublesome student. He had good grades, though he obviously was not nearly as talented as his brother. Kakashi shrugged. 

‘So the village is mostly concerned because he’s the last.’

He flipped to the last page, which included a personality assessment from the woman herself.

‘Overachieving, perfectionist.’ He thought with some amusement, reading along. ‘Displays distrust with untested authorities- evidently unsure that adults are capable of protecting him or others. Under both severe internal and external pressure to succeed. Personality is given to attempting to become a protector and authority.

‘Never mind. Sounds like a pain in the ass.’

He avoided the other folder by re-reading everything, noting that Rejina-hime had been including notations from something else. They were numbered. 

‘She didn’t give it to me, whatever it is.’ He flipped through it again. ‘I doubt it was unintentional.’

He got up and cleaned his apartment, avoiding the folder sitting on his shelf. Then he made dinner, prepacking it into appropriate-sized bento boxes.

He looked around. There wasn’t anything else to do- he could scrub the shower again? 

The guilt nagged at him until he flipped Sensei’s son’s file open.

It was shocking, to say the least. 

Failing grades, abysmal work in every subject. He swallowed to tamp down the nausea. He was probably what she’d been hinting at in their meeting.

‘What the hell is happening? How is Sensei’s son failing every class? It seems impossible.’

The next pages provided little clarity- but someone had taken the initiative of finding him a tutor. The last few months of classwork showed a massive increase in grades. 

‘Ebisu, of course.’ he flipped again, ‘Kami, his ninjutsu scores are awful. But Ebisu as a tutor makes sense.’

Rejina’s personal evaluations provided some context, at least.

‘Evidence of extreme social isolation, self-raising, and potential mild learning disability.’ it read. ‘Has trouble reading, but performs extraordinarily well with demonstration and learning by doing. Social isolation likely to remain a long-term issue, as has learned to gain attention through outsized behavior to solicit any engagement with other people. Goal-motivated, but requires consistent monitoring. Fears of inferiority jeopardize other relationships, as does not take instruction or critique from peers well. Displays significant fear of abandonment.’

He let the folder wilt slightly in his fingertips. 

‘Well. She wasn’t joking.’

The fact that some of that reminded him of Obito decidedly did not help. He shoved both folders into his bookcase, behind his Icha Icha collection. 

‘It’s three years away. Maybe I won’t even have to do this at all.’

And now he was lying to himself. Badly.

‘Fuck.’