I kept working on my Flicker jutsu training with Shisui while our team racked up the usual pile of D-rank missions. Chores dressed up as shinobi work. Chasing cats, pulling weeds, delivering letters. At this point I could probably open a small business and call myself Certified Village Errand Boy.
Then came a single C-rank, and for the first time it felt like we were doing actual shinobi work. It went so smoothly I almost felt guilty taking the payment. Almost. That guilt lasted about two seconds before I reminded myself the village was not about to hand me a free lunch otherwise.
The mission sounded simple on paper. Gather dirt on a noble's rival. Slip in, observe, and bring back proof of shady dealings. Easy enough. In my head I imagined disguises, clever signals, maybe even a rooftop chase or two. Something flashy enough to make me feel like a real spy.
Reality was quieter. Before we made a move, Sena asked us to leave this mission to her, since her plan fit her toolkit and promised fewer complications. We gave her space. She spent the afternoon shadowing the staff entrances, counting shift bells, noting who chatted with whom and which doors stuck in their frames. By dusk she had the rhythm down. After the lamps were lit, she slid into a blind spot behind a housemaid, dropped her with a precise touch, tucked her somewhere safe, and took her face with a clean transformation. Then she drifted in with the supper trays, folded herself into the routine, and by the time the night rounds began she had every piece of information we needed.
Meanwhile, Kaen and I loitered outside trying very hard to look like intimidating professionals instead of bored statues. By the time Sena strolled back out, cheerful as if she had just finished a shopping trip, we had not so much as broken a sweat.
I would like to say we contributed. Technically, we did. We guarded the perimeter, which in practice meant glaring at every tree in the area as if one of them might suddenly sprout eyes. That counts as participation. At least that is what I will keep telling myself until someone in the mission office writes "stood around" in the report.
Still, I had to hand it to her. The way Sena worked was scary smart. She did not need flashy jutsu or brute strength. She just used what she had with perfect timing, the kind of efficiency that made it clear why people trusted the Yamanaka with their secrets. Watching her work was equal parts impressive and irritating, mostly because she made it all look insultingly easy.
Shisui never said it outright, but it was obvious he was most pleased with her out of the three of us. Clients adored her too. She handled them with polish and steady manners, smoothing things over and making sure their experience felt pleasant even when the mission got messy. Thanks to her, our team started to build a reputation for efficiency, competence, and being client friendly. Before long, some clients even began asking for us by name. Every time it happened, Shisui smiled like a shopkeeper whose best item never runs out.
That growing reputation even started to creep into how the mission desk employees treated us, which was saying something.
When we first started, the clerks treated Shisui in a way that was professional but stiff, always with a quiet edge. There was always some delay, a scroll suddenly "misfiled," a form mysteriously "not ready," or an unnecessary pause before stamping the report. They did their jobs, but there was no mistaking the message. They saw the clan symbol on his back before they saw him.
Over the weeks, something had shifted. It was not sudden, and it was not friendly either, but the resistance had softened. The paperwork moved faster, the pauses grew shorter, and the clipped responses carried a trace of respect that had not been there before.
After that second C-rank mission, it stood out even more. Our record was beginning to speak louder than the crest on Shisui's vest. Whether the clerks liked it or not, they could not ignore the results. Watching them hand back our report without delay.
Kaen noticed as well. For once he was not itching to argue. He stood taller, shoulders squared, as if the respect rested on him by right. Maybe it was pride. Maybe he was finally seeing that Shisui's idea about changing the Uchiha image through steady results had weight. Or maybe he just liked that people were not looking down their noses at us. Whatever it was, he looked satisfied.
After that, Shisui and Kaen headed for the Uchiha compound while Sena and I walked toward our residences.
"How about we start training on the chakra spreading method," she said, casual voice, focused eyes.
I nodded. "I mostly train on my own now. According to sensei my basics are established, and I just need to improve on them. He will still check on me from time to time to make sure my Flicker grows steadily and to correct any mistakes, so I have more time. We can finally start working on my jutsu."
Sena nodded. "Good. Let us meet tomorrow morning in that discrete training field where you practice the Flicker."
"Good idea. More privacy. Nice."
She chuckled, split into her path, and waved goodbye.
When I reached home I did not find Genta, which probably meant he was on a mission. Lately he and his father had started training in my backyard. Since Genta always ended up at my place anyway, his father used that to make the work less unpleasant, especially with me there to tease Genta and fire him up. I was pretty sure his father appreciated that, though not verbally, not nonverbally, not in any way a normal human being might show appreciation. But I'm sure it was there... somewhere.
After a quick shower and a short round of ninjutsu drills, I sat at my desk with Master Shuzo's fuinjutsu scrolls spread across it. The more I read, the deeper his words dug into my head. At first, seals had looked like nothing more than lines and symbols to me, flat marks meant to pin down chakra. But Master Shuzo did not see them as ink on paper. He described them as constructs, patterns that existed in more than two dimensions.
The diagrams seemed to shift in my mind like unfolding boxes. A single stroke was not just a line but a path guiding energy through space. A spiral was not decoration but a coil that compressed, stored, and released. Every layer locked into another, like gears meshing inside a machine that only appears once you stop thinking in flat terms.
It made sense why he called fuinjutsu a conversation with the world. The world is not flat. It has depth, weight, and constant movement. A seal trapped in two dimensions is incomplete, like sketching a bowl on paper and expecting it to hold water. To truly function in the real world, the seal has to reach into that third dimension, linking ink, chakra, and matter together.
That realization settled deeper the more I used fuinjutsu in the field. On paper, seals read like instructions. In practice, they behave like living frameworks, bending and adjusting to what they touch. I began to see that seals do not just force an effect. They interact with their surroundings, twist rules, push boundaries, and create a new balance. It is less like writing orders and more like reshaping space itself.
The thought left me both excited and uneasy. I could almost picture seals not as written tools, but as lattices of chakra wrapping around objects the way roots wrap around stone. They could bind, reinforce, or erupt depending on how the layers stacked together. For the first time I was not just memorizing what Master Shuzo wrote. I was beginning to see it the way he did, and that opened a new path forward.