Uchiha Izumi flashed through seals, chakra surging to her throat.
"Katon: Hōsenka no Jutsu (Phoenix Flower Technique)!"
A spray of fist-sized fireballs lanced toward posts at the edge of the grounds.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Every shot hit—perfect placement, perfect cadence. And yet her brows stayed knitted tight.
Too weak.
They scorched the surface, nothing more. A fireworks show, not a kill. She wanted seeds like the touchyweed—scatter wide, but each one deadly enough to punch through.
Where was the flaw?
She tried again, forcing more chakra into each orb.
"Katon: Hōsenka no Jutsu!"
The fireballs swelled, wind keening around their flight. Two unraveled midair; the rest slapped the targets with even less bite than before.
"Damn it."
Her fist thudded a nearby trunk. Pain stung her knuckles; she ignored it. The real ache was the dead end in her chest.
Elders preached that Hōsenka's key was scatter—"heaven's petals with no blind spots." But in real fights, scatter without bite didn't break anyone's guard.
So she'd chased the opposite: gather—condense each shot into a killing bolt. And still, a wall.
Chakra output versus flame shape—an irreconcilable knot.
Just like her view of clan and village—contradictions and fog, no path out.
Breathing hard, hands on her knees, sweat tracing from her temple, Izumi never noticed the silhouette in the shade a short walk away.
Namikaze Shinju watched her fail and fail again, eyes steady. Kakashi's report had been exact—this girl bored into problems alone. Good talent, excellent chakra control for a chunin—but her heart reduced her flame.
He didn't step in. A good hunter waits until the moment prey is most exhausted—guard down—then strikes. He waited for Izumi to spend herself and teeter on doubt's edge.
A dozen attempts later, most of her chakra was gone. She slid down the trunk to sit, head tipped back to the sky, eyes empty. Itachi's words drifted back. The old pages on Hashirama and Madara, too.
Why like this? Clan and village. Ninjutsu training. Every thread a snarl.
Footsteps padded closer, even and calm.
She snapped a glance over—only a boy approached, plain clothes, anyone's son.
Shinju stopped a few paces away, no threat in posture. He took in the charred targets, then the girl on the ground.
Izumi said nothing—only watched, wary. The third park lay just outside Uchiha grounds; open to the public, yes, but few non-Uchiha wandered here on purpose.
He let her catch her breath during a lull between drills, and smiled, mild as spring water.
"Your chakra control is strong."
She blinked—praise was… unexpected.
He went on, unbothered by the chill in her eyes. "But the essence of Katon is the will to 'burn everything down.' When you cast, your heart hesitates. Your fire becomes gentle."
Her head snapped up, pupils tightening. How could he—
He'd nailed it. When she formed seals, thoughts bled in: the clan's future, the village's stance, friends slipping away, the cruelty of war. Weight that kept her from purity. Her will cooled; her flames lost bite.
She'd told no one.
A stranger, after watching for minutes, had named both her technique's and her heart's core flaw.
Impossible.
Shinju read the shock and knew the door was open. He pressed.
"Hōsenka—Uchiha chase 'scatter,' chase coverage. That's a mistake." He shook his head. "The true core is ignition. You compress fire-natured chakra to the limit—not to make a ball, but to forge countless 'seeds' hot enough to soften steel."
"After your seals, don't rush to spit. First, compress again at the throat. Picture ramming a lump of charcoal into a diamond. It'll cost more focus, but when you release those seeds, they're no longer ordinary flame."
"They cling like rot on bone. Touch once, and they keep burning until the target is ash. That's Hōsenka done right—victory by inextinguishable burn, not by area."
He said no more. The idea cut across Uchiha habit—yet on theory, it was flawless. He'd once nudged Sasuke on a similar choke point; Izumi's was the same family of problem.
Izumi sat frozen.
Secondary compression? Seeds? Persistent burn?
Every word overturned years of "more chakra = bigger fire = stronger jutsu." Elders' lacquered wisdom, passed down in tones of certainty.
This boy said true strength lay in compression, in temperature, in will. Sharper than her own hunt for "gathering"—it struck at Katon's essence.
Who was he, to understand Uchiha fire better than most Uchiha jōnin?
His gaze and voice carried only kindness.
In a season when clan and village bristled and kindness felt like a myth, kindness from a stranger was unreal—and precious.
"You…" Her lips worked; her voice came back hoarse with stirred feelings. "Who are you?"
Shinju only smiled. "A passerby. Another shinobi in training." He looked at the sky. "It's late. I should head home."
He turned to go.
"W-wait!"
Izumi lurched upright, swaying. She swallowed, steadied her breath, formed seals again—and remembered his order.
Compress. Then compress again.
She held the heat at her throat, forced it smaller, tighter—heat brightening to a white-hot pinprick in her mind's eye. Doubts clawed up; she crushed them and fed the squeeze with one clear intent.
Burn through.
"Katon: Hōsenka no Jutsu."
The volley that left her lips looked… modest. Smaller orbs, fewer of them.
They struck.
No thunderclap. Instead—a soft, hungry hiss.
Where each seed kissed wood, the black did not cool; it crawled. Ember-veins burrowed inward, chewing through grain. A breath later, each impact blossomed into a deep, cherry-white glow. The posts didn't "catch fire" so much as sag, eaten from within.
Izumi stared, breath caught. The targets were rated to shrug off a jōnin's basic Katon. Now they slumped into their own ash.
Shinju glanced over his shoulder, expression unreadable, and inclined his head once—as if to say, there.
The girl turned, eyes shining in the dusk. "Thank you! I—"
But the boy in plain clothes was already gone, footsteps fading into the trees, as if he'd been a mirage conjured by exhaustion and need.
She looked back at the smoldering holes and felt, for the first time in days, a knot loosen.
Maybe… not all knots stay knots.
She reset her stance, formed seals again, and let the heat spin down to a point.
Burn through.
Far away, on a rooftop above the park, Shinju watched her seed-fire eat clean lines through hardened timber and slowly nodded.
The bridge takes its first plank when it believes it can bear weight.
(End of Chapter)
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