Chapter 16

"Why did I expect the first day to be anything but boring?" Naruto whined in between ramen bowls as we all sat at Ichiraku's, the whole group almost occupying all the seats at the restaurant.

"School is always such a drag," Shika nodded, although it could have been either due to being sleepy as much as it could have been agreement.

"It was rather dull for a first day," When Shino said something was boring, you knew something was boring.

"I'm just happy we didn't do anything physical today," Ino admitted while picking at her bowl, clearly still not as much of a fan of ramen as the other blond in our group.

"But that's the problem!" Whined Naruto this time, flailing his arms up in the air exaggeratedly.

"Do you think we'll have to go through the obstacle course straight away?" Chouji asked worriedly, eating even faster than normal due to stress.

"Iruka-sensei did say that we would start this year… so … it's possible?" Hinata answered uncertain and in a low voice, but at least there was no stutter anymore.

"Oh man," The Akimichi slumped in his seat.

"Everything ok, Eiji?" Shikamaru asked, glancing at me from the corner of his eye and everything turned towards me.

"Yeah, why?" I gave him a half-smile as I pushed my empty bowl away from me.

"You are a bit quiet today," He pointed out.

"There are a lot of people talking, we aren't a small group anymore," I reassured easily as I waved signaling our group. The Nara hummed while turning again to speak with Chouji and everything returned to normal.

'That was close,' I thought to myself as I looked down, not noticing that everyone was looking discreetly at me.

[}-o-{]

That night, I sat at our garden looking up at the night sky. Sometimes I wondered if it was the same as back in my world. I had never known much about constellations and all that.

'A year... Today is exactly a year,' I thought to myself, a neutral expression on my face. 'I wonder if you all are still alive… how everything went after my death,' In my mind, the faces of my old family appeared up in the air in front of me.

Many of them were blurred, unrecognizable or almost so. My relatives were barely shapes with color at this point, either due to my passing through the Void or due to how long it had been, maybe both. Even my parents' memories weren't as clear as I would have hoped either.

'I'm already forgetting…' I thought with a grimace, apologizing to them without speaking.

Then I looked down at the notebook that sat innocently on my lap. I had several of them now. All resting inside my Inventory most of the time. Notebooks with information from my past life. Everything I could remember of my family and friends. Everything I could remember from the media. Everything I could remember from anything at all, even the most mundane of things.

I had all that written in these books. Even if my mind would slowly forget, I would have something to remind me that all that had happened. I had made my peace with it, actually. I had accepted the fact that the memories would disappear eventually.

It didn't mean that I liked it though.

But much like my own death, I had had to deal with it.

'I miss you,' I thought out loud, a single tear falling down my cheek as my brain conjured once more the blurry pictures of everyone I used to know.

'Would you be happy for me?' I wondered as I recalled everything I had lived since that day when I woke up in the middle of Iruka-sensei's class.

'I miss you,' I repeated. 'Wish me luck.'

And with that. I stood up and walked inside and made my way to my bedroom.

I had a new life now. I had had it since a year ago.

I wouldn't forget but I would move forward anyway.

[}-o-{]

"That was easier than expected," I said cheerfully while inwardly smirking. All around me my classmates laid on the floor, panting or holding one of their limbs in pain.

"I hate you so much," Kiba muttered, even though he was one of the ones that had it the easiest.

"Huff, I should have joined you in your free running, Eiji," Chouji admitted, sounding like every word was a herculean feat.

"And now you know better," I replied still grinning from ear to ear.

What was it all about? The obstacle course. Turns out that Hinata had been right and we had started going through it right in our second day. Granted, Iruka-sensei had us practice each of the different parts separately at first so we knew how to deal with each, but afterwards he threw us right into the death trap. The exercise had actually been the only thing we had worked on the whole day.

I was quite happy with my performance, which made sense since not only was I part of the group of people that had actually finished the course but also the one to do so the fastest.

And as if that wasn't enough…

[Quest Complete: Finish the Obstacle Course in first place.

Reward:

+ 3 Free Running Level

+ 2 Dexterity Level]

'I feel so awesome right now,' I couldn't help but think to myself.

[Dexterity: 27]

[Free Running (Active) – Lvl 15

When used increases the speed of the user while running by 75%

When used increases the distance the user's jump by 75%

When used increases the power of the user's arms while maneuvering by 75%

Consumption – 13 Energy Points per second]

"Next time I won't lose," Sasuke muttered under his breath while resting next to me. I resisted the urge to smirk at him. With the bonus I had gotten for winning? The poor guy didn't stand a chance anymore.

