“Lord Third, I’d like to take him on myself.
I extended the ANBU invitation the other day, but he hasn’t come to see either of us since.
Sounds like he’s turned it down.”
“Ha, Kakashi, take a look at this.”
Hiruzen’s eyes crinkled with amusement.
“What is it?”
Kakashi took the paper from him.
Not a scroll.
A formal proposal document.
Proposal: “Vitality-Enhancing Medicinal Soak.”
This was—
He read through it carefully.
Rapid fatigue relief.
Accelerated bodily absorption.
A compound like this—
If it actually worked as described, physical conditioning would speed up dramatically compared to before.
“Chiba’s work?”
“Mm.”
Hiruzen nodded, leaned back in his chair, and let out a long sigh.
“Kakashi, if I were ten years younger, I wouldn’t hesitate for a second.
I’d take him on as my own student, right now.”
“…”
I feel like you’re hinting at something here.
Kakashi thought privately.
He picked the proposal back up and read it over again.
“What’s the cost look like?”
“He tried five different formulas and submitted the two cheapest.
Weaker effect, sure, but cheap enough that even a genin could afford it without much strain.”
That was the part Hiruzen appreciated most.
Coming from a commoner background, Chiba never weighed effectiveness alone—cost mattered just as much to him, every time, from the soldier pills straight through to this medicinal soak.
Kakashi felt himself torn.
He was genuinely impressed by Chiba—the boy’s ability, his character, his mind, all of it left Kakashi more than a little stunned.
If he was honest, Chiba was the closest thing to a student he’d actually wanted to take on in his entire life.
“If you’re worried about Naruto, I don’t think you need to be.”
Hiruzen said with a smile.
“Why’s that?”
Kakashi didn’t follow.
“I’ll grant you some latitude—you won’t need to follow the usual process.
Give it a year.
Do you think you could bring Chiba up to chūnin level in that time?”
“That’s—”
Kakashi understood what Hiruzen was getting at.
One year.
Bring Chiba up to a proper chūnin, and then Kakashi would be free to step back, ready to return and take Naruto’s team on later if that turned out to need doing.
Actually not a bad arrangement, when he thought it through.
He was still weighing it when Hiruzen added another piece.
“I’m old, but I can still offer some guidance here and there myself.
The rest, I’ll need you to handle.”
Hiruzen was worried about Chiba being led down the wrong path.
In terms of raw talent, the only things Chiba genuinely lacked were nature transformation and genjutsu.
In every other respect, his gift bordered on the absurd—every bit the equal of the Second Hokage in his prime.
All the boy needed was someone to point him in the right direction, to keep him from ending up like Orochimaru.
Guy wasn’t the right fit for that.
At the very least, Chiba wasn’t suited to Guy’s blunt-force approach to teaching.
“Understood.
I’ll take on the evaluation myself, then.”
“Senior Kitayama.”
“There’s a new project.
We’ll need everyone running a week of continuous observation—”
“What project?”
The whole room crowded around at once.
Byakusō, slower on her feet, ended up shoved to the back of the group.
Kitayama Sho gave them a quick rundown.
“A medicinal soak formula.
Lord Hokage’s already approved it for trial, and if testing goes well, it’ll be cleared for public sale.”
“A formula?”
Everyone had heard of medicinal soaks before, but most versions on the market belonged to the nobility, and honestly weren’t especially effective.
They crowded in closer.
By the time they’d read through it, the room had gone quiet, everyone exchanging glances.
No wonder Chiba had been running back and forth to the Nara compound lately—he’d been working on this.
Which meant the Nara clan had a stake in this formula too?
Now there was an opening.
Their own cut would only be the actual brewing work, but this was clearly a business with real legs, and the labor involved—testing, follow-up compounding—wasn’t much to speak of.
Enthusiasm swept through the room at once.
“That kid’s too clever for his own good.
Shame he can’t use medical ninjutsu.”
“Isn’t that the truth.”
“Comparing yourself to someone like him will just make you miserable!”
Hōshō and Nanshiki muttered to each other, low enough not to carry.
Byakusō let out a quiet laugh to herself.
Compare yourselves to him?
Go ahead, if you want to.
That kid was practically a reincarnation of the Second Hokage.
Measuring yourself against someone like that was just asking for a headache.
She kept the thought to herself and went quietly to copy down the formula for testing.
By the time Chiba reached the hospital, the whole division was already in motion, the entire lab thick with medicinal fumes—stronger, even, than the locker room had been that other day.
Everyone throwing themselves into it.
Good.
He was satisfied.
That meant he could step back and not have to worry too much about this one himself.
Chiba sat down, turning over what to work on next, and let his mind settle on the bodhi seed in his awareness.
One groove.
Two—
Sure enough, a new pattern had appeared.
Still faint for now, but noticeably longer than the short mark from the soldier pills.
So.
Length correlated to potential future impact?
That seemed to be the rule.
This groove’s potential rivaled the chakra needle’s.
He just had no idea yet what the payoff would actually be.
Chiba wandered the hospital for a while, found nothing that particularly called to him, and headed straight out to run instead.
The days that followed settled into a fairly dull rhythm.
Read, train, sleep, over and over.
He did notice, though, that his old classmates had gotten unusually diligent lately—even Lee had started buckling down to study.
Exam season, maybe?
He happened to be passing the Academy and, checking the time, decided to duck in and see.
Sure enough.
The school sat in complete silence, everyone bent over their desks in earnest concentration.
Down on the training grounds outside, though, a handful of students were training on their own—Tenten among them.
Neji, on the other hand—
Chiba scanned the grounds, then walked over.
“Tenten.”
“Oh, Chiba?
What are you doing here—not at the medical division today?”
Tenten looked mildly surprised.
Chiba used to come by weekly to file his report; once he’d become a specially appointed shinobi, even that requirement had been waived.
Aside from passing through during his runs, he had little reason to visit the Academy anymore.
So.
Tenten had more or less gotten used to thinking of him as already graduated and gone.
Seeing him again felt oddly out of place.
“Just passing through on a run.
Noticed Lee hasn’t been training much lately, so I figured exams must be coming up.
How’d it go?”
“Eh, decent enough, I think.
No worries about graduating, at least.”
Tenten pressed her lips together in a small smile.
“Good to hear.
Where’s Neji?”
Chiba scanned the yard again, but there was no sign of him.
He and Neji hadn’t crossed paths much during his time at the Academy, but Neji’s scores had trailed only just behind his own—there was no way he’d still be sitting exams like everyone else.
“He graduated early too, actually.
Happened last month.
You were probably too buried in whatever you were working on to hear about it.”
Tenten said.
Chiba thought back.
Right—he’d been deep in his books around then, working through the vitality soak formula.
No wonder he’d missed it.
“Never mind that.
Anyway, he’s been acting strange lately—every time your name comes up, he just clenches his fists off to the side and goes quiet with anger.
Let’s not talk about him.
What have you been up to?
Still at the hospital?”
Tenten’s expression turned distinctly complicated the moment Neji’s name came up.
Chiba wasn’t quite sure what to say to that.
Was this really so unexpected?
He hadn’t gone out of his way to target the guy or anything.
Oh.
Right—without him around, Neji would have been the Academy’s top student by a clear margin, and these days barely anyone even remembered Neji was supposed to be the prodigy of his year.
That did track, actually.
He shook the thought off, deciding not to dwell on it.
“These days I mostly just wander through the hospital when I feel like it, show up when someone actually needs me.
Mostly I read, train, and work on my research.
Pretty relaxed, honestly.”