5. Daily life in the Namikaze house

A carefree short-tempered woman with a kind heart, that was the impression Aiko got after interacting with Kushina, a person sharing the same bloodlines as him and he felt a sense of gratitude deep in his heart for her for providing aid to him.

Analysing his situation, after learning about his clan's history and a bit about this world from Kushina, he realised that his fate would have been a lot worse if he had fallen into some other peoples hands as he would either be killed or controlled as a weapon due to his lineage.

Even with the system he realised that he was still very weak as he had seen people do incredible things during his walks in the village, it had been about ten days since he met the Hokage, now he was living in their house.

Hokage was also a interesting man, and Aiko could feel the love and respect between the couple he stayed with, sometimes leaving him with a bit of longing, Minato had a carefree personality with a soft attitude when he was at home which wasn't much due to his job, and he too interacted with Aiko kindly whenever he had the chance. Overall Aiko felt that they had become quite important people to him in his short stay here.

"Aiko-kun do you want to join the academy?" asked Minato one day during breakfast.

'Academy', thought Aiko, a place where ninja training was given to the children of clans and commoners who aspire to be ninjas and passing the academy was a way to be recognised as a ninja and only those are allowed to take missions from the village.

"He just recently recovered, let him rest for awhile he is still five years old anyway, ya know" answered Kushina before Aiko could answer.

Minato also noticed that Kushina was getting quite attached to the kid in front of him, thinking that it was her maternal instincts acting up, not that he was opposed to it as he too liked the obedient kid who seems a bit too mature for his age, that was also the reason Minato wanted him to go the academy as he could get to interact with people of similar age.

"I also want to teach him about the sealing techniques of my clan, so that he would have a good foundation" added Kushina, she didn't want her clan techniques to go extinct with her and she had a bad feeling recently not that she shared it with anybody.

'Do you wish to learn sealing techniques from Kushina Uzumaki?

-yes

-no'

He saw a message from the system, and decided he would be going to the academy at a later date.

"Are you also a shinobi Aunt kushina?" he asked curiously

"Ha ha, kushina-chan is a jounin, as she is pregnant now she has retired from the force" explained Minato with a smile. "She is so strong that she is even called haba.." he continued but quickly stiffened when he felt a dangerous aura from kushina.

"Hehe you have explained enough, I think dear~~" came a terrifying voice from Kushina and Aiko could see her long red hair floating slightly behind her.

"Yeah yeah" said Minato laughing sheepishly.

Aiko sensing the atmosphere was a bit dangerous and wisely chose to not go further into it.

"I will join the academy at a later date, and I will also help out at the house" Aiko decided and selected yes from the system, even though the hokage mansion was big it was only occupied by the three of them.

Kushina smiled warmly at him and ruffled his bright red hair, Minato's gaze also became gentle as he watched this scene.

"Minato, why are you having kakashi follow us, you know I can protect myself right?" said Kushina as they were about to finish the breakfast.

"How did you find out?" asked Minato, a little bit surprised as he had told kakashi to tail them in secret.

"Aiko- kun found out, he said that the fox masked guy who brought him to the office the first day was hiding in the tree." said Kushina as she was also surprised that she did not detect Kakashi at all.

'His sensory abilities are stronger than mine' thought Minato as he could also only vaguely sense kakashi's aura outside the mansion.

It was actually thanks to the mapping skill as it was able to record the different chakra signatures which made it easy for him to recognise the chakra he had previously come in contact with.

In these ten days, other than learning about the world, he also tried to learn about his system and skills, and found out that he can toggle his skills on and off and found that he can increase or decrease the effects of his skill like calm mind which he found to be operating at 50%, and the more he increased it the more detached he became from his emotions.

He also noticed that keeping mapping skill on all the time helped it level up but also made him mentally tired so he was now experimenting on the optimum range and time for the skill.

The most interesting skill was instinct manipulation, he just had to give a command to his body like 'don't breathe' and he felt the urge to breathe vanish though the effect of not breathing still affected his body, he had full control over it. The only drawback was the stamina consumption which increased drastically as time went on when the skill was active, he summarized that it was maybe because the urge increased with time, so the stamina required to contain it increased as well and he could also increase his senses and perception.

He practiced all his skills daily until he ran out of stamina and used the remaining time to gain knowledge. He had a feeling that he would level up soon, though he was not sure about the criteria.

"Well, you know it is for your protection" said Minato and seeing that her expression was turning bad, he added "I want him to relax a bit he has been on missions since rin's death and I don't know a better way" his face looking sad and filled with regret.

As a sensei of Kakashi's team, Minato, known as the fastest ninja alive, regretted the fact that he wasn't there in time to save his disciples.

Kushina noticed his thoughts too, as she was also close with Minato's team due to her relationship with him, but the nature of their job was to put their life in the line and she had long since accepted that fate. "Ask him to come out from hiding, he can stay close and also help in teaching Aiko basics." she conceded.

Aiko also remained silent as he had learned about the incident from Kushina and understood the reason for the type of aura he felt when he first met him. One more thing he noticed as days went by that the people's aura changed subtly based on their emotions but some part of the core always remained the same.

"Yes, thank you" said Minato as a smile again returned to his face. He had already faced a lot of deaths in his life, but still that did not mean that he was used to it nor was he devoid of regrets.