"Ugh, I can see your smugness even if you don't show it," Ino grumbled making me chuckle.

"What's that even supposed to mean?" She didn't respond but the glare she sent me would have made any of the civilian kids run for the hills. As it was, I just laughed some more.

"I hate you."

"Sure you do."

"Flirt some other time, you two," Both of us sputtered at Shika's words.

While Ino shouted Shikamaru's ears off, I took a deep breath in. 'Yeah, no,' I thought to myself. I had nothing against Ino, but I was mentally ten years older than her. So, no, that wasn't happening anytime soon. Kids in the Elemental Nations were more mature than they were in my world, but that was still a resounding no for me, no matter what.

Thankfully, Iruka-sensei called for us to gather giving me an excuse to push that unpleasant thought aside.

[}-o-{]

Three people sat at our table that night. Me, resting a cheek on my hand and smiling amusedly at my squirming brother on the side. Said blonde looking nervously at the third person, halfway between excited and worried.

And, finally, the Third Hokage himself, who was looking intently between some sheet of paper.

Eventually, the man set them down and kept a completely straight face as he turned towards Naruto.

"I have decided…" That dramatic pause was what had me knowing that the elder was really enjoying making the blonde squirm. "that your calligraphy, Naruto…" I had to bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself from laughing as the jinchuuriki leaned forward with wide eyes. "is good enough to start learning Fuinjutsu."

"YATTA!"

"Yes, yes, congratulations," The man said patiently while taking a few two scrolls and a book from who knew where and setting them on the table. "Be that as it may, you will save any and all attempts with chakra paper and chakra ink for when I'm here to supervise them, am I clear?"

"But… but then nothing changed!" Naruto whined loudly and I chuckled to myself.

"Even if you can write well, that doesn't mean you won't blow yourself up with a mistake on what you write, Naruto," I explained slowly as he frowned at me. "Just study from the books and practice when Hiruzen comes to visit. You'll still be ahead of whoever else signs up for the Fuinjutsu elective."

"I… guess…" The blond accepted slowly before grimacing. "But still…" He whined weakly and I chuckled some more.

"Now, with that out of the way, Eiji," I turned curiously before grimacing myself as I saw a now familiar face on the village leader. "You sure I can't convince you-"

"No, I won't go and make you tea at the Hokage building, Old man. Just give up," I interrupted with a roll of my eyes before blinking at the two's grinning faces. "What?"

"You called him old man," Naruto pointed at the Hokage and my eyes widened.

"I'm glad that you finally feel so at ease with me, Eiji," I relaxed a bit at the man's reassuring words. But still, I couldn't help but feel nervous inside. This was a war hero and the current Kami no Shinobi right here. It just felt wrong to address him informally. "With that said, I heard you are pretty good at Shogi," I felt a chill run down my spine as yet another invincible opponent appeared in front of me. I didn't know if I should be thankful it took so long or sad that it couldn't take him longer to find out.

"Sure, let's all beat poor Eiji, why the hell not?" I grumbled to myself even as I stood up and looked for our board. Behind me, I heard both my brother and the Hokage chuckling and I couldn't help but smile.

[}-o-{]

[Senbon Throwing has gone up a level.]

'Fucking finally,' I thought to myself as I grinned at the screen. It felt like forever since I had leveled up one of the Shurikenjutsu skills. Which made sense since we didn't have any moving targets to practice on and static ones didn't seem to help anymore.

Now though, we were using moving targets in class. If it had been awesome to hit the center of the static ones, it was nothing compared to hitting the moving ones. Even when I could barely hit them let alone the center, it was still a great filling.

"Welp, seems like I'll have to climb back to the first place," I commented as I saw Sasuke hit with all his projectiles. Not surprising, considering that the guy had been trained by freaking Itachi and from a young age at that. The system might help me get perfect scores on static targets, thing that he couldn't do. But he still was much better with the throwing weapons over all.

"Hn," Ah, there it was, the infamous grunt once more. I snorted.

"Just you wait, I'll be beating you again in no time," I blinked in surprise when he actually sent a small smirk my way.

"Can't wait," I stared at him with wide eyes. "I've been progressing faster since we started competing and… working together," He admitted, looking away and checking that everyone else was still distracted or too far to listen. "So… thank you," He still looked uncomfortable with those words, but I took it as a win anyway.

