Night had enveloped Konoha, wrapping the village in a comfortable silence. For Yuji, night was his best ally. It was the time when the world finally slowed down, when the demands to socialize and be a competent ninja-in-training faded into a distant background. His room, lit only by the moonlight filtering through the window, was his fortress.
He was just preparing to perform his favorite nightly ritual: sinking into bed and letting his consciousness drift away to the realm of dreams, the only place where he could be truly free. He was already in his sleepwear, his blanket felt incredibly tempting, and his pillow was calling his name with a promise of heavenly softness.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The soft tapping on his windowpane shattered the illusion of peace instantly.
Yuji didn't move. He just lay there, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, and sighed. It wasn't a sigh of surprise or fear. It was the sigh of a man who had accepted that the universe was actively conspiring to ruin his quiet time. There was only one person in the entire village who would choose a window over the front door at this hour.
"Go away, Naruto," Yuji mumbled into the empty air, his voice hoarse with fatigue. "I'm practicing the secret technique of becoming one with my mattress. It's very important for my mental well-being."
Tap. Tap. TAP. TAP! The knocking became more urgent.
With a groan that sounded like a disturbed bear, Yuji dragged himself out of bed. Every step felt like a sacrifice. He unlatched the window and slid it open just a few inches. "What? Is the village under attack? Has the giant ramen monster finally risen from the sea? If not, this had better be important."
Outside, crouching on the low roof below his window, was Naruto. His face was alight with excitement and mischief, his blue eyes sparkling even in the dim light. And in his hands, he held a rather large scroll.
"Shhh!" Naruto hissed, putting a finger to his lips. "Let me in! Quick!"
Yuji looked at the scroll, then at Naruto's overly eager face. A bad feeling started to creep into his stomach. "No. Whatever that is, I don't want to know. Good night."
He tried to close the window, but Naruto was faster. He pushed the window wide open and leaped into Yuji's room with surprising agility, landing with a soft thud on the tatami floor.
"Look what I got!" Naruto whispered loudly, holding up the scroll like a trophy.
Yuji closed the window and stared at his uninvited guest. "You came into my room through the window. In the middle of the night. Carrying a suspicious-looking item. This has all the early hallmarks of a very, very bad idea."
"It's not a bad idea! It's a genius idea!" Naruto retorted. He unrolled the scroll a little on the floor. The old parchment smelled of dust and ink. "I found it!"
"Found it where?" Yuji asked, crossing his arms. His sleepiness had been replaced by a sense of foreboding.
Naruto's grin widened. "In... uh... a place. A place with lots of books and desks."
"The teachers' lounge," Yuji said flatly. It wasn't a question.
"I didn't say that!" Naruto said quickly, looking a little panicked. "I just... borrowed it!"
Yuji massaged the bridge of his nose, feeling a familiar headache begin to throb. "Naruto. You stole it. You stole from the teachers' lounge. That's probably the second stupidest place to steal from after the Hokage's office. Are you insane? Take it back now before anyone finds out!"
"No way!" Naruto protested, hugging the scroll protectively. "I've already looked at it, Yuji! It's amazing! It's not about history or math! It's about... real ninja stuff!"
"Real ninja stuff can wait until we legally learn it in class," Yuji said, trying to keep his voice down. "Now go home and put it back tomorrow morning before anyone notices!"
"But you don't understand!" Naruto insisted, his eyes pleading. "There are pictures in here! About how to feel the energy inside you! Chakra! And there's this exercise, with a leaf! You have to stick a leaf to your forehead using only your chakra! Isn't that cool?!"
Yuji froze.
Chakra. The leaf exercise.
The voices in his head—the voice of David Gerald, the anime fan—began to buzz. The leaf exercise. It was the most basic chakra control exercise. The foundation for everything. From tree-walking to water-walking. From forming a Rasengan to maintaining a medical jutsu. It all started with the ability to focus a small amount of chakra to a single point.
Outwardly, Yuji maintained his bored, annoyed expression. "Sticking a leaf to your head. Wow. The very pinnacle of shinobi power. I'm so impressed I'm about to fall asleep again. Go home, Naruto."
But inside, his brain was racing. 'This is an opportunity.' He hadn't really cared about it all before, truly, but the scroll triggered something in him, which now desperately wanted to see fantastic things like in the anime... it was cool.
"I'm not going home!" Naruto said stubbornly. "I'm going to practice here all night and tomorrow I'll be the first one in class who can do it!"
