.

Without change, there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive

for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity

to manage the change that is inevitable.

"Whenever you're ready, kiddo."

"Okay," I said.

Deep breath in, deep breath out.

The world around me danced with chakra in every direction, pulsing and chafing against my sense, but I focused my attention on the blot in front of me—my own chakra. The chunk of my yin chakra that was given shape by the evening sun behind me.

I reached out to touch the shadow that was splayed across the grass in front of me and pulled.

The chakra slipped away at first, refusing to be harnessed, but I was resolute and I kept grabbing and tugging and yanking it towards me, coaxed it onto the tip of my fingers. There wasn't anywhere near as much resistance as there used to be. That said, it was a struggle to initiate the technique.

Once the first prick of chakra coated the pad of my middle finger it grew more malleable, more willing, curled out towards my touch. Three seconds ticked by as I weaved an unstable coat of armour over every inch of my skin with the chakra, forcing it into the form of my desire.

It remained intact for two seconds and shattered. The chakra streamed off of my skin and pooled on the ground beside me, back in its place as my shadow.

I rocked back into a sitting position and closed off my chakra sense, staring at Shikaku and Maen.

"So you have to touch it?" Shikaku asked, thumbing the goatee that sprouted from his chin. "That's the only way you can do it by yourself?"

"Yeah."

"Interesting," he murmured.

"My hands are the easiest, right now, just 'cause I can actually see it and it's a small area," I explained. I looked down at my hand and flexed my fingers. "I can watch the chakra attach to my fingers and how it moves up from there—that's the hard part, the first bit. Once I've got a decent hold it's easier for me to control it."

"Your ability to use it is coinciding with your actual chakra control, right?" Shikaku asked. At my nod, his attention turned to Maen. "How's she doing there?"

"She's improving quickly," Maen answered. "She's got a strong grasp on the leaf exercise. I'm going to try her on tree-walking soon."

"You think she can do it?"

Maen shrugged. "Doesn't really matter—the practice of gathering her chakra at her feet is going to be useful to her regardless."

Shikaku's head bobbed in a slow nod. "Her feet are what touch her shadow when she's standing up," he said, making the leap in logic. "If she can harness her chakra in her feet then she can more easily use her kekkei genkai when she's standing up. Plus, just working on it'll be a source of practice for her chakra control, so it's a two in one."

"Exactly."

"Can we start now?" I asked.

Both men turned to look at me.

"Well," Maen said, "we've got time, so I don't see why not."

Maen stretched out from his spot on the ground, his body emitting a string of pops and cracks that had me cringing.

"Nasty," I muttered.

Maen took the liberty of smacking me behind the head as he ambled towards one of the largest trees in the area.

"Get over here, kiddo," he said. "Before I die of old age."

"You're well on your way already."

That was a lie, as Maen's twenty-fifth birthday had passed a month prior, but the comment elicited a snort from Shikaku.

"Hilarious," Maen said. "Hurry up."

"Yeah, yeah. I'm coming."

I crossed the clearing to where he was standing.

The shade of the tree stretched out, encompassing both of us with room to spare. The trunk of the tree was vast and devoid of branches for twenty feet, give or take. There was more than enough room for me to practice.

"There's not a lot for me to tell you, really," Maen said. "You need to gather the chakra on the sole of your foot in a thick enough layer that you'll stick to the tree. Too thin and you'll fall, too thick and you'll destroy the tree trunk."

Maen lifted one leg and placed his foot against the tree, leaning back so that his hold on the bark was what kept him standing.

I released my grasp on my chakra sense and peered at his foot. A layer of chakra danced around the bottom of his foot, two or three millimetres thick, a compact cluster of chakra that kept him anchored to the tree.

"Alright," I said.

"You're not going to get it the first time," he said.

"I know."

"Then have at it."

I sat down at the base of the tree and turned my attention to my feet.

Wielding chakra was like making use of any other muscle. I had the added bonus of being able to see it while I worked and thus had a heightened level of accuracy, but calling on the chakra had its challenges nonetheless. Being able to see your arm move as you did a pushup didn't mean that the pushup was any easier, but it did mean you could watch your arm as you did it, ensuring that your arm was in the correct position to maximize the effort.

That was, in essence, how my sense aided me.

I wouldn't need trial and error in the same way others would as I'd know before stepping on the tree whether or not I was going to stick.

