A month passed like a lazy breeze. For Yuji, it was a month filled with the boring routine of the academy and afternoons that somehow always ended with three other people. This day off was no different. The four of them—Yuji, Naruto, Shikamaru, and Choji—were sprawled like a herd of lazy seals on the green grass by the riverbank, enjoying the warmth of the midday sun.
Yuji was in his element: lying on his back, doing absolutely nothing. Choji, as usual, was solemnly finishing a large bag of shrimp chips. Shikamaru seemed to have achieved his life's goal and was actually asleep, a soft, little snore occasionally escaping him.
The peaceful silence, of course, couldn't possibly last. The inevitable source of disruption was Naruto.
"Alright! I'm gonna try it again!" Naruto exclaimed, leaping to his feet with an energy he seemed to generate from the sunlight itself.
Yuji opened one eye. "Try what? Trying to make all the fish in this river die of a heart attack?"
"No!" Naruto said, ignoring his sarcasm. "I'm going to walk on water! I almost got it yesterday!"
He had not almost gotten it yesterday. Yesterday, he had managed to get his foot into the water, and then the rest of his body followed with a very loud splash.
Naruto ran to the water's edge, took a deep breath, and focused his entire being on his feet. He stepped onto the water's surface with the confidence of a prophet. For a magical split second, his shoe seemed to hover on the surface.
Then, of course, he sank up to his ankles.
"Ugh! Why?!" he yelled in frustration, stomping his foot in the shallow water and creating a large splash that nearly hit the sleeping Shikamaru.
The academy had started teaching them basic chakra exercises a month ago. They had learned how to feel and channel it. But Yuji, with the knowledge from his previous life and his infinite boredom, had gone a step further.
He could already do it.
Essentially, the key to chakra control, as he had discovered, wasn't power or intense concentration. It was balance. Just like balancing a stack of books on your head. You had to relax, find your center, and let your energy do the work with a steady, calm flow.
Yuji could already walk on water, trees, and anything else that made Naruto envious. However, there was one thing that still bothered him. He might have good control, but what about his taijutsu? He had been training secretly, but he had only fought a bunch of kids. He didn't know if he had become stronger in a real sense. Could he take a real punch? Could he actually protect someone? Those questions still hung in his mind.
"This isn't fair!" Naruto whined, now soaked up to his knees. "Why can you do it so easily, Yuji?"
"Because I'm not trying to make the river explode," Yuji replied without getting up from his position. "You're trying too hard. You're putting in too much chakra, then you panic and lose focus. Just relax."
"But I am relaxed!"
"You're shouting. That's the definition of not relaxed."
Shikamaru, who had been woken up by the commotion, sat up and yawned. "He's right, Naruto. You're too noisy. Even your chakra is probably tired of listening to you."
Naruto's frustration finally reached its peak. With a frustrated war cry, he started kicking the water wildly. "I HATE WATER! I HATE CHAKRA! I HATE EVERYTHING!"
Water flew everywhere. The first drops hit Shikamaru's face. The next landed on Choji's precious bag of chips. And a rather large wave hit Yuji right in the face.
For a moment, Yuji just lay there, soaked and stunned. Then, he sat up slowly. "You," he said in a very calm voice. "Have just made a huge mistake."
Chaos ensued. What started as Yuji's revenge quickly turned into a full-scale water war.
After what felt like an hour, they were finally exhausted, sprawled on the grass again, soaking wet, out of breath, and laughing.
"Okay," Shikamaru sighed, combing his wet hair out of his face. "I am officially too tired to move again. And my clothes are wet."
"My chips... are ruined..." Choji sobbed dramatically, looking at his soggy, limp bag.
"We can't go home like this," Yuji said, wringing out the hem of his shirt. "My mom will ask too many questions."
"We'll just dry off here," Shikamaru suggested with genius. "The sun's still hot. It's a drag, but it's less of a drag than getting scolded."
And so they spent the next few dozen minutes. They took off their jackets and outer shirts, spreading them on large, warm rocks under the sun. They lay on the grass, in just their undershirts, waiting for their clothes to dry.
