Satoru stood shirtless beneath the wide trunk of a sturdy oak, the kind of tree that looked like it had been rooted here long before Konoha had even been built.
Its bark was coarse and ridged, cool from the lingering bite of the dawn air, and it smelled faintly of moss and earth. He pressed his left hand flat against it, fingers spread wide, feeling every uneven groove beneath his skin.
His right arm hung loose at his side, relaxed for now.
Closing his eyes for a moment, he inhaled deeply through his nose, pulling in the crisp morning air until his lungs felt full. Then, with the same slow deliberation, he began to exhale and in that rhythm, he sent a steady, even stream of chakra flowing from his core down his arm, gathering in his palm.
It was an invisible bond, but he could feel it latch on instantly; a subtle, magnetic pull that clung to the bark and anchored him in place. It wasn't a violent grip; it was a balanced and precise one, like the perfect tension in a bowstring.
He bent his knees slightly, shifted his stance, and with a quiet grunt, began to pull himself upward.
"Fwhup… fwhup… fwhup."
Each pull-up was painfully slow and deliberate. His muscles contracted in clean, controlled bursts, shoulders tightening, biceps bulging against the strain, and then released in smooth descents.
But this wasn't about raw strength. The real challenge was the chakra flow: keeping it perfectly steady through every fraction of an inch he moved.
Too much chakra, and the adhesion would spike violently, like a suction cup suddenly overpressurized; he'd feel the jolt shoot through his wrist and elbow in a way that made his teeth clench. Too little, and the bond would weaken instantly, his palm peeling away from the bark with nothing to catch him but the dirt below.
And unlike the standard tree-walking technique, there was no relief here. No planting one foot, pausing, adjusting balance. This was constant strain, constant demand; no pauses, no cheats, no moments where the body could rest.
A mistake here wasn't just slipping. It was losing all grip in an instant and slamming shoulder-first into the ground with the full weight of his body.
The early morning chill had already faded from his skin. Now there was only the faint sheen of sweat beginning to gather along his brow and trail down the side of his face. His breath came in a slow, practised rhythm, the kind that kept his core steady and his chakra flow unbroken.
He'd been at it for minutes now, the repetition drilling into him like a mantra. Each upward motion was a test of patience, each downward release a dare to not get sloppy. Somewhere around the twentieth rep, a fine tremor had started in his forearm; subtle, but there.
By the thirtieth pull-up, his upper arms burned, the warmth deep in the muscle bordering on the sharp edge of fatigue. He gritted his teeth, pushed through the last slow descent, and then, finally, let himself peel away from the tree.
His palm came free with a faint, satisfying pop.
He stepped back, flexing his fingers to ease the stiffness, rolling his wrist in a slow circle. The skin of his hand was flushed red where the bark had pressed into it, the chakra adhesion having left its mark as much as the physical pressure.
"Chakra pull-ups," he muttered under his breath, a half-smirk tugging at his lips. "Best thing I've come up with in months."
He stood there for a moment longer, rolling the thought over in his head, the faint throb in his arm serving as proof of just how much more effective, and more punishing, this was than the exercises Nono had given them.
He exhaled and let his gaze wander, his mind already drifting back over the last three months.
'Three months.'
It had been three months since Nono Yakushi had agreed to teach them. Three months since he'd thought, perhaps naively, that medical ninjutsu lessons would start with actual ninjutsu.
Instead, they hadn't learned a single ninjutsu.
If this had been Earth, he would've understood the slow pace; learning was linear there, safe, controlled, especially for people so young. But here? In the world of shinobi, where creating child soldiers was normalised? Here, Nono's measured, almost passive approach felt… off.
"I mean, she taught Kabuto early," Satoru muttered under his breath, plucking a stray blade of grass and twirling it between his fingers. "So why not us?"
The only answer he could come up with, other than the depressing one, was that maybe she thought they weren't ready. Or worse, that he wasn't ready.
After all, when it came to medical ninjutsu training, their progress had been less about doing and more about memorising. Hours spent poring over anatomical scrolls; learning muscle groups, organ functions, nerve clusters. Mapping tenketsu points across diagrams until they were etched into his brain.
It hadn't been hard for him. Back on Earth, he'd had a surface-level knowledge of biology. The shinobi version wasn't wildly different, except for chakra.
Chakra changed everything.
The way the tenketsu regulated flow; the feedback loop between coils and organs; the subtle ways chakra could stimulate, repair, or destroy muscles.
Still, he couldn't shake the feeling that they were crawling when they should be sprinting.
He let the blade of grass fall, watching it tumble on the breeze before catching against his knee.
If there was one area where he hadn't been forced to slow down, it was his physical conditioning.
Every morning, without fail, he'd worked his body. A hundred squats; a hundred push-ups; a hundred pull-ups.
The results were visible now. His arms had more definition; his legs carried him with smoother, springier steps; his shoulders no longer looked like a child's. For someone barely past toddler height in this body, he was strong.
A smirk tugged at his lips. "Didn't get a chance to run ten kilometres daily," he murmured, raising one hand to ruffle his hair.
"Maybe that's why I still have my hair."
His fingers sank into the soft strands, still thick, still full. A luxury he'd lost far too early in his first life.
Some things had been stranger than others.
In all this time, the Yamanaka clan hadn't contacted him. Not once. For someone with their blood in his veins, it was unsettling.
Worse, the Uchiha had been just as absent. No outreach, no curiosity.
That was the part that made his stomach knot. Before, he'd been banking on his strange 'social capital' with both clans, but three months of silence was an erosion of that plan.
The clock was ticking, and the clans either didn't know or didn't care he existed.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
'Maybe that's why Nono hasn't taught me anything. Maybe she's—'
"No," he muttered, shutting the thought down with a short shake of his head.
"Maybe this is for the best."
The words felt flat, even as he said them.
The sound of soft footsteps reached his ears; light, deliberate, crunching over the dew-laden grass.
He turned his head just as Ayano appeared from the orphanage's side path. She was dressed neatly, her dark hair tied back, a faint flush on her cheeks from the morning air.
"There you are," she said, her voice even but carrying a note of urgency. "You should get ready. We're about to leave."
Satoru blinked, then sat up straighter. "Right… I'll get ready."
As she turned to go, he rose to his feet, brushing grass from his trousers.
A small, crooked smile formed as a thought struck him.
'Ooh… I almost forgot. Today's the day the Academy finally opens.'
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