The eastern training grounds lay at the base of the mountain, where the village road ended and the treeline began. It was a wide, flat clearing—the kind used for large group exercises—bordered on three sides by dense forest and on the fourth by a low stone wall marking the outer boundary of Konoha's district. Beyond the wall, the mountain rose dark and unhurried, its upper ridges still wrapped in the shadow of early morning.
We stood in rows.
Someone had arranged us that way. The kind of formation that said this is official without anyone needing to say it aloud.
Mist from the valley had drifted up during the night and settled low over the grass. The rising sun slipped through gaps in the canopy, cutting long pale strips of light through the haze. It was cold enough that our breath fogged faintly in the air.
At the front of the clearing stood two figures.
One was a bald old man with a severe face and hard, measuring eyes. He wore a jōnin vest that looked as though it had seen decades of service. Deep lines around his mouth and brow suggested he was not a man who smiled often.
Beside him stood Hirose, the teacher of Class A.
Where the old man seemed carved from stone, Hirose appeared almost relaxed. A middle-aged man with calm eyes and an easy smile, he carried himself with the quiet confidence of someone long accustomed to handling restless students.
Standing side by side, the contrast between them could not have been sharper.
"You should all be proud of yourselves," the old man said, his gaze sweeping across the rows of students. "In the long history of the Ninja Academy, you are the first class where every single student has passed."
A murmur rippled through the line, but he raised a hand and the sound died instantly.
"Unfortunately," he continued, his voice steady, "I cannot allow all of you to advance."
Confusion flickered across several faces.
"For that reason, we will be conducting a special examination."
He paused, letting the words settle over the clearing.
"I know this may sound unfair," the old shinobi said at last. "But that… is the life of a shinobi."
"Pay attention," the old shinobi said, stepping back to let Hirose move forward. "Hirose will brief you on the rules and objectives of the exam."
Hirose moved forward. The easy smile sharpened slightly at the edges.
"Listen carefully. I will explain the rules once."
The clearing went quiet. Students who'd been in his class long enough knew that once meant exactly once.
"Throughout the mountain, flags have been placed. Each carries a point value."
He raised a finger.
"Yellow flags. Twenty of them. Each worth twenty-five points."
A second.
"Red flags. Five exist. Each worth fifty."
A third.
"The main flag. One. Worth one hundred points."
He paused, letting the numbers settle.
"You may form teams of up to seven, or participate alone. Points are divided equally among all members." He let that settle. "If you take a flag from another student by force, you will be immediately removed. Your score locks at that moment, calculated from your team's total divided by current team size."
Confused looks spread through the crowd. Hirose gave them three seconds before moving on.
"Bladed weapons are strictly prohibited. The use of any will result in immediate expulsion from the academy."
All traces of warmth vanished, replaced by a hardened stare that swept across the crowd.
"You have exactly four hours."
A hesitant hand went up near the center of the crowd.
"S-sensei…" a girl asked, her voice trembling slightly. "What is the passing score?"
The corners of his mouth curled upward. Not malicious. But offering zero comfort.
"That," he said smoothly, "will be revealed after the exam ends."
Whispers rippled through the rows.
I frowned. Smart.
No passing score meant no ceiling. If you didn't know what was enough, the only rational move was to collect as much as possible — which put every team in automatic competition for the same limited flags. Hirose hadn't mandated conflict. He'd just removed every reason to avoid it.
And it made team formation a minefield.
Large teams felt safe. More bodies, more ground covered, harder to ambush. But seven members splitting a yellow flag walked away with three and a half points each. Even finding every yellow flag on the mountain — a fantasy with five other teams competing — left thirty-five points per person. Barely passing, assuming thirty was even the threshold. One missed flag didn't hurt one person. It hurt everyone simultaneously.
Small teams had the opposite problem. Two people finding a yellow flag walked away with twelve and a half each, needing far fewer flags to hit any reasonable threshold. But two people had nobody watching their blind angles. One ambush and it was over.
Without knowing the passing score, every team size looked simultaneously reasonable and catastrophically wrong. Students were making irreversible decisions — team composition locked before the exam started — with fundamentally incomplete information.
Some would guess correctly. Some wouldn't.
