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When exactly did I stop saying “What a drag”…?

Shikamaru considered the question as he looked up at the sky, where one thin cloud after another briskly sailed by, despite the wind not being especially strong. The hurried confusion above him was not so different from the twisting and turning in his own heart, and Shikamaru smiled wryly.

At any rate, he was busy.

More than two years had passed since the Fourth Great Ninja War, and the world was finally starting to settle down again. The Five Kage Alliance, born of the outbreak of war, remained intact, leading to a dramatically different world for shinobi. The original alliance had been established among the five hidden villages, but after the Great War, the smaller neighboring lands were quick to announce their intention to join the larger group. Shinobi from every part of the continent were now a part of the organization, which had slowly developed from a loose alliance into a more formal union. The work previously undertaken by individual villages before the launch of the Five Kage Alliance now came in batches to the union. Ninja representatives from every region in the union then discussed and assigned missions to the villages. Being able to ensure a steady flow of work corrected disparities among them, finally bringing an era of peace and stability to the world of the shinobi.

“Aah.” The sigh melted into the air. The stone beneath him was cold, meaning that his back was essentially frozen. If I don’t move, I’m gonna catch a cold or something, he thought, and yet he had a reason for not getting up.

Work was waiting.

An absolutely ridiculous amount of work. And he couldn’t figure out where to even start with it.

If he simply thought of this time as a brief break, he could keep lying here like this in the middle of the day. But once he got up, that dream would die. His brain would immediately shift into work mode. And once that happened, he knew he wouldn’t be able to lie down again. So he continued to lounge obstinately on the cold stone roof of the Hokage Residence. And as long as no one came around looking for him, he intended to stay like that.

Beyond the round roof, he could see the stony mountain, the faces of the generations of Hokage carved into it. In order from the right were the first Hokage, Hashirama, and his younger brother, Tobirama. They were followed by the third Hokage, Hiruzen, who died in Orochimaru’s operation to destroy Konoha, and Namikaze Minato, the “Yellow Flash.” The fifth Hokage, Tsunade, was one of the three legendary shinobi alongside Orochimaru and Jiraiya. These were the historical Hokage.

The face of the current Hokage was next to Tsunade’s. Sleepy eyes under wiry hair. The lower half of his symmetrical face with its sharp nose covered by a mask. The Hokage was the symbol of Konohagakure, someone every ninja in Konoha had to approve before ascension. The face in the mountain was meant to carve the Hokage’s face into memory, and yet the lower half of this man’s was hidden by a mask.

Hatake Kakashi, Hokage.

Every single soul in the shinobi world knew him as the master of the two heroes who brought about the end of the Fourth Great Ninja War. Shikamaru, however, had a much closer relationship with Kakashi and those two heroes, and he felt disconnected from all the fuss made over them. People told him they were heroes and legends and praised them to high heaven, but he definitely wouldn’t use words like that to describe any of them. Kakashi was a man who stepped up to the plate when he had to, but in everyday life he was a total waste of a grown-up with no interest in doing anything.

And the two so-called heroes were the same. One was a complete and total idiot. And the other was utterly pigheaded. There was no helping either of them, and yet they were called “living legends.” Shikamaru honestly did not understand this world.

“What am I even doing…” His thoughts naturally spilled out from his mouth.

Shikamaru was very much not the hero type. To start with, he had never wanted to be a hero. He wasn’t interested in polishing his ninjutsu and being one of those super industrious types, either. He also didn’t particularly want to study medical ninjutsu and become a rear-guard support specialist, and training in computation or rhetoric to become an official seemed like a giant yawn.

Just right at everything, that was Shikamaru’s dream. As a ninja of just the right rank, he would carry out just the right missions, marry just the right girl, and live with their just-right children. And then an old age that was just right… Somehow, each day would end without anything in particular happening. Was there anything happier than that? He didn’t think so.

On nice days, he could lie around like this and send his thoughts chasing after the flowing clouds as he stared up at the sky. On rainy days, he’d pour a drink for his shogi opponent. No one expecting anything from him, not the tiniest bit of pressure. Stress would never darken his heart. What a wonderful life that would be.

“Haaah…” The heavy, weighty sigh sounded as though it were seeping out from the depths of his stomach.

This thing reality was a truly formidable enemy.

Against a human enemy, Shikamaru would have a real chance of winning. Even a godlike enemy, as long as they had a physical form, would have to have a weak spot somewhere. In fact, his opponents in the last Great War had all had at least a bit of monster in them, but Shikamaru and his comrades had rallied their forces and defeated each and every one of them.

He could beat a real enemy.

But…

There was no way he could defeat an enemy with no physical form: i.e., reality. And whether he liked it or not, reality was callously carrying him off in a different direction.

Despite Shikamaru simply wanting a just-right life, he had somehow become an essential part of the Allied Shinobi. He worked to divide up the work requests brought in by the daimyo and citizens of each land into ranks A through D, and assigned those missions, taking into account the special characteristics of each village before determining which was best suited to the task. He discussed and negotiated any number of issues with the five great nations. He even played shogi with the aging Tsuchikage; he could manage any task. Some even said the Allied Shinobi worked because of Konohagakure’s Shikamaru.

The more he resisted, the more he tried not to stand out, the more disinterested he was in advancing through the ranks, the more he was pushed up by those around him.

His first mistake had been the chunin selection exams, where genin from the entire continent, from the five great nations down to adjacent smaller nations, came together. For some reason, while the shinobi world was rocked by disaster and strife—Konohagakure rogue ninja, Orochimaru’s secret maneuvering, the death of the third Hokage—Shikamaru was the only one allowed the promotion to chunin. He was the lone graduate.

