"H-hopefully, yes."

Coincidentally, here comes Naruto now!

He(?)'s calmed down enough to decide to put off thinking about whatever that was—aaa not thinking about it until after he gets home tonight, but he's still a bit shaken.

Hinata visibly perks up at this. "H-hello, Naruto-sama."

She's not quite brave enough to bring up the shopping plan, though. Sakura'll have to do that.

"Hi Hinata, hi Sakura! Wanna go find a place to practice?"

"Sure, but… do you mind if we talk about something first, on the way?"

Oh gods oh fuck, did she practically-read-his-mind again!? He does not have the emotional energy to deal with another conversation about that right now.

"Oh, uhh, sure!"

He starts walking in the direction of the nearest training-ground, hoping in vain that they can get there before she can actually bring up whatever this is.

"Right, so umm…"

"…We don't think you're getting enough food, and we want to help."

Oh kami, no that's so much worse!

At least if it was that, he'd be ready to shrug it off and get them to leave him alone about it for a bit. With this? What does he even say?

…

Naruto sighs.

"…Sorry.

I do know I'm not eating enough."

"I'm not very good at cooking, so I'm probably not getting as much out of my ingredients as I should, and I'm way worse at budgeting than the other orphans, because they always manage fine with money left to spare, but I don't have enough time to get better at either and I don't really know how—

I'm so sorry if this ends up making me a worse training partner."

Sable is torn between desire to throttle several villagers and desire to hug Blondie senseless.

{It's not your fault it's not your fault who told you this stuff was your fault—}

"N-Naruto-sama, no, it's n-not your f-fault."

Yeah, Sakura is absolutely going to hug him now. This is a situation that calls for hugging Naruto, and if it makes things weird later she can deal with that then.

What? No, why is this the reaction he's getting?

Did he misunderstand something? They should be disappointed that he can't take care of himself, not… hugging him?

…

…And why…

Why is he crying now?

Hugging Naruto-sama is allowed? Can she also hug Naruto-sama? Are Hyuuga allowed to hug?

Hinata shyly hugs Naruto as well, arms tight around him and Sakura both.

Naruto's going to just sob and hug the two of them for a few minutes, before he can really get any more words out.

…

"…So, you said you wanted to help me?

What did you mean?"

Hinata looks down as she indirectly admits to more spying, "Ah, um. M-most of the shops are o-overcharging you.

"Not Ichiraku!" she hastens to add, "b-but everyone else."

Oh. Well that explains some things.

"But… why would they do that?

I know a lot of the villagers don't like me—and it's not like I don't do anything to make them—but that still seems… way worse than they could think I deserve."