Chapter 4: The Student Council President Who Wants to Be Hokage
Maya had finally made her decision: ninjutsu was her path.
Every training path had one thing in common — the earlier you started, the better. The older you were when you began, the slower the progress and the lower the ceiling.
Ninjutsu especially. Never mind prodigies like Itachi or Kakashi, who were already elite Jonin by thirteen. Even Naruto, at thirteen, could pull off Rasengan competently. Look across the entire Naruto universe: almost every powerful figure had started young.
Ninjutsu had its weaknesses. It offered no path to immortality — longevity was as distant as a mirage. Early training burned through physical potential at a brutal rate, and in the later stages, users aged quickly and their abilities declined fast.
But ninjutsu had one advantage that no other powerful training path could match: it was accessible.
Take the Hunyuan Scripture as a comparison. Maya couldn't cultivate it — she lacked the required aptitude — but she could read its contents. The sections on meridians and acupoints were manageable; she'd trekked to Chinatown and tracked down a basic guide to Chinese meridian theory, worked through it with her adult intellect and university-level Chinese comprehension, and gotten the gist. Those parts made sense.
But then came the passages about "ingesting qi", "absorbing solar energy", "balancing opposing forces" — and Maya's brain simply stopped. She was technically what you'd call an ABC: born into a Western world, Chinese blood underneath. She could read all the characters individually. But strung together, they were gibberish. She'd eventually spent enormous effort at the New York Public Library, plowing through Daoist classical texts just to decode the terminology, and had barely achieved seventy or eighty percent comprehension. Theoretically, it was enough to begin Foundation Establishment cultivation — maybe.
But this was a low-tier technique from a low-tier sect. What happened at the advanced stages? Every library in the world wouldn't be enough. No reference material existed.
Ninjutsu, by contrast, was designed so that even Naruto could learn it. And Naruto, let's be honest, spent the entire series barely moving past clone jutsu and Rasengan.
With that settled, she headed home.
Maya stepped off the subway, jogged across Fifth Avenue, and headed toward the apartment in high spirits.
"Sweetheart, how did your interview go?"
Jennifer was walking out of the kitchen, towel in hand, when Maya stepped inside. The apartment was thick with the smell of star anise and Sichuan pepper — Jennifer had been cooking pork knuckle again, clearly.
Maya swapped her shoes for slippers, then answered as she hung up her bag. "The spot at Town Center High School was already guaranteed a while ago. Today's interview was really just about the scholarship tiers."
Jennifer dropped onto the sofa beside Jack, who was reading the newspaper. She picked up the remote and clicked on the TV, then said casually, "How much money are we talking? Enough to cover the subway fare from Manhattan to Queens every day? Honestly, I don't see why you're going to all this trouble — you could just finish high school at the local school and apply somewhere decent afterward. You still have a few months before eighth grade graduation. Why the rush—"
"Thirty-five thousand dollars a year."
Maya tucked a loose strand of dark gold hair behind her ear and said it flatly, cutting right through Jennifer's monologue.
"What the f**k?!" Jennifer's jaw dropped.
Jack let out an exaggerated whistle. "Well done, Maya!"
"How on earth — I've been in Broadway for years and I barely clear $20,000 a year! Jack gets two thousand dollars for a full script revision — how are you—"
Jack, whose annual income was closer to $15,000, cleared his throat quickly and pivoted. "There's probably a Stark Industries grant in there too, right? I believe Howard Stark himself went to Town Center High School."
Maya had briefly looked in on her baby brother James asleep in his crib before returning to answer. "Town Center gives $5,000 — the easiest to qualify for. Another $10,000 is from the New York City Board of Education. There's also $10,000 from the national scholarship, which is much harder to land. The last $10,000 is a Stark-endowed scholarship — ten spots per grade. The first three, I knew I had locked up early. Today's interview was specifically for the Stark money."
Jack nodded slowly, remembering. "That explains why you insisted on changing schools. Town Center really does produce remarkable people — well-funded, clearly. With that many major donors backing it, it can afford to be. Back in college, I had a scholarship too, but you could only hold one at a time. West Coast Film Academy isn't in the Ivy League, but it has a global reputation. Twenty thousand a year, at most."
Maya nodded. In her past life, Jia Baoyu had faced the same situation — multiple scholarships available, all with overlapping eligibility, all competing for a limited pool. In the end, he'd taken the one with the biggest name and the largest amount.
Same game, different continent.
Jennifer had settled down by now. She looked at the TV, where Jordan was weaving through defenders and scoring at will while the opposing team's big man roared in frustration, pounding his chest.
"You didn't win any scholarships before, though, did you?" Jennifer asked, eyes still on the screen.
Maya glanced over at the glass-fronted cabinet beside the television. Without turning her head, she said, "They're all in there."
Jennifer looked. The cabinet was stuffed with gold medals and trophies. She stared at it for a long moment.
"Tonight," she finally said, "we're having pork knuckle—proper Chinese-style."
After dinner, Maya skipped the TV, washed up, and dove under her covers.
Tonight was the night. The first step on the path to becoming a female Hokage.
Then her quilt was yanked off.
Cold air flooded in. Maya had been kneeling with her forehead buried in her pillow, murmuring her system chant under her breath. The sudden yank startled a yelp out of her.
Before she could flip over and see who it was, Jennifer's voice floated over: "Baby, what are you doing? Why are you kneeling in the blankets with your butt in the air?"
Maya's cheeks went scarlet. Her hard-won dignity, thoroughly demolished. She sat bolt upright.
"Oh my god, Jennifer! You'd better have a very good reason for this, because we are not done here!"
Jennifer lay down beside her and held down Maya's flailing hands. Pure innocence on her face. "I knocked for ages. You didn't answer. What was I supposed to do?"
Maya's blush faded. Her heartbeat returned to normal. "Fine. What couldn't wait until morning?"
Then Jennifer started fidgeting — eyes drifting, words dissolving before they formed. "It's, um... it's just that... honey, okay, listen, the thing is..."