That was how you filtered thirty students down to the handful Hirose actually needed to fail.
"You have fifteen minutes until the exam officially begins. Come down and register your teams before the clock runs out." His eyes swept across the rows one final time.
"That is all."
The formation dissolved the moment Hirose stepped back. Students broke apart instantly, clustering into small anxious groups, voices rising all at once in a wave of calculation and barely contained panic.
I stayed where I was.
"We're teaming up."
I turned.
Akito was standing beside me with his arms crossed and his chin raised slightly — the expression of someone who had already decided and was informing rather than asking.
I sighed.
Of course.
I didn't argue. Partly because arguing with Akito before an exam was a waste of energy I'd need later. But mostly because — if I was being honest with myself — I'd already run the numbers on him.
Akito was genuinely capable. Better with shuriken than most of the class gave him credit for, fast enough to keep pace on rough terrain, and despite every impression he gave to the contrary, not actually reckless when it mattered. More importantly he was someone I'd have spent the entire exam quietly worrying about if I'd left him to form his own team.
If I had to be paired with anyone in this class, it was him.
I just wasn't going to say that out loud.
"Fine," I said.
While Akito started talking about strategy — most of which I tuned out — I scanned the clearing.
The crowd was already sorting itself into predictable shapes. Pairs forming quickly between friends. A few students standing slightly apart, calculating, not yet committed. And near the center, a larger cluster growing around a single figure.
Retsuo.
Class A's most naturally liked student — the kind of person rooms organized themselves around without anyone deciding to. Tall, easy in his movements, with the particular confidence of someone who had never needed to raise his voice to be heard. He was gesturing now, pulling students in with the relaxed authority of someone born to lead groups.
The problem was that Retsuo knew exactly what he was. Average in skill, exceptional with people — and smart enough to understand that the gap between those two things needed to be filled by others. That was what he was doing here. That was all he was doing here.
Competent students could see it. Most of them were already looking elsewhere.
Retsuo seemed to sense this. His eyes moved across the clearing until they landed on Neji, who stood at the edge of the treeline with his back against a trunk and his eyes closed, apparently unbothered by the exam, the cold, or any of it.
Retsuo walked over.
"Hey, Neji." His tone was easy, friendly. "What do you say — want to join up with us?"
Neji opened his eyes. He looked at Retsuo once, then past him at the cluster of students watching from a distance — some with fear, some with something closer to admiration.
Then he looked back at Retsuo, and his expression didn't change at all.
"You're not asking because you think I'd benefit from the team," Neji said. "You're asking because without someone like me, your team has no real chance and you know it." He let a beat pass. "I'd rather work alone than be someone else's ceiling."
Retsuo stood there for a moment. Then he turned and walked back toward his group with the practiced ease of someone pretending a conversation had ended on his terms.
Neji closed his eyes again.
Speaking of eyes — I became aware of a familiar pair watching me.
A few seconds of searching and I found her — Aoi, standing a few feet away from me and Akito, wearing an expression that could only be described as please adopt me.
I sighed. "Aoi. You want to team up?"
The glasses adjustment was immediate. Every trace of helplessness vanished like it had never been there.
"Well," she said, already moving toward us, "since you asked so sincerely, I suppose I can put down the other teams' offers."
She said it with complete seriousness, as though she hadn't been hovering three feet away waiting for exactly this.
Akito watched her close the distance between us, then looked at me. "...Did she just act like we needed her?"
"Yes," I said.
He thought about it for a second. "Okay."
As we walked toward Hirose to register, I caught movement near the edge of the crowd.
Lee was talking to a group of three students — or had been. Whatever he'd said, it clearly hadn't landed. The boy at the front of the group turned away with the particular contempt of someone who wanted to make sure everyone nearby noticed it.
"Stop bothering us. Nobody wants to team up with a cripple."
He said it without lowering his voice.
Then he shoved Lee by the shoulder — not hard enough to be a fight, just hard enough to make a point — and walked away. His two companions followed without a word or a backward glance.
Lee went down.
He hit the ground and stayed there for a moment, one hand braced against the grass. Not unconscious, not even hurt. Just still. Like he was giving himself a second before deciding what expression to put back on.
