Chương 10: Training

"Shin! Open up!" Kiba was at the door again, hollering like the house was on fire. Shin, who had just finished his morning katas, pressed two fingers to his temple. Why are kids incapable of sleeping in on weekends. He crossed the courtyard and pulled open the gate. There was Kiba — grinning like an idiot, Akamaru draped across the top of his head with his eyes still half-closed, clearly not a morning person either.

"What," Shin said.

"We're going out!" Kiba announced, undeterred by Shin's complete lack of enthusiasm.

"Irie's older brother just got back from the Land of Water — brought souvenirs. We're all heading over. Come on." He eyed Shin's yukata.

"Go change. You look like you just woke up."

"No." Shin turned and walked back into the courtyard.

"Hey—!" Kiba scrambled after him, nearly tripping over the threshold.

"Hold on!" He caught up, falling into step beside Shin as they crossed back toward the main house.

"You're seriously not going? It's food you can't even get in Konoha. Don't you want to at least—""No."

"Irie's mom's going to be there," Kiba tried, voice dropping to something conspiratorial.

"And you know she loves you. She'll be so happy if you show up." Shin stopped. He pictured it. Irie's mother. Her face lighting up the moment she spotted him across the room. Shin-kun, come here, let me hug you— You're so adorable. Wouldn't it be wonderful if you married our Mishuki someday? The corner of his mouth twitched.

"No," he said, with more finality than before. Kiba looked like he was about to pull his hair out. He could already hear Irie asking where's Shin? and himself having to explain that he'd failed — despite swearing up and down that he'd bring him.

"Why not?!" He threw his hands up.

"What are you even doing today? You just staying home?" Shin had already continued walking. He slid open his bedroom door, went to his wardrobe, and started changing — right there, in front of Kiba, without a second thought. Kiba blinked.

"Oh. You're going somewhere?"

"Training."

"…Training?" Kiba stared at him.

"It's the weekend. You already passed. Where?"

"The forest west of the village." Shin straightened his collar and reached for the pack hanging on the wall — weighted from the shuriken inside — and picked up the bento box from the table in the front room on his way out.

"It's quiet. No one goes there. There's a stream." Kiba trailed after him, momentarily struck dumb. Shin sat at the entrance and laced up his sandals, unhurried.

"When you leave," he said, without looking up, "close the gate behind you."

"…" Kiba watched Shin's back disappear down the road and didn't move for a long moment. He's always been this serious about training? He had no idea this was actually new. That Shin had only started pushing himself like this recently.

"Ughhh—!" Kiba groaned at the sky.

"What am I supposed to tell Irie?!" Akamaru, shaken awake by the outburst, voiced his displeasure.

"Woof!" The morning streets of Konoha were almost empty. A few shopkeepers rolling up their shutters. The smell of something baking. That particular quiet that only existed for an hour after dawn. Shin walked west at an easy pace, in no hurry, taking in the village the way he rarely let himself — unhurried, just looking. The Hokage Monument rose above the rooftops ahead of him, four great stone faces watching over the valley. Shin glanced up at them briefly.

The weight of what those faces meant wasn't lost on him, even at his age. He was still looking when two voices cut through the quiet.

"Kakashi! Race you to the gate — first one there wins!" Two jonin were heading his way. The first was impossible to miss: head-to-toe green spandex under a standard flak jacket, his Konoha headband wrapped around his waist, a bowl cut so precise it looked architectural, and eyebrows that deserved their own entry in the Bingo Book. The second was familiar. White hair. Mask. Headband tilted down over one eye. Shin had seen him before — at the Memorial Stone. Kakashi Hatake. He was almost certain.

Kakashi glanced at Shin as they passed — a brief, flat look, the kind that registered and immediately filed away.

"No," Kakashi said, to his companion.

"Kakashi! That kind of laziness is the enemy of youth—""You dragged me into a mission on my days off. I'm conserving energy."

"There's no such thing as wasted energy when it's spent in the bloom of—""Uh-huh." Their voices faded as they moved on. Shin watched them go for a second, then continued walking. The western forest was everything he'd said it was. Old trees, massive and dense, their canopies knitting together overhead so that the light came through in broken slants — shifting, dappled, cool. The ground was soft underfoot. Somewhere deeper in, a stream ran over rocks. The kind of place that felt untouched.

Shin found his usual clearing, set his pack down, and opened it. A spread of shuriken and a handful of kunai, each one accounted for. He picked one up, turned it in his fingers, then stood. He'd been at this for weeks. The kunai throws had come naturally — too naturally, maybe, for reasons he didn't fully examine. The shuriken were a different story. He marked a target tree with a kunai — two quick cuts, an X into the bark — then stepped back until he was roughly twenty meters out. Simple enough.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. He threw. The shuriken hit the mark. Too simple. He backed up further. Thirty meters. Threw again. Hit it. He stood there, staring at the embedded shuriken, feeling vaguely dissatisfied. Farther distance was just a matter of power. Accuracy improved with repetition. He was doing both just fine. So why did it feel like he was going nowhere?

