Koharu listened through it once, then read over Chiba’s handwritten notes a second time, and tried the technique herself.
It actually worked.
She could hardly believe it.
Was there really a child this brilliant walking around in the world?
“Chiba, this—how did you even work this out?”
Kanpō stared, dumbstruck.
“It’s nothing much, really.
My perception’s fairly sharp, so I tested each seal one at a time, noted roughly what effect adding it had on the technique, and then grouped them by pairing.”
“…”
Kanpō was completely lost.
Perception?
Wait—
Could chakra even be perceived that directly?
Koharu looked at him with real surprise.
“You have sensory abilities?”
“Nothing especially strong.
Short range, and other people’s chakra fluctuations are hard to pick up on.
My own is clearer, at least.”
What Chiba didn’t mention was this—
Within roughly half a step, he could sense the rough contours of chakra flow.
Just now, when Koharu had gone through her seals, he’d been able to trace, in broad strokes, how her refined chakra moved through her pathways.
If he’d wanted to strike her in that moment, he could have driven a compressed chakra needle straight into the general location of a pathway.
But that alone, in Chiba’s own estimation, fell well short of a real success.
The efficiency was terrible.
If he could get that close to someone, he could just stab them outright—why bother with a chakra needle to disrupt or seal off a pathway when a plain blade would do the job faster?
That would be putting on pants just to take them off again.
Koharu went quiet.
Nothing especially strong, he’d said.
Sensory ability wasn’t something you picked up at the corner shop.
What an understatement.
Koharu quietly ran a few tests of her own, some successful, some not, but enough of them landed to confirm the method actually worked, and she couldn’t keep the excitement entirely out of her voice.
“Boy, you’re a genius.
Stay on at the hospital!”
“I’d rather not, honestly.
I still want to become a shinobi.
Coming to the hospital has only ever been about learning medicine and anatomy—I never meant to become a full medical-nin.”
Chiba shook his head.
Kanpō let out a disappointed sigh.
He and Koharu exchanged a glance and sighed together.
It really was a shame the boy couldn’t manage medical ninjutsu.
That was the one real flaw in an otherwise perfect picture.
Clearly.
Koharu had come to the same realization—that outburst a moment ago had been a rash thing to say, born of excitement rather than good sense.
Beyond that, keeping a boy this talented pinned down purely because his chakra scalpel and needle work happened to be exceptional would be a real loss to the shinobi world, and to Konoha as a whole.
Confining him to medical work alone would be a genuine waste of what he could become.
“Adding the extra seals did lower the difficulty on your technique, but it’s still A-rank at heart, and even among those in the medical division who manage to learn it, few will have hands as steady as yours.”
“Here’s what we’ll do—keep the specially appointed post regardless.
It’ll give you a standing to work from while you pursue whatever else you have in mind these next while.”
Kanpō said, his tone gentle.
“As for pay, we’ll allot you half the standard medical-nin salary, whether or not you’re actively at the hospital.”
Koharu added.
“Thank you, Advisor Utatane.
Kanpō.”
Chiba felt a small surge of satisfaction.
Now we’re talking money—I’m wide awake for that part.
The bodhi seed gave him talent well beyond the ordinary, sure, but as a non-shinobi and a war orphan besides, his only income came from a handful of village stipends.
Life wasn’t unbearable, exactly, but nowhere near enough to fund the kunai, materials, and experimentation his research demanded.
He wasn’t sure yet how much the pay would actually amount to, but it beat empty talk of ideals any day.
Once the technical discussion wrapped up, Koharu spent a while longer painting a rosy picture of the future, talking until her throat ran dry before finally letting Chiba go.
For the sake of the salary, he sat through all of it without complaint.
Leaving the office, he went to find Kitayama Sho.
Sure enough—
She was already deep into studying the chakra needle herself, and she flushed slightly at the sight of him, apparently a little embarrassed to be caught secretly practicing her own student’s technique.
