The lemon candy lasted exactly seven minutes and fourteen seconds. Asahi had timed it.
He sat in his usual corner of the dining hall, sucking the sweet, while the rest of the orphanage descended into the usual chaos of dinner time.
Kenji was attempting a world record for how many peas he could fit up his nose. Miko was passionately explaining to Emi-san why her drawing of a six-legged cat was artistically superior. And for the first time in years, Asahi wasn't filtering it all for threats. It was strangely pleasant.
'The God of Shinobi,' he thought, rolling the candy around in his mouth, 'gave me a sweet after using a Baby-Level Katon because his lighter broke.'
'The Patriot of Konoha,' he thought, recalling the hallway lesson, 'is genuinely concerned about my lumbar health. He probably thinks I'm a future contributor and doesn't want me calling in disabled.'
'And the Hokage's family is alive, happy, buying candy apples at the park, and their Jinchuriki son is a popular brat who gets sweets.'
Asahi closed his eyes. The sour-sweet taste of lemon flooded his senses — present, real.
'I've been an idiot. A paranoid, arrogant, monumentally stupid idiot.' He had spent years living in a gothic horror version of a script that didn't exist.
He'd been waiting for Dracula to appear in a romantic comedy. He'd been looking for a serial killer on Sesame Street. He'd been preparing for a zombie apocalypse in a world without zombies.
The only person out of place in this world… was him.
A massive weight lifted from his shoulders, a muscle tension he hadn't even realized he carried. Years of constant vigilance dissolved so quickly it left him dizzy. Physically dizzy. But it was replaced by something stranger. Shame. Deep, humiliating shame that warmed his ears. He felt incredibly stupid.
'How many hours of sleep have I lost? How many meals barely touched because I expected them to be poisoned? How many times did Emi-san try to be kind and I looked at her as if she were going to sacrifice me to a Demon?' He shrank into his seat, suddenly feeling very small, and for the first time, feeling like a six-year-old. A very, very dumb six-year-old.
He finished the candy. The last piece dissolved, leaving only the taste of lemon.
'Okay,' he decided, opening his eyes. The noise of the dining hall persisted. Kenji had gotten a pea stuck and now Emi-san was trying to remove it with tweezers while he laughed. 'The past is irrelevant. My canon knowledge is, at best, a guide to poorly written characters. But the threat is gone.' A sense of calm settled over him. Long, deep, and honestly, a little boring. With no impending catastrophe to plan for, no Obito to stop, no Danzō to evade — what was he supposed to do? The silence in his head was deafening.
The next morning, Asahi woke in the shed, not from panic, but out of habit.
The sun barely filtered through the cracks in the wood. The air was cold. His routine called to him.
But why?
'Why am I here?' he asked himself. He sat on his makeshift sleeping bag. The shed no longer seemed like a survival bunker; it just seemed old and dusty.
'No one is chasing me. I don't need to "survive".' The mental silence persisted. Before, this moment had been filled with plans: 'Push or pull routine? How many sets? Check the perimeter?' Now, there was… nothing.
He looked at his hands, small but already calloused. He had built a solid foundation.
'And now what? Do I give up? Go outside and… play ball with Kenji?'
The mere idea made him physically recoil.
The thought of rolling in the mud, shouting for no reason, wasting time… was anathema.
He couldn't turn off his adult mind. He couldn't erase the discipline he had forged. Playing was the epitome of irrelevance. It was accepting being a child with no direction.
'No.' He stood up. The world might not be dangerous, but it was still competitive. He had seen Hiruzen walk on the wall. He had seen Minato wear the Hokage cloak. He had seen the prosperity of this village, prosperity built on the strength of its shinobi.
This peaceful world functioned because incredibly powerful people maintained that peace.
'This world is peaceful, but not fair.' He was still an unnamed orphan.
The Hokage's family still held all the power.
Sasuke Uchiha (whom he had glimpsed in the park, looking annoyingly happy and well-dressed) had the backing of an entire clan and elite status. They had been born at the top of the mountain.
He was at the bottom of the valley.
'If I stop training now, I'll be a civilian. I'll be… nothing. A street sweeper with good posture, thanks to Danzō. I'll be a background character.'