I sat there, staring at my feet, and watched the chakra ebb and pulse around the bottom of my foot. I touched them to the trunk every so often.

There were a couple of times in which I got close to the right amount, had my feet stay in place for a couple of seconds, but then the connection would falter or my foot would come away with nothing but a chunk of bark sticking to it, and I would be back at square one. That had been expected. In a week's time, perhaps two, I would be walking up trees without any issue, I was confident in that.

I could wait.

.

.

"Three hours," Shikaku murmured, casting his eyes up to the sun. "That's a long time to be training."

"Maybe. I'm sure she's not the only one her age that trains for that long, though," Maen said. His lips itched to fall into a frown but he held them straight. "Some of the clans push their kids pretty hard."

"Fair enough," Shikaku answered. "Do you always have her going for that long?"

Maen bit back a sigh—he sensed an incoming lecture.

Kasumi's retreating back was visible to them. She had been sent off to retrieve Shikamaru and the game boards, a task that could take anywhere from five minutes to fifty minutes, depending on the prior of the two.

Maen hadn't thought much of Shikaku tasking her with that rather than going himself. That wasn't unusual, in and of itself. Shikaku had a glint in his eye, though, and was taking the conversation down a path that had one destination, causing Maen to suspect there was an ulterior motive to his action.

"Most days. Some last less, if practising with her chakra sense gives her a headache, and some go on for a bit longer if she gets stuck on something. She doesn't like to finish until she's happy with her progress."

Shikaku sighed. "Don't you think you might be pushing her a bit hard?"

Maen propped himself up into an upright position, settling his weight on his elbow. "I push her as hard as she lets me," he said. "She likes it. I used to have her only going three or four days a week but she wanted to start training every day. She asked me to start her on more kata, more stretching, more conditioning. If there was ever a point where she didn't want to keep going as hard she'd have no issue just telling me."

Shikaku held up his hands. "Alright, alright. Just wanted to be sure."

"Trust me, I know where her limits are," Maen said. "I won't let her burn herself out."

"You do have to admit, though, that she does push herself harder than most other kids her age."

"Spite's a powerful motivator."

Shikaku raised an eyebrow. "Spite?"

"Yeah," Maen said. "You know about Uchiha brat in her class?"

"Fugaku's spawn?"

"That's the one."

"I've heard a bit about him. Top of their class, prodigy, all of that."

"Yeah, and he's a snotty little shit," Maen said.

Shikaku smirked. "Shikamaru said as much."

"They ended up as sparring partners by the end of the first year. He's had the top physical scores in their class from the first day. Kasumi had beat the other kids, which was why Iruka started pairing the two of them up, but she was still a ways from being on his level."

"She spent the entire summer between her first and second year training," Shikaku recalled. "That was the first time I really started to notice it."

"She wouldn't say why, at first," Maen said. "She just told me that she wanted to be ready for her second year."

"But?"

"Turns out the Uchiha told her that 'cause she was female and civilian born, she'd never be able to beat him."

"You're serious."

"Completely."

"He really is a little shit," Shikaku muttered. "That's… such an Uchiha thing to say."

"Yeah. She took it better than I would have thought—I mean, she didn't just deck him then and there, which is pretty good—but it lit a fire under her ass. She wanted to prove him wrong."

"Did she end up doing that?" Shikaku asked.

"She's beaten him, but he wins more often than not."

"She doesn't want to just beat him a couple of times, then," Shikaku said. "She wants to be better than him."

"Maybe," Maen said. "I'd like to think she's moved past that and does it for the sake of training, at this point, but it's hard to say."

"She's an interesting one, alright."

Maen scratched the back of his head. He rolled onto his back, staring up at the sky.

Interesting.

Yeah, he'd go with that.

.

.

"Are you trying to box me in?"

"I dunno," I said. "Is it working?"

Shikamaru placed a piece at the edge of my formation, blocking my advance. "No."

I fell back against the grass with a groan, staring up at the sky as I sulked.

The sun had sunk below the horizon and heralded in the evening with purple skies and a chilled breeze. That was my favourite type of evening. Not cold enough to require more than a t-shirt, but not warm enough that I was uncomfortable and sweating from the heat.

It was a shame that it was being ruined by a board game.

"When somebody asks you about your strategy," Maen said from his spot a few feet away, "you not supposed to answer them."

"You say that like it matters," I grumbled. "He's gonna beat me no matter what I try."

