The month of help was over. No more green blur at the edge of my vision, no easy warmth slipping in from outside helping me. Morning light pushed through paper screens and turned dust into tiny stars. Cloth rasped as my mother folded it. A kettle breathed, then clicked. Close things finally had enough shape and color to indulge. That was enough to not want to be lost in my own head. The chakra control exercises helped, but it doesn't mean that I wanted to be lost like that all the time.
I checked the skill window because curiosity woke up before I did.
...
[Chakra Control — Lv 9 Effectiveness: 18%]
...
The definition hasn't changed much, but my sense of chakra flowing through my pathways had indeed sharpened considerably. While the effectiveness number was still small, it was a hell of a lot better than when I first started.
I lay on my back and started the loop, this time though I had another idea in my mind. Pursuing my theory of my stats being above 2 because I was feeding my body with chakra, I was pretty confident now, since the vision stat became 1 as soon as I was born, leading me to believe I was supposed to have 1 stat in everything if I did nothing. The next plan to get away from my confinement was to develop muscle control. So I focused my chakra into concentrated loops.
Hands: down through the first tenketsu on my shoulders, across the one associated right underneath my bicep, there was one underneath my tricep, but I let it alone for now, following the pattern, the chakra poured through the one situated on my elbow down the forearm and ending at the wrist. I kept the pace steady, slow enough to feel the right muscle answer as my whole chakra reserve was depleted. Holding the chakra along the tenketsu started to hurt after a couple of seconds, so I never pushed it too much.
'Another thing I have noticed is the fact that although my reserves are pretty small, they fill up pretty quickly. Though it does leave me hungry a lot, which has led me to cry a lot to get access to more food for my practice.'
Legs: Down the thighs, through the knees, till the heels. I kept the process simple, holding and releasing chakra across simple paths. A loop I could repeat without drama, as it was pretty easy to control.
Neck: A circular loop connecting the three teketsu around my Adam's apple. Center, right, and left, center. This was the easiest loop and the only one where I could complete two cycles with my limited chakra reserves.
Hands, rest, legs, rest, neck rest. A longer rest and then repeat. It was the spine of the day; everything else hooked onto it.
"Ren, hands." My mother's fingers wiggled over my nose, pale hair escaping her knot to catch the light like thread. I reached—awkward, not random. She laughed under her breath. "Good *#*#."
The words slid into place instead of a mindless babble without scraping. This time, meaning arrived quietly, the way a door swings when it's already oiled. The change was so smooth that it was frightening until the words emerged before me.
[Skill Gained: Language Comprehension — Japanese Lv 1]
[Understanding of basic words resolved through repetition and context.]
All of a sudden, an encyclopedia of Japanese to English translation appeared in my mind. Sleep. Milk. Hot. Cold. Ouch. Here. No. Okay. They sat where they belonged. I had already figured out some context to it during the week; the system, or whatever it was, had built upon that understanding and solidified my progress as a foundation.
I still couldn't talk. My mouth wasn't ready, and even if it was, I wasn't going to freak them out, rather than I already was. I could tell both of them were worried that I was normally deathly quiet, engaged in my own world, which is why they had begun to interact with me as much as possible.
Mother said, "Sleep later. Now, hands," I knew the order and the time according to my internal clock.
Father came in with the sound of dust patting off sandals by the door. He smelled like sweat and road. His voice found the room before his face. "I'm back." The scar along his jaw tugged when he smiled. He didn't rock me anymore; instead, he worked me.
"Slowly." He slid his palm lightly against my open hand and gave me something to press into. "Push." His voice stayed low as he pushed once, indicating what he wanted me to do. I pushed, and he held—not hard, just enough to make my forearm wake up and work for it. Then his palm braced the sole of my foot, lifting it up. "Kick." A steady resistance, the kind you can lean on without slipping.
