The next day she is so tired that she's almost late for class, almost. She walks in at the last second, earning a glare from her 'seatmate' – though he's always glaring so it doesn't count – when she takes her seat.

"One would think that a genius would know how to set an alarm clock," he says, startling her.

"One would say that someone who's on the top five of the class would know how to mind his own business."

The kid chuckles, something very disturbing coming from him, if you ask Reishi, and rises his hands in front of him on a pacifying gesture. "Just kidding, just kidding. Seems like someone got up on the wrong side of the bed," he says smirking.

Reishi snorts, slumping on the back of her chair and letting her head loll back. "You don't know half of it."

The kid huffs a laugh and extends his hand. "Morino Ibiki."

Reishi shakes his hand, feeling that this conversation wouldn't be out of place in a seedy bar like the ones she used to go to. It's odd, coming from a little boy, but she's not one to judge. She doesn't say her name back, and he doesn't ask for it. It would be pretty stupid, considering that she introduced herself to the class just yesterday.

They spend the rest of the class in a companionable silence, which again, she appreciates. He rises an eyebrow at her in a mocking manner when he peeks at her notebook, only to see that she has been drawing on it instead of taking notes. She shrugs at his unspoken question, it's not like she needs to take notes anyways.

When she peeks at his notebook near the end of the class, he has doodled one of her drawings on the top left of the page. She supposes the old dick-butt never gets old, even in different dimensions.

All in all, she likes the kid, and she knows that he isn't going to die. That's a plus. A safe friendship right there.

True, he's going to be tortured sooner or later and end up fucked up, but aren't they all in one way or another? What's a little bit of sadism in a world ruled by violence? She can live with it.

She dedicates recess to avoid meeting with Obito and Rin. Maybe she's being stubborn about it, maybe it's very stupid and she's overreacting by avoiding them. Does that matter though?

No, the answer is no, because there's no one to stop her from being stubborn and stupid.

When she finally goes back to class she sees Obito shoot her a hurt look by the corner of her eye and she tries her best to act like she didn't see it. She hopes she was convincing enough.

Apparently, she's so busy worrying about this that the next thing she notices is being paired up for sparring against a boy with sunglasses and a very odd styled hair. It's like the wind had blown it sideways once and now it was stuck that way.

The boy introduces himself as Ebisu, there's a surname in there as well, but Reishi stopped paying attention the moment she recognized him as that uptight guy that tried to train Naruto once.

Her wave of realization is interrupted when the boy decides to kick her in the ribs. It's only thanks to her reflexes that she manages to get out of the way in time to avoid the kick. After having been struggling to avoid kunais while not sinking the day before, this isn't nearly as difficult, or stress inducing.

She has to give it to him though, even if he isn't the quickest or stronger, his form is perfect. He probably looks just like the picture shown in the book from an outside perspective.

Avoiding that last kick leaves her open though, which is an opportunity Ebisu takes eagerly.

The punch to the solar plexus comes swiftly and without mercy, and she's lucky he hits her just as she was moving backwards, because if she had been just standing it would have blown the air out of her lungs.

As it is, she coughs a little and prepares for a counter attack.

As he lunges for another hit, she ducks under his arm and steps forward, punching him in the gut in the process. It's a low blow and probably not something they would approve at the academy, but she learnt to fight in a bar first and in the academy second, and there's some habits that you never get out of your system, even in a second life. It's nothing personal, just her instincts kicking in. Also it's very hard to feel guilty for punching a kid in the stomach when that kid is technically two years your senior and also attacked you first.

Ebisu jumps back while nursing his damaged stomach, and they both start circling each other. He's probably re-evaluating her and she's happy to use that time to breathe. She might be faster and stronger and maybe have better reflexes, but after just a few seconds she is already breathing erraticaly. She tries to force herself to breathe normally in hopes that he won't notice, because if he tries to turn this into a stamina contest she doesn't stand a chance.

Thankfully he doesn't notice this and she ends up winning the friendly match. She's so happy she has finally won that she actually smiles and offers him her hand to help him get up. And apparently it's not a scary smile either, because he doesn't seem too put off by it and gives a small smile of his own.

Her little moment of happiness doesn't last long however, because when she turns around to walk to her next match she notices Obito looking at her with a frown on his face. The moment she looks at him he changes his expression to give her a smile and a thumbs up, but she has been around him enough to see that the smile doesn't reach his eyes.

The matches go on as normal though, and she doesn't get paired up with him, so she doesn't have the chance to push his buttons to figure out what's bothering him.

Her partners end up being Kurenai and Gai. She wins the match against Kurenai, though this time she has more trouble; Kurenai turns out to be very good at blocking and also more resilient so it's a very close match. Against Gai she loses, obviously. Still, it was interesting to compare her abilities against him, and she's proud to say that she lasted more than one minute, which was her true objective.

By the end of it she's pleasantly tired and satisfied with her sparring abilities. She's not the best of the class, but she's good enough to be decent. Her happiness is interrupted when she remembers that she has to be from five to who knows when at the Uchiha compound training with her new shishō.

Hopefully, if she runs to her house, she might still have some time to take a shower and nap before going.