"She has a point," Shikaku drawled. He peeked over his son's shoulder at the board. "He secured a win about three moves ago."

There was a clatter of stones as Shikamaru swiped the board clean.

"Why am I doing this?" I wondered aloud.

"You're the one who wanted to learn how to play Go," Maen said.

"I just wanted to know the rules so I'd understand what was going on when you guys played—I don't give a shit about playing myself."

A Go piece arched through the air and landed smack in the middle of my forehead. I yelped, my hand rising to rub at the spot.

"No swearing," Shikaku said.

"C'mon," I whined. "Maen lets me."

"Stop spoiling her," Shikaku said, picking up another piece and tossing it at Maen with the intent to kill. Maen tipped far enough to the side that the stone sailed past him, his eyes locked on the pages in front of him. "You're creating a monster."

"She's just expanding her vocabulary," Maen answered. He moved his book down far enough that I could see the smirk on his face. "Plus, it's kinda cute."

"No, it's not," Shikaku said. "This is your fault, you should be trying to fix it."

"Why fix what isn't broken?"

"An eight-year-old shouldn't be swearing."

"I was swearing when I was eight."

"That's not good enough justification."

"It's Kiba's fault," I said. "He's the one I'm picking it up from."

Another piece nailed me in the exact same spot as the last. "Don't cover for him."

I scrambled up off the ground and threw myself behind Maen, letting him serve as my human meat-shield should Shikaku decide to launch further offensives.

"He does swear a lot," Shikamaru said. "He even says fu—"

Shikaku clapped a hand over his son's mouth before he could get the word out and groaned. "This is hopeless."

"They're just words," I said.

"They're bad words," Shikaku countered. "They're impolite."

"And?"

"Right, of course," he said. "I'm talking to a brat who wouldn't know manners if they smacked her upside the head."

I poked Maen in the back. "Defend me," I hissed. "He's being mean."

"He's not wrong," Maen said.

"What? Come on!"

"Hey, I won't get after you for your bad manners, but I won't act like they don't exist."

"Traitor."

Shikamaru trudged through the doors to the Academy building beside me, his head dipped forward and his eyes half-lidded.

I poked his arm. "You're not sleep-walking, are you?" I asked.

"No."

"Good," I said. "I don't feel like having to drag you into your seat."

He grunted, a sound that could mean anything from 'okay' to 'stop talking'.

On most days the former was a safe bet. With it being the first full day back at school, though, Shikamaru was in as close as he could get to a sour mood, so it was worth at least considering the latter as well. He wasn't a morning person on the best of days but the end of summer intensified that.

We were two of the last people to get to class, the room full of chattering children that were audible halfway down the hall. Most of them ignored our arrival, save for two groups.

In the far corner of the room a group of girls—which was comprised of every girl in our class except for myself and Hinata, my lone companion in sanity—turned to look at us as we walked through the door. There was chittering, glaring, and various other shows of distaste aimed at me, none of which hit their mark.

I had noted that, in their mutual dislike for me, they had been united. The girls who had bullied Sakura ceased doing so at the end of our first year in the Academy. Ino and Sakura were still close friends, despite having both developed affections—they were not romantic feelings, children were not capable of developing romantic feelings—for Sasuke.

In the race for Sasuke, I had become the common enemy, despite the fact that I wasn't even attempting to compete.

I had yet to decide if that was hilarious or horrifying.

The other group to glance my way were four boys that had spent the early Academy years bullying Naruto, led by Toya, the boy whose shins I had kicked in the previous year. While I hadn't felt good about beating up a little kid, it wasn't as if I had hurt him—he had a couple of bruises the next day to show for the incident but nothing more.

All I had wanted was to send a message to him and that's what I did. After that day, he and his cronies hadn't dared say a word to Naruto, nor had any other kid from our class, and that was what mattered to me. If they had to be afraid of little old me for the sake of staying off Naruto's back, that was a small price to pay.

Not that I felt that bad about scaring them—they were brats, even if the fault for that was with their parents.

"Good morning, Toya," I said as we walked past, giving a small wave to him and his friends.

The four of them stiffened. Toya turned to look at me but the other three looked down at their desks rather than meet my eye.

How rude.

"Kasumi," Toya said.

Shikamaru tugged on my sleeve. "C'mon."

I turned to look at him and saw a hint of a smirk on his face even as he pulled me away.

"Fine," I said. "Ruin my fun, why don't you."

