Trust

Two things, first of all, to all those who aren't a fan of this arc, it's going to end in chapter 15 so don't worry.

Second, there has been a couple of questions about the debuffs, and I should have probably made it clearer that they were only there because his intelligence and wisdom were thrice greater than his other stats. So it's less of a 'you need perfect stat balance at all times' and more of a 'you need to avoid becoming one of those bodybuilders who aren't able to reach their own shoulder because of the sheer amount of muscle in the way'

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I sighed repeatably in the way only a truly hurt soul could, falling aginst the columns in sadness so great that it almost made me swoon while walking through the halls on my way to my room, and while some minor part of my sadness may have been melodramatics so that, in case I stubled upon someone, I could make a joke out of this, I was felling a bit melancholic today.

"Anno? why are you going from column to column, sliding down them before sighing and dragging yourself to the next one?" Kyoko asked as she walked around the corner, she had been a regular guest for some time, to a point where she could come and go as she pleased, well, she could always do that, but now it was because the servants knew not to stop her, and not because she was the daimyo's daughter meaning that she could do whatever she wanted.

"no... you must leave me now... I am not in the mood for... friends" I told her, sighing uncontrollably throughout.

"yeah, it was quite well-hidden, but something told me you were sad, I'm not sure what it was though, it might have been what you were up to when I arrived, it could have been the three dramatic sighs in one short sentence, or maybe it was just my intuition" - she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm - "but seriously, what's up?" she said.

"I could have almost mistaken that for empathy, if not for the fact that you have already proven yourself as a heartless monster by denying the fact that roguish charm is the perfect tool for any situation, and even making fun of it," I said

"that's because it is not the perfect tool for any situation which you have clearly demonstrated through your endless attempts at making it work in high society, now tell me what's wrong," she said.

"I made it work! It took some time, but now I'm well-liked in high society, in large part because of my roguish charm I'll have you know, it worked perfectly after adjusting it a bit" I defended

"that's because you took more and more of the roguish part out of it, leaving it as just charm, which, might I add, was the exact point in time where you became well-liked. Now stop trying to avoid the subject. You can't both be melodramatic and not want to talk about it, it doesn't work that way, so tell me what's wrong" she said firmly.

"first of all, I was not trying to avoid the subject, I was trying to drag it out to add suspense, secondly, it's really not that big of a deal," I said

"well you're not adding suspense you're adding annoyance, so tell me what's wrong or I'll take one of those eight unnecessary and ugly hair sticks in your bun and stab you with it," she said, trying to sound firm but with a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

"fine, fine, if I must" - I said as I walked over to a column, swooning against it and throwing the back of my hand over my eyes to shield me from the cruel world, as I slowly slid down with a sigh, in a clearly tragic pose "you see... today... is the day... when my old... friends...will..." - I started to hear an annoyed tapping - "... graduate... without me"

"that's it?" she said incredulously

"Yeah, yeah, I know it's not that big a deal" - I said as I slid to the floor, finally sitting on the floor looking at my knees with a small melancholic smile "but, well, I thought we would graduate together, I'm not sure what would have happened after that, since we were ten people for three people tea- never mind that, it's not important, but, suffice it to say, I'm a bit... down, because of that," I said.

I looked up, only to see Kyoko looking at me inquisitively, before she started speaking "will you ever tell me the truth?"

"of course I will, why?" I said, not sure if I could keep my word on that.

"you know how much I hate people lying to me, so please, trust me enough to tell me the full story" she said, trying to sound confident, but I knew her well enough to hear the underlying desperation.

"it's just... the truth is dangerous, and I don't want to drag you into a problem I caused myself with a stupid mistake, but I promise that I'm not trying to use you," I said

"How can I trust that? How do I know that youre not lying?" she asked.

"can't you just trust me as my friend?" I said

"no! I can't, not when you have a secret so large that I might not even be your friend" she said, and I could feel my anger rising.

"Are you saying that we're only going to be friends as long as I don't have a goal that goes against your goal?" I practically yelled, angry that she could treat our friendship so lightly.

