Obito stood at the throwing line.
The entire class turned their eyes on him.
Rin Nohara stood a little behind and to the side, peeking out.
Kakashi stood at the far right of the crowd, one hand in his pocket, glancing over with the most perfunctory look imaginable.
Yoru stood in the very back row, arms crossed, the corners of his mouth curling into an exceptionally kind smile.
The wind picked up.
Dust from the playground swirled past Obito’s goggles.
Obito let out a loud shout.
He bent his knees slightly, dropped his center of gravity, and struck the most textbook Uchiha throwing stance.
His right hand flew to the pouch at his waist, unzipping it with a *zzzt.*
His fingers clamped around a scrap-metal kunai giving off that eerie black light.
“Take this!”
Obito snapped his wrist forward, twisting hard at the waist, pouring every ounce of strength into the throw.
The air seemed to tear apart.
The first kunai left his hand with an oppressive shriek.
Then his right hand darted back to his waist twice in quick succession.
Almost without pause, he drew the remaining two kunai in one fluid, cloud-smooth motion.
He flicked his wrist, twice.
*Swish!
Swish!
Swish!*
Three black shadows carved sharp arcs through the sunlight, flying out one after another.
The entire throwing sequence was crisp, clean, done in a single breath.
That combo showed off the Uchiha clan’s deep foundation with ninja tools without holding a thing back.
“So fast!”
A few civilian students in the front row couldn’t help gasping.
After loosing the last kunai, Obito didn’t even glance at the result.
He turned around, brimming with confidence.
Left hand on his hip, he swept his right hand back, brushed the bangs from his forehead with exaggerated ease, and added a little spin.
A textbook Uchiha turn-and-finish, striking the pose he considered devastatingly dashing.
His eyes locked with pinpoint precision onto Rin Nohara in the crowd, his lips curling into a wicked, charming smile.
The moment their eyes met, Obito felt his whole soul fizzing pink.
Pride surged through his chest.
Obito calculated frantically: *Sure, I didn’t get three perfect scores like that poser Kakashi.*
*But two straight bullseyes at twenty-five meters is more than enough to look down on every last one of these new leeks!*
*Rin’s definitely going to be mesmerized after seeing that move!*
*Should I strike while the iron’s hot and go talk to her?*
*What do I open with?*
*”Hey there, Rin — I’m Obito.
Not a bad throw just now, right?”*
*”I usually do even better than that!”*
*No good either, too full of myself!*
Just as Obito was overflowing with pink bubbles, beaming, ready to bask in the cheers —
In midair, the trajectories of the three kunai underwent a change that flat-out defied the laws of physics.
The first two kunai jerked into a stiff turn mid-flight, veering off in some absurd direction.
Whistling, they flew straight toward two completely unrelated spots.
*Thunk!
Thunk!*
Two crisp impacts rang out one after the other.
At the sound, Obito glanced toward the target range twenty-five meters away.
He clearly saw two kunai out there, planted rock-steady dead center in a bullseye.
The curl of his lips grew from a lift into a full grin, his chin rising a notch.
But the playground was deathly silent.
No cheers.
No gasps of amazement.
The Chunin instructor standing off to the side was shaking violently, his face black as coal.
He suddenly raised the grade book in his hand and drove two savage strokes down beside Obito’s name.
Punching the pen straight through the paper.
“Uchiha Obito!”
The instructor let out a furious roar that rolled clear across the Konoha playground.
“Zero points!”
The whole class stayed dead silent.
The smug curve on Obito’s face froze and set solid.
He stood stunned for two seconds, then his eyes flew wide and he sprang half a meter into the air like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.
Flailing his arms, he protested at the top of his lungs, his voice cracking.
“Zero points?!”
“How is that possible? Teacher, did you make a mistake? Is that fair?!”
“I clearly hit two bullseyes!”
“They’re stuck right there! Can’t you see those two big kunai buried in the red circles?!”
Obito was so frantic his face went red, jabbing a finger at the distant bullseye and arguing loudly.
The instructor’s chest heaved with rage; he rolled the grade book into a tight paper tube and pointed it straight at the targets.
Gritting his teeth, he spat the words out one at a time.
“Open your eyes and look properly!”
“You did hit two bullseyes — on the targets next to yours!”
“The left one belongs to Asuma Sarutobi! The right one is his too!”
“The targets are a good ten meters apart! Your own assigned target doesn’t have so much as a wood chip scraped off it!”
Obito’s voice cut off short.
The whole class turned their heads in unison to look where the instructor was pointing.
An utterly bizarre scene met everyone’s eyes.
Directly in front of Obito, the No.
3 wooden target with its red circle sat spotless and untouched.
Asuma Sarutobi swallowed, cold sweat beading on his forehead.
Thank god it hadn’t ended up buried in him.
The color drained from Obito’s face in an instant.
He stood there blankly, arms hanging limp at his sides.
His worldview collapsed on the spot.
How was this possible?
The force just now had felt perfectly fine.
So why had those two turned and bolted for someone else’s target ten meters away?!
Yoru hid at the very back of the crowd.
He lowered his head, shoulders shaking uncontrollably, biting down hard on the inside of his lip.
He fought with everything he had to keep his face under control, forcing the laughter to stay down in his gut.
The system interface refreshed right on cue, and a crisp, delightful notification burst in his mind.
［Ding!
Emotional Damage Points from Uchiha Obito, +888!］
Yoru smacked his lips, thoroughly pleased.
*This kid Obito — his emotional swings are always such great value.*
Just as Yoru was about to look away, two flashing golden highlights popped up in the system background without warning.
［Ding!
Emotional Damage Points from Kakashi Hatake, +999!!!］
［Emotional Damage Points from Kakashi Hatake, +999!!!］
Dense system notifications flooded his visual panel.
All of Yoru’s face management collapsed on the spot.
His eyes went wide, his mind filling with enormous question marks.
*Obito made a fool of himself, Obito got a zero — why in the world would Kakashi rack up such terrifying breakdown value?!*
*I always kind of suspected Kakashi and Obito were the real deal…*
*But has the bond between these two men already reached this level?*
*They’ve barely known each other any time at all — love at first sight???*
Deeply confused, Yoru quickly shifted his gaze to lock onto Kakashi.
Kakashi still stood at the far right of the crowd, holding his signature hands-in-pockets pose.
His silver-white hair looked effortlessly stylish in the wind.
His head was tilted slightly up, gazing at the clouds at a picture-perfect forty-five-degree angle.
His posture was cold and aloof, matching a top prodigy exactly, not a ripple out of place.
But when Yoru’s eyes drifted downward, he instantly turned to stone.
On the gray fabric of Kakashi’s left calf, the third kunai Obito had thrown was buried vertically, sunk deep into the muscle.
The blade was in flesh, only half the kunai still showing.
Bright red blood was seeping slowly down the weave of the pant leg, dripping onto the dry soil of the Konoha playground, staining a small dark-red circle.
Yoru sucked in a breath.
That kunai — the one that had spun off the target range on an upward arc and vanished — had actually crossed the whole crowd and all that distance, on a trajectory that defied every law of aerodynamics, to seek out and strike, dead-on, the one person in the entire place with the highest posing stat.