"You're going to wake up my parents and we'll both be grounded for life," Yuji retorted. "And you can't even read half the kanji on that scroll."
"I can look at the pictures!"
Yuji glanced at the partially unrolled scroll on the floor. He could see a diagram of a human body with dots and flowing lines, and a rough sketch of someone meditating with a leaf on their forehead. His damned curiosity, the fan's curiosity he had tried to bury so deep, began to gnaw at him. He wanted to know what it said. He wanted to know the details, the theory. He wanted to know if he could do it.
A fierce battle raged within him. His rational brain screamed that this was a stupid, dangerous, and reckless idea. It could get them both in huge trouble. But his fan's heart, his curious soul, whispered in a tempting voice. 'Come on. Just one peek. What's the harm?'
"Alright, look," Yuji said, finally giving in to his worse impulses. "You're too loud. You're going to ruin the scroll with your ramen-greasy hands. Give it to me."
He stepped forward and carefully took the scroll from Naruto's hands before the blond could protest. Naruto looked surprised for a moment, then his face lit up. "So you're gonna help me?"
"I'm not helping you," Yuji said quickly, taking the scroll to his small desk and turning on the reading lamp. "I'm doing damage control. I'm going to read it to make sure there aren't any explosive jutsu that could level this building, then you're going to take it back. Got it?"
"Got it!" Naruto said, pulling up a chair and sitting next to Yuji, too excited to care about Yuji's flimsy excuse.
And so, in the unplanned silence of the night, they began to read together. Yuji carefully unrolled the scroll completely. It was exactly as Naruto had described, but far more detailed. There were long explanations about chakra being a combination of spiritual and physical energy. There were instructions on how to meditate, how to draw that energy from within the body. And then, there was the section on the leaf exercise.
Yuji read every word with intense concentration. This was no longer just anime knowledge; this was a real, actionable textbook. He felt like a historian who had just discovered a lost ancient document.
"What does that word mean?" Naruto asked, pointing to a complex kanji character.
"'Focus'," Yuji answered automatically. "It says the key is focus. Not power. You just need to release a tiny amount of chakra, a steady, thin stream, and then hold it at one point."
"Ohhh," Naruto said, as if a great secret of the universe had just been revealed. "A thin stream! I was thinking I had to push it out with all my might!"
They continued to read. Yuji would read a paragraph in a low voice, and Naruto would listen with an attention he rarely showed in class, occasionally asking questions. For the first time, their dynamic was reversed. Yuji was the holder of knowledge, and Naruto was the eager student. Strangely, it didn't feel bad.
As he read, Yuji couldn't help but feel a strange sense of excitement. This was real. Chakra was real. And he had a chance to learn it. As a fan, he had always wondered what it would be like to have chakra. What clan would he be in? What would his elemental nature be? Would he be a ninjutsu, genjutsu, or taijutsu type?
Before, he hadn't done these 'chakra' things not just out of laziness, well, that was one reason. But also because he wasn't sure he remembered the small details like the correct exercises, which were shown in the anime. And as for physical training, it was tiring, he just wanted to laze around longer before finally fighting someone.
Here, it seemed he didn't have to move too much to train his chakra, just had to focus.
The thought surprised him. All this time, his goal had been simply to survive. Becoming a ninja was a means to that end. But now, for the first time, a flicker of real ambition began to ignite within him. Not the ambition to become Hokage or a hero, but a more personal ambition. The ambition to see how far he could go. To test his own limits in this fantastic world.
Time passed without them noticing. Page after page of the scroll they read. Finally, the fatigue of the day began to catch up with them. Naruto's head started to droop, and his explanations of chakra flow visualization began to sound like a distant hum in Yuji's ears.
Yuji himself felt his eyelids grow heavy. The warm reading lamp and the dense text were starting to make him drowsy. He marked the last page they had read with a small slip of paper.
He turned to tell Naruto to go home, but it was too late. The blond head was already slumped over the desk, fast asleep in the middle of trying to listen to Yuji, letting out soft, little snores.
Yuji looked at him for a moment. He should be annoyed. He should wake him up and kick him out. But he was too tired. And a small part of him didn't have the heart to do it.
With a final sigh, Yuji turned off the reading lamp. He didn't bother going back to his bed. He just rested his head on his folded arms on the desk, next to the stolen scroll and his sleeping friend.
As consciousness left him, his last thought was of a single leaf. Tomorrow, he would try it. And for the first time since he arrived here, he fell asleep with a strange flicker of anticipation.
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