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The link is also in the synopsis
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Naruto was vibrating with a triumphant energy that he couldn't quite contain as he sat at his desk in the classroom. He swung his head back and forth with a toothy grin on his face. His victory was glorious; everyone had seen how easily he had wiped the floor with Kiba.
"N-Naruto…"
He blinked, turning around to look at the aisle behind him. Hyūga Hinata sat rigidly in her chair, her pale eyes snapping down at her lap the moment they made eye contact as her index fingers pressed together in a nervous tap. A furious blush was already creeping up her neck.
"Um… you…" She took a shaky breath, forcing herself to look up just enough to meet his chin. "You were… amazing out there. It was a-a really smart move. C-congratulations on your win…" Her voice trailed off into a faint whisper by the end.
Naruto's eyes widened slightly in surprise before his face split into a blinding, ear-to-ear grin. He rubbed the back of his neck, practically radiating triumph. "Heh, thanks, Hinata! I finally showed 'em I'm not just all talk."
That bright, unfiltered smile, aimed squarely at her, was entirely too much. The blush violently overtook the rest of Hinata's face, turning her cheeks a dark crimson. Utterly overwhelmed by his direct attention, she snapped her gaze down to her blank notebook, burying her chin deep into her jacket collar and completely shutting down, incapable of uttering another word.
Naruto didn't think much of it. She always looked away whenever he looked at her. He was used to weirdness. He leaned back into his chair and put his legs on the table, his hands clasped behind his head. Across the aisle, Kiba was furiously scowling at his textbook as if anyone would believe that he would ever willingly read. Naruto caught his eye, offered a jagged grin, and deliberately reached forward to tap his own knee. Kiba's face flushed a violent shade of red. He bared his canines, looking ready to vault over the desks, while Akamaru gave a muffled, sympathetic whine from inside his jacket.
Naruto just chuckled, turning his attention to the front of the room as the elation began to fade, replaced by a sinking weight.
"—Read this and come prepared. I'll quiz you. If you do well, I'll teach you something else—"
He reached into his jacket and slowly pulled out a folded, slightly crumpled piece of paper. He smoothed it flat against his desk, hiding it behind his open textbook. It was a page of handwritten notes regarding the chakra mechanics of the Shadow Clone Jutsu. Just one page. But as Naruto stared at the neatly arranged rows of meticulously written words, it looked like an impregnable forest.
He glanced up at the blackboard. The instructor was drawing a complex diagram of the body's internal chakra pathways, drawing arrows to represent flow and talking about 'conversion ratios'. The words washed over Naruto like static. His chest tightened. He frowned heavily, feeling the suffocating dread—the horrible feeling that he was the only one in the room completely lost in the dark.
He looked down at the notes. Even he could tell that the concepts had been dumbed down for his benefit, and yet the characters swam all the same. A hot flush of embarrassment crept up Naruto's neck.
I'm too stupid for this, the insidious thought whispered.
The fear seized him. He imagined a look of disappointment or a sigh of dismissal. If he failed this, he would lose the opportunity to learn how to be strong. Maybe he would even lose the training on clones, and then he wouldn't even be able to become a shinobi.
Naruto's grip on the paper tightened until his knuckles turned white, crinkling the edges.
No. He refused to let go of this. He wanted to win again. He wanted to be a shinobi. He wanted to be acknowledged. He focused, placed his finger below the first line, and slowly began reading along the words.
The bell rang, signalling the afternoon break. The classroom erupted into chaos, students forming groups to chatter. Others on lunch duty readied themselves with their hairnets and gloves to serve the freshly cooked school meals that would arrive shortly. Some even rushed to the canteen to get something extra.
Naruto didn't wait for the school lunch. He stood up, clutching the single sheet of paper like it was a lifeline, and rushed out of the classroom when he thought no one was looking.
Iruka was sitting at his desk in the faculty office, filling out the paperwork for the graduation. Everyone except Naruto had already passed. He would submit their paperwork in advance, and hopefully, Naruto would follow after the final graduation test. Leaning back in his chair, the office quiet around him, he allowed himself a sigh.
