I love your take on Shizune! Can you please write a day in the life for the sanin apprentices? I wanna know how hard they have to work and if they complain about their mentors XD
I love Shizune too! She is exhausted, competent, underappreciated, and one bad day away from biting someone.
Regarding the apprentices, they work very hard ofc.
Because imagine being a genin and apprenticed to Tsunade because she fancies your uncle.
Or apprenticed to Orochimaru before you are old enough to understand that half his lesson plans should come with legal oversight.
Or being Jiraiya's apprentice, which means everyone has started saying things like “you’re responsible enough for this” right before handing Minato something that absolutely should not be given to a child.
Their schedules are insane. Their mentors are worse. Their coping mechanism is sitting together whenever they can steal ten minutes and comparing trauma like it’s gossip.
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By noon, Shizune has already cleaned blood out of her sleeves twice.
The first time is from a training injury. The second is from Tsunade sama grabbing a man by the collar after he tries to leave the hospital against medical advice and accidentally reopening his stitches in the process. Shizune is holding a clipboard when it happens, because Shizune is always holding a clipboard now. She is still a genin and has somehow become the smallest person in Konoha with the most exhausted handwriting.
The top page has three drops of blood, two clawed fingerprints, and one note in Shizune’s careful script that says: patient remains stupid.
She finds Minato on the hospital roof. He is sitting cross-legged beside the water tower with a scroll balanced across his knees and a half-eaten rice ball in his hand. His hair is wind-tangled, his cheek is smudged with ink, and there is the faint, distant look on his face that means Jiraiya sama has either abandoned him mid-lesson or assigned him something that belongs in an intelligence file with several red stamps on it.
Minato looks up when she arrives and smiles like he has not been awake since before sunrise.
That is the problem with Minato. He is already polite in a way that makes adults trust him with things they really, really should not. He has been a chūnin long enough for people to treat it like proof that he is mature enough to be left unsupervised in dangerous places.
Shizune thinks this is ridiculous.
Minato also thinks it is ridiculous, but he says it with less venom because he is Minato.
“Sensei told me to infiltrate a gambling den tonight,” he says pleasantly.
Before Shizune can decide whether this counts as a reportable offense, Anko hauls herself over the roof ledge with both elbows, kicks one leg up, and rolls onto the concrete with the grim determination of a very small animal that has survived several murder attempts before lunch.
There is dirt on her knees, a bandage stuck crookedly along her jaw, and a look of feral triumph in her eyes.
“Orochimaru sama says fear sharpens the instincts,” she announces, then immediately steals the rest of Minato’s rice ball.
Minato lets her while Shizune makes a strangled sound.
“You can’t just take people’s food.”
Anko chews. “He didn’t stop me.”
“That sounds like a him problem.”
Minato, who has absolutely decided this is his problem, offers her the wrapped plum from his lunch packet too. Anko looks at him suspiciously before accepting it, as if kindness is a trap and she is trying to figure out where the wire is.
Shizune sits down beside them with a groan that sounds far too old for a genin.
“Trap corridor,” Anko replies mid-munch.
Shizune very slowly writes something down on her clipboard.
Minato leans over to read it and finds, in her neatest possible script: Some apprentices may require unionization.
He considers this with grave seriousness. “I don’t think we’re eligible.”
“We are children,” Shizune says.
Anko points at him with the plum pit. “You’re almost a Jonin right? Do something.”
“Still a chunin. And I don’t think my authority extends to those three.”
“She has a point,” Shizune mutters.
Minato looks between the two of them, faintly wounded, which is impressive because he is the one sitting there with ink on his face and an infiltration assignment in his lap. He is only a little older than Shizune, but there is already a strange gap forming around him.
Adults look at Minato and see promise. They see a bright weapon beginning to take shape. They see a boy who does not complain loudly enough, which in Konoha is often mistaken for readiness.
Shizune sees the way his fingers twitch toward his scroll when there is too much noise. Anko sees the extra rice balls he packs because he knows she will appear somewhere and bite him if he does not feed her. Neither of them says anything about it.
For a few minutes, they sit together beneath the bright afternoon glare while the village moves around them.
Below, someone shouts for a medic. Somewhere in the distance, Jiraiya’s laugh rolls over the rooftops, loud enough to make three pigeons explode into flight. Tsunade’s voice cuts through the hospital courtyard a moment later, sharp and furious and followed by the unmistakable crash of furniture meeting a wall. A snake slides silently out from Anko’s sleeve, tastes the air, and retreats, which Shizune decides to ignore because she has to preserve her sanity somehow.
Minato breaks his rice wrapper into tiny squares and folds them with absent precision.
“Do you think other apprentices have normal schedules?”
Shizune and Anko both look at him.
He pauses. “Right. Sorry.”
“My morning started with Tsunade sama telling me that if I can’t identify internal bleeding by touch, I’m not paying enough attention,” Shizune says.
Anko brightens. “I got bitten by a snake.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“I learned I don’t like that snake.”
Minato nods thoughtfully, as if this is valuable field data.
Shizune presses the heel of her hand to her forehead. She loves them, unfortunately. She has no idea when that happened, but it is true in the quiet, inconvenient way most terrible realizations are true. Minato is too gentle for the things people keep asking him to do. Anko is too young to know which parts of her training should scare her. Shizune herself is still learning how to hold pressure over a wound until someone stops screaming.
Maybe this is why they find each other. Because maybe no one else would understand how absurd it is to be lucky enough to learn from budding legends and unlucky enough to survive their lesson plans.
Finally, Shizune tucks the clipboard under her arm and stands.
“I have to find out which gambling den Jiraiya sensei meant,” Minato nods.
“I have to go back before Orochimaru sama notices I’m enjoying myself,” Anko adds.
They part with the solemn dignity of soldiers returning to war.
Five minutes later, Shizune hears an explosion from the direction of the training grounds, pauses in the hospital corridor, and keeps walking.
Some things are above her pay grade.
Unfortunately, she is not being paid.
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