I watched him and started doing the math.
Adding Lee would thin our individual points. That was the obvious downside and it was real. But the other side of the ledger was harder to ignore. Lee was the second best fighter in our batch — Neji aside, nobody came close. And whatever limitations had earned him that word just now, they hadn't touched any of it.
The hours he'd logged were visible in the way he moved, the way he'd already stood back up without thinking about it. Stamina, athleticism, relentless work ethic. For scouting alone he'd be worth more than a flag.
Before I could open my mouth, Akito was already moving.
He crossed the distance in about four seconds, stopped in front of Lee, and pointed in the direction the group had walked off.
"I will beat every single one of those — " he paused, visibly searching for the right word, " — sons of witches."
"How could they say that," he added, as though the first statement hadn't quite covered it.
Lee's expression crumpled. Then, with the particular commitment of someone who did nothing by halves, he burst into tears — the loud, unashamed kind, the kind that made nearby students turn and stare.
"Akito-san," he sobbed, grabbing both of Akito's hands. "You are the best person I have ever met."
Akito looked slightly panicked by the volume of it but held his ground.
I walked over and waited for a gap in the crying.
"Lee," I said. "Do you want to join our team?"
Lee wiped his tears with the back of his hand — instantly, completely, like a switch had been flipped.
"You mean it?" His eyes were wide, still wet, but the crying was simply gone now. Replaced by something that could only be described as radiant. "You would have me on your team?"
"Yes," I said.
He grabbed my hands. Both of them.
"I will not let you down," he said, with a conviction usually reserved for deathbed promises. "I, Rock Lee, will run faster, search harder, and fight longer than anyone on this mountain. This I swear on the flames of my youth!"
Akito looked at me over Lee's shoulder.
I looked back at him.
"Welcome to the team," I said.
Lee burst into tears again.
Ignoring the crying, I turned and walked toward Hirose. The others followed — Akito still looking mildly traumatized, Aoi watching Lee with the detached curiosity of someone studying an unfamiliar species, Lee wiping his face with his sleeve while somehow maintaining perfect posture.
The next five minutes passed in the particular way that waiting time passes before something difficult.
I scanned the clearing while the remaining students finished registering.
Tenten was across the clearing with a group of three — two students I recognized vaguely from Class A, one I didn't. She was checking her equipment with the focused efficiency of someone who had done this before, not looking at anyone. Her team had the quiet, purposeful energy of people who had made their decision early and stopped second-guessing it. Whether that was confidence or resignation I couldn't tell from here.
She glanced up once — not at me specifically, just a sweep of the clearing — and her eyes passed over our group without stopping.
I looked away.
Near the stone wall, I finally spotted the person I hadn't wanted to admit I was looking for.
He stood a few paces from the nearest cluster of students, staring at the registration table. A suffocating mix of fear and guilt.
I watched him for three seconds, then forced myself to look away.
Whatever he decided to do, it was his burden to carry.
Up at the front, Hirose stood up.
"The exam will begin in five seconds."
The clearing went still. Students shifted their weight, eyes moving toward the treeline, toward each other, toward the mountain.
"Five."
I tightened my gloves.
"Four."
Aoi adjusted her glasses.
"Three."
Lee had stopped crying entirely. His eyes were fixed on the mountain with an expression I could only describe as hunger.
"Two."
Across the clearing, Neji was still leaning against his tree, eyes closed, like the countdown was beneath his attention.
"One."
The clearing held its breath.
"Begin."
Thirty students moved at once — a sudden burst of bodies breaking in every direction, scattering toward the treeline like the clearing was exhaling. Within seconds the open grass was half empty, figures already vanishing between the trees.
We ran.
The mountain grew larger through the gaps in the canopy as the forest swallowed us whole.
"So what's the plan?" Aoi asked the group — but her eyes were on me.
"We go for a red flag first," Akito said between breaths. "Fifty points split four ways still beats a yellow."
"There are only five red flags across this entire mountain," I said, not slowing. "Twenty yellows spread across the same area. The math on finding a red before someone else does isn't good."
Akito's jaw tightened. He kept running.
"So what do you suggest?" he asked.
