Thud.
The moment his feet touched solid ground, the scene before his eyes was no longer the cramped interior of the wardrobe.
Shiranui Rei stroked the Flying Thunder God seal engraved on the wall and let out a long sigh of relief.
At the critical moment, it seemed that the pressure of the crisis had forced him to break through his potential.
He had finally managed to activate the Flying Thunder God Technique again.
This time, there had been no deviation in the coordinates.
He had landed securely beside the wall bearing the Flying Thunder God seal.
But before he could even celebrate, his heart was still pounding from the fright.
“The Third Hokage and Jiraiya-sensei both warned me that this technique could be deadly and that I had to be extremely careful. I didn’t expect it to be quite this deadly…”
Shiranui Rei muttered to himself.
He had been extremely cautious, constantly guarding against the fatal dangers involved in learning Flying Thunder God.
He had avoided death.
But he had almost failed to avoid social death.
At that moment, there seemed to be some noise from the living room, as though someone had just landed there.
A burst of panicked movement also came from inside the bedroom.
After the sounds subsided, roughly half a minute passed before the girl’s voice finally rang out.
She was pretending to sound calm, but there was a faint hint of uncertainty in her tone.
“Rei-kun, did the noise from me cleaning disturb you?”
“Ah, no.”
Shiranui Rei’s expression was slightly strange.
“That sound just now was me practicing a ninjutsu.”
“That’s good…”
“…”
Standing in the living room, Shiranui Rei seemed to faintly hear Uchiha Mikoto let out a sigh of relief.
The strange murmuring and suppressed breathing he had heard inside the wardrobe moments ago still seemed to echo beside his ears.
The implications behind those sounds made his head feel a little hot.
He shook his head and forced himself to focus on the Flying Thunder God seal on the wall in front of him.
Then he took several steps backward, once again increasing the distance between himself and the seal.
“The second spatial jump did indeed bring me to the location of the seal, exactly as described in the Second Hokage’s training method.”
“So, does that mean I’ve already learned it?”
Shiranui Rei’s black eyes seemed to contain the stars of the night sky, shining brightly with excitement.
Judging from the warnings given by the Third Hokage and Jiraiya, those who had failed before either could not sense their Flying Thunder God seals at all, or they had failed during their first one or two attempts.
Their bodies would suffer severe damage from spatial distortion, and some had even become lost in space.
Although Shiranui Rei’s first activation of Flying Thunder God had resulted in a deviation from the intended coordinates, he had still landed safely.
And his second activation had sent him accurately to the vicinity of the Flying Thunder God seal.
If that wasn’t success, then what was?
He had crossed the threshold.
From here on, all he needed was constant practice.
With his current strength as a jonin, combined with his future mastery of Flying Thunder God, his prospects were practically limitless!
He had succeeded on his second attempt.
There was no reason his third attempt would fail.
With that thought in mind, Shiranui Rei decided to consolidate what he had learned today.
With a thought, he once again used his spatial perception to establish a connection with the Flying Thunder God formula engraved on the wall ahead.
A flash of black light appeared.
The living room was empty once again.
…
“…”
Lying on the floor with an utterly defeated expression, Shiranui Rei stared at the underside of the bed, barely half an arm’s length from the tip of his nose.
He slowly closed his eyes, beginning to question his life choices.
I achieved an impressive time of 0.01 seconds in the bed-identification championship.
Why don’t you come give it a try?
There was no way he could fail to recognize the bed he had slept in for so many years.
Lying on the cold floor, Shiranui Rei fell into deep thought.
So his third attempt at Flying Thunder God had failed again.
The coordinates had once more deviated, sending him beneath the bed in his bedroom.
The only thing worth being thankful for was that Mikoto seemed to have already cleaned the floor beneath the bed.
There wasn’t a speck of dust.
Shiranui Rei carefully shifted his head slightly toward the outside.
From the corner of his eye, he could see a pair of fair little feet walking around the bedroom in cream-colored slippers.
Ever since the Second Shinobi World War had ended and Mikoto had first visited him to thank him for saving her life, she had occasionally come by to visit.
Sometimes she brought small gifts she had made herself, and other times she brought things she had purchased.
Shiranui Rei had originally lived alone.
For convenience, after completing one of his missions, he had picked out a pair of women’s slippers in exactly the right size and placed them by the entrance.
A few days later, Mikoto happened to visit again with some freshly made pastries.
She had stared blankly at the brand-new pair of women’s slippers on the floor for a long time.
The only thing Shiranui Rei remembered was that after putting on those slippers, Mikoto-san seemed to wear a gentle smile throughout the entire day.
But that memory ended there.
Right now, the most important thing was getting out from underneath the bed.
Hearing the sounds of Mikoto diligently cleaning the room, Shiranui Rei also breathed a sigh of relief.
“As expected, I must have simply heard wrong earlier. There was no way Mikoto-san could…”
His thought abruptly stopped.
Shiranui Rei’s expression stiffened as he felt the girl’s light body slowly settle onto the soft mattress directly above him.
“Rei-kun’s scent…”
Mikoto’s fair, delicate cheek pressed tightly against the neatly folded bedding.
Her eyes were hazy, with a hint of shyness in them.
Her slender fingers pinched the corner of the bedsheet and gently rubbed it between them.
If Shiranui Rei hadn’t happened to be lying directly beneath the bed, he probably wouldn’t have been able to hear that almost inaudible whisper.
This time, he could no longer deceive himself.
Shiranui Rei remained silent.
After secretly sighing to himself, he activated the Flying Thunder God Technique once again.
This time, everything went exceptionally smoothly.
His ability to sense space seemed to be strengthening with every attempt, and activating Flying Thunder God was becoming increasingly natural.
There was no deviation in the coordinates.
He once again appeared beside the wall in the living room.
Yet there was no joy in his heart at how rapidly his mastery of Flying Thunder God was improving.
Instead, his mind was filled with the suppressed passion he had just sensed from the girl.
After three years together, especially with how frequently they had interacted over the past year or two, the two of them had developed considerable affection for each other.
But feelings were never that simple.
Neither of them had ever pierced through that thin layer of unspoken emotion between them.
Normally, although he had never deliberately avoided it, Shiranui Rei had not actively responded to the subtle signs of affection Mikoto had shown whenever they interacted.
It wasn’t that he had no feelings for her.
It was simply that he always felt a faint sense of urgency following close behind him.
The major events that awaited him in the future were like a pack of wolves constantly at his heels, ready to tear him to pieces at any moment.
The strength of a jonin was far from enough.
Even his future friend Minato, despite possessing Kage-level strength, would eventually die amid the chaos caused by the Nine-Tails’ attack on Konoha.
So it was only after personally experiencing it just now that Shiranui Rei realized how much emotion Uchiha Mikoto had already been suppressing in her heart without receiving any response.
“Should I make a change now, too?”
Shiranui Rei stared absentmindedly at the Flying Thunder God formula on the wall.
The thought suddenly surfaced in his mind.
It wasn’t merely because Mikoto’s suppressed emotions had touched him.
It was also because, after gaining an initial mastery of the Flying Thunder God Technique, he had finally taken another step toward placing his own fate firmly in his hands.