"You are welcome."

[}-o-{]

I fell flat on my back and huffed loudly as the wind got knocked out of my lungs.

"Suddenly, I don't envy you as much, Eiji," Naruto mocked me with a shit eating grin.

"Your leaf fell off again," I pointed out before standing with a grown.

"Aw, come on!" He complained and I chuckled to myself.

With a long sigh, I turned towards the wall next to me and then glanced towards my classmates and friends. All of them were sitting cross-legged. All of them trying to get their respective leaves to stick to their foreheads. Some succeeded, some failed.

We had all been pleasantly surprised when Iruka told us that this year we would barely have theory classes. It was still important, and there would be a harder test at the end of the year compared to the last. However, one of the theory hours would be replaced by chakra control and later on ninjutsu. The two remaining hours would go on for a few months before it was also replaced, this time by our electives.

Naruto had been ecstatic, and when I explained that he would need to study at home the cheeky bastard only smiled and said: "That just means you'll teach me just like last year." I had to applaud the sheer gall of the boy. Not that I didn't have my vengeance in the form of chores being assigned to the blond.

"Back to the exercise, Eiji," Iruka-sensei called out and I sighed before facing the wall. Most people would find Tree Climbing or, in this case, Wall Climbing pretty cool, especially when they got to train it earlier than everyone else.

Right now though, it was just a pain in my back… literally.

I took my distance and then ran at the vertical surface.

The system was just steadfastly refusing to give me the freaking skill, even after half a class of just doing my damndest to do it. It wasn't like I was relying entirely on the game either. After a year, I had had to caught on and realize that more than the cheat code that it was in most fanfics my system was more of a helping hand. I had to actually try, and that was fine.

'But why is this so goddamn hard!' I thought as the surface under my feet exploded once more.

Now, once I said that, most people would say something along the lines of 'you are using too much chakra, use less!'. Well, thank you very much, Captain Obvious. I knew that already. But knowing didn't really help much since I ended up using too little and slipping off.

Finding the middle ground was a lot harder than one would expect.

"Damnit," I grumbled as I sat on the ground and glared at the now hole-filled earth wall, which Iruka had someone else build for me, as if willing it to tell me the secret to the thrice be damned exercise.

"Eiji," I turned my eyes to Shikamaru on the side, who was calmly looking at me with his leaf firmly placed on his forehead. I don't even know why I was surprised that he had gotten it so quickly. "You can't run before walking."

"What does that even…?" I started demanding before trailing off and looking towards the wall once more. My eye twitched. "Iruka-sensei, I think I hate you," I said out loud earning only a chuckle.

"It's good to see that even genius students can be dumb," The teacher shamelessly replied with a grin and I groaned out loud as I stood up.

Then, slowly, I walked up to the wall and placed a foot against it. It was a somewhat awkward position and it made me feel like a fool, but I could deal with a bit of embarrassment. Closing my eyes, I controlled my breathing to the steady one I used while Meditating. Carefully, I moved the energy that filled me through its coils towards my feet and bit by bit pushed it out. Then, I made it hold the wall. In my mind, it seemed almost as weird as trying to grab it with my hands while my palms were pressed against it.

Contrary to that situation, my chakra actually was able to do so. As I felt my energy take hold, I brought my other foot up, almost falling just by the fact that I was holding myself up only with a foot on the wall, which was a lot more difficult than the show made it look like.

With my second foot finally placed next to the other, I repeated the process. Then I released the hold on the first one and moved it up a bit and-

"Uff," I exhaled as I fell on my back. 'At least I wasn't as high up as before,' I thought to myself with a grimace. 'Still, that was a lot better than my other attempts,' And, as I opened my eyes, a grin spread over my face.

[New Skill Acquired: Intermediate Chakra Control Exercises Lvl 1]

There it was, in all its long-named glory. The description, once I brought it up, was exactly the same as it had been as Basic. But that didn't matter. I had the skill now, and getting the skill was half the battle… well, not really, but it was a big step forward.

"Shika, I could kiss you right now," I said, as I closed my eyes again and stepped towards the wall once more.

"Please don't," I heard behind me, although the amusement was clear in the Nara's voice. I simply chuckled alongside him and we both continued with our exercises.

'Wonder if Iruka will teach me Water Walking if I do well enough,' It was an exciting thought, but it was unrealistic. Considering that it had taken me months to get the Leaf Concentration exercise to Max, it stood to reason that Tree/Wall Walking would be the same or worse. Which made me, once more, think about how I clearly wasn't in a canon universe.