She arrives at home out of breath and ready to drop anywhere and never get back up again, but instead she heats up the tonkatsu she prepared yesterday and tries not to eat it too quickly. Before promptly passing out on the couch, Reishi notices the lack of Fuhaku's chakra signature in the house and the now pristine wall where the wine stain was the night before.

At least she doesn't have to clean that up.

Fugaku hopes that being late won't become a habit.

Reishi arrived ten minutes late to their first official training session, muttered a barely audible 'sorry' – she doesn't look sorry at all; more like she hasn't slept in her whole life, which isn't so rare for her, though today it seems oddly pronounced – and proceeded to stand in front of him while staring off at something in the distance for the next five minutes.

He has checked the direction she's staring at twice now. There's nothing there, just trees. She's staring at the trees.

He's pretty sure that he could knock her down with a mild shove.

Fugaku snaps his fingers in front of Reishi's face, who startles and looks up at him with wide eyes. He wonders if someone can fall asleep while standing and sighs, suspecting that he has probably witnessed the answer.

"Today's training will be dedicated at throwing practice," he announces.

It's not an immediate effect, but the girl seems to be more awake now, keeping her back straight. Good.

He notices something tense in her posture, as if throwing practice has some sort of hidden importance that he has missed somehow.

He's not complaining at her sudden interest, it's much better than her usual apathy is. It's always easier to teach someone willing to learn, wether they're a genius or not.

He finds a little odd her choice in weaponry. Usually kids are eager to throw kunais or shuriken and the senbon go unnoticed in favour of the more flashy weapons, but when he tries to suggest that she tries first with something easier she looks almost offended. The girl seems to go on the defensive and close in on herself and Fugaku knows that he lost this battle even before it started.

(Just how stubborn can a five year old be? She actually debated with him the answers of her tests and now this? Is his kid going to be like this too? He doesn't know if he will be able to deal with this on a daily basis.)

Perhaps it is for the better, if she is so adamant in learning to throw senbon he sees no problem with it.

He is curious about where does her insistence come from though, he will have to read her files more thoroughly in case it has escaped him. It's nothing to worry about, but it's still good to know.

As he sees her struggle with the oversized needles, he decides that she isn't entirely bad at it. She isn't good, but she isn't bad either. And by this he means that at least half of the senbon hit the mark, which is pathetic, by his standards.

Mikoto would poison him if she knew that he had called his new pupil 'pathetic' though. She says that he must be patient with children and that he can't talk to them as if they are adults – it doesn't matter how much he insists on how Reishi speaks basically like an adult –, not to mention that he would hate to make Reishi lose interest in the only thing she's been invested in so far, so he tries to be more gentle in his delivery.

This is met by a rised eyebrow and a sceptic look from Reishi, which means that at least she is aware of just how bad she is at this.

He makes some little adjustments in her posture and has her throw again, and they repeat this process during the rest of the evening. The rest of the week will also be dedicated at throwing practice, and Reishi will find herself hating the needles more and more with each passing day.

By the end of it at least seventy percent of the senbon hit their mark, which isn't the best rate, but it's some improvement so Fugaku will take what he can get.

It's on the evening of the third day when it happens.

"Holy Fuck!"

Fugaku's head snaps up, ready to chastise his pupil for such rude language – where does she pick up those words anyways? – when he sees a single senbon wedged into the center of the target; a bull's-eye.

And Reishi is beaming, smiling in a way that lights up her face and makes her look like the child she is supposed to be. Alive. She's practically bouncing on the balls of her feet, looking at him expectantly.

He decides that they can talk about her speech faux pas later.

"Good job," he says, and her smile stretches a little bit wider, just before suddenly fading at the corners, like an old photograph that's been under the sun for too long. She keeps the smile on for a little longer while she goes to retrieve the senbon, but Fugaku can tell that it's for the sake of appearing normal, it isn't genuine anymore.

By the time she's back at the throwing line Fugaku drew on the ground (he makes her throw from greater distances when he thinks she's ready), she has let the smile fall off completely and it has been replaced by a look of determination.

Sunday comes surprisingly fast, in Reishi's opinion.

She's in an unusual good mood today, the lack of free time means she hasn't had the time to feel existential dread during the whole week. She has been so distracted by training that she has almost forgotten about how fucked up everything about her is and, honestly? It feels so good to zoom in from time to time and stop seeing the bigger picture, just let life pass by.

She has also missed hanging out with Obito. She hasn't seen him at all during recess, mostly due to her choosing to use that time for senbon practice, and she hasn't been able to train with him after class because of her training with Fugaku.

She hasn't felt lonely during the last week though. Thanks to her winning streak at the sparring matches in the academy, she's suddenly popular amongst her fellow students – yet another reason to spend the recess holed up in the gym – and she's proud to say that she has collected a small amount of allies. Or friends. Or whatever it is that people call it.

The first one was Ibiki. After their small exchange the day she was almost late he seems to have taken a liking to her, often hanging out with her in the gym and mocking her throwing attempts while reading a book.

She feels tempted to use him as a target instead.

For some unholy reason, Hayama Shirakumo; a boy with gray hair just a shade darker than hers and a very serious attitude, has decided that he must join her efforts at target practice.

