Ramen

Doing push-ups, sit-ups, and squats while trying to stick a leaf on my forehead with chakra was harder than I thought. 'They made it seem easy in the show, fucking anime main characters.'

Getting up from the ground and walking towards a tree to sit down under, I noticed children who had not stopped training from when I entered the training grounds. 'They look younger than me but they can still keep going god damn, and this is the civilian training grounds meaning they did not get systematic training like the clan kids. Guess I am the weak-minded one since I came from a relatively peaceful era but now that death would be an active consequence I'll probably be like them in a few days at most.'

Getting into a meditative position, I closed my eyes and looked inwardly at my abdomen where my chakra is supposed to be. 'With an hour of 10 push-ups, 10 sit-ups, and 10 squats on rotation while barely keeping the leaf on my forehead, I barely have any chakra left.' From the quantity of 4 adult-sized fists, my chakra core depleted to only 1 adult-sized fist.

'They definitely should have a unit measurement for chakra in this world, though I never heard it on the show.' Opening my eyes, I looked at the sky to take a breather so my chakra could recover.

'I need information about other people's chakra capacity so that I can gauge where I stand, there was no information on it from the books I borrowed.' Turning my head to the side where the books I borrowed were, I opened the book on the leaf-sticking exercise. 'It says that I should stick the leaf on my forehead for at least three hours, before moving on to stick another leaf on my neck while trying to keep both up for three hours as well, I barely can keep the one on my forehead for an hour. Oh, it says it progressively gets harder and harder with an additional two leaves on my left and right chest. But why the forehead, neck, and two parts of my chest?'

Taking out the diagram for the tenketsu points to figure out why the leaves should be stuck on that specific area of my body. 'The librarian said there are 361 points in the body, ahh I see 31 in the head, 30 in the neck, 60 in my entire torso having 30 on each side. I think I know where this is going.' Referring back to the book about the leaf-sticking exercise I noticed that the next parts to stick the leaves would be at the shoulders, palms, thighs, and feet.

'A total of 30 points each in my upper arms, 30 in total in my forearms inclusive of my hands. And the same goes for my legs 30 in each of my thighs, and 30 in each of my calves inclusive of my feet. Twelve sets of 30 tenketsu points in each part of my limb with an extra 1 tenketsu point in my head. That is why there are 12 hand seals to substitute these 12 sets of tenketsu points. This is more organized than I thought it would be.'

Seeing how my chakra would take some more time to recover, I decided to try and manually control one tenketsu point to see whether it was as difficult as the librarian said it would be. 'Starting with the one nearest to my chakra core would seem like the easiest.' Focusing on the tenketsu point on the right-hand side of my torso near my waist, I channeled my chakra toward it while focusing on it to clamp up so that it could block the flow. 'It has to clamp up and loosen up with a thought kind of like a damp, but it is not even budging at all.

Wait did it just tremble?' Focusing harder on that one point the tenketsu point clamped down blocking the chakra flow. 'I did it! I fucking did it! Though some chakra is barely flowing through the point since it's not clamped down hard enough. Let's see if I can loosen it.' The tenketsu point loosens slowly allowing the chakra to flow through it seamlessly again. I managed to clamp it down fully and release it at will after several tries.

'Am I a genius at chakra control? Since the librarian said that controlling tenketsu points was insanely difficult, let me try the point next to it.' Focusing on the adjacent point, it did not even budge despite me focusing my entire will on it so that it would contract.

'Beginner's luck on the first point? I don't think so, based on what I heard I think this body is brilliant at chakra control like Sakura. I'll try again tomorrow and judge whether or not I am a chakra control prodigy. If this body is one, I guess I can say I wasn't dealt a bad hand from this transmigration, though my affinity is still trash.'

Getting up and walking to a boy training near me, I looked at his clock and saw that it was 3:34 pm. 'Hmm, it takes almost 30mins to recover the entirety of my chakra after an hour of training, guess I can train for another 2 rounds before having to go meet my parents for dinner at 7 pm.' Nodding my head towards the boy who was definitely at least 2 years younger than me I went back to my spot to resume my training. 'I have to bring me clock here tomorrow.'

Breathing heavily and drenched in sweat I collapsed on the ground. 'I definitely can see progress in my chakra capacity, since I can see a small clump of chakra growing beside the 4 adult fist-sized clumps of chakra I already have and I can keep the leaf stuck on my forehead with ease better than when I first did it.' Getting up from the ground and dusting off the dirt from my clothes, I walked to the exit of the training ground to meet my parents at Ramen Ichiraku since it was already 6:45 pm.

Walking through the streets of Konoha under the setting sun, made me realize that this was the world I was going to live in for the coming years, and I would only be able to leave by training at least four times as hard then I did today. Seeing the ramen shop coming into my view, I could see both Ran and Kusuri waiting for me outside. I waved at them as they spotted me getting closer.

"Kai, I'm proud of you. It looks like you trained hard with how filthy you look." Ran quipped while smiling at Kusuri.