Was Takuma the right fit for this?
He vividly remembered Takuma from his time as a genin. Even back then, the boy had been a creature of order. He listened to what others had to say before stating his opinion. He asked questions and requested additional information. He prepared accordingly. The boy even carried a resume scroll on his person, as though he were prepared to seize any opportunity.
In short, he was the mirror opposite of Naruto.
Naruto was brash and reckless. He often spoke without thought, sometimes just to speak first or to voice his opinion loudly so he would be heard. He didn't think about the topics enough to ask pointed, specific questions for additional clarity; instead, his instincts and stubbornness had carried him through.
Teaching him required an enduring patience—a tolerance for chaos that Iruka had spent years painstakingly cultivating. Takuma was a master of the Shadow Clone Jutsu—a very niche jutsu that only a few ever considered learning, and fewer actually did due to its chakra requirements—but he had zero teaching experience. He had never had to wrangle a student whose primary instinct was to hype himself up and charge at the problem.
Iruka feared that Takuma's orderly approach, which might have worked for him, might simply bounce off Naruto's stubbornness, or worse, make the boy even more disconnected and uninterested in learning.
And yet, he was cautiously optimistic.
Takuma hadn't thrown a scroll at Naruto and called it a day. When that didn't work, he had given Naruto handwritten study notes. He had come to Iruka for advice, and heeded his words by enticing the hyperactive, knuckleheaded boy with the promise of teaching him how to fight if he studied.
That showed that Takuma was willing to adapt.
With the graduation exams looming closer every single day, the stakes were agonisingly high. If Takuma's lessons failed, Naruto would fail, and Iruka wasn't sure how the boy would take it if he were held back.
The faculty office door slid open with a rattle. Iruka emerged from his thoughts and looked up, blinking in surprise. "Naruto? Why aren't you at lunch? Is something wrong?"
Naruto entered the office and his deliberate footsteps stopped right behind him. "Iruka-sensei," he said, his voice unusually quiet but firm. "I… I really need to learn this. I understand most of it, but there are things that I just don't understand. Can you help me with this?"
Iruka looked from the crumpled paper to Naruto's determined yet vulnerable expression. The light seemed to settle in the quiet room. Slowly, a soft, incredibly genuine smile broke across the teacher's revitalised face.
"Of course, Naruto," Iruka said gently, pulling a chair beside his desk. "Let's sit down and look at it together."
———
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The late afternoon sun cast long, slanted shadows across the empty training field. Naruto stood opposite Takuma, his hands fidgeting with the hem of his orange jacket.
"Good afternoon, Naruto. Did you get a chance to read my notes?"
Naruto swallowed hard and nodded, giving a jerky thumbs-up. Internally, his stomach was tying itself into knots. He had read it alone; he had read it with Iruka—but it had only been a couple of hours since his first read. What if he forgot some parts? What if he mixed up some words?
Takuma didn't miss the rigid posture. He glanced at Iruka, who was once more sitting in the distance, and nodded. He let a beat of silence pass.
"Before we get into that," Takuma said, shifting his weight slightly. "Did you get a chance to use my advice in a spar?"
The effect was instantaneous. The dread vanished from Naruto's face, replaced by a grin. "I did! It worked perfectly!" Naruto threw a wild punch into the empty air to demonstrate. "Kiba came right at me with this huge swing. I remembered what you said about joints! I ducked, kicked the inside of his knee, and he went down like that." He snapped his fingers. "I pinned him down and made him surrender, believe it!"
"Good," Takuma said, offering an approving nod. "Joints are weak points, but they aren't the only weak points. You should learn where they are and figure out how to target them during a fight."
Naruto beamed, puffing out his chest. For a moment, even though he didn't have a forehead protector, he felt like a shinobi.
"Now," Takuma said. "Let's see if you know what I asked. Let's start the quiz."
