Chiba had no idea what had gone on back at the Academy.
Still.
A week later, when he went in to file his report, Tenten mentioned it to him—that day, the school had put together an exam not just for their class, but for the year below them as well.
Hiruzen had made his terms public: anyone who could hit a perfect score and clear the second-round test would get the same offer, early graduation to pursue their own studies.
As it turned out, not a single student managed it.
Not even Neji.
So the whole matter quietly died down after that.
Chiba returned to the medical division.
“Sensei, I’ve finished the basics of pharmacology too.
I’d like to look at something deeper.”
“Already?”
Kitayama Sho blinked, caught off guard for a moment.
She looked him over, not entirely convinced.
“You didn’t just skim through it, did you?”
“I remember all of it.”
“Bold claim.
Fine, let’s test that.”
She took the pharmacology text back from him, a faint smile tugging at her mouth, then set it down and picked up the medical theory book from before as well.
She laid both books on the desk, flipped to random pages, and began quizzing him on individual points, no particular order to any of it.
Chiba thought for a moment each time, then answered without much trouble.
He worked through question after question.
Kitayama Sho’s eyes widened slightly, her expression shifting toward outright disbelief, and she started jumping between the two books at random, no logic to the sequence at all—but it made no difference to Chiba.
Half an hour later, she was shaking her head in amazement, tinged with something like regret.
If only he could learn ninjutsu.
With talent like this, he could have grown into a truly remarkable medical-nin.
That was what Kitayama Sho found herself thinking.
Chiba, for his part, didn’t seem bothered by any of it.
The light sphere had taken away his capacity for ninjutsu, but it had given him something else in return—and, unless he was imagining it, the sphere itself seemed to have shrunk a little since.
“You take it well, at least.
All right, let me find something suited to you.”
Kitayama Sho turned, pulled out a book on anatomy, thought it over, then opened a drawer and took out a small box.
From inside it, she produced a scroll.
“What’s this?”
“A recipe for soldier pills.
Starting next week, study the theory and try your hand at actually making some.”
She smiled as she said it.
Chiba felt a rush of surprise and delight all at once, taking the scroll and reading through it carefully.
The formula wasn’t complicated.
He had it memorized in no time.
“Thank you, sensei!”
Same field, more or less, as anatomy in my old life—but different enough to notice.
Chiba finished reading through the material once.
By the time he’d worked through all three books, he had a general grasp of how medicine worked in Konoha.
There was pharmacological support, but the bulk of treatment relied on medical ninjutsu, and surgical procedure followed the same pattern—which meant the underlying knowledge and the way operations were actually carried out here diverged quite a bit from what he’d known before.
Soldier pills, though, had given him some new ideas.
The current version was too much of a jack-of-all-trades.
Staving off hunger and restoring stamina, both crammed into a single pill.
That was fine in principle, but it made the thing expensive, and prone to overuse.
Sometimes a shinobi didn’t need a large stamina boost in a short window at all.
Other times, that was exactly what they needed, and fast.
The two functions ought to be split apart.
Chiba brought his idea to Kitayama Sho.
She gave a faint smile, not taking it too seriously, but outwardly she encouraged him to experiment freely, and gave him free run of the office’s books.
So, for the next three days, he buried himself in soldier-pill formulas and pharmacology texts.
On the fourth day, he stepped into the lab.
“Byakusō.”
“Lady Kitayama, is something the matter?”
“That boy’s making his first batch of soldier pills.
Keep an eye on him, and give him a hand if he runs into trouble.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
Byakusō glanced over.
A boy, roughly twelve years old.
Very young.
A few years back, that wouldn’t have raised any eyebrows.
In wartime, twelve-year-old chūnin were nothing unusual.
Peacetime was a different matter entirely.
So this is Yanagyū Chiba?
Curious, Byakusō stepped closer for a better look—then her expression shifted to something startled.
“Lady Kitayama.”
“What is it?”
Kitayama Sho had been on her way to guide some other juniors through their medical ninjutsu training when Byakusō’s call stopped her.
