The morning mist still hung low over the secondary Hyūga training grounds, clinging to the damp grass. Akira stood in a quiet, isolated corner of the dirt clearing, balanced lightly on his toes. A wooden target was pinned to a massive cedar tree exactly two hundred meters away.
With a sharp flick of his wrist, a standard iron shuriken left his fingers. It cut through the cold air with a faint hiss, thudding perfectly into the dead center of the bullseye.
"Hey! Akira!"
A loud shout broke the morning quiet. Hyūga Ichigo came jogging into the clearing, adjusting his canvas training gear. Hyūga Bai followed right behind him, her hands tucked into her pockets, her pale eyes scanning the distant target.
"Two hundred meters?" Bai raised an eyebrow, looking from Akira to the tree. "That's double the Academy requirement for our year. Since when can you throw that far?"
Akira simply picked up another shuriken from his pouch. "The wind is low today. It makes the trajectory predictable. Did you both finish your morning text summaries?"
"Don't remind me," Ichigo groaned, pulling out his own practice weapons. "My dad kept me up until midnight drilling footwork. Come on, let us join in. I bet I can hit the inner ring from here."
For the next half hour, the three classmates filled the clearing with the steady thud-thud-thud of flying iron. Ichigo's throws drifted slightly to the left, while Bai's hits were accurate but lacked the raw velocity to pierce deeply at that distance. Akira, maintaining his usual mask, intentionally caused every third throw of his own to nick the outer edge, keeping his average look intact.
"Alright, enough throwing," Ichigo suddenly said, dropping his pouch and wiping the sweat from his forehead. He grinned, cracking his knuckles. "Hey, Akira. Bai and I were talking on the way here. You handled that Uchiha kid so easily last week, but you haven't sparred with us using real clan techniques yet."
Bai stepped forward, her loose stance instantly shifting into something far more rigid. "He's right. Let us see how you handle the real deal. Both of us against you. No academy rules."
Akira looked at them, his expression completely blank. "A two-on-one match within the clan grounds will draw attention if someone walks by."
"Nobody comes to the secondary rings at this hour," Bai insisted. "Come on, Akira. Don't hide behind that polite face."
"Fine," Akira murmured. He stepped back, but instead of raising his fists or dropping into the traditional Gentle Fist posture, he simply bent down and picked up a thin, snapped cedar branch from the dirt, breaking it down until it was the length of a short stylus.
Ichigo blinked. "A stick? Seriously?"
"Begin when you are ready," Akira said softly.
Ichigo and Bai exchanged a quick, sharp nod. In unison, their eyes narrowed, the veins around their temples bulging slightly as they forced their chakra to circulate.
"Eight Trigrams Thirty-Two Palms!" they shouted together.
They lunged from opposite sides, their movements synchronized as their palms cut through the air, aimed directly at Akira's major chakra pathways. The strikes were fast, sharp, and carried the genuine weight of noble clan training.
To Akira, the field of view was completely different. His mind mapped the overlapping trajectories instantly. As Ichigo's first palm swiped toward his shoulder, Akira simply leaned his torso back by a fraction of an inch, letting the strike brush past his shirt. Simultaneously, Bai's palm cut upward toward his ribs. Akira pivoted on his left heel, his movement so fluid it looked like a shadow drifting out of reach.
He didn't strike back with force. He didn't use the Gentle Fist.
Tap. Tap.
The small cedar stick in Akira's hand flicked twice like lightning. The wooden tip struck the exact center of Ichigo's shoulder joint, then immediately dropped to tap the side of Bai's knee—striking the precise, unprotected pressure points with microscopic accuracy.
The effect was instantaneous. Ichigo's arm went entirely numb, his balance shattering as he collapsed heavily into the dirt. A second later, Bai's leg gave out beneath her, and she fell hard beside him, clutching her knee in sheer disbelief.
The clearing fell into a stunned silence.
"What... what did you just do?" Ichigo stared up from the ground, his eyes wide with a mixture of shock and frustration. "My whole arm feels like lead. I couldn't even see your hand move."
Bai sat in the dirt, staring at the grass, her hands trembling slightly. "Thirty-two palms... we've been drilling that sequence every night for two years. Our parents said it was the pride of the branch family. Is our entire training just meaningless?"
"Why are you so strong, Akira?" Ichigo complained loudly, trying to rub the feeling back into his shoulder. "You don't even attend the evening compound drills!"
Akira lowered the small stick, his face remaining perfectly calm. "Your forms are correct, but your execution is predictable. You are focused on the memorized sequence instead of the target in front of you. And you are not training hard enough."
"Not training hard enough?!" Ichigo wailed. "I run five miles a day!"
"Let's just eat," Bai muttered, her pride clearly stung as she pushed herself up into a sitting position. "My brain hurts."
