Ana Hiritake

Ana Hiritake.

She was born from civilian background. Often bullied because of her very bad vision, she wore glasses in all circumstances. Even when fighting, she had to wear them, otherwise she was completely incapacitated.

It was a curse, and her classmates would often steal her glasses to make fun of her, as she crawled to see where they had fallen. Her parents were wealthy and tried to summon many physicians, but apparently it was a genetic defect that she needed to bear all her life.

However, everything changed after meeting Arya. The Yuki Clan princess was very much opposed to bullying and the practice of the bloody rituals. In her eyes, everyone was worthy of living in Kirigakure, and it was a waste for them to go through the bloodbath to graduate and become a genin. Knowing that it was something she could only change by becoming stronger, Arya had become more distant, but her ideals stood strong.

Eventually, Arya came into contact with someone she loathed: Takeshi Ryu. 

Although he was at the bottom of the class, if not dead last, he steadily improved overnight. Many thought that it was a fluke, but he started to win against fairly strong opponents during spars, improve a lot in shurikenjutsu, and even mastered the Mist Sword Art, something that only Biwa had managed to do after training for years in his family dojo.

Eventually, Takeshi overcame everyone, including Biwa, the strongest of the class. Though their rivalry fueled their progress, Takeshi did not share his insights and instead started to take advantage of his strength. Rich students needed to give him money to repair his equipment, and poor ones needed to run errands for him, like buying shurikens and kunais, since he did not want to bother his parents with the task. 

As for merchants selling them to him directly, they would never sell weapons to kids, and the academy gear was just too low-quality to be used.

Many times, Ana confronted him. She had a positive image of Takeshi, as he never made fun of her bad vision. However, Takeshi truly had no empathy and only cared about himself, something that everyone knew in the class, be it teachers or students.

She did not mind this change. 

However, Arya decided to make a move. She detected that Takeshi sometimes used clones to attend classes that were uninteresting like the ninjutsu class. After all, he had already mastered basic jutsu and did not need any more explanations, which was common knowledge.

Not wanting to make a move herself, Arya ordered Ana to tell the teachers.

It ended up pretty badly. Her arm was broken, and she was very weak from all the blood loss.

She just happened to be in the very same nursery room as him. His body was covered in bandages too. According to the rumours, he had been sent to the crazy elder Otuka! Was he going to kill her? He did say that if she tried something against him again, she would not end up with just a broken arm.

However, none of it happened.

It was as if she did not exist.

In the boy's eyes, she simply did not exist.

'Were you not supposed to hate me? Torment me? Like Arya said?'

"What do you know about Otuka?", the boy suddenly asked her.

There was no hostility in his voice, nothing. As hours passed, Takeshi started to practice the famous glass stirring exercise, a common chakra control training consisting in stirring water with chakra. Many household moms considered this their bane, as the glass would often break into pieces.

However, Takeshi practiced it diligently with care and dedication for hours, without stop. After exhausting his chakra, he started doing push ups on his bed. After exhausting his body, he started the stirring water exercise again. After both his body and chakra were completely empty, he started to study books of shurikenjutsu.

Like everyone, Ana thought that Takeshi's strength came from his unbelievable talent in ninjutsu and kenjutsu.

However, she quickly realized that it came from unbelievable training. 

Clenching her first, Ana thought that she did not lose because her opponent was a genius. She just did not train hard enough. Arya did not lose because of tricks, she lost because she had trained much less than her opponents. Biwa did not lose because he was inferior in ninjutsu. He lost because he had not trained half as much as him.

"Sorry", Ana eventually said with tears in her eyes.

From Takeshi's perspective, he received a notification out of nowhere.

[You have earned 250 Reputation points with Ana Hiritake]

[You have earned 30 Reputation points with Kirigakure Academy Class A comrades]