15 Chapter 15

It did not take long for me to find Jiraya. He was relaxing near a waterfall near the town. I did not hide my presence and approached him with a smile.

His eyes shot open when I was just about three hundred meters away from him. I really admired this sort of sharp instinct. As expected he was really experienced.

Me - Hello Jiraya san. I am Kitamura Aoki a jounin of Konoha. It's an honour to meet you.

Jiraya - Ahh... Aoki kun, yes I remember you. The quiet kid from back then can now smile too.

He said with a smile and I could tell that it was sincere. Aoki had few short encounters with Jiraya during the 3rd shinobi war so I was not surprised by his comment. But I definitely wont tell him that I'm a different person.

Me - More than a decade has passed since then. Everyone has changed a lot. You will notice that at one glance when you go back Jiraya san.

Jiraya - Yeah you are right. I have stopped by many times but only met the old man for a while. If everything goes well then I shall be back after a year or so.

I did not need to ask the reason because I knew from the story that he would come back and become Naruto's master.

Me - It will be nice. Then we can have a drink sometime. So, do you want to know about Yondaime's son? I've met him a while back.

...

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I started my return journey after chatting for about half an hour with Jiraya. We talked about my short encounter with Naruto and the general mood of the village.

Jiraya did not give out any signs from his expressions but his chakra was honest. Whenever we talked about Naruto, his previous calm emotions , would start fluctuating like a torrent. Guilt , Love and Anger. These three were especially strongly felt by me.

I could somewhat understand his feelings though. Naruto was his godson and the only son of his prized disciple but fate was cruel and he could not even take care of the boy himself. There could be many reasons behind that and I could guess a few.

One was to hide Naruto's identity from especially enemies like Yondaime's son and Jinchuriki. I knew that but did not like it.

When I met Naruto , I found him pitiful. That boy was acting hyperactive naturally but I knew his situation so I also knew that he had no choice to do that to hide his sadness in his heart. Well he would soon find new friends so I was not worried about him either.

I did not know whether Sandaime acted like his grandfather on purpose or not but this much was sure that the small affection was super important to Naruto.

Danzo's intervention caused the negative impression of villagers towards Naruto and I definitely found that guy disgusting.

Kakashi despite living in the village , was lost in his past and guilt so he could not interact with Naruto openly for now. The guilt would be same for Jiraya as he could not save Naruto's parents and maybe this was also one of the reasons why Jiraya did not interact with Naruto.

To be honest , I did not like Konoha much but did not hate it either. There was so much dirty politics there and the Hokage did not look that reliable to me for now. But it was also true that the village could be called rich and there were no shortage of missions. Right now I wanted to complete missions for rewards from system. So I was not considering leaving the village at all. Maybe not in the future either .

Now Konoha could be called my home. So I did not want to be indifferent to the people there. I had to live there and it would of course be better if I had some friends too. I had some feelings for Anko and hoped to start a relationship with her.

I could ignore everything else and solely focus on training and missions but that sort of life would be boring one. It did not suit my style.

I did not gain much for the meeting with Jiraya but I got to confirm my feelings for Konoha so it was not a waste of time either.

Now my mind was clear and I could not wait to finish giving the mission report and complete system's quest as soon as possible. Then I would have enough points to buy Sword of Basics manual from system.

The plan to visit some gambling dens was discarded but that did matter much as I could always visit some in future.