"This is the lowest point of my life," Yuji said, staring at the sky.
"At least it's quiet," Shikamaru mumbled, his eyes already closed.
After their clothes were dry enough to wear without dripping, they put them back on. They still felt damp and uncomfortable.
"I still don't want to go home yet," Shikamaru said, standing up reluctantly. "It's too much of a drag to explain why my clothes smell like fish. But... let's go to my place."
Naruto immediately sat up. "Really? Can we?"
"Yeah, yeah, don't make a big deal out of it," Shikamaru said. "At least we can actually dry off in the backyard. Maybe I have some leftover snacks for Choji too."
Choji's eyes immediately lit up.
They walked towards the Nara Clan compound. It was a place that was starting to feel familiar to them. Shikamaru's father, Shikaku, had long ago given them permission to come over whenever they wanted, a gesture that still slightly surprised Naruto every time he remembered it.
As they walked through the main courtyard, Shikamaru pointed to a building that was slightly larger and older than the others.
"Wanna go there?" he asked casually. "I'm kind of bored."
"What is it?" Naruto asked.
"The library," Shikamaru replied.
Yuji stopped walking. A library. A clan library. The Nara clan was known for their intelligence, their strategists, and their knowledge of medicine. Their library... it had to be a treasure trove.
"Remember, right?" Shikamaru said, seeing Yuji's expression. "Dad said we could go in anytime as long as we don't burn anything."
Yuji nodded, trying to hide his enthusiasm. Of course he remembered. That permission was one of the most precious things he had ever received. The chance to access knowledge he would never get at the academy. Scrolls on tactics, uncensored history, and maybe... maybe jutsu.
The thought made his heart beat a little faster.
"Yeah," Yuji said, his voice calmer than he felt. "Let's go there."
This was a different kind of silence. Not the empty silence of Naruto's apartment, or the lazy silence Yuji sought for napping. This was a silence filled with potential. Filled with answers. Filled with real power.
Shikamaru pushed the heavy wooden door open, and they stepped inside.
As the heavy wooden door creaked shut behind them, the outside world seemed to vanish. The air inside the Nara Clan library felt different—cool, still, and heavy with a scent that was intoxicating to someone like Yuji. It was the smell of old paper, varnished wood, and the faint trace of dried herbs, the aroma of centuries of collected knowledge.
Dim light filtered in through high windows near the ceiling, illuminating dust motes that danced like tiny stars in the silent aisles. Bookshelves towered on either side, so high their tops disappeared into the shadows. This was nothing like the small, sterile academy library. This was a cathedral dedicated to words and scrolls.
Yuji stood frozen in the doorway, his eyes wide. He was in awe. In his previous life, David Gerald was a voracious internet user, able to access limitless information with a few clicks. But this... this was different. This was physical knowledge. Every scroll, every leather-bound book, was an artifact that had been touched, read, and studied by generations of strategists and genius shinobi. This was a real, tangible legacy.
"Whoa," Naruto whispered next to him, but his tone was completely different from Yuji's. It wasn't a tone of awe. It was a tone of profound disappointment. "This place... is more boring than a history lesson."
Naruto was starting to be Naruto again. The silence and solemn atmosphere of the library seemed to have no effect on him. He was already starting to fidget, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
"This is incredible," Yuji murmured, more to himself.
"What's so incredible?" Naruto asked, his slightly-too-loud voice echoing in the quiet room. "It's just a bunch of books! There are no windows to look out of! And it smells like an old man's clothes! Can we go now?"
"Shhh!" Shikamaru hissed from behind them, though even his hiss sounded lazy. "You'll wake the librarian ghosts. They're a major drag."
"I don't care about ghosts!" Naruto said. "I care about boredom! And I'm super bored! Yuji, let's go do something fun! We can practice walking on walls again!"
"I am doing something fun," Yuji retorted, his eyes still sweeping over the endless shelves. "This is paradise."
"This is a very large nap room," Shikamaru corrected.