Sasuke throws six at once in a wide arc and hits more targets at a greater distance than I throw four in a straight line. He turned that over. Six shuriken. Curved trajectories. Different angles, different release points. They spread and converge. Mine fly straight. I've been making them fly straight. He picked up another shuriken and held it, really looking at it this time. A kunai was designed to go in a straight line. You threw it like a dart, you wanted it to go exactly where you aimed, as directly as possible.

A shuriken was different. It was made to spin. The spin was the point. The spin was what let it curve. Shin closed his eyes for a moment. I've been throwing shuriken like they're kunai. I threw away the one thing that makes shuriken worth using. He almost laughed. He moved to the side of the target tree — taking a new angle, flanking position rather than dead-on — and dropped back ten meters. Easier conditions. Build from there. He adjusted his grip. Cocked his wrist differently. And threw.

The shuriken curved wide and sailed past the tree entirely. He walked over, picked it up. Expected. He threw again. Too much curve. Again. Not enough. Again. The morning passed in the sound of spinning metal and the soft thud of bark....... By the time the sun was directly overhead, the clearing looked like a shuriken graveyard — blades stuck in trees, half-buried in roots, scattered in the undergrowth where they'd skipped off their targets. Shin looked at the mess, then looked at the shadows. Almost noon.

He sighed. Sat down by his pack, pulled out the bento box, and ate in silence. Sasuke throwing six in a pattern from a longer distance. He chewed slowly. I can't even reliably land one with a curve from fifteen meters. He'd underestimated him. That much was obvious now. Not because of the number — Shin could probably match six eventually — but because of the understanding behind it. Sasuke hadn't learned to throw shuriken straight and then compensated. He'd learned shuriken. There was a difference.

Shin finished eating, collected every shuriken from the clearing, and started again. The afternoon was slower. His arm ached after the first hour. He took breaks when the fatigue started affecting his release point — an error in technique was worse than no practice — but he always went back. The forest was completely silent except for the wind in the leaves and the periodic whirr-thunk of spinning steel. By late afternoon, he still hadn't landed it cleanly. Not once.

But he'd gotten a feel for the motion — the way the wrist had to uncoil instead of snap, the way the release needed to be later than felt natural. It was in there somewhere. He just hadn't found it yet. Tomorrow, he thought, and finally stopped....... He heard the stream before he remembered it was there. He followed the sound, ducked through some brush, and crouched at the bank — splashing cold water over his face and the back of his neck, exhaling long and slow. The light was going amber through the trees.

Evening. Then — rustling. Something moving through the undergrowth, coming fast. Shin went still. A flash of white burst through the treeline and shot straight toward him. Akamaru. With a cloth bundle clamped in his jaws, tail going like a flag in a storm. Shin blinked, then crouched and scooped him up. Akamaru dropped the bundle into his hands and immediately started trying to lick his face.

"Akamaru." Shin tilted his head back out of range.

"What are you doing here."

"Woof!" Akamaru butted his nose against the bundle.

"…Kiba sent you?" An enthusiastic bark. More tail-wagging.

"Good boy," Shin said, and actually meant it. He scratched behind Akamaru's ears, then set him down and opened the cloth. Inside: a small stack of individually wrapped sweets — rice flour cakes, by the look of them, delicate and pale. The Land of Water souvenirs. Shin unwrapped one and took a bite. It was good — lighter than he expected, faintly sweet, something floral underneath that he couldn't quite name. He unwrapped a second, held it out.

Akamaru inhaled it in one go and looked up at him with enormous, hopeful eyes. Shin rewrapped the bundle, tucked it into his pack, stood up, and looked down at the small dog.

"Where is he?" Akamaru's head swiveled toward the forest's edge.

"Let's go." The treeline opened onto the road, and there was Kiba — sitting on a flat rock just outside the forest, chin tipped up, watching the darkening sky. He'd been there long enough to look comfortable, which meant he'd been there a while. Shin set Akamaru down a few meters back.

"Go," he said quietly. Akamaru bolted.

"Woof!" Kiba's head snapped down. His face did something complicated — surprise, relief, quickly buried under a studied display of not caring. He caught Akamaru and got immediately mauled by an enthusiastic tongue.

"Hey—! Okay, okay—" He was laughing despite himself, twisting away.

"Stop it, that tickles—""Woof woof!"

