Chapter 4

Minato sat alone in his private study, the soft glow of a newly issued Konoha Tech laptop illuminating his face. Over the last week, he had forced himself to master the mechanics of the internet, social media, and global search engines. He needed to see the world his son had built with his own eyes.

With a few keystrokes, he began to unearth the digital footprint of Naruto Namikaze.He started with the foundational data.

Name: Naruto Namikaze. Age: 30. Date of Birth: October 10th.

Minato let out a shaky breath, a small, proud smile touching his lips. "Despite leaving us... you kept the name namikaze. You built your own legacy."

He clicked further into the public profiles, scrolling through personal details.

Relationship Status: Single. No marriages. No children. Minato leaned closer to the screen. "Has he ever even had a girlfriend?"

He searched through countless media archives, but found nothing but baseless tabloid rumors that had been officially debunked. Naruto kept his personal romantic life entirely locked away.

Then came the history of his survival. The digital records showed a harsh truth that made Minato's chest tighten, Naruto had lived on the streets as a homeless vagrant until the age of sixteen. At that legal milestone, he had filed for emancipated adult status, secured a basic job, and was almost immediately discovered by scouts, signing a professional contract with an elite athletic league."

A professional athlete at sixteen?" Minato whispered, stunned by the sheer grit it took to rise from the asphalt to a stadium.

He clicked on the career statistics spreadsheet. In his very first year on the pitch from age sixteen to seventeen, Naruto had scored a staggering 98 goals.Minato's eyes went wide. "No way..."

He looked for a catch, scanning the medical and injury reports. Throughout a seventeen-year career, Naruto had only suffered a handful of minor injuries mostly sprained ankles that mysteriously healed to perfect condition within forty-eight hours.

Minato stared at the recovery times. He heals that fast without medical ninjutsu? It has to be the latent Uzumaki vitality.

He pulled up the digital version of the sports poster. By age twenty-five, Naruto had shattered the global athletic record by scoring 1,000 professional career goals in a span of just nine years.

Curious, Minato opened a second tab and typed in the records of other historic players. To his absolute astonishment, the absolute greatest legends in the sport's history took twenty to twenty-five years of grueling play to approach that milestone.

"My son didn't just succeed. He rewrote the history books," Minato said aloud to the empty room.

He kept digging, wanting to see what else Naruto did with his massive lifespan.

As it turned out, sports were only the beginning. Naruto was also a high-profile model, dominating both international fashion campaigns and artistic nude portraiture. Minato quickly closed out of that specific image gallery, clearing his throat. "I... definitely didn't need to see that part."

What impressed minato most was Naruto's discipline. Despite earning astronomical wealth, he was incredibly careful with his finances. He didn't own a sprawling estate like the Namikaze compound. Instead, he lived in a modest, high-security three-bedroom apartment that featured a private lap pool and a gym.

Then there was his wardrobe. Minato scrolled through hundreds of paparazzi photos and public appearances, noticing a bizarre pattern. In cold weather, Naruto wore a heavy black hoodie and black pants. In hot weather, it was a simple black T-shirt and black shorts. For red-carpet galas, he wore a tailored, three-piece black suit. At the gym, a black workout shirt. At the pool, black swim trunks.

"What is with this boy always wearing black?" Minato muttered, a soft chuckle escaping him. "Unless he's wearing his team jersey, he doesn't wear a single drop of color." It was the ultimate irony, the son of the bright Golden Flash lived his life completely shrouded in shadow.

Minato clicked on a recent medical article from a sports science journal. Naruto had recently undergone an advanced physiological scan to determine his cellular biological age, Despite being chronologically thirty years old, the test confirmed Naruto possessed the pristine, unblemished body of a seventeen-year-old athlete.

Minato wasn't entirely surprised. The Uzumaki bloodline possessed a legendary, dense life force that naturally slowed aging and warded off disease, and when paired with the elite genetics of the Namikaze, it made perfect sense. Minato glanced at the mirror on his office wall.

Even in his fifties, he still looked remarkably like the young man who had first taken the Hokage oath decades ago.

Naruto had inherited the best of them, even if they hadn't given him the time of day.

He scrolled further down the search results, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of his son's achievements.

Naruto ran a massive, highly successful online manga shop focusing on sports narratives and character dramas.

He was also a critically acclaimed actor and a platinum-selling recording artist.

"Where does he find the hours in a single day to get all of this done?" Minato asked the screen, completely baffled.

The final financial assessment listed Naruto not just as a wealthy man, but as a multi-billionaire. Yet, his wealth wasn't hoarded.

The digital ledger showed billions of dollars funneled directly into global charities, low-income family funds, and modern orphanages.

He had become a beloved, universally recognized global celebrity, traveling to dozens of countries as an ambassador of goodwill.Minato slowly lowered the laptop screen and took a deep, centering breath.

The crushing guilt that had weighed on his chest for nearly two decades lifted, replaced by a profound sense of relief.

"After all these years of agonizing... of wondering if you died alone in the dark... you were thriving. You were doing just fine this whole time."

Minato opened the laptop one last time, driven by a lingering spark of curiosity. In the sports forums, fans universally referred to Naruto as the G.O.A.T. the Greatest Of All Time. But when Minato scrolled down to see his official media moniker, his breath hitched.

The fans, the commentators, and the headlines all called him by one title: The Yellow Flash.Minato stared at the text, his heart hammering against his ribs. "They call him the same thing they call me? But... why? He doesn't use the Flying Thunder God. He doesn't use chakras."

He shook his head violently, forcing himself to look away from the mystery.

He would find out the answer to that later.

Right now, his eyes locked onto a final search result. It was a promotional link for an autobiography.

Naruto had recently written a comprehensive memoir detailing his childhood, his escape, and his rise to stardom.

Without a single second of hesitation, Minato pulled out his personal credit card and clicked the purchase button. He was finally going to read the truth, straight from the son he had failed.

To be continued...