Genin Days (I).

He watched some crows fly by the window from where he sat in the last row of the classroom while still listening with one ear to what the instructor was explaining at the moment. It wouldn't do to be called upon and not knowing the answer because he didn't know the question itself. Not only would his parents undoubtedly hear about it, but his pride wouldn't allow something like that to happen either. It would be way too embarrassing not being able to answer an academy-level question, no matter how boring he thought the lessons to be.

It was hard to believe that he already spent six months sitting in this classroom, "learning" stuff he mastered decades ago. Of course, he knew that this was necessary as he couldn't become a shinobi if he didn't finish his schooling first, but it was still boring.

He spent most of the time in class musing about the future, how he could train in private after school, or how he could spend his time with Sasuke on that day.

Sadly, his thoughts often wandered off in much more unpleasant directions. One example of such a thought was the memory of how the Sandaime informed him about his failure in apprehending Orochimaru.

The Hokage had decided to gather information about said Sannin's activities before he would act, to see if he was already too far gone or if he could still be saved. He knew that the snake summoner was like a son to the old man and that he couldn't act completely unbiased regarding him, but he was still somewhat annoyed. It might be hypocritical of him considering he was the same when Sasuke was concerned, but he couldn't help himself.

It would have been a great boon for them to stop Orochimaru before he could leave the village, but now he was gone, earlier than in the original timeline, and there wasn't anything they could do to change that now.

Good things happened as well, of course.

For one thing, the Uchiha Clan hadn't been relocated to the outskirts like the last time. Instead, their new district was pretty much at the centre of the village, right beside the marketplace. Because of that, the clan was forced to interact more with the non-Uchiha population, making their clan look less aloof and unapproachable as it was still the case with clans like the Hyūga.

Naturally, there were a lot of protests at first as many members of his family didn't want to interact too much with the rest of the village, but all resistance stopped as soon as they noticed how the increased number of people from outside the clan multiplied their income.

The only persons who had been quite outspoken against this change had been Danzo, but when the Hokage argued that this placement would allow the KMPF, which was mainly manned by members of the Uchiha Clan, to be everywhere in the village fast enough to be actually able to do something in case of an emergency, and no one else objected, it had been decided anyway.

Another positive change from his timeline was that he still didn't hear any rumors about Naruto, which meant that his status was still very much a secret.

He actually heard his parents argue about adopting him, his mother had been close friends with Kushina after all, but the idea was turned down in the end.

"Itachi-kun, can you tell me for which Jutsu the hand seals I just demonstrated is?"

He looked at the expectant face of his instructor, slightly surprised that he had actually been called to answer the question. Most teachers had already accepted that they wouldn't catch him by surprise and that he always played attention even if he didn't look like it.

"The seal is for the Suiton: Suijinheki (Water Release: Water Formation Wall), Sensei," he answered without hesitation.

His teacher nodded with a smile, having obviously expected him to know the answer.

In his opinion, he should have called upon someone else if he already knew that he could answer the question, but it didn't really matter anyway. At least he had been moved up the grades a few months ago, just shortly after his enrollment, which meant there were no fangirls in this class who could swoon about him.

He suppressed a sigh. If there was one single advantage of becoming a well-known criminal, then it was the absence of fangirls. Not to say that they vanished completely, there were some weird people out there who actually are into mass-murderers, but it definitively lessened.

Having correctly answered the question, his teacher continued to explain various techniques and their strengths and weaknesses while Itachi continued to stare out of the window and counting the time until school was over so he could get some real training done today.

The class was just over and he was on his way home when he heard a female voice call his name:

"Itachi! Not so fast!"

He knew who called his name even before he fully turned around, having recognized the voice instantly, so it was no surprise when Izumi suddenly stood in front of him.

"Meh, Itachi, I told you to wait for me after school. Do you know how annoying it is to run to catch up with you?"

He was pretty sure that she was glaring at him right now, but to Itachi, it looked more like she was pouting than anything else.

Since he awoke in the past, he had tried his best to spend more time with the few people he had been close to, which was a pretty limited group of people consisting of Sasuke, Shisui, and Izumi. Probably his parents as well. Sadly, he had not much reason to interact with Shisui yet and his parents were too busy more often than not, so he spent most of his free time -or at least the time he didn't spend training- with either Izumi or Sasuke. Sometimes with both of them at the same time.

One of those days had been yesterday. He had trained with Izumi after school, and Sasuke had watched. Of course, when he said 'training with her' he actually meant 'training her' instead.

That had also been when she told him to wait for her after school today.

"You caught up with me just fine, so everything turned out alright, didn't it?"

Her pouting -sorry, glaring- intensified at that. "That's no excuse Itachi! You can't just-"

He just smiled as Izumi continued with her rant. He was used to it by now, having spent quite a few hours just listening to her talking. That was how they spent most of their time when they weren't training, actually; she talked and he listened. He would chime in with some comment from time to time, but not much more. He never was the most talkative person and the years after his banishment from Konoha only strengthened this habit.

Also, having serious conversations with children was not exactly easy.

The first time he had met her in this timeline, when they were accepted into the Academy, he hadn't known how to react. It was rather fortunate that he didn't need to do anything but listen to the Sandaime because he wasn't sure he would have been able to even speak at all.

Izumi's death might be the only one he regretted as much as his parent's, so it was understandable hard to be in her presence.

It helped that they were in the same class, at least before he had been graded up after two months because he could get used to her the same way he got used to his parents' presence after living with them again for a while. Now that they were close again, probably even closer than they had originally been at this age, he was a bit saddened about the fact that they didn't share classes any longer. He didn't regret it, though. After all, being around young children all day was exhausting, even more than it had been the first time around.