Yuji ignored them and started walking down one of the aisles. His fingers brushed against the spines of old, leather-bound books. He read the titles slowly: "Strategic Analysis of the Second Great Shinobi War," "Ino-Shika-Cho Formations: History and Application," "Medicinal Plants of the Land of Fire: A Complete Guide." "Poisons and Antidotes"—this one was a bit interesting.
He stopped at the history section. The shelves were filled with thick records on every Hokage, every major war, every peace treaty. To be honest, he wasn't very excited. He had heard enough of it in class, the censored, kid-friendly version. And from his previous life, he already knew the more complete version, the one filled with betrayal, sacrifice, and dark politics. Reading more about it felt like doing optional homework. It was boring.
He turned, leaving the history aisle, and that's when his eyes caught it. A smaller section, slightly hidden in a corner. The titles here were different. No names or dates. Just words like Kenjutsu, Bōjutsu, and one shelf labeled simply: Shinobi Weaponry.
Now, that was interesting.
Yuji's heart beat a little faster. This wasn't history or politics. This was the hardware. The tools of the trade. The things that made a ninja a ninja. He walked to the shelf and pulled out a thick, heavy book. The cover was dark leather with no title, just a small, embossed symbol of a crossed kunai and shuriken.
"Shikamaru," Yuji called, turning to his friend who was now leaning against one of the large tables in the center of the room. "Can I... look at this?"
Shikamaru opened one eye. He glanced at the book in Yuji's hand, then shrugged. "Whatever. As long as you don't rip the pages or use it to hit Naruto. That would leave a stain."
With that casual permission, Yuji brought the book to the table and sat down. Choji, pulled up a chair next to him with a sad sigh. "There are no cookbooks here," he lamented.
Yuji opened the book carefully. The pages were thick and slightly yellowed, and they were filled with incredibly detailed, hand-drawn illustrations and neat handwriting. The first page showed the most common weapons: kunai, shuriken, senbon. But the book explained more than just their shape. There were diagrams showing the center of balance, the best way to hold them for different throws, and even notes on different types of metal and their advantages.
"Whoa! Look at that one!"
Naruto was suddenly behind him, looking over Yuji's shoulder. His hand pointed to a picture of a large shuriken with four curved blades. "That looks so cool! Way cooler than the ones we have at the academy!"
"That's a Fūma Shuriken," Yuji said automatically, information from his past life bubbling to the surface. "It's collapsible for easy carrying, and when you throw it, it opens up. It's heavier, so it's harder to throw accurately, but the impact is much more devastating."
"Devastating is good!" Naruto said enthusiastically.
Yuji continued to flip through the pages. There were many different weapons, each with its own uniqueness and method of use. There was the kusarigama, a sickle connected to a chain and a metal weight. The book explained how the chain could be used to entangle an opponent or deflect attacks, while the sickle was used for close-range attacks.
"What's that?" Naruto asked, pointing to a weapon that looked like a metal claw worn on the hand.
"Tekkō-kagi," Yuji read from the text below the picture. "Hand claws. Used for climbing and for very close-quarters combat. Can be used to parry swords or to tear... well, you know."
Naruto shivered with a mixture of horror and delight. "Cool!"
They continued to look. There were various types of swords, from short tantos to incredibly long nodachis. There were different kinds of spears and polearms. Yuji was fascinated. This was a theoretical armory. He absorbed every piece of information, every diagram, every little note about the weaknesses and strengths of each weapon. This was the kind of practical knowledge he craved.
Meanwhile, Choji, having given up on finding cookbooks, had found a large picture book about different types of insects and mushrooms. He was pointing at a picture of a colorful caterpillar with an expression of awe. Shikamaru, after deciding that standing was too much of a drag, had found a dark corner, dragged a cushion from one of the reading chairs, and seemed to have successfully achieved his goal of taking a nap.
The library fell silent.
It wasn't an empty or awkward silence. It was a comfortable, productive silence. The only sounds were the rustle of pages being turned by Yuji and Choji, the soft snores from the corner where Shikamaru was sleeping, and the occasional whisper of "whoa" or "cool" from Naruto, who was still faithfully looking over Yuji's shoulder.