"Okay let's go buy something to eat first, I am starving, and based on how you look I can say you're probably starving as well," Kusuri replied while walking inside the shop.

Entering one of the most iconic locations of Naruto made my heart pound faster, with the bar-styled seating arrangement, the warm lighting, and the smell of ramen. Behind the counter was one of the few people who gave Naruto a place to belong someone who didn't treat him like shit like everybody else.

Teuchi looked 22 or 24, and the wrinkles on his face which he has in the anime were nowhere to be seen. But he still had the nostalgic kind smile plastered on his face as he was serving another customer in the shop. Sitting in our seats, Ran and Kusuri discussed what they wanted to order.

Ran turns to look at me, "Kai do you know what you want to order? Or do you want to order the same thing you ordered on your birthday?"

'I can't remember the ramen Naruto buys every time he comes here, I definitely can't say that I want the same order as the future 7th Hokage.' "I would like to have the same thing as I had on my birthday, though I can't remember what it was. Sorry to disappoint you." I saw the light dim slightly in her eyes, closing her eyes for a while she looked to Teuchi telling him our order.

"Aren't you the birthday boy who came to celebrate here just recently?" Teuchi asked as he was prepping our order. Concerned looks came from both my parents, I smiled at him as I explained my circumstances roughly.

"Ah, a blessing and a curse at the same time. Must be hard for you and your parents, though if you don't mind me saying, you should just make do with what you got, since you still can make new memories once better than before." Saying that he served us our food.

Turning to look at my parents, I could see that they were contemplating what Teuchi said. 'Damn was Teuchi ever wise in the anime? I mean not that this issue affects me as it does my parents. Looking at the bowl of ramen in front of me I can finally say the phrase I was dying to say since I entered the shop.' "Itadakimasu", breaking my parents out of their stupor as they started to eat.

'Damn that was anti-climactic the ramen was not as great as I thought it would be, since the anime hyped it up. It was good but I have had better back in my universe.' Thanking Teuchi and exiting the shop with my parents walking home, I could see that both Ran and Kusuri had something to say but were hesitating.

I purposely walked slower to give them time to say whatever was on their mind. Ran looked at me while holding Kursuri's hand, "Kai, what the ramen shop owner said got your dad and me thinking. We wanted to bring you to places that we had been to together as a family tomorrow, but we decided that we won't do that. We will not try to put you in situations so that you will remember."

"I realized that we were so hung up over the fact that you lost your memories that we failed to realize that you still are our son the same boy who thought that a comb was a toothbrush." Kusuri snickered at that thought before continuing, "You Kai, with or without your memories of the past will always be our son, even when you become a Genin or a Chunin maybe even a Jounin, will always be our son." Both Ran and Kusuri knelt and hugged me as tight as they could.

'Damn, I can feel tears welling up in my eyes. Fuck I took over their kid and was even planning on disregarding them in the future once I became a Genin. They remind me so much of my parents that it hurts.' Separating from the hug and looking at them, I tried to think of something to say.

"Thank you for accepting, this new me as your son. I might have different habits or I might even speak differently to the Kai you remember but know that I will care for you just as the old Kai did. I will let both of you be the parents of the greatest ninja to have ever lived." 'This was the closest I could get to telling them that I am not their son anymore. Feels like some of the guilt I was feeling has been lightened.' "Let us go home, Mom and Dad. I still need to practice the hand seals before going to bed."

"Ha ha ha! Ran, based on how diligent our son is when it comes to ninja training I might have been wrong in saying that our son might stop at the Jounin rank." My father said laughing while wiping the tears from his eyes.

"Yup who knows he might even become Hokage someday in the future." My mother said while smiling as if she had just won the lottery. 'Nope fuck that, I am never going to be the Hokage. Too many fucking problems, from killer snake students to back-stabbing best friends and even fucking old people who can't seem to stay dead.'

Sitting in my room, I opened the scroll which had the diagram of the 12 hand seals. 'Oh, there are finger exercises and stretches to help improve the dexterity of the fingers to increase the speed of weaving hand signs. That was not even mentioned in the anime at all.'

Looking at the twelve hand seals named after the Chinese zodiac animals, I wondered why the zodiac animals were even referred to in this Universe. 'Maybe there is some similarity between my universe and this universe. Oh, some of the myths and folklore from mine are true in this universe which is shown in the anime, like the nine-tailed fox.'

Skimming through the entire scroll I could not find anything about which hand seal was substituted for a specific group of tenketsu points. 'Maybe there is an advanced version of this scroll somewhere in the library. Guess I'll just focus on the finger stretches first, practicing the hand seals second and once I can get a full group of 30 tenketsu points controlled manually I can figure out which set of 30 tenketsu points for which hand seal.'

Sitting on my bed and stretching my fingers while memorizing the hand seals, made me excited for the things I could learn in the academy since I was already being overwhelmed by pre-academy stuff. 'Two more months for the academy.' I grinned thinking of all the possible situations I would face.