And it wasn’t as though he had particularly worked for it. During the one-on-one fight part of the exam, he had initially been thrown completely by a cheeky female ninja when she used a ridiculously large fan to create storm-level winds, but in the end the fight had come to a stalemate, and he had surrendered.

That had been well received.

Once a ninja became a chunin, they had people under them. The quality deemed most valuable for this purpose was an ability to accurately assess any given situation. The examiners handed down top marks for Shikamaru’s sportsmanlike admission of defeat.

This was a mixed blessing.

He hadn’t even wanted to take the exam; he’d been forced into it by his master Sarutobi Asuma. He hadn’t had any intention of getting good marks or any real interest in doing it at all. But reality led Shikamaru to the rank of chunin, and the way the villagers looked at him changed.

It was around this time that his life plan started slipping off the rails.

When Sasuke left the village, Shikamaru had chased after him as the leader of a team of ninja in his class. After that, he was seen as standing a head higher than others in his year and given responsibility for a number of missions. The more he resisted, the more reality pulled Shikamaru higher and higher.

Two years after the Fourth Great Ninja War, Shikamaru turned nineteen, an age at which he could no longer be called a child.

How fortunate he was to have people counting on him. How wonderful it was to be needed by people. No one had to tell him; he knew it. Shikamaru’s friends had actually risen all the way to the top to become heroes of the village—of all ninja—simply out of the desire to be needed by people. He knew without anyone having to tell him that people were creatures who needed others. Which was why he didn’t feel weird when someone said to him, If you weren’t here… If he was needed, he’d face whatever problem needed facing unflinchingly, with everything he had; he hadn’t once cut corners on a mission.

Nineteen years since he’d been born into this world.

Already, his entire self was ensnared by too many ties and obligations. Akatsuki, the organization plotting to rule the world, had killed his teacher Asuma. And Asuma had had a girlfriend named Kurenai, and Asuma’s baby had lived in her belly. That baby was already two years old. Her name was Mirai.

Become Mirai’s teacher…

It was a promise he had to keep.

Shikamaru’s father, Shikaku, had worked as an officer of the Allied Shinobi during the Fourth Great Ninja War. He died with Ino’s father, Inoichi, when Obito’s maneuvering ended in Ten Tails’s Biju Bomb blowing up the alliance headquarters. The last words of his father and Inoichi were still clear in his ears even now.

Never forget that we live on inside you. Forever.

Become a great man like your father…

He had sworn it to the man who gave him life in this world.

And Naruto. The shinobi hero, always forthright, never doubting for a second he would someday be Hokage.

Huh. I’m the only one who can be his advisor, Shikamaru had thought on death’s doorstep, as Sakura treated his injuries in the battle with Ten Tails.

Make Naruto the Hokage and be his right hand.

That was the dream.

He was bound by so many ties and obligations, he couldn’t even count them all. He had no doubt these were the power propelling him forward. Shikamaru could live as Shikamaru precisely because everyone had him in their hearts.

And yet…

It was exhausting sometimes. The real him wasn’t the man everyone thought he was. He was the sort you could find anywhere, who felt like every little thing was a drag, who dreamed of having a just-right life. The more people expected of him, the more he wanted to run away. That was the true nature of this man, Shikamaru.

Way back when, his friends had understood his tendency to find everything to be a hassle, his lack of motivation. When had everyone started getting the wrong idea? When had Shikamaru stopped saying “what a drag”? He felt like both had happened around the same time.

“That’s…” As he stared up at the clouds, a deep crease carved itself out between his eyebrows. His almond-shaped eyes focused on a single point in space, where he could just make out a lone falcon.

The majestic bird, wings spread, turned slowly to the west in the creeping crimson of the early-evening sky, Shikamaru in the middle of its arcing trajectory. Or rather, more accurately, the circle of its flight had the Hokage Residence as its center.

This wasn’t a matter to simply sit up for. He stood. His mind, drifting along on a boundless ocean only seconds before, had already snapped back to reality, a whetted blade. His eyes caught hold of the falcon and didn’t let go.

Jet black…

The falcon was a pure black, as though it had been drawn in ink. No, it really had been drawn in ink. The Art of Cartoon Beast Mimicry, Sai’s jutsu.

Sai had taken Sasuke’s place on Team 7, the team Naruto and Sakura belonged to. With his special technique, the Art of Cartoon Beast Mimicry, he could give life to the beasts and birds he drew and make them move.

The falcon flying above Shikamaru’s head was drawn by Sai.

“Finally here, huh,” he muttered to himself, as the falcon stopped circling in the sky and started to descend.

Shikamaru started running. His feet headed for the stairs to the lower level, at the bottom of which was the Hokage’s office, the falcon’s destination. He grabbed on to the staircase railing, and the bird disappeared into the side of the building, brushing up against his cheek as it did. He very nearly flew down the stairs and raced along the hallway.

The office.

He opened the door without knocking.

“Oh, Shikamaru,” Kakashi said. He was standing in front of a desk piled with a mess of documents and books, holding out a scroll.

“Sai’s falcon just came into this room.”

“Mm.” Kakashi flipped around the scroll he had been reading so Shikamaru could see it.

Text dancing on a white background leapt into Shikamaru’s field of view. He rushed over to get a closer look.

“It seems the situation is even more serious than I thought,” Kakashi said, looking at Shikamaru. His eyes were so fierce he was almost glaring, and his usual absentminded tone was also abnormally serious, all of which gave Shikamaru a bad feeling.

His eyes chased after the characters written on the scroll: “I don’t know myself anymore…” This last sentence alone, spelled out in a fine brush, looked to Shikamaru especially vivid.