Yuji no longer felt annoyed. Naruto's presence behind him felt... normal. The boy's enthusiasm for the "cool" pictures became a strangely calming background to his intense information absorption.
This was silence, and Yuji liked it.
He felt at peace. Here, among the old scrolls and dusty books, surrounded by his strange friends, he didn't feel like an outsider. He didn't feel like a fraud. He just felt like himself—a boy learning about his dangerous new world, with a noisy friend by his side.
He turned another page, revealing a detailed diagram of the mechanisms inside a kugutsu puppet. Naruto gasped.
"WHAT IS THAT?!"
Yuji smiled faintly. "That, Naruto," he said in a low voice. "Is a story for another time."
The precious silence continued, broken only by endless curiosity.
..
That night, the moon hung full and pale in the Konoha sky, its silvery light slipping through Yuji's window, painting ghostly stripes on the tatami floor. In the dead of night, Yuji woke up. Not from a nightmare or a loud noise from outside. It was a simple, unavoidable call of nature.
With a soft groan, he threw off his blanket and shuffled to the bathroom. The house was dead quiet. Only the chirping of crickets from outside and the ticking of the old clock in the living room broke the silence. After finishing his business, as he was walking back to his room, a faint but rhythmic sound stopped him in his tracks.
Scrape... scrape... scrape...
It was the sound of wood being shaved. Slow, steady, and full of concentration. Yuji frowned. Who would be carving wood in the middle of the night? There was only one answer.
Curiosity won out over his sleepiness. He followed the sound, tiptoeing down the stairs, towards the front of the house where his father's shop and workshop were located. The sliding door to the workshop was slightly ajar, casting a warm sliver of lamplight into the dark hallway.
He peeked through the gap. There, in the middle of the room that smelled of pine wood and varnish, his father sat on his low work stool. Kenji Yamashita, illuminated by a single oil lamp, seemed completely lost in his world. His back was slightly hunched, and his hands moved with a skill born from years of practice, a small carving knife dancing over a piece of wood, peeling away thin layers to form the contours of a face.
Yuji said nothing. He just stood there, in the doorway, and watched. He watched how his father's brow was furrowed in concentration. He watched how the muscles in his father's forearms tensed with each calculated movement. He watched the small, satisfied smile on his father's lips as the piece of wood began to take shape—a sly, smiling Kitsune mask.
His father in this world was kind. That was a simple, undeniable fact. He was a man who laughed freely, who wasn't afraid to show pride in his work, who would tell a bad joke at the dinner table just to see his family smile. He didn't hide his emotions at all. His passion for his work radiated from him like the warmth from the oil lamp in front of him.
A shadow from the past flashed through Yuji's mind. His father in his previous world... they loved each other, of course. But there was a distance between them, an invisible wall built from long work hours, exhaustion, and unspoken emotions. His old father was a good man, but he was a tired man, who kept his own world inside himself. Yuji had never seen him have the kind of passion that Kenji had right now.
Slowly, Yuji pushed the door open a little wider and stepped inside. The soft sound of his footsteps made Kenji look up, his kind eyes blinking in surprise.
"Yuji? Why are you awake?" he asked, putting down his knife.
Yuji didn't answer. He just walked over and sat on the floor next to his father's work stool, hugging his knees. He said nothing, just looking at the half-finished mask. The silence between them was comfortable, filled only by the sound of their breathing and the calming scent of wood.
After a few moments, Yuji finally spoke, his voice low in the quiet room.
"Dad," he began. "Why... why did you become a mask maker?"
Kenji looked at his son, a little surprised by the sudden, deep question. He smiled, his usual, warm smile. "Why? Because it's the family tradition, of course, champ!" he said in a joking tone. "Your grandfather was a mask maker, your great-grandfather too. Our blood probably has more sawdust in it than iron."
Yuji just looked at him, not smiling. He knew that wasn't the real answer.
Seeing the seriousness in his son's eyes, Kenji's smile faded into something softer, more introspective. He sighed, turning his gaze to the mask in his hands.