Naruto's shoulders slumped as the pride evaporated. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the heavily creased page of notes, holding it out for Takuma to take.
"Keep it."
Naruto blinked. "Huh?"
"It's an open-book assessment." Takuma gestured for Naruto to unfold the page. "You can look at the notes while I ask the questions. I don't care if you have it memorised. It's only been one day. I'll expect more later. Right now, I care about whether you understand the concepts."
Naruto stared at him, utterly stunned. Looking at the notes felt like a trick, but Takuma's expression was completely sincere. Relief washed over him like a cool breeze. He unfolded the paper, gripping it tightly in both hands.
"First question," Takuma started. "The Shadow Clone Jutsu requires you to split your chakra into two parts and then mix it. What do you do with those two parts?"
Naruto's eyes darted over the paper. "You convert the chakra into Yin and Yang natures. T-Then you mix them together to create a special mix of chakra."
"Correct. Do you know what Yin and Yang natures mean?"
Naruto frowned. He read the page again, but there was nothing about the chakra's nature. "N-No, I don't," he said, his shoulders slumping.
"That's okay. There's nothing about that in there. I just wanted to see if you'd make stuff up. You didn't, good. If you ever don't know something, you should ask instead of feeling shy or ashamed… How much chakra does a clone take?"
"Half of what I have."
"Correct. When do you mix all of that chakra? Do you mix it before you form the hand seals, or do you do it afterwards?"
Naruto frowned as though something was wrong. He stared hard at the page. "… You don't mix that much chakra. You only mix the chakra to create the clone's body; it takes the chakra on its own."
"Correct and incorrect," Takuma said. "Yes, you don't mix the chakra because the clone doesn't take chakra. It takes your physical and spiritual energy."
"Oh?" Naruto said, looking through the notes.
"What happens to the physical and spiritual energy if a clone doesn't use all of it?" Takuma asked.
Naruto didn't know the answer to that, and it showed on his face. He opened his mouth before slamming it shut. Instead, he read the page for a few minutes until he found his answer. "T-The unused physical and spiritual energies return to your body when the clone is dispersed."
"Correct. Will you remember this now?" Takuma asked.
"I will," Naruto said confidently.
They went through four more questions. Naruto nailed two of them, fumbled one completely by confusing a chakra coil function, and gave a partially right answer for the last.
Naruto lowered the paper, staring at his sandals. A hollow ache of failure settled in his chest. He messed up. He couldn't even get all of the answers right when he had the answer key available to him. He braced himself for the dismissal, squeezing his eyes shut.
A rustle of paper made him flinch. He opened his eyes to see Takuma holding out a fresh, brand-new sheet of paper covered in meticulous handwriting. "I'll test you on that one," he said, pointing at the crumpled page in Naruto's hands, "at the end of the week. This one, though, you'll come prepared with tomorrow."
Takuma pushed the new page towards Naruto's chest until the boy numbly took it.
"I'm satisfied with your effort today, Naruto. If you have questions, don't hesitate to ask," he said, his dark eyes locking onto Naruto's wide blue eyes.
"O-Oh. Okay," Naruto said, partially uncomprehending. He thought that Takuma wasn't scolding him because he had low expectations of him in the first place, but as he looked into his eyes, that wasn't it. Takuma genuinely thought he had done fine despite his wrong answers.
That felt… nice.
Takuma nodded. "Today, we'll do some practical foundation building with Transformation Jutsu, which is a surprisingly decent preparation jutsu for the Shadow Clone Jutsu, given our situation. After that, as I promised, I'll teach you something new you can use during fights.
"Chūnin Iruka says that you're good at Transformation Jutsu."
At those words, Naruto grinned widely with a mischievous glimmer in his eyes as he slammed together hand seals.
"I'm really good. Lemme show you. Sexy Jutsu!"
As smoke burst out, Iruka's voice, filled with teacherly anger, echoed in the field.
"Naruto, you idiot!"
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The link is in the synopsis!