If I hadn't had to concentrate in what I was doing, I was sure my mind would have drifted towards the million possibilities that line of thought presented for my future. As it was though, I didn't have time for that. Not that I let myself dwell on that kind of thing too long. I had my 'ninja way' as Naruto would have said, and I was sticking to it.

Live life to the fullest.

Canon and fanon be damned.

[}-o-{]

"Your own garden, you say?" Noriko asked with a raised eyebrow, curiosity clear in her voice. "I think you know enough to start one without help at this point, Eiji."

"Well… I do. But I wanted to have more than just pretty plants in it. I would like them to be useful too, for my career in the future," I explained slowly, trying not to sound to awkward. "I am… learning to use senbon, and they are the most useful with poisons and also, well, I'll be taking Medical Training as an elective, so anything that would help with that would be good too. I know enough to make a garden for those things too but… I wanted the opinion of someone with more experience in the matter."

"Hmm… I see…" She replied slowly, adopting a thoughtful look as she eyed me. It felt like being under a microscope, if I was honest. "Sure!" She said eventually, her serious expression quickly replaced with a cheerful one. I let out a breath I didn't know I had been holding. "You worry too much, Eiji. Of course I'll help you. You working here has been a boon for us, honestly. The least I can do is help you with your garden."

"Thank you, Yamanaka-sama," My grin twitched as she narrowed her eyes at me. "I-I mean… Noriko."

"That's more like it," She nodded before pulling a sheet of paper from behind the counter and starting to write on it. "First of all, I'll give you a few different herbs that you can use to poison your senbon, nothing too dangerous, of course. And you'll need to be able to make an antidote for them too. I'm not quite sure which antidotes they cover in Medical Training, but I'll give you recipes and you can take them to your classes. Until then though," She fixed me with a stern glare. "I don't want you to try any of this, am I clear? Just growing the plants and nothing else."

"Yes, Yamana- Noriko," I replied quickly, my back going straight at the authoritative tone. There was that Clan Head aura that she and all the other wives shared with their husbands. And they wondered why I couldn't address them informally.

"Good," She nodded, satisfied either by my answer or something else she probably saw. For all I knew she could just be happy I had corrected the way I addressed her. People in this world were weird. "I'd also recommend some more medically oriented herbs, like…" And so she continued explaining while also writing the names and other info I would probably need to go over before I even started the garden.

Meanwhile, I stood there trying and failing to contain a grin. Having friends in the right places really went a long way.

[}-o-{]

Sasuke PoV

The kunai embedded itself into the target log with a dull sound, just the smallest bit off of the center of the red cross in the middle of it.

In other times, that would have annoyed me to no end. That small but significant failure. It would have infuriated me, driven me to train twice as hard and long into the night. Now though…

"So close," The words replayed in my mind followed soon by a chuckle.

"Why aren't you annoyed? You failed," I recalled my question as I picked up the kunai again and walked back to try again.

"I did, that's what practice is for, isn't it?" He had answered casually. The black-haired boy had even been confused. "I already train as much as I can. Trying to train more would just exhaust me and getting angry would make my aim worse."

Back then, I hadn't had an answer to his words. He was right, after all. And so, I took a deep breath in, just like he always did to calm himself and gather his thoughts, and continued training. Target practice, physical conditioning, kata practice, chakra control.

Eventually, I grew tired. The desire to carry on regardless was there, but…

"Training all the time will end up hindering your growth instead of the opposite. You need rest too."

I sighed and picked everything up before walking back inside.

A now familiar silence welcomed me inside my own home. Familiar, yes, but never any less unnerving or depressing. Soon enough, I had showered and was already moving towards the kitchen to prepare dinner.

"Your diet can be another factor," I remembered as I picked up the diet plan I had worked up with Chouji and looked for something to prepare today. I knew most meals by heart already, but the action was more for routine's sake than anything else. To remind myself that it was important to follow it.

It also always brought to my mind the group. Naruto, Shikamaru, Chouji, Shino, Hinata, Ino.

Eiji.

The friendly faces always worked to push away my family's, even if it was only for a short moment. It didn't help that the Satou's eyes reminded me so much of the Sharingan. And the Sharingan reminded me of-

"And one day, when you have the same eyes as I do, come and stand before me!"

The knife I held in my hand fell to the floor and clattered against the wood.

I shook my head. I was growing. I would find him, eventually.

And I would kill him.