Your votes keep this climbing.
Thanks!
Five days slipped by without incident.
Umino Iruka ran a preliminary test on Konoha’s Nine Rookies, and that was about it.
July 1st, morning.
The Chunin Exams arrived on schedule.
Sunlight filtered through the leaves in broken patches, scattering light and shadow across the stone path outside the Ninja Academy.
Genin from every village had gathered here.
“Whoa, Sakura, you’re so late!” Naruto spotted her instantly through the crowd, his mess of blond hair bobbing as he threw up a wave.
“Yeah…
sorry.” Sakura returned the greeting and reached up to smooth her wind-scattered pink hair back into place.
There was a faint tiredness behind her eyes.
Sasuke was leaning against a stone pillar nearby.
His dark gaze settled on her face for a few seconds, something turning over behind his eyes.
[Sakura…
something’s off with her today.]
“Since everyone’s here, let’s get moving before it gets too crowded.” He pushed off the pillar and walked straight into the Academy without waiting.
“Ugh!”
With a dull thud and a muffled grunt, Rock Lee, bowl-cut hair and wide-eyed enthusiasm, hit the ground hard and came up coated in dust.
“Ha?
That’s your best?
And you think you’re ready for the Chunin Exams?
Maybe you should sit this one out, kid.”
Izumo Kamizuki and Kotetsu Hagane, who had used Transformation Jutsu (not that anyone could tell, they looked almost exactly the same as before; truly a technique deployed in the service of absolutely nothing), stood with arms crossed and contempt on their faces, staring down at the green-clad figure in the dirt.
“Yeah, yeah!
Little brats should go home and drink their mothers’ milk!”
“Kotetsu” followed up with a sneer, his smug expression making more than a few examinees quietly ball their fists.
“Are you okay, Lee?” A girl crouched beside him and helped him up.
The twin buns on the back of her head swayed with the motion.
“Please, let us through.” She got to her feet and met the two gatekeepers’ eyes, taking a step forward, expression earnest.
“We are fully capable of taking this exam.”
“Hmph.
Capability isn’t something you just claim out loud.”
“Izumo” raised his hand and swung it hard at the bun-haired girl’s face.
SLAP,
Tenten squeezed her eyes shut and braced for the impact.
It never came.
A massive metal bracer had appeared in front of her, catching the blow cold.
“You, ” “Izumo” barely registered the sting of the recoil.
He was too busy staring in shock at the wall of muscle standing between him and the girl.
Beside him, “Kotetsu” dropped the Transformation Jutsu entirely and snapped into a combat stance.
“Yare yare.
Fancy meeting you here, you two diligent jōnin.” (Calling a special jōnin just “jōnin” is like calling an assistant manager “manager”, technically a stretch, but socially smooth.
The man knows how to work a room.)
“I don’t mean to wreck your little act.
But standing by while someone slaps a cute girl…” A let the silence do its work.
“That’s not something I can manage.”
[Cu, cute…] Tenten peeked up at the broad back shielding her and felt heat flood her cheeks. New chapters come out on g.com first.
Girls her age dreamed about romance.
Unlike Sakura’s specific, burning obsession with Sasuke, Tenten’s feelings toward Neji were barely a murmur, something warm and formless that hadn’t even crystallized into a real crush yet.
Closer to friendship than anything else.
Then, without warning, a man built like a small mountain had stepped in front of her and called her cute.
It was like someone had fired a Patriot missile into a perfectly still lake.
The surface shattered outward in ripples of pure, flustered embarrassment.
“Tenten.
Hey.
Tenten!” Lee stared at his teammate, drifting gaze, crimson cheeks, and genuinely could not process what he was seeing.
Come on, what are you blushing for?!
We’re pretending to be pushovers, not actually pushovers!
Why are you pulling the helpless maiden routine right now?!
“Oh, sorry, Lee.
I zoned out.” Tenten snapped back at the sound of her name and immediately dropped her gaze to the ground.
“Izumo” let his Transformation Jutsu dissolve with a POP and exhaled.
“Lord Raikage, you’ve thoroughly derailed everything we had in motion.”
Kotetsu peeled back the bandages on his face, looking resigned.
“Yes.
We could have screened out half the faint-hearted examinees right here.
Now the Chunin Exams have become considerably more of a headache.”
A hadn’t said a word yet.
It didn’t matter, the crowd behind him had already exploded.
“Wait — Raikage?!
Did I hear that right?!”
“The Raikage is here in Konoha?!
I can smell a conspiracy—”
“Forget that, did you catch what they said?
An act?
A stage?
We’ve been played!”
Then Sasuke pushed through the crowd, Naruto and Sakura a half-step behind.
“Now that this farce is over,” he said, flat and unhurried, “dispel the genjutsu barrier.
We’re going to the third floor.”
The noise died instantly.
Every head turned toward him.
“…What’s this guy talking about?”
Murmurs rippled through the crowd.
Izumo and Kotetsu exchanged a glance, and something that looked almost like admiration crossed their faces.
“Oh?
So you picked up on it.”
Sasuke’s lips curved.
He turned his head slightly.
“Sakura, you were probably first, weren’t you?
Your analysis and genjutsu knowledge are the strongest on our team.”
Something warm flickered in her chest.
[Thank you, Sasuke.] She raised her chin.
“Obviously.
I noticed ages ago.” She pointed at the room sign.
“Because this is the second floor.”
Naruto grinned like the sun coming out.
“Yosh!”
“Heh.
Not bad perception on these newcomers.”
“Release!” Izumo lifted a single finger.
The genjutsu peeled away like morning mist, revealing the room number in full,
201.
“What—”
“It was genjutsu this whole time!
We actually got played!”
The crowd erupted again, faces red, voices climbing over each other.
Sasuke shook his head and started toward the staircase.
WHOOSH,
Wind pressure.
Sasuke’s pupils constricted.
He spun,
A green bodysuit.
Right behind him.
Out of nowhere.
[That speed, ]
The pale-eyed boy standing near Tenten frowned and called across the hallway.
“Hey.
That wasn’t the plan.
Didn’t you say you didn’t want to attract attention?
That you didn’t want anyone on guard?”
Tenten, meanwhile, hadn’t noticed any of it.
She was still sneaking glances at A where he stood chatting with the two gatekeepers, cheeks pink, expression somewhere far away.
On the other side of the hallway, Sakura felt her heart nearly launch itself out of her chest.
She stood frozen, staring at the figure that had materialized directly in front of her.
A kappa.
An actual kappa.
(He was such a cute kid back in the day.
What a waste.)
“You’re Sakura, right?” The bowl-cut, this earnest, green-clad kappa, straightened to his full height and pressed a fist to his chest, expression dead serious.
“My name is Rock Lee.
Please go out with me.
I will protect you with everything I have!”
➤ Next: Neji Hyuga’s Revenge
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
✨ 4 new chapters released every single day.