Naruto and Choji were waiting for us at the back of the room. They were sitting at the same desk, chatting with each other, but they broke apart when Shikamaru and I made it to them. Naruto took one desk while Choji got up and lumbered over to the empty table beside it, as was usual.

"Morning boys," I said, taking my seat beside Naruto.

"Hi!" Choji said.

To my right, the sound of Shikamaru collapsing into his seat was followed by a thud as his forehead slammed against the table.

Naruto grinned. "Morning."

Up at the front of the room, Iruka threw the door open, walking in with a stack of papers in one hand and a red pen in the other.

"Welcome back from your summer vacation, class," he said, stopping in front of his desk. "It's time for a pop quiz."

.

.

"Kasumi."

I paused, one foot planted in the hallway on my way out to the schoolyard. "Yeah?"

"We need to talk."

"Ah, really?"

"Yes."

I waved at Naruto, Shikamaru, and Choji. "I'll meet you guys outside."

The three of them marched on without me, Naruto snickering—"Kaka's in trouble, Kaka's in trouble!"—and Choji muttering to himself—"She did it again!"—as they made their way outside.

There was a familiar sheet of paper sitting in front of Iruka on his desk.

"You passed this quiz by one mark," he said. "You left the rest of the questions blank."

"But I passed."

He exhaled, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Yes, but you and I both know you could have done far better on this quiz if you bothered to try harder."

"It's the first quiz of the year—you never take the marks from them."

"And if I started to do that today?"

I shrugged. "Oh, well."

"How am I supposed to know where your academic level is when you won't show it to me?" he asked. "That's what these are for, you know. I take the marks from them and use them to find out where the class needs improvement."

"Then just ignore mine," I said. "I don't pay attention in class anyways."

"Which is the problem! You could be the top girl in your year if you applied yourself academically."

"You've got way too much faith in me, Iruka ."

"I don't," he said. "Your intelligence is high enough that you could beat out Sakura, I know that."

I frowned, crossing my arms over my chest. "How come you're only getting after me?" I asked. "Shika is worse than I am, but you don't go hounding him."

"Shikamaru isn't somebody I can motivate, but you are. You apply yourself in your physical work, your taijutsu and your weapon throwing. But in class, you read your own books instead of the assigned work and doodle—"

"I don't doodle," I cut in, my fingers tightening around the sketch pad I had clutched in my hand, my mind bringing up the image of the updated portrait of mama I had worked on rather than complete my quiz, "I draw."

He blinked, his jaw rising to shut his open mouth, the rest of his words lost. A beat of silence passed.

"Right. You—you sit and draw instead of listening when I'm teaching or doing your class assignments."

"I still pass everything."

"You're capable of doing more than pass! That's—that's what I've been trying to say."

"But unless I fail, there's nothing you can do."

"You'll fall behind if you don't keep up with the basic foundations."

"No, I won't."

He stared at me.

Aside from the fact that I had retained some level of my basic academic knowledge from my last life, stored with all of the other bits of semantic memory that had been passed on along with my soul, there was little being taught to us at this point that couldn't be picked up at a later date in a weekend of studying.

Multiplication, division. The basic history—propaganda, really—of Konoha. The systems of the body. What will kill you if you eat it out in the wilderness. How to pitch a tent and not make a disaster of the environment around you while doing so.

If I ever found myself in need of that information I had access to the Nara library through Maen and the Konoha's shinobi library. There wouldn't be any issue in my getting to it.

There was no reason for me to bother with doing all of it now.

Iruka hadn't said it, but that was the same reason why Shikamaru, and other Nara in general, didn't get ragged on for attaining poor grades in the Academy, assuming that they at least passed. Due to their vast intelligence and the resources they had available to them, it was expected that a Nara would pick up what knowledge they needed down the road.

All of that said, I could have literally scored a zero on every test except for the final ones issued at the end of every semester and still be allowed to progress to the next year.

The grades we received in the physical aspects of class were deemed equal to our academic ones, as knowledge and physical abilities were of equal worth to a shinobi. The grades I received in our physical testing were high enough that, should I want to, I could get a bare pass on my final tests and skate through the Academy without issue.

"I see," Iruka answered. He leant back in his chair, watching me. "You really believe that?"

"Yeah."

He took a deep breath and let it out in one whooshing exhale. "Alright, Kasumi. You can go."

I turned and left without a word.

.

.