"Yeah, yeah, you were great, I know, I'll get you something good when we're home—""Woof!"" I said stop licking—" Shin came up behind him without hurrying and stopped a step away. He said nothing, just watched the two of them. Kiba finally spotted him. He looked away immediately — nose in the air, arms tightening around Akamaru — and stood up, pointedly facing the road back to the village. He didn't say anything. Just started walking. Shin fell into step behind him.

After a moment, the corner of his mouth curved — just barely, gone before it really formed. He followed Kiba home in silence. The next day.

"Shino! Leaving already?" His mother came jogging out of the house just as he reached the gate, slightly breathless, holding something out in both hands.

"Your bento." Shino took it. It was heavier than usual. He looked inside. Two boxes. He looked back up at her.

"I made extra," she said.

"Smoked meat rice — it turned out well this time. You should share some with your friends." She smiled.

"You're always mentioning that Shin boy. And Kiba, too." Shino considered this.

"Smoked meat," he said carefully, "…rice."

"Is something wrong?" He thought about his mother's cooking. He thought about what 'turned out well' meant relative to her general track record.

"No," he said.

"I'll head out."

"Be nice to your friends!" He was already gone. He didn't walk straight to the Academy. Instead, he turned at the first fork and took a side road, stopping beside a utility pole near the corner. He waited. It wasn't long before he spotted them down the block — Kiba, carrying Akamaru, and Shin a step or two behind.

"Yo! Shino!" Kiba raised a hand in a wave. Akamaru barked. They came over. Shino fell into step beside them, the three of them pointing back toward school.

"What have you got?" Kiba asked, eyeing the cloth bundle in Shino's hand.

"Bento."

"Where's your bag?" Shino stopped walking.

"…I may have left it at home." Kiba stared at him. Shin said nothing.

"Give it here," Kiba said, resigned, unzipping his own pack and holding it open. Shino passed the bundle over without a word.

"Why is this so heavy?" Kiba nearly fumbled it.

"What did you pack, rocks?"

"…Smoked meat rice. My mother made extra." A brief pause.

"For you both." Kiba's expression shifted immediately.

"Oh. That's actually really nice of her." Akamaru, who had caught the word meat the moment it left Shino's mouth, went electric with excitement. Shino looked at the small dog. He thought about saying something — perhaps a preemptive note on the matter of expectations — and decided against it. Some information was better shared after the fact. They kept walking. Kiba fished a bundle out of his pack with his free hand and held it toward Shino.

"Here. For you."

"What is it?"

"Land of Water stuff. Irie's brother brought it back. I grabbed some yesterday." He smirked sideways at Shin.

"Someone was too busy being antisocial to come, so I sent Akamaru instead. You're welcome, by the way."

"..." Shin gave him a look that communicated approximately nothing.

"I'm just saying. A thank-you would be nice. Shino said thanks."

"I did," Shino confirmed.

"See? Shino gets it." The three of them walked in comfortable, meandering silence the rest of the way. The Academy was already buzzing when they arrived. The classroom had filled up early — everyone restless, conversations layered on top of each other across the rows.

"Morning! Kiba, Shin, Shino!" Naruto spotted them from across the room and waved with his whole arm, grinning. Shin raised a hand in return. They filtered toward their seats. Shin's path took him past Sasuke's desk — Sasuke sitting with his chin in one hand, gaze out the window, seemingly indifferent to the noise around him. His eyes flicked to Shin.

"Morning," Shin said.

"Hmph." Sasuke looked away. Shin moved on and sat down. Around him, the chatter had already settled on a theme.

"Iruka-sensei said today's the first real ninjutsu lesson—""What do you think he's going to teach? Fire Release? My dad does Fire Release, it's insane—""No way he's starting us on elemental jutsu—""Probably Transformation and Clone, right? That's what the books say—""That's so boring. I want to learn something that can actually do damage—" Shin listened without commenting. Shino leaned slightly toward him.

"He won't be teaching elemental jutsu," he said, quiet and matter-of-fact.

"The Academy only teaches the Three Basic Jutsu. My father explained — they're more practical than any high-level technique."

"Why?" Shin asked.

"Because a powerful jutsu that misses accomplishes nothing. Genin have low chakra reserves. Teaching them flashy techniques would just get them killed faster." Shino's voice was measured, the same tone he'd use to cite a reference.

"Master the Three Basic Jutsu, taijutsu, shuriken — add the core theory — and you have a functional shinobi. The foundation matters more than the peak." Shin turned that over. It wasn't a satisfying answer from an entertainment standpoint, but it was a sound one. He wasn't particularly disappointed. He hadn't expected otherwise. The door slid open. The noise dropped about thirty percent. Iruka stepped in, already scanning the room with that easy confidence that didn't need volume to command attention.

"All right, settle down." He moved to the front.

"Today is your first ninjutsu class. We're going to start from the beginning — how to gather chakra and shape it into a technique."