Chiba saw through it and said nothing, instead trading her the improved version of the technique for a scroll—
The Extraction Technique.
Hiruzen’s earlier comment had stuck with him.
Even where he couldn’t learn a technique outright, the underlying principle behind it could still be borrowed.
The Extraction Technique was a case in point.
He’d never be able to replicate its effect of drawing out poison or the source of an illness, but he could take the “extraction” mechanic itself and repurpose it—pairing it with chakra to draw out blood, or perhaps even an opponent’s own chakra, down the line.
Of course, that was still only a rough idea for now.
Turning it into something real would take a good deal more work.
With no instructor currently assigning him tasks, Chiba spent a while unsure what to do with himself, wandering the medical division with a book in hand, reading as he went, suddenly with time on his hands.
Not until the afternoon, when a surgery came up, did he tag along again.
The medical-nin, predictably, made no objection.
The “specially appointed shinobi” title, in the end, was just that—a title.
Chiba still didn’t even have a proper headband to his name, and he figured he’d eventually have to sit through a real shinobi exam of some kind regardless.
He’d never planned on staying long anyway, so none of that bothered him.
With this new standing, Chiba found himself smoothly folded into a string of operations and follow-up patient care.
Still.
Within a day, one more item had found its way onto his daily schedule—
Swordsmanship.
He’d earlier traded his insight and technique behind the chakra threads for a sword from Tenten’s family shop.
Tenten was true to her word—she’d gone home, explained the arrangement, and her father had sent the sword over to Chiba’s place that very day, along with an offer to teach him swordsmanship personally.
The techniques from Tenten’s family weren’t especially advanced—just some basic fundamentals.
But.
A journey of a thousand miles began with a single step, and fundamentals were exactly what Chiba needed right now.
A month or so passed.
The stir caused by a twelve-year-old “leading surgery” gradually faded, and Chiba’s regular presence at the hospital stopped drawing the kind of starstruck attention that had followed him everywhere at first.
Over this stretch of time, Chiba used his access to absorb a considerable amount of medical knowledge and anatomy, developing a real feel for muscle structure and chakra pathways.
Recently he’d turned his attention to developing a medicinal broth for physical conditioning.
Except—
The formulas always fell just short of what he wanted.
After asking around for a good while, Chiba finally got a lead from Kitayama Sho—the Nara clan were the true specialists in pharmacology.
Most of Konoha’s earliest pharmacological knowledge had, in fact, come out of the Nara clan originally.
As it happened, he’d saved Nara Shikae’s life, and he’d crossed paths with both Shikaku and Shikamaru before.
Things hadn’t gone especially smoothly with the latter, but at least they weren’t strangers.
“Shikamaru.”
“Hm?”
“You’ve got a bit over a year left before graduation.
Ever thought about pushing yourself, graduating early, and studying in another department?”
Shikaku had a rare stretch of free time and used it to talk with his son.
Shikamaru propped his chin on one hand, looking thoroughly unmotivated, and didn’t answer right away—he let two seconds of silence pass before finally saying, “I did, at first.”
“With your head, you could manage it easily enough.”
“Too much trouble.” Shikamaru sighed.
“Graduating early sounds great and all, but then I think about it—more coursework after that, probably more evaluations, more assignments, more reports to file.
Once I really thought it through, I lost interest.”
“…”
Shikaku had nothing to say to that.
Every other kid saw early graduation as pure glory—leave school behind, get more free time to enjoy yourself.
This one, alone, had looked straight past the glory and seen only more work and more pressure waiting on the other side.
Being too clever wasn’t necessarily a blessing.
Shikaku thought it over for a moment, about to press the point further, when something occurred to him and he smiled instead.
“Didn’t you ask about Yanagyū Chiba the other day?”
“Huh?”
Shikamaru looked mildly baffled.
He’d only asked once, after getting hauled back over the wall by the guy’s chakra threads that one time.
Why bring it up now, out of nowhere?
“You’ll get the chance to actually meet him today.”