"Hey, hey, Kaka! So, did Iruka get mad at ya?"

"Nah."

"Eh, really? That's so boring."

"It's a good thing, it means she's not in trouble!"

"Yeah, but it's still boring. I wanted to hear Iruka yell at her or something."

"You're only saying that because you want him to yell at somebody other than you for once."

"What? Nu-uh!"

"I agree with him—you're just bitter."

I sat on the couch in the living room, my chakra sense wide open and tears burning in my eyes.

Signatures were flying around the village at a mile a minute, high-level signatures at that, one of which belonged to Maen and another to Shikaku. The spot in the village which I had, over time, managed to label as belonging to the Uchiha compound, sat devoid of any chakra activity save for three or four signatures buzzing around which didn't hold the static that was typical of an Uchiha's chakra signature.

After a minute or two I located a familiar signature in the hospital. The movement of the chakra was subdued, slow and dull, compared to its typical lively nature. It was the only signature left that had the Uchiha static.

I lasted an hour before the dull ache in my head progressed to a roar and I was forced to close off my sense. As soon as the pain subsided, though, I had them open again, a grim curiosity making it impossible for me to keep myself from observing the village in its state of panic.

Maen returned at three in the morning and found me sitting in the living room, a hand over my mouth, my cheeks flushed and damp.

He walked through the threshold, decked out in full shinobi attire. He gave me a bewildered look when he spotted me there—I hadn't moved the entire time he was gone.

"Kiddo, what—"

"They're gone," I mumbled, the words muffled as they slipped through my fingers. "I can't—I can't feel them, they're just gone."

Recognition flashed across his features, followed by horror. In a second he was on the couch beside me, holding me in his lap, carding his fingers through my hair and murmuring nonsense in that calming voice of his.

Neither of us got any sleep that night.

Sasuke didn't come back to school for two weeks.

Had I not felt the aftermath of the Uchiha massacre for myself, his absence would have been enough to tip me off.

As it was, once he returned he was—understandably—changed. His default mode was to sit in silence and glare at anybody who looked his way or came within five feet of him. What few words he did speak were clipped, voiced in a tone far colder than any child should be capable of using.

The worst part was how this new attitude was worshipped by the girls in our class.

Some of the blame belonged to those around them who didn't bother correcting their attitudes. I doubted any of the girls grasped the gravity of the situation, the full extent of the horror that was the Uchiha massacre. They couldn't begin to guess at what type of damage they were doing to the psyche of an eight-year-old Sasuke Uchiha.

"Alright," Iruka said to our class as we gathered in the training grounds. "Pair off and get started on your spars. Remember to have good, clean fights, okay?"

Sasuke stood off in the far part of the group of students. Ino and another girl, who I believed to be her sparring partner, were hovering near him, giggling to each other and throwing glances at the back of his head.

I made my way over to where he was.

"Good luck, Sasuke," Ino said.

"Yeah! I know you can do it, Sasuke!" the other girl cried. "You're way better than her."

Sasuke gave them as much attention as I did, which was none at all.

I placed myself across from him without uttering a word and held my hand out in the seal of confrontation. He mirrored the action.

My hand fell at my side and I pulled myself into the defensive position that Maen had taught me, rather than the one that the Academy trained us to use. Despite his calm exterior, I could sense a storm of anger and grief churning in Sasuke, the writhing and frothing of his chakra betraying him, clear to my sense even without having them open.

He flew at me with nowhere near the level of control he had shown in the past.

He launched a reckless offensive that I danced around, knowing better than to try and compete with him in a battle of brawn. If I engaged in a slug-match he'd win. Instead, I waited him out, moving around his punches and kicks with practised ease.

When he overextended with a loose punch aimed at my face, one of the places we weren't supposed to be targeting anyways, I grabbed his wrist and pivoted, tossing him over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes with a sharp yank. He landed on his back and stared up at me, his chest heaving.

I took a step back and extended a hand down to him.

Ten seconds ticked by; I didn't move an inch.

He reached up and wrapped his fingers around my wrist. He let me pull him to his feet, though the second he gained his footing he dropped my hand and backed away. I formed the seal of reconciliation and Sasuke did the same.

Giving a small nod, more to myself than him, I turned my head to the side and frowned at the two girls who had watched us fight rather than participate in their own sparring match.

"Don't you two have something to do?" I asked, not blunting my tone or my words.

The girl let out an 'eep' and skittered away but Ino stared me down. At least one of them had a backbone.

