# Chapter 4: Lessons
*[Stamina: 50%]*
Sitting in the far corner of the classroom during lessons at the Shinobi Academy, Lee found himself genuinely listening to everything their teacher had to say — a clanless Chunin with a light-colored fringe and his forehead protector worn around his neck. He wanted to experience the world of ninja training firsthand, not filter everything through scraps of someone else's memories or half-remembered anime episodes where so much had been cut for runtime. And that runtime, now, was going to last the rest of his life. Besides, the fundamentals being covered were important ones — because in one month, every student in this class would be sitting the Genin exam. Rock included.
Though that raised an obvious question: how exactly was he supposed to pass a Genin exam when he couldn't channel chakra outside his body, let alone use Ninjutsu or Genjutsu for the three basic techniques?
*What a mess… I'll probably have to work something out with the teacher, or go straight to the principal — whoever that is, since I haven't actually run into them yet. Then again, if I can demonstrate clearly superior Taijutsu compared to the rest of these shinobi larvae, I don't think anyone's going to question my competence.*
Lee set his jaw with quiet determination, gripping his pen and copying down everything that would be useful for the written portion of the Genin exam.
Eventually, the long-awaited break arrived, and Lee was genuinely ready to relax and rest his cramping hand.
That was the plan, at least.
Under the weight of his classmates' eyes, Lee's thick brows drew together for the first time. It genuinely seemed like everyone had set aside whatever they were doing just to stare at him and enjoy whatever they were expecting to happen. A low, barely audible murmur spread through the room — clearly connected to him in some way — but the round-eyed boy chose to ignore it. He wasn't about to stoop to the level of petty children.
He was going to become a master of the martial arts. And until that day came, he absolutely could not allow his clean honor as a warrior to be dragged through the mud by picking fights with arrogant fools.
"Hm… Have you guys noticed? Something about Lee seems… different."
"Does it? I mean… now that you mention it, he's been weirdly quiet today."
"Not just that. He seems too serious, don't you think? It's like his energy changed. That whole frantic thing he always had going on — it's just gone."
"What are you even talking about? That's the same Lee as always. He's probably just in a bad mood because the Genin exam is next month and there's no way he's passing it."
That was what some of his classmates were whispering — and what Rock was working very hard not to hear. It turned out they had stopped walking up to him and laughing at his "weakness," because on some instinctive level they could feel that Lee had changed. Still, they pushed the thought aside quickly enough, and decided, for today at least, to leave the thick-browed boy alone. Not with that hardened look in his eyes. Not with that weight hanging off him.
Which brought up the matter of those thick black brows.
Where twelve-year-olds had once found them hilarious and ridiculous, they now triggered something more like a subconscious wariness — a faint nervousness that crept in the moment Rock moved them, really furrowing them into a mask of iron resolve.
"Neji, do you think that loser Lee is actually going to make Genin?" one boy from a prominent clan asked another, a smug smirk pulling at his lips.
"I don't care," the one called Neji answered in a flat, indifferent voice. His dark chestnut hair fell to his shoulder blades, and his eyes were a pure white tinged faintly with lavender, set beneath brows as fine and clean as brushstrokes on a willow painting. "He's nothing. A nobody from a small family who can't escape the fate of a pathetic weakling."
The Byakugan, in the flesh. Or more precisely — that extraordinary Dojutsu, famous even beyond the borders of the Land of Fire, accessible only to members of the Hyuga clan by birthright. In Konoha, the Hyuga held more influence than any other family. The only ones who could have rivaled them were the Uchiha, and they were already gone.
---
*[Stamina: 80%]*
Practical lessons arrived.
The teacher gathered everyone in the academy courtyard and put them through a full battery of physical exercises for the next thirty minutes under the blazing warmth of Konoha's sun. Running, squats, pull-ups, stretching, and core work — every student regardless of gender. And the best of all of them, without question, was Rock Lee.
Second place, with results just slightly below the bar he should have hit, went to Neji Hyuga. His elegant face darkened considerably at that. The clan heir puzzled over it — how had a failure managed to train himself to this level? Still, Neji had his expression back in order by the time the teacher announced they were moving on to shuriken and kunai exercises.
*He'll crash and burn at this. No way he does as well as before. A talentless nobody. With the Byakugan, hitting the target is trivial.*
He thought this with a certain smugness, his pride still stinging — which was interesting, given that he'd declared not twenty minutes ago in the classroom that he couldn't care less about Lee or anything Lee did. Apparently he'd been lying to himself.
As it turned out, Rock did fail completely at Bukijutsu.
Unlike the others, who had grown up handling weapons, Lee had been an ordinary person just yesterday — someone who'd been learning karate and other martial arts, but had never once held a blade or a throwing weapon in his life. Muscle memory was no help here. He knew it going in, and he wasn't upset about it. If anything, it only lit a fire in him. He made a quiet promise to himself: he would learn to throw shuriken and kunai.
"Alright, everyone! Good work out there!" The teacher clapped his hands and smiled, gesturing toward the circle painted on the grass in the courtyard — the designated ring where the student sparring matches would be held. "Take a couple of minutes to rest, and then we'll get started!"
The class lit up with energy at the announcement. Even the round-eyed Lee felt a flutter of nerves take hold of him. This would be his first fight in the new world — and on the very first day after waking up and figuring out where he was. How could he not be nervous? This was finally his chance to see how real-world karate functioned within the physical framework of a chakra-enhanced shinobi body.
*The original Lee almost always lost his sparring matches because he was clumsy and held himself back. I'm not doing any of that. They can throw Hyuga at me for all I care — I'm not afraid to kick anyone's ass.*
That was how charged up he was.
After a short rest, the teacher rose from the grass and began calling out names. Two students at a time stepped into the ring. They would form the Seal of Confrontation, fight until one of them won, and seal it at the end with the Seal of Reconciliation.
Lee's class had both clan students and clanless ones — a full spectrum of backgrounds. The sparring matches were genuinely interesting because of it. An Akimichi went up against a member of the Aburame clan. One of the Sarutobi faced off against a clanless boy. Neji Hyuga dispatched a blond boy from the Yamanaka clan without any particular effort. And sweet, hardworking Tenten drew a dark-haired girl from the Nara clan.
The well-trained children fought each other with real confidence, putting on a level of skill that was respectable even by Genin standards. And as for Rock—
"Get ready to get pounded, loser!" snarled the boy from the Inuzuka clan — a cocky, aggressive kid who made a performance of cracking his knuckles.
Not one person in the class wished Lee luck.
Only Tenten watched him with a faint, quiet look of concern on her face — for some reason feeling no particular need to see the boy beaten up for the crowd's entertainment.