Sometimes he'd put his thumb on the pad of a finger and say, "This one." Then he'd tap the next and say, "Not this." He wasn't aiming at anything invisible; he was teaching my hand which part of itself to listen to. When I got it wrong, he didn't sigh. He held still and let me find the right pressure. My muscle control improved by leaps and bounds pretty quickly. It was then that I noticed that the PHY stat wasn't lying, I had the strength in my muscles, I just am not familiar with this body yet. Even though I know how to kick, my body doesn't, and it needs to be retrained.
I helped myself in the only way I could: a ring of chakra around the chakra coils near the nape of the palm, another around the bases of my fingers. Not down the limb's main route. I held the chakra for longer. The effort landed closer to where it should be. My hand opened a little farther than usual. He felt the change as a physical thing—tendon and skin—and grunted, pleased. "Good."
Hands, legs, neck. Rest. Small and neat. Chakra, physical, rest.
The house kept its own loops, an irony of its own: kettle in the morning, whistle of rice in the evening, and a boiling pot of stew at night. It didn't take long to realize why I'm thinking like that; my experiences of my past life were bleeding through the concepts. As a coder, I was pretty familiar with loops, the building blocks of an algorithm. Unconsciously, I had wrapped my whole existence in loops now, from the coils in my body to the routine that I held. Loops everywhere.
By the end of the week, the skill window of my new comprehension showed constant improvements.
[Language Comprehension — Japanese Lv 3]
[Understanding of basic words resolved through repetition, context, and intent.]
You can do it. Don't. Here. There. Again. The words moved from air to bone.
Finger practice became a thing during the second week, and I had to adjust my routine to keep some chakra separate as Father helped me with it. Separating the index and middle, holding it like that for a few seconds before closing my hands into a fist once again. Separate middle and ring, fail, try again. My hand shook like something inside it found me funny. I ringed the chakra around the coils at the finger bases. The shake got smaller as I succeeded, but without chakra, the efforts were minimal.
'Maybe my coordination stat hasn't kicked in yet.' I thought. Which didn't make sense as the PHY stat was working just fine.
"Two." Father held up two fingers and waited. Tongue at the corner of my lip, I separated mine. He said nothing until I kept them apart for a full breath. Then a small approval: "Good Boy."
...
By the end of the first month back home, my head stayed up for the length of her hum. I turned left, found her face, and kept it in focus. I rolled to my side without trapping my arm. The floor was closer and friendlier, yet I wasn't interested in rolling over the crib.
I checked the pane while they talked about tea and errands in the kitchen, voices soft as steam.
...
[Chakra: 27.8]
[Physique: 2.4] [Reflex: 2.1] [Coordination: 2.3] [Vision: 1] [Mind: 22.1]
[Chakra Control — Lv 9 Effectiveness: 18%]
[Language Comprehension — Japanese Lv 5]
...
A rather plain report card.
"Bicycle, bicycle." Mother rolled my legs in small circles; I matched, slow and sure, working my muscles with pulling and pushing. "You did well." She set me on my stomach as she stood up to turn the rice cooker off. I planted both hands to the side, tucked a knee… and tried to crawl. I fell into the blanket as my leg wobbled.
...Ignoring the slight tinge of pain from my cheeks, I tried again.
Plant, tuck, push. Something in my shoulder finally agreed as I wobbled, but lifted my chest against the ever-increasing force of gravity. I lifted my belly for one breath, then two, then dropped like a beanbag and laughed without sound because I needed the air more than the noise.
"You did it!" she clapped, having noticed my movements. From the other room, Father said, "Not bad." The words filled a place that had been empty since the cord went quiet with warmth. How did he know what I tried? I'll leave it to his super ninja senses.
Hands planted, legs tucked carefully, neck lifted. I pushed myself up once again and tilted. The first full roll didn't look like triumph. I flopped, nose in the blanket, arms shocked by their own work. Then I pushed up on my forearms and turned my head to the side. The room sat upright with me.
...