Rather than cower, Ino gave a haughty sniff and turned her nose up at me. With a flick of her hair, she turned and followed the other girl, taking up their positions in their own sparring square.

"Do you think it could be her hair?"

"Oh, maybe! I heard Sasuke likes long hair and hers is really long."

"She never wears it down, though. I think he only likes girls with long hair who actually wear it long, she just keeps it in a messy braid most of the time."

"I guess you're right."

"What about how thin she is?"

"She's got like... weird muscles, though. Mama said women should be delicate and thin, not muscled like brutes."

"I bet it's her accent. It's kind of, like, exotic, right?"

I slammed my book shut and stood, stalking towards the group of girls that sat mere feet away, gathered together and gossiping as they picked at their near non-existent lunches.

One would expect that, in a society that puts such emphasis on manners and politeness, somebody would have taught them how to show some level of tact and restraint when talking about another person who was within earshot of them. Nobody had. They weren't even trying to be quiet.

I planted my hands down on the table and they grew silent. Ino, of course, didn't bat an eye at me while the rest of the girls, Sakura included, inched away from me.

"You're all being stupid," I declared.

"Eh?"

"What do you mean, stupid?"

"You're just trying to get in our way, that's it!"

"I'm not trying to get in your way," I said. "I'd have to actually like Sasuke to do that."

"You don't like him?" one of them asked, her eyebrows furrowing together and her lips puckering.

"Not at all," I said. "We're not even really friends—we're just sparring partners."

"But—but he actually talks to you!" Sakura said.

"Well," I said, "he kind of does."

He spoke to me more than most other people but that wasn't saying much.

Sasuke tolerated me. He didn't like me, nor did he go out of his way to talk to me, but if I asked him a question related to training I could at least expect a monosyllable response rather than silence and a glare.

That was fine with me as I had no desire to talk to him about anything other than training.

"Why does he talk to you," Ino asked, pointing at me, "instead of any of us?"

"Yeah, what makes you so special?"

"Probably because I'm not you," I offered.

"Huh?"

"You all act like he's some kind of Kami," I said. "It's creepy."

"We're showing our devotion!" a girl cried with a huff.

"No, you're being creepy," I repeated. "You giggle anytime he's within ten feet of you and stare at him for way longer than what's socially acceptable."

"Fine," Ino snapped. "What should we do, then, if you're so smart?"

"Stop trying to impress him with your appearances and start trying to impress him with your abilities," I said. "You're all so busy wondering what about my appearances Sasuke could like that you're completely missing the point—unlike any of you, I can take him in a fight."

I received a multitude of blank stares in response.

Ino was the first one to snap out of it. "So we need to get stronger, not prettier," she said, her nose scrunching up as the words left her mouth.

"Well, that, and just… stop being so creepy all the time."

"Hmph."

"How do we know you're not just trying to trick us?" Sakura asked, her eyes narrowed. "You might just be trying to get Sasuke all to yourself!"

A shudder ran through my body at the thought—gross.

I was a lot of things, but a pedophile was not one of them.

"I have absolutely zero interest in Sasuke," I said.

I turned on my heel and walked away, preventing them from throwing more questions my way. As soon as my back was turned they broke out into a mess of chatter, three or four conversations going on at once around the table, the words incomprehensible to me.

I hoped that at least a couple of the conversations were revolving around training.

They were young and wrapped up in the warm embrace of childhood. They didn't yet realize the weight of their decision to attend the Academy, the grim future that they had set out for themselves, inching towards them, growing closer with each passing day. It would be a couple of years until that set in. For some of them, it would take longer, those who wouldn't understand the reality of their lives until they were holding a bloody kunai in their hands for the first time.

I had the foresight to know that I needed to take my training seriously, a luxury that none of them possessed. The few of them who had shinobi parents, or belonged to shinobi clans, would at least have somebody pushing them along through their training regardless—that couldn't be said for the children who had civilian parents, the girls especially.

Not all of the girls would listen to me. Some would ignore what I had said and go on trying to woo Sasuke with hairdos and makeup. Others would take my words to heart for a little while, try to improve themselves, but give up once they saw no results with Sasuke or found the task too onerous.

If, at the end of the day, I spurred on one or two them who managed to stick it out until the end, no matter what their reason for doing it, I would be satisfied.

The chance that Sasuke might spend less time getting ogled at was an added bonus.