"I'm saying that you might be using our friendship to get what you want!" she yelled, even angrier. However, her words struck a chord inside me, and I could feel anger dying and sadness replacing it over the fact that she thought I cared so little about my friends that I would use one of them, even after spending almost every day together for over a year.

"leave, please, I don't want to be around you right now, so please leave," I said.

"FINE! I don't need to be around more liars than I already have to!" she yelled as she stormed out.

And after that, I didn't see her for weeks, at least, not outside of glimpses at parties we were both invited to, I never sought her out since I wanted to let her decide when, and if, she wanted to talk again. That was, primarily, because I realized that I was the villain of that argument, as, while I did have my reasons for acting like I did, I definitely overreacted a bit, in my own defense, I was having a bad day, and friends are important to me, and she accused me of betraying roguish charm! But she never had a real friend, and she was terrified of me just using her, and she hates liars, which definitely didn't help.

So I resigned myself to training alone, at least until she decided to forgive me, practicing my senbon throwing, even though it was almost perfect already, trained my physical prowess and combat skills, although it was challenging to find a challenge that could actually force me to improve, I did have an idea for my next big project, and if I succeeded with that I would have to modify my hand to hand combat style a bit. Lastly was my fuinjutsu training, which, as I became progressively more proficient, became both faster and easier to do, so, I largely trained by finding random small problems and forcing myself to find fuinjutsu solutions to them, which made me find new and creative ways to use fuinjutsu and giving me an ever-increasing pile of unused projects large enough to upgrade a house to the level of a modern home with the best appliances. That, and working on my newest combat project, after finishing with my special senbon, which culminated in a beautiful artistic senbon with tens, maybe even hundreds, of whirlpools all over it made from tiny kanji, the inscribing process only made possible by my stats.

I propped myself up on my elbows as I lay in my bed, Now that I think about it, I've barely used my system in quite a while, I didn't really have a reason to before now since I was stuck in Konoha, leaving me very little opportunity to level up, and I didn't really need to hear every skill and stat notification before now, so I just turned them off and forgot about it for a while. Huh. I should probably check them; it has been a while. So, I opened the notification log with a thought and was baraged with a tsunami of system messages

[Congratulations! You've leveled up the skill [Acting] to level 44]

[Congratulations! You've leveled up the skill [Cooking] to level 86]

[Congratulations! You've leveled up the skill [Throwing weapons] to level 71]

[Congratulations! You've leveled up the skill [Sword combat] to level 45]

[Congratulations! You've leveled up the skill [Knife combat] to level 22]

[Congratulations! You've leveled up the skill [Hand-to-hand combat] to level 49]

[Congratulations! You've leveled up the skill [Stealth] to level 32]

[Congratulations! You've leveled up the skill [Wilderness survival] to level 5]

[Congratulations! You've leveled up the skill [Climbing] to level 16]

[Congratulations! You've leveled up the skill [Acrobatics] to level 47]

[Congratulations! You've leveled up the skill [Etiquette] to level 24]

[Congratulations! You've leveled up the skill [Charm] to level 28]

[Congratulations! You've leveled up the sub-skill [Roguish charm] to level 25]

[Congratulations! You've leveled up the skill [Dancing] to level 19]

[Congratulations! You've leveled up the skill [Deception] to level 31]

[Congratulations! You've leveled up the skill [Smithing] to level 65]

[Congratulations! You've leveled up the skill [Engraving] to level 46]

[Congratulations! You've leveled up the skill [Calligraphy] to level 79]

[Congratulations! You've leveled up the skill [Fuinjutsu mastery] to level 91]

Huh. I mean, I realize that I've been spending at least eight hours a day on fuinjutsu for one-and-a-half years, but I honestly didn't think it would be so high, I mean, it's even higher than my cooking skill.

I wonder what my stats are?

