Nothing happened for a while.
That was new.
---
Team Nineteen did D-ranks.
A lot of them.
Too many.
We escorted merchants who complained about ninja fees, chased cats that did not want to be chased, cleaned riverbanks after floods caused by people who could bend nature and never apologized for it.
No glory.
No blood.
Just work.
I relaxed.
That should have scared me more than it did.
---
Morita-sensei ran us like a ledger.
Strengths listed. Weaknesses circled. Risk minimized.
He rotated who took point. He avoided forests when possible. He rerouted missions instead of pushing through.
"Time is cheaper than funerals," he said once.
I wrote that down.
---
Hana surprised me.
She wasn't flashy, but she noticed things—footprints that didn't match, birds that stopped singing, shadows that moved wrong.
She never announced it.
She just adjusted.
I approved silently.
---
Riku struggled.
His hands shook in combat drills. His chakra control spiked when he panicked. He apologized too much.
Morita-sensei didn't yell.
He reassigned roles.
Riku became support.
No one died.
---
I learned where I fit.
Rear guard. Inventory. Reports.
I remembered details. Times. Directions. Costs.
Morita-sensei started handing me paperwork without comment.
That was trust.
Or delegation.
Either way, it kept me alive.
---
We passed other teams sometimes.
Loud ones.
Teams that laughed too hard, boasted too openly, talked about becoming famous.
A month later, we'd hear about one of them getting reassigned.
Or absorbed.
Or quietly dissolved.
Hana noticed too.
We never discussed it.
---
Once, during a border patrol, we found a corpse.
Civilian.
No visible wounds.
Morita-sensei marked the location, filed a report, and rerouted us.
"Above our pay grade," he said.
I slept that night.
That bothered me.
---
I ran into Naruto again.
Literally.
He was sprinting through the street, yelling about ramen.
He bounced off me like a projectile.
"Sorry!" he shouted, already gone.
I stood there for a moment, heart racing.
The plot had brushed past me.
I hoped it hadn't noticed.
---
Mika visited less.
She was busy.
She looked tired in a way sleep didn't fix.
She talked about procedures. About triage. About learning how to decide who didn't get treated.
I listened.
I didn't give advice.
That felt safer.
---
One evening, Morita-sensei asked me a question.
"Why are you a ninja?"
Simple.
Dangerous.
I thought carefully.
"Because I didn't see a better option," I said.
He nodded.
"Good," he replied. "Heroes hesitate. Survivors don't."
I wasn't sure if that was praise.
---
Weeks passed.
Season changed.
Leaves fell.
We stayed alive.
---
I noticed something then.
Team Nineteen wasn't improving fast.
We were improving evenly.
No spikes.
No miracles.
Just gradual, boring competence.
In Konoha, that was camouflage.
---
One night, updating our latest report, I hesitated.
There was a detail.
A sound we'd heard. Distant. Wrong.
I left it out.
The report was cleaner.
Morita-sensei signed it without comment.
I didn't sleep well.
---
I added another rule.
Rule Five: Silence is also a decision.
Outside, the village hummed.
Far away, something important was happening.
It wasn't happening to me.
Not yet.