By the end of the second month, I held my head steady, turned with intention, and rolled both ways. Crawling waited until I stopped lying to my fingers and gained a lot more control of my palms.
Language kept stitching itself as I learned to decipher intent and slowly connected pointy fingers to objects, then to their names.
[Language Comprehension — Japanese Lv 7]
[Understanding of basic words and grammar resolved through repetition, context, and intent.]
Now. Later. Time. Numbers. When Father said, "*#* at night," I knew the when, not the what. When Mother said, "# * # on the way back," I knew there would be a stop and new smells in the house.
...
On one bright morning, shadows like clean rulers on the floor stretched across the deck, and change arrived as softly as a breath as the morning sun lazily overlooked its tapestry. I finished the loop without a single wobble—on my arms—and stopped one breath before the edge when it happened. Everything sharpened as finally I was able to sense them as clear as day. I opened the skill window as soon as possible and noticed tha the skill description finally changed. Even the Language skill description had changed every other level, giving me more clues, yet the chakra control skill had remained stubborn.
[Chakra Control — Lv 10 Effectiveness: 20%]
[Ability to direct and hold chakra through familiar chakra pathways and basic control over known tenketsu.]
Somehow, the text became vaguer, but it did shed light on why I was finally able to sense the gates so clearly. I had this new muscle that I became aware of, the control to open and close one of the pathways connecting one tenketsu to another.
I smiled. The tenketsu along my hands weren't mummers anymore. Small, precise places I could feel if I looked: a pause under the palm heel; bright dots at the base of each finger; a neat pair by the wrist bones. A tiny trickle always ran through them.
I knew I had the control, so closed one—incoming only—at the base of the index finger.
Pain flared after a second, and I stopped. Not a lesson to repeat without more context.
Rule one: never close the whole connection to the core, as the stored chakra in the tenketsu will get drained according to natural flow, and that would cause problems.
I left the coil open at my core and shut only the outgoing pathways. The tenketsu filled—tight as a grape. One breath. Two. Three. My control slipped; it spilled back into the route. It aches slightly, but not enough to dissuade me. I tried it with the Palm heel, same. A sense of tightness, then a spill.
Store. Shape. Spill.
If I focused on thin, the spill left like a thread across skin before it dissipated either along the channels or around the skin. If I focused on wide, it poured like a cup being emptied, directly dumping the chakra along the muscle surrounding the tenketsu, flooding them as a sense of strength flared across my hand. The muscle answered differently than it did before, clearly stronger than before, before it returned to normal.
Another skill window appeared in front of me, this one like the other, entirely unexpected.
...
[Skill Gained: Muscle Agumentation Lv 1]
[Flood chakra through the muscles to gain a temporary enhancement. Effectiveness 10%]
...
'Huh... I guess this would be my first technique, could be like Tsunade and blast upon walls if I punched hard enough and had a high enough skill?' I thought as I smiled. I am happy to have gained a new skill that I can now incorporate into my training repertoire. My focus shifted back to a handful of chakra points that I could manipulate through my newfound control. They were just a handful, and I didn't even have control over the 12 distributed across each of my hands.
There were too many points to connect. More than three hundred in the chakra network, from what I remember. I kept a list I could manipulate: Six in the hands and wrists, three on each forearm, two behind each knee, two by each ankle, two across the tops of the feet. Enough to learn without breaking myself. I had a lot of work to do.
...
Crawling arrived a lot easier after a few weeks of my managing to hold my own weight. I got excited with my first success and made it forward twice, and couldn't stop in time as my muscles once again betrayed me, and I met the table leg with my head. Table legs are not made for heads, as a twinge of pain erupted from the place of contact.
"Okay, okay." Mother rubbed the spot and scolded the table. "Mean thing."
I did laugh at that as she was a bit silly like that, rather than complicating everything by thinking about the world and the future, I had decided to enjoy my time here.