"That's... not the whole story," he said quietly. His voice softened, losing its usual cheerful tone. "You know, when I was a kid, I was in the ninja academy too."
Yuji blinked. This was new information. "Really?"
Kenji nodded. "Yeah. I wanted to be like the other kids. I wanted to be strong, to be a hero who protected the village. I entered the academy with the same kind of spirit as your friend, Naruto."
He paused for a moment, his fingers tracing the carving on the mask. "And as it turned out... I wasn't very good at it."
"I wasn't bad at fighting," he continued, as if correcting himself. "I could do the stances right, I could throw a kunai and hit the target. But that was it. I was just... average. In a world full of kids from the Hyuga clan who could see through walls, or the Uchiha clan who could copy your moves just by looking at them once... being 'average' felt like being the worst."
Yuji listened in silence, feeling an echo of his father's feelings in himself.
"Every day was a struggle," Kenji said. "I saw my friends mastering new techniques with ease, while I had to practice three times as hard just to keep up. I became frustrated. Angry. I felt like a failure. I started to hate training, to hate the miserable feeling every time I lost a sparring match."
He put the mask down and looked at his own hands. "One afternoon, after a particularly bad day at the academy, I came home angry. I wanted to punch something. And that's when I came into this workshop. My father was working, just like I am now. Around him were the masks he had made. Back then, I never had any passion when I looked at them. To me, it was just my dad's job. Just... masks."
"But that day was different," he whispered. "Because I wanted to vent my anger, because I wanted to do something with my hands other than form hand seals that were always wrong, I picked up a piece of scrap wood and an old carving knife. I didn't know what I wanted to make. I just started carving."
Yuji could picture it clearly. A frustrated boy, channeling all his anger and disappointment into a piece of dead wood.
"At first, my carving was terrible. I almost broke the knife. But then... something happened," Kenji said, his eyes shining with the memory. "I stopped thinking about the academy. I stopped comparing myself to others. I just focused on the wood in my hands. I listened to the sound it made as the knife sliced through it. I felt its texture under my fingers. I could make whatever I wanted. An angry face, a sad face, a funny face. There was no right or wrong. It was just... mine."
"The carving turned out to be fun," he continued. "Every time I felt frustrated, I would come here and carve. Slowly, my anger disappeared, replaced by... calm. I found peace here, amidst the wood shavings and the smell of varnish. Something I never found on the training ground."
He picked up the Kitsune mask again, looking at it lovingly.
"And that's when I realized. I didn't have to be a ninja to be strong. I didn't have to be a hero to be valuable. I could create happiness with my own hands. I could make a child laugh with a funny mask. I could make a festival more festive. That... that was my own kind of strength."
"So," he finished his story, looking at Yuji with a sincere smile. "I decided to follow this path. I left the academy. Some people said I gave up. But to me, it didn't feel like giving up. It felt like... finally finding my way home."
Yuji looked at his father, completely speechless. He saw the man before him in a completely new way. Not just as his kind, slightly goofy father. But as someone who had faced his own failures and found the courage to choose a different path, a path that made him happy.
That was an act of courage greater than facing an enemy on the battlefield.
"Thanks for telling me, Dad," Yuji whispered.
Kenji smiled and ruffled his son's hair. "Of course, son. Now, go back to sleep. Mask makers need their rest too."
Yuji nodded. He got up and walked out of the workshop, leaving his father back in his quiet, passionate world. As he went up to his room, his mind was racing.
He had chosen the path of the ninja out of fear. Because he thought it was the only way to survive. But maybe... maybe his father was right. Maybe there was more than one way to be strong. Maybe there was more than one right path.
The thought didn't make him question his decision. Strangely, it gave him peace. He might be on a difficult path, but it was the path he had chosen. And knowing that there were other paths, that there was happiness outside of fighting and jutsu, somehow made his burden feel a little lighter.
He got back into his bed, and this time, he fell asleep quickly, with the rhythmic sound of wood shaving from downstairs as his lullaby.
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