She assumed something had gone wrong on Chiba’s end.
“No—his technique is textbook-perfect, but the ingredients he’s chosen don’t look right.
They seem to be off from the recipe.”
Byakusō was twenty-six, eight years Kitayama Sho’s senior.
Her skill with medical ninjutsu didn’t quite match Kitayama Sho’s, but she still ranked among the best in the division, and she knew medical ninjutsu and soldier pills inside and out—well enough to catch even a small deviation immediately.
Kitayama Sho frowned.
“That boy’s being reckless.”
“His hands are steady, though,” Byakusō added, giving credit where it was due.
Every step Chiba took was close to flawless—his technique, his movements, without a single visible mistake.
The only problem was that the ingredients didn’t seem to be matching the formula at all.
“Let’s go take a look.”
Kitayama Sho, frowning, walked over toward him.
Halfway there, Chiba had already finished.
He picked up the finished pill and lifted it toward his mouth.
“Wait!”
“Hm?”
Chiba turned, saw the two of them approaching, and understood at once why they’d come.
“Sensei.
Senior Byakusō.”
“You changed the formula?”
“I did.
Since I’m still new to this, I figured I’d start by dialing down the rapid stamina recovery and boosting the hunger-suppression and caloric effect instead, then compare the results and refine from there.”
He walked them through his reasoning as he spoke.
Kitayama Sho frowned.
“You’re being far too careless about this.”
“Well, none of the ingredients are toxic, so I figured I’d just try it.”
Before she could say anything more, he popped the pill in his mouth and bit down, gently.
He chewed it over for a moment, considering.
“…Not quite refined enough yet.
Let me think—right, I probably underdosed these two ingredients.”
With that, he went back to work, adjusting the mixture.
“You—”
Kitayama Sho found herself briefly speechless.
Byakusō, meanwhile, picked up the bitten pill, tore off half, and tasted it herself.
Her eyes lit up.
“Lady Kitayama, this soldier pill really does suppress hunger better, and it won’t restore a big chunk of stamina in the short term.”
“Let me try it.”
Kitayama Sho tasted it too, then went quiet, turning the sensation over carefully in her mind.
It was true.
The hunger-suppression effect was noticeably better.
“What’s the cost on this?”
“I cut the two ingredients meant for rapid stamina recovery and replaced them with chakra-compressed grain and dried meat instead, so the cost comes out to less than half of the original.
That said, cutting stamina recovery entirely isn’t ideal either—it should probably include a small amount, just—”
Chiba answered quickly, without slowing his hands.
Before long, another pill emerged.
This one should be right.
“Try this one.”
“Mm.”
Kitayama Sho grew serious now, taking it and breaking it in half, then breaking that half again—she’d learned her lesson about the last one’s strength.
She tasted a piece, and her eyes lit up.
This soldier pill—
The balance between hunger-suppression and stamina recovery had landed somewhere genuinely good.
Better than the original formula, no question.
“The cost comes to about half of before.
From there, we could adjust the ratios further—develop one version specifically for rapid short-term stamina recovery, with weaker hunger-suppression, and price that version higher.”
“That way, most people end up spending a lot less overall.”
Chiba laid it out plainly.
Kitayama Sho and Byakusō exchanged a look, both their faces caught somewhere between shock and something more complicated.
None of this was especially difficult.
They might well have thought of it themselves, eventually.
Except—
How long had this boy even been studying?
He’d only been working with soldier pills for three days.
And in that time, he hadn’t just mastered the manufacturing process—he’d already worked out a redesign, one built entirely around practical use, and splitting the formula into two versions genuinely made more sense.
Not difficult.
But neither of them had thought of it.
Kitayama Sho considered it for a moment, then said, “Byakusō, help him with the research—get a version optimized for rapid stamina recovery with low hunger-suppression finished as soon as possible.
Once it’s done, have Chiba write up the formal report, and you can help correct it.”
“Yes, ma’am!”