Akira didn't argue. He reached into his canvas bag and brought out two neatly packed, insulated homemade meal boxes, handing them over. The moment Ichigo snapped the lid off, his complaints vanished. The box was packed with perfectly seasoned, crispy chicken pieces, sweet glazed vegetables, and perfectly cooked rice.
"Oh my god," Ichigo mumbled, shoving a massive piece of chicken into his mouth. "This is incredible. My house food doesn't taste like anything at all compared to this. The cooks at the main estate just boil everything."
"It's because they only care about nutritional balance, idiot," Bai said, though she was eating just as fast, her eyes widening slightly at the flavor. "Where did you learn to season meat like this, Akira?"
"I simply read the marketplace manuals," Akira replied, opening his own box containing a simple meal of fried pork rice.
Once the boxes were nearly cleared, Akira reached back into his bag and pulled out a thick, slightly weathered parchment scroll. He unrolled it on the grass between them, revealing a dense grid of geometric arrays and handwritten ink instructions.
Ichigo leaned over, his mouth still full. "What's that? A secret clan scroll?"
"No," Akira said, pointing to the primary formula block. "These are the fundamental instructions for creating a standard paper bomb. I am studying the ink stability required to balance the explosive tags."
Ichigo and Bai both looked at the scroll, then looked up at Akira with identical expressions of complete boredom.
"Boo," Ichigo said, waving his chopsticks dismissively. "Basic academy logistics? That's what the supply corps handles, Akira. Why are you wasting time writing paper bomb formulas when you can literally trip people with a stick?"
"It's boring," Bai agreed, shaking her head. "A shinobi should focus on refining their dōjutsu, not playing with ink and gunpowder like a civilian merchant."
Akira didn't say a word. He simply rolled the scroll back up, tied the leather strap around it, and slipped it quietly back into his bag. Their dismissal was exactly what he wanted; the less interest they took in his private research, the safer his home laboratory remained.
"Speaking of geniuses," Ichigo said, leaning back against a wooden post and changing the subject. "Did you hear the older students talking near the gates yesterday? The Uchiha clan has a real monster entering the field soon."
Akira paused, his chopsticks halfway to his mouth. "A monster?"
"Yeah," Ichigo said, his voice dropping to a lower, slightly envious tone. "Itachi Uchiha. He's only a few years older than us, but people are saying he mastered the Sharingan at an impossible age, and is already operating on high-level missions. They're calling him the ultimate genius of their clan."
"Wait, what do you mean he's far above our level?" Ichigo snorted, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand when Akira murmured a small response. "Akira, the guy is literally sitting three rows away from me. He's in the exact same class as Bai and me in Class 1A."
Akira paused, his fingers resting on the strap of his canvas bag. He kept his face perfectly still, but his mind instantly recalculated the timeline.
Itachi is in Class 1A? Right now?
"He's in your class?" Akira asked, keeping his voice entirely casual, as if he were just making polite conversation. "I thought the clan genius would have skipped ahead or been placed on a private track by now."
"The Uchiha elders wanted him to have a standard foundation first, or some political garbage like that," Bai explained, leaning back on her hands and looking thoroughly annoyed. "But honestly, it's just irritating. The teachers treat him like he walks on water. During the shuriken test yesterday, he didn't even look at the targets. He threw four at once, bounced them off each other in mid-air, and hit every single bullseye around a blind corner."
"Yeah, the civilian girls in our class don't even talk about Rio anymore," Ichigo added, rolling his eyes. "They just stare at the back of Itachi's head all day. But the guy doesn't say a word to anyone. He just sits there by the window, looking out at the sky like he's completely somewhere else."
Akira nodded slowly, slipping his canvas bag over his shoulder.
Itachi Uchiha. The prodigy who would eventually slaughter his entire lineage to prevent a civil war, a tragic pawn trapped between the dark politics of the village elders and the pride of his own bloodline. Knowing he was physically present in the building, just a few classrooms away from Class 3A, changed the threat matrix entirely. A genius with that level of perception would notice even the slightest anomaly in the student body.
"Sounds like a lot of trouble to deal with," Akira said softly, standing up and brushing a stray blade of grass off his trousers. "I am glad I am in Class 3A. The drama there is much simpler."
"You're telling me," Ichigo laughed, picking up his empty lunch box. "Anyway, we need to move. If we're late for the morning gate check, Daichi-sensei will make us do extra laps, and my legs are already dead from that stick you used."
"Let's go," Bai said, swinging her bag onto her shoulder and heading toward the compound exit.
Akira fell into step beside them, his gaze fixed straight ahead. The pieces of the grand board were already moving, much closer than he had anticipated. He would need to make sure his mask of absolute mediocrity remained completely flawless.