Ring, ring, ring...
The school bell rang, signaling the end of the morning session. Gojo Yoru rose from his seat and walked out through the back door of the classroom without a pause.
Kushina Uzumaki had only just received her books and was still copying down Yoru's notes from the first half of the year. The moment she saw him leave, she jumped to her feet and hurried after him.
Her mouth stayed slightly open the whole way.
What did she see?
Everywhere Gojo Yoru passed, boys and girls alike stopped what they were doing and moved aside for him. Some of the boys standing closest to the hallway wall even turned around to face it, terrified that their eyes might meet his.
And even that still wasn't enough to spare them.
A boy who happened to be standing beside the wall had his hair seized the instant Yoru passed him. In one smooth motion, Yoru dragged him forward and ground his face against the wall. The boy did not dare cry out.
The others nearby immediately crouched down and curled in on themselves, doing everything they could to shrink their presence. Of everyone in the corridor, only the girls were spared that kind of treatment.
Kushina stood there dumbfounded, watching Gojo Yoru openly pick fights with people as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
At last, she understood why everyone in class was so afraid of him.
So this guy really is a delinquent!
Why are you following me?
The instant they stepped out of the school building, Gojo Yoru stopped. He turned around to look at Kushina, who had been trailing him in secret, and frowned faintly.
Startled by his gaze, Kushina instinctively looked away. Then, as if she had suddenly remembered something, she forced herself to look him in the eye and answered with all the confidence she could gather, "Yuya-sensei told you to look after me, so I want to follow you and learn my way around the school."
Gojo Yoru stared at her for several seconds, until the bravado in her face began to crumble and her eyes started to drift away again.
Only then did he say slowly, "If you're scared of being bullied, then do what I do. Beat them until they submit. Beat them until they're afraid of you."
His voice stayed calm and flat from beginning to end.
"I still have to train. I don't have time to babysit you."
After saying that, he turned and left the school grounds.
Kushina stared blankly at his retreating back, and the confusion in her mind scattered like clouds torn apart by the wind.
So that was it.
No wonder he always felt so out of place. It wasn't that Gojo Yoru liked picking fights for no reason. It was that if he didn't do it first, someone like him—someone different, someone who didn't fit in—would end up being bullied instead.
Better to become the one everyone fears than the one everyone tramples.
Did he help me because he saw his old self in me?
A shiver ran all across Kushina's body. In that moment, she felt the unmistakable thrill of having found a kindred spirit.
So she hurried after him again and kept close behind his back.
***
Gojo Yoru acted as though he had no idea she was still there.
He left the school grounds, cut through the edge of the forest, and headed for an abandoned training ground hidden among the trees. Once he stepped into the clearing, he immediately began practicing the Body Flicker Technique.
The sharp whooshing of air splitting apart struck Kushina's ears one after another, and she froze again in shock.
Before her eyes, a black afterimage flashed across the training field over and over, like a brush furiously scribbling on paper. Horizontal lines, slashes, diagonals, overlapping streaks—black marks crossed and recrossed until the whole clearing seemed wrapped in a net of shadows.
That alone was enough to show just how fast Gojo Yoru was.
And this was only the beginning.
Five minutes later, after finishing what was apparently just a warm-up, Gojo Yoru appeared beside one of the wooden dummies in the field. Then he rolled up his pant legs and untied the weighted iron plates strapped around his calves.
He tossed one of the weights aside. Whether by intention or by accident, it slammed straight into a wooden dummy not far away.
The next instant, the dummy exploded into splinters as if a charging wild boar had rammed through it.
After letting the iron plates bounce twice across the dirt, Gojo Yoru vanished again, leaving only an afterimage behind.
This time, the chaotic black lines from before disappeared completely.
Without some kind of sensory technique, only someone with exceptionally sharp eyesight could barely catch a vague blur. More frightening still, those afterimages no longer stirred up leaves or produced the whistling scream of air being torn apart.
They moved in utter silence, like a ghost slipping across the world.
"A Body Flicker Technique like that is unbelievable... Is he really only a fourth-year student?"
Those words did not come from Kushina.
At that moment, the little girl was so shocked she could not speak at all. The one who had whispered that sentence was an ANBU operative hidden in the forest, concealed by an invisibility technique, tasked with secretly observing and protecting Kushina Uzumaki.
As the Hokage's personal black-ops force, the ANBU did not specialize in ordinary ninjutsu. Their true strengths lay in assassination and reconnaissance.
And among the skills they valued most was high-speed movement.
Every ANBU member had mastered the basic Body Flicker Technique to a very high level. Many of them had even blended one of the Five Nature Transformations into it, creating elemental variants of the technique or other high-speed movement methods based on taijutsu.
In their view, the ordinary Body Flicker Technique had already been pushed to its limit at their level.
And yet now, in a child far younger than himself, this ANBU operative had just witnessed an even more advanced Konoha Body Flicker Technique—something even they had not achieved.
That ghostlike speed, those noiseless steps, the terrifying precision behind them... all of it pointed to astonishing chakra control and reaction speed.
"A genius of the Body Flicker?"
Both the ANBU operative hiding in the shadows and Hiruzen Sarutobi, who was watching the training ground through a crystal ball elsewhere, found themselves arriving at the same conclusion.
Gojo Yoru, of course, had not actually discovered the hidden watcher nearby.
But he could guess that he had probably already caught Hiruzen Sarutobi's attention.
Today was Kushina Uzumaki's first day at the academy. There was no way the Third Hokage would not be keeping a close eye on her. And as the classmate assigned to sit beside her, Gojo Yoru was guaranteed to be on the list of people under observation.
Hiruzen had probably already had his background investigated in full.
That was why Gojo Yoru had deliberately led Kushina here during the lunch break.
He wanted to display a kind of talent that was outstanding, but not yet monstrous.
Before Shisui Uchiha's name and his famous Body Flicker ever existed, Gojo Yoru's ability to push an ordinary Body Flicker Technique to this degree was more than enough to attract Hiruzen Sarutobi's notice—and earn him the label of a Body Flicker genius.
And this was only the opening move.
If he wanted the Third Hokage's tacit approval—and eventually his investment—then Gojo Yoru would need to prepare even more surprises for him.
After another ten minutes of training, Gojo Yoru finally came to a stop.
As he bent down to pick up the weighted iron plates and strap them back onto his legs, he turned his head toward Kushina and frowned slightly. "Why are you following me again?"
Kushina's mind was still blank from everything she had just seen. "I... I..." she stammered, unable to force out a complete sentence.
"Never mind."
Gojo Yoru cut her off before she could embarrass herself further, then tossed her an easier way out. "Do you know how to fight? Want to spar with me?"
"C-Can I?" Kushina's eyes lit up at once. She nodded so hard she looked like a chick pecking grain. "I can fight! I'm really good at fighting!"
As if she had to prove it right away, Kushina rolled up her sleeves and struck a pose like she was showing off her muscles. The sight of it was absurdly adorable.
"Then don't cry later."
A slight smile curved Gojo Yoru's lips as he lunged straight at her.
And just like that, the two children—one boy, one girl—started fighting in earnest, with not the slightest concern for gender.
***
"So that's how it is..."
Watching everything unfold through the crystal ball, Hiruzen Sarutobi could not help smiling. His gaze held unmistakable approval.
At first, he had assumed Gojo Yoru was a problem child—an orphan who had lost both parents young and ended up with a twisted personality.
But looking at him now, Hiruzen realized he had misjudged the boy.
He was simply a good child who knew how to protect himself—cold on the outside, warm at the core.