Father added resistance the way a careful trainer would, with time, the resistance would increase, giving me a constant feedback loop. He pressed his palm to my foot and said, "Kick." He held steady and quiet. He set two fingers against my palm and said, "Push." I could do it quite easily now, but we kept the routine as a bonding exercise.
By the end of month three, I could crawl from blanket to doorway in four moves if nothing funny happened. Something funny always happened—a pillow collapsed, a spoon rolled, a shadow jumped and demanded to be watched.
[Language Comprehension — Japanese Lv 6]
It was easier to track the shape of talk without catching every word. Gathering context clues was a lot easier.
He built soft walls of pillows and created a route to follow, like an obstacle course. "Ren, here." He pointed, and I plotted and went. When I rushed to the indicated spot, he said, "Don't rush. Slowly. Always in control *" I don't understand the word, but from the context I can tell it was meant to be remembered.
He set the spoon two arms away. "Again." I had noticed that even in little things, a picture was being built. I was taught how to throw a circular disk. On how to properly grab a spoon. Father turned everything into a game, but I was clear he was testing my limits.
'Deciding if I had the potential to survive this world or not.'
...
The house responded with its own sounds: water being poured into a bowl; rice rinsed on the sink, a broom scratching the same line until it was clean. The marketplace breathed through the open door—sing-song calls of laughter; neighbors talking too fast; a bicycle rattling by; a dog insisting on the foul smell down the alley.
The Skill window tapped again while laundry argued with the weather, and I tried to make the spoon sit in my palm with a grip eerily reminiscent of holding a kunai. I was somewhat ready for my future, so I had few complaints, though it was disturbing that my own Father thought getting me ready from childhood was something necessary.
[Language Comprehension — Japanese Lv 7]
"Today, I can get home early. Maybe." Maybe sat on the sentence like a pebble. "Thanks for your hard work," Mother said, adding tea to his cup.
We went outside more. The sun warmed my forehead and made me blink, but I could keep my eyes open and make pictures now that my vision was finally clear. Stalls were made of wood and cloth, and hands. Smoke carried grilled fish. A woman with a basket said, "Cute one you have there," and Mother said, "Thank you," tipping her head more politely than the words.
Father's eyes counted rooflines the way hands count prayer beads. The leaf on his headband was dull, yet it still shone. He shifted his grip so I could see it around more.
We passed an herb stall. My mother named bundles I mostly missed while I could understand normal words. I still need to be introduced to new things. The skill wasn't magic. The vendor turned to someone behind us and threw fast words I couldn't catch—and laughed as if someone had made a joke.
At dinner, Father said, "*#*#… bright. *#… short." Later, he and Mother folded quieter words between them—#*#, #**#, maybe #**#. Those marched past me in uniform anonymity, and I let them. I can't worry about things outside of my control right now.
A rainy afternoon pushed us home early. The Hokage Rock stared whenever the street opened north. Three faces. Stone didn't care what I wanted. How long did the fourth last anyway? Even if a new face was added, it wouldn't help now anyway.
'It would be better if I were further away from the fourth war. I can still handle them if I hide my proficiency and excel, but against an army of reincarnated legends. That won't exactly cut it.' The thought lingered as I gazed at the rock.
Inside, the loops continued. Hands, legs, neck. Rest. Tenketsu practice. The same day and not the same day, the way practice is, the way growing is.
I made a mistake because I wanted to know the lines I needed to draw. Two tenketsu at the right forearm—incoming closed together, core coil to each other open, both storing chakra. Three breaths held. At four, the muscle drew a bright line under my skin that spelled no.
The first rule I learned was: stagnant chakra is bad chakra. No matter what happens, the chakra needs to flow; perhaps it was an inherent property.
I was starting to understand my own path forward. All I need to do is figure out how it works and how it flows. Easy right.
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AN- A bit of everything mixed in, probably a couple more chapters before the Academy starts. I'm building the concept of chakra and the pathways, jutsu from scratch, to have a better world-building, so be a little patient. Anyway, see ya soon!