[status

Level: 27

Name: Anno

Age: 12

Title: [congratulations! After leaving your starter zone, [Konohagakure], for the first time, you have unlocked titles! All title notifications have been withheld until this prompt has been read]

HP: 1705 -> 2605

CP: 2820-> 3110

CON: 53 -> 83

STR: 57 -> 87

DEX: 68 -> 98

INT: 104 -> 111

WIS: 87 -> 100

ATP: 110 -> 0]

I should have guessed that trying to steal from your own faction, then getting banished to another faction as a spy would be memorable enough to level up from since experience in this system is about how large an experience what happened was. I decided to allocate my attribute points with a focus on the physical stats since I don't even know the academy three yet, which are the bare minimum requirements to be a genin... does that mean that I'm not a genin? Or does it make me a special genin? Never mind. Suffice to say, my exceptional jutsu library won't be the thing keeping me alive for now, not when the limit of my magical abilities is jumping better than a normal human and having a leaf stick to my body. With that in mind, I decided to stick with combat and magical weapons.

Now, let's have a look at what mighty deeds I've accomplished, actions so great that even the system recognizes their greatness in the form of titles.

[title: Konoha traitor.

It's well known in the circles of Konoha shinobi that you betrayed Konoha in the pursuit of knowledge and power before you even became a Genin.]

Well, I'll be taking that as a compliment, I mean, I may very well be the only person in Konoha history who betrayed Konoha before even making genin, that's two grand achievements under my belt, fastest to fail at the introduction obstacle course, and fastest to betray Konoha.

Three sharp knocks sounded from my door, and the voice of my head servant came from the other side, as anyone other than me was forbidden from entering.

"Master, the lord daimyos daughter has arrived, she wishes to speak with you," he said

I scrabbled from my bed, running towards the lounge area of the mansion as fast as possible, my legs hitting the floor with the tempo of a fangirl chasing her idol, and finally, I slammed the door of the lounge open, panting for effect as, while I didn't really feel all that tired, I wanted to make it clear that I hurried over.

"Before anything else, I'll admit right now that I was in the wrong, not completely, as it's natural to have some secrets, but I didn't really have a reason to be angry, not a good reason, anyway" I said immediately as I came in.

"then why didn't you come to apologize sooner?" she asked

"I'll let you in on a secret, the son of a merchant can't enter the palace of the daimyo whenever he pleases, not even when he claims that he's friends with the daimyo's daughter" I said with a smirk.

Kyoko scowled at me for a couple of seconds, before looking away "thanks, I guess. I thought I would have to drag it out of you... but, I guess I could have tried to explain why I need to know your secret better, even if it shouldn't matter since friends should tell each other everything. And you did have a reason to be mad, I mean, you never had a real family, not with how you described your dad, so friends' kind of fill that role to you, so I guess I understand why you got hurt when I said you didn't care about your friends" she grumbled in what was clearly a large step for her in her personal development, as that may very well have been the very first time I've seen her apologize... or come close to apologizing, if we were being completely honest about what she just did.

"So... I guess we can comfortably say that this was your fault?" I said with my most understanding smile.

"Wha-? No! That's not right! It was barely even a little bit my fault!" she yelled.

I attempted to place a supporting hand on her shoulder but was hampered by her swatting it away "look, Kyoko, I get it, it was hard for you to apologize, and I understand that me doing so first was needed for you to get that off your chest, but now that my symbolic and in no way real apology is out there, let's just forget about it and focus on how you were completely in the wrong, ok?" I said, keeping my supporting smile on.

"Oh shut up already" she huffed, ignoring me instead of reacting, and completely taking all the fun out of it.

"Fine, fine, but to have my serious moment for this month" - I said, dropping my smirk and settling into a resolute expression - "I have been thinking about it for a while now, and, if you promise to, under no circumstances, reveal what I intend to reveal to you, then I will tell you my largest secret"

"I promise" she said without hesitating for a moment.

I led her to my room, a place she had never been before now, then went inside, closing the door and activating the secrecy seal "I'm actually not the son of a merchant, I am an orphan who went to the shinobi academy in Konoha, and... I was sent here as a spy, to find out what is wrong with kirigakure. But I swear, that I never planned to use you to get that information, I promise. And before you say anything, let me tell you the full story of how I got here." I said, before waiting with bated breath for her reaction.