Chapter 6

The grand hall of the namikaze Museum smelled of fresh paint, polished marble, and rich mahogany.

Minato stood center in the cavernous space, his hands clasped behind his back as he surveyed the nearly completed exhibits.

All around him, workers were carefully mounting massive oil paintings and framed tapestries detailing the military victories of his four younger children. Glass display cases were already filled with historic ninja weapons, shrieken used in legendary skirmishes, custom seals cracked under pressure, and shattered blades reclaimed from fallen enemies.

The entire building was a monument to shinobi dominance, engineered to celebrate the raw power of the Namikaze and Uzumaki lines.

Yet, as Minato looked from one glittering display to the next, a suffocating weight settled onto his chest.

He was actively trying to find a place for his eldest son, but the original blueprints had completely excluded him.

There was no category for a civilian athlete in a hall of warriors.

Minato walked slow circles around the main pavilion, his eyes tracking upward. Directly in the center of the museum, the architecture opened up into a breathtaking, vaulted glass dome that pierced the sky, flooding the marble floor with brilliant, natural sunlight. It was the highest point in the entire structure, originally left empty to give the room an air of grand solemnity.Minato stopped, staring up into the light.

A spark of inspiration struck him, "Hmmm... a simple portrait won't do," Minato murmured to himself, a sharp, visionary focus taking over his features. "The firstborn son of the Hokage deserves something far grander. Something that commands the entire room."

He paced the perimeter of the sunlit circle, mentally calculating the spatial dimensions. If his geometric coordinates were correct, the structural integrity of the floor and the height of the glass dome could easily accommodate a massive, twenty-five-foot-tall centerpiece. A statue. A towering monument to Naruto, the boy who conquered the global stage entirely on his own terms.

"White marble," Minato decided instantly, his voice echoing in the empty hall. "Prone to catching the sunlight from the dome. But... what should he look like? What should he wear?" Minato tapped his chin, mentally filtering through the digital images he had cataloged from his late-night research. "A three-piece suit? No, it's too modern, too stiff for a grand monument. A standard Konoha flak jacket or a Hokage cloak like mine? Absolutely not. He isn't a shinobi, and forcing that image onto him would be an insult to the path he chose."

He frowned, pacing back and forth. "His athletic uniform? I can't have a historic, twenty-five-foot marble monument of my eldest son wearing sports shorts and cleats in the middle of a cultural museum. It lacks the timeless weight of a legend."

Then, a specific chapter from Naruto's autobiography flashed in his mind, paired with the fashion archives he had hurriedly closed out of the week before. Naruto had modeled for the world's most elite artistic designers, embracing the pure, unblemished symmetry of the human form.

Minato's eyes went wide as the perfect concept crystallized in his mind."Classical antiquity," Minato whispered, his hands snapping together in sudden excitement.

"A classical Roman sculpture. Timeless, powerful, and entirely focused on the raw discipline and perfect anatomy of a world-class athlete. A god carved from Stone marble, maybe holding a globe or a stylized ball beneath his foot." It was the ultimate statement.

It would completely shatter the traditional ninja aesthetic of the museum, forcing every visitor to recognize a different, higher form of greatness.

Minato smiled genuinely for the first time in weeks, though the expression quickly softened into a nervous reality. To pull this off with absolute accuracy, he couldn't rely on out-of-date civilian photographs or guessing dimensions.

He needed the source material. He needed exact specifications, facial mapping, and above all else, his son's permission.

"All I need to do now," Minato said, pulling his cell phone from his pocket and looking down at the international dialing codes he had quietly acquired from the ANBU intelligence file, "is finally in contact with him."

To be continued...