I slowed slightly, scanning the terrain ahead as I thought it through out loud.
"We split. Two pairs — you and Aoi take the east side, me and Lee take the west. More ground covered, less time wasted, but we need to stay close enough to regroup if something comes up."
Nobody objected. The logic was obvious enough that it didn't need to be an order.
"Here." I pulled two smoke bombs from my pouch and held them out. Akito and Aoi pocketed them without comment. "Throw them high if you're in serious trouble. Last resort only — everyone on this mountain will see it."
They nodded.
I stopped and turned back to the terrain, scanning until I found what I needed. A tree significantly larger than anything around it, impossible to confuse with another. To its west, a waterfall — I could already hear it, a steady sound that carried cleanly through the forest. To the north, the mountain.
"This is our rally point. One hour in, both pairs come back here independently." I used the waterfall and mountain to orient them, marking directions they could find again without a compass. "Sync your clocks before we split. And if you lose track of time, use the sun against the mountain ridge — when it's moved roughly a quarter across the sky, start heading back."
"How do you know all this?" Aoi asked.
"There's a section on field navigation in the academy library," I lied. "Most people skip it."
She looked at me for a moment with the expression of someone who had filed a question away for later. Then she looked away, which meant she'd accepted it for now.
"And if the other pair doesn't show?" Lee asked.
"Five minute window. After that, if we're waiting — we move east and find you. If you're waiting for us, move west. Whoever's missing, the other pair goes to them."
I paused.
"If time is short," I said, my voice dropping slightly, "ditch them and focus on flags."
Akito looked like he wanted to argue with that. He didn't.
"Yellow flags are the priority. Stay unnoticed, don't leave a trail." I let a beat pass. "And don't assume the rule against combat means people won't get physical. That rule has more holes in it than Hirose let on."
Akito and Lee exchanged a glance. Aoi said nothing, which meant she'd already seen it.
"Hirose said taking a flag by force results in ejection. That's it. That's the only restriction." I looked at them. "Stealing, pickpocketing, trickery, extortion — none of that was mentioned. And teams can sacrifice their own members if the math works in their favor. Someone will figure that out eventually. Probably already has."
"let's move"
Further into the treeline, the mountain was quieter.
Neji walked without urgency, without looking around, without any of the restless scanning that everyone else on this mountain was doing right now. Two yellow flags were secured in his vest — locations that required actual observation rather than luck, the kind of spots that rewarded people who read terrain rather than just moved through it.
He was considering his next direction when he heard them drop from the branches above.
Three students landed in a loose triangle around him — two behind, one in front.
The one in front held his ground with his arms loose at his sides, projecting calm he didn't quite feel.
Neji looked at them without particular concern.
"You don't have any flags," he said. It wasn't a question. He'd already read their vests — nothing secured, nothing hidden. "And you're not afraid of ejection."
The boy in front smiled, and the other two shifted slightly, spreading the triangle wider.
"Hirose-sensei said ejection only happens if we take a flag by force," the boy said. "So we're not going to take anything." He tilted his head. "We're just going to make you hand it over yourself."
A beat.
"Smart," Neji said.
They attacked simultaneously.
The front attacker came straight in. The rear-left swung wide. The rear-right drove forward low, aiming to take his legs.
Neji dropped.
Not backward — straight down, collapsing his stance in a single clean motion. The front attacker's strike passed over his head. The rear-left attacker, committed to his swing, couldn't pull back in time — his fist connected squarely with the front attacker's jaw. The sound was sharp and unhappy.
Both of them staggered.
From the crouch, Neji drove his elbow back into the rear-right attacker's stomach without looking. The boy folded.
Neji rose in the same motion, turned to the rear-left attacker — the only one still functional — and activated his Byakugan. The veins rose around his eyes, faint and precise.
One step forward. Two strikes, Gentle Fist, targeted and deliberate.
The rear-left attacker's arms dropped to his sides like strings had been cut. He looked down at them with an expression of profound confusion, then sat down heavily against the nearest tree.
Neji looked at the three of them — one holding his jaw, one still catching his breath, one staring at his own unresponsive hands.
"Nice idea," he said. "Wrong target."
He stepped over the front attacker's feet and kept walking.