"Shogakko…?" I repeated blindsided. Shogakko. The civilian elementary school. It was…very, very rare for a Nara to go there. Even those of the clan that didn't go on to be ninja usually went through the Academy. "I'm… not going to the Academy?"
"Oh, sweetheart," she said, face softening, and sat me down at the table. Then she explained, very clearly, about how, when I had been a child they had taken me to the hospital, and I had been diagnosed as chakra hypersensitive. It meant, she went on, that I would never be able to use chakra and never be able to be a ninja.
This was the first I had heard of it, and it confused the hell out of me. I had been using chakra. I knew I had been using chakra. Nothing as obvious as a jutsu, I didn't have enough chakra for that, but I could stick myself to surfaces, and could form chakra strings and light, as well as a dozen other chakra control exercises I had run across in my reading or invented.
"But… Shika is going," I said, bewildered at this information, grasping the first point of argument that I came across. It took me a little while to order my thoughts, as it occurred to me that what I knew and what others 'knew' weren't the same. There was an inconsistency between my internal world and the external world. It shook me, probably more than it should have.
"I know," Mum sympathised. "But you're a big girl now. Wont it be nice to make friends without your brother hanging around?"
It occurred to me that I was being offered a perfect 'out' from the danger of being a ninja. It was tempting. Even if I had decided before that I was going to do something about the disasters I knew were coming… it was tempting.
But, Shika was my brother. Chouji was my friend. I knew the Konoha Twelve as characters in a story, but I still liked them. I couldn't just abandon them. I couldn't just do nothing.
"I want to go to the Academy," I said firmly, possibly the first time in my life (this time, anyway) I'd made a declarative statement. Mum looked horribly surprised.
"Shikako." She sighed. "You wont be able to learn what they're teaching. You wont be able to graduate."
"I want to go. Please," I swallowed. "I'll work really hard and learn everything else, even if I can't use chakra." I was pretty sure I could, but she had started a niggling doubt. Maybe what I had been doing was different. Maybe…
"Alright," she said, finally. "I'll talk to your father when he gets home and see what he thinks."
It wasn't a 'yes, you can go', but close to it. Dad very much went with the flow, unless he had a very good reason not to. The ninja Academy covered every topic that the civilian one did, and more besides, so there was no real argument that it would be better for me, except that I would never be able to graduate. Possibly, they were also concerned that being unable to use chakra wouldn't do a heck of a lot for my self-esteem, but ninja didn't really believe in coddling their children. Most of them were of the belief that 'a few hard knocks and they'll work out what they're doing wrong.'
I wandered outside to find Shika and Chouji, confused and surprisingly upset. Shika was watching clouds, as usual, and I lay down beside him and curled up into his side.
"Something wrong?" he asked after a moment.
I sniffed, and considered not telling him, but couldn't see why not to. He'd probably find out tonight anyway, and he might be able to come up with more arguments to convince our parents.
"I might not be going to the Academy with you," I said.
"What?" Chouji exclaimed, dropping his bag of chips. "Why not?"
"They don't think I can use chakra," I said, wrinkling my nose. "One of the medics at the hospital apparently diagnosed me as hypersensitive when I was a baby."
Shikamaru rolled the new information around in his head. "But you can," he pointed out, frowning. "I've seen you do that light thing."
I nodded. After a nightmare I would sometimes creep out of my room and into his. After a few nights of walking into things, I'd managed to learn how to call up chakra to my hands for illumination. I hadn't realised he knew that, though.
"Did you tell them that?"
I blinked, then sighed. "No?" I offered. Stupid. Now there was a simple solution. I was so stupid. I had been avoiding showing off my skills for fear of being labelled a 'prodigy', something I most definitely did not want or need, but I could have told them that.
"Alright," I said, resolved. If it came up, I'd show them. I'd rather be a prodigy than excluded.
But it didn't come to that. As I predicted, Dad had no argument against me going to the Academy with Shikamaru. That was how we came to be signed up to start the Academy at the end of summer.
The night before we started the Academy I didn't sleep that well. It might be more accurate to say that I had a nightmare, probably brought on by the nervousness and anticipation I felt. Of red chakra and pure terror and the helplessness of being blind and dumb. I woke silently, the gasp never leaving my lips, eyes flaring wide and darting about my room. For a second, I thought there was someone standing in the corner. But no. there was no one there. My chakra sense told me the only people in the house was me, my brother, and my parents.
The human brain was good at facial recognition. Too good sometimes, because it found faces in other things - shadows as a prime example. It was particularly common during hypnagogia, or waking sleep.