The fear of death had disappeared.
It was replaced by something much more mundane, but equally powerful: the fear of irrelevance. The fear of being a powerless spectator in his own life.
'No. If this world is a competition, I will win. If it's a romantic comedy, I will be the protagonist. I will not be an extra.'
His training shifted again.
The goal was no longer survival; it was continuous improvement.
He recalled a word from his past life.
Kaizen. 'Today, I am better than yesterday. Tomorrow, I will be better than today.'
His strength routine was fine, but Hiruzen and Danzō had shown him the importance of efficiency. And he had been neglecting a fundamental pillar.
He stood in the middle of the shed. Took a deep breath. Slowly, he bent forward, keeping his legs straight, trying to touch his toes.
His fingers barely passed his knees. His hamstrings screamed as if being murdered.
'I am… stiff.' It was a revelation for how bad it was. He had been doing squats and planks, building tight, short muscles like a miniature bodybuilder. He had focused so much on armor that he had forgotten mobility.
'A tense ninja is a dead ninja,' he thought, recalling how Hiruzen had landed silently like a leaf. 'Flexibility is the body's shock absorber. It's agility. It's the ability to bend without breaking.'
That day, he didn't do a single push-up.
He spent an entire hour dedicated to the agonizing art of stretching.
'Static stretch. Hold the position. Twenty seconds. Breathe,' he ordered himself, trying to reach his feet again. The pain was sharp, a long, cold pull, very different from the hot burn of muscle fatigue.
'The muscle doesn't lengthen if you're fighting it. Relax. Exhale into the pain.' He worked his hamstrings, hips, shoulders, and back.
It was a workout without sweat, without panting, but mentally exhausting.
It was an exercise in patience, in forced calm against his hyperactive nature. It was, in itself, a form of meditation.
'Asahi-kun?' Asahi opened his eyes. He was sitting on the shed floor, legs crossed, trying to press his knees toward the ground in a groin stretch.
Emi-san stood at the door, holding a basket of clothes. She looked at him with an expression he couldn't read.
Normally, Asahi would have jumped up, heart racing, ready to run or invent an excuse. This time, he simply looked at her and relaxed the stretch.
"Hello, Emi-san." The caretaker blinked, visibly surprised at his calm response and lack of flight. "You're not going to run?"
"I have nowhere to run," he said.
"Hello… Are you okay? I've been watching you lately. Always here alone. Always… doing… that." She gestured at his stretching position. "Yesterday you were jumping off the roof, today you look like a pretzel."
"I'm training," Asahi said simply.
Emi-san frowned, a genuine wrinkle of concern appearing between her brows. She approached and sat on a crate in front of him, ignoring the dust. "You train more than some Genin I know," she said softly. "Asahi… I know you don't like to talk about it, but… you're a child. You're allowed to play. You're allowed… to be messy and loud like Kenji."
Asahi considered her words. 'Play.' The word sounded strange. "I don't like to play," he replied.
It was the truth. 'Playing is inefficient. It's wasted time.'
Emi-san sighed, as if she had expected that answer. "Asahi… you don't have to push yourself so hard. This village is strong. It's safe. You know that, right? No one is going to hurt you." Her kindness was so genuine, so devoid of ulterior motives, that Asahi had to look away.
The shame of his past suspicions returned with force.
"I know," he said softly. And he meant it. "I'm not training because I'm afraid."
That seemed to surprise her even more. Her eyes widened slightly.
"Then why? Why push yourself to the point of hurting yourself?" Asahi looked at the shed wall. The wall Hiruzen had walked on. The wall he still couldn't climb.
"Because soon I'll be old enough," he said, more to himself than to her.
"Old enough for what?"
Asahi stood, his stretched muscles feeling light and alive.
He looked toward the shed door, beyond which was the orphanage, and beyond that, the village.
"For the Academy." He had been training to escape a prison.
He realized he had been wasting time.
He needed to become so good that he could walk out the front door, enroll in Konoha's Ninja Academy, and prove to a peaceful, fair, boring world that a nameless orphan could surpass the Hokage's children.
The long calm was over.
The long competition had just begun.