Kakashi is panicking, and isn’t that rare? It isn’t the kind that rears its head in the midst of the night, nor is it the kind he feels when the Sharingan in his skull itches and itches all day long. Kakashi panics, because—apparently, he’s done his job wrong.

He’s crouched down on a rooftop just a distance from Naruto’s home because he just has to see. “It has come to my attention that you have been neglecting your duties,” Hokage-sama had said back then, and when he looked at the child scrambling around his apartment for water; a burned tongue from an all-too-hot ramen, all he sees is a slightly skinny child.

His cabinets are filled, Kakashi had made sure of that, watching the cabinets and they were full, to his standards at the very least. He can’t pinpoint anything that would be inherently wrong, and it’s not as if he’ll up and grab the kid for inspection. It’d pain him to do so.

Kakashi isn’t even sure what he’s supposed to be looking for, nothing from his earlier renegade of interrogating his ANBU member about caring for children gave him any information. In his panic-induced frenzy, he’d ignored any more of the logical options. He pushes himself to stand, rolls his shoulder, and decides that the next best course of action is to ask around. Intelligence gathering was something he was always good at.

He asks Gai, Asuma, heck, even Genma, out of all people, and the answers vary drastically. Asuma out of all people helped the most, even if it consisted of spying on him training his genin and then being called out for it. He got what he wanted from the man. The last person he’s made himself to check is you, because for all that he knows, it’s that you know how to take care of children better than Genma.

Kakashi raps his knuckles on the wood of your door, grime scuffed on his sandals from the stairwell. It doesn’t take long before he hears the door click and it opens, turning from a sliver to a wide opening. He clears his throat—“{{user}},”—even if he’s done this for what feels like a million times.