They don't talk. They haven't shared a conversation ever. He just showed up one day, nodded at her, and started practising with kunais. There is something about him that makes her hate him, makes her try to throw better than him, fight better, run faster. He reminds her of someone of her past life but she can't remember who.

Maito Gai has joined them twice now, and she expects him to waltz in and out of their little recess club more often in the future. She hasn't tried to understand his motivations, she's pretty sure that he won't ever show a pattern in anything, and perhaps that's what makes his fighting style so effective and terrifying. It doesn't have a pattern, it's unpredictable, just like Gai.

Sometimes Ebisu comes in too and sits with one of the academy books in his lap, sneaking glances at Reishi from time to time. She's sure he thinks he's being sneaky. He's not. At all. Though she can't tell for her life what it is that he finds so interesting.

They're a bizarre group but the dynamic works, so she's not complaining.

She finds Obito in their usual training ground; it's practically hidden in the forest and not many people know of its existence. Because of that, the place is usually full of weeds, sometimes they get as tall as Reishi's waist, though it's not that often and the center of the training ground is always clean.

Obito seems to be in the middle of practising some katas when she arrives, and she decides to remain silent until he decides to take a break. It's not like she's in a hurry to start training, she hasn't done anything else in the whole week.

After a few minutes of waiting, Obito stops and leans down to pick his water bottle and Reishi takes this chance to approach him.

"Hey."

Obito seems startled for a second, then looks at her as if he's surprised to see her here.

A pang of guilt starts to surface but Reishi pushes it back to whatever dark corners of her mind it was in and forces herself to smile at her friend.

"So, you come here often?" She jokes. It's admittedly not the kind of humour you would expect a kid to understand, but she's been quite the bad influence on Obito and the damage has already been done. Thanks to this, the comment earns a snort from Obito, whose expression morphs from surprise to 'I'm glad to see you but where the fuck have you been'.

It's a smile. You have to learn to read the differences between his smiles because the damn kid spends smiling eighty percent of his time, but Reishi is proud to say that she's an expert at this.

Reishi decides to pretend she hasn't seen this silent question and walks to the tree where Obito left his bag to leave hers there too. She hears some shuffling behind her and when she turns around she sees that Obito has resumed his katas.

Reishi decides to meditate, it has been a while since she practised sensing chakra and she doesn't want to get rusty. Besides, it's easier for her to feel the chakra around her when she's not physically exhausted.

They both fall back into the easy rhythm of routine they had, and Obito's repetitive motions lull her into a sense of peace.

It has become a ritual by now; he practices katas while she meditates, then they stretch together using some of the yoga positions she knows from her past life and some new she saw in some book in Ryouji's library. After that they'll move on to one exercise or another, perhaps sparring, and finally they'll end by running some laps.

She starts by tentatively brushing her mind with Obito's chakra, as always it's warm and welcoming, a feeling she has come to associate with 'home' (not that she's ever going to tell him that).

In the evening chill it's almost like having a small sun near her.

After following Obito's movements she decides that it's time to expand her radius of awareness a little, see if she can find something interesting.

If she concentrates she can feel an anthill not too far from the training ground, she follows the trail of little ants until they stop somewhere a little bit to the left of the anthill. They must have found a food source there, as there's a constant stream of ants going from there to the anthill and back.

She gets distracted by the ants for a few minutes until some sort of flying insect 'pings' her radar, she can't tell exactly what it is. Nonetheless, she follows its movements until it gets... stuck? It's too small and also too far away for her to make out its movements but it seems frantic.

Suddenly she notices a second chakra signature near the insect, it seems to be another one, slowly approaching the one she was following moments ago. The first insect becomes more and more frantic as the second one comes closer until both signatures collide. Then the first chakra signature dissipates.

Reishi opens her eyes, curious as to what exactly she just witnessed with her mind's eye, though she has a theory.

She walks to the place she last felt the insects and, sure enough, there she sees a small spider web. A spider seems to be enveloping some insect in the web for later consumption.

When she comes back to Obito, he's looking at her with a rised eyebrow, probably asking where did she go so suddenly. She hasn't told him about her being a chakra sensor yet, so she can't just tell him. She settles for shrugging.

"I thought I heard something back there."

They don't talk much today, even when they start practising their throwing skills and Obito makes an appreciative noise at seeing how she has improved in a week.

She makes in his posture some of the adjustments Fugaku did in hers and they continue on.

By the end of the day they're both exhausted and sweaty, making them shiver in the cold night's air. November is almost over and winter is right around the corner, she considers starting to wear one of those ninja onesies under her usual clothes, like the one the adult version of Gai wears, just not green.

"You seem to be getting pretty popular at the academy lately."

Obito's voice startles her, making her look back at him. They're sitting under a tree, still in the training ground. They usually stay there for a while after they've finished training, it's a silent understanding between them that they'd rather not come back home. Though usually they would be chatting and not drowning in an oppressive silence.

"It's annoying, I don't like it when people pay attention at me."

"I know."

They listen to the rustle of the leaves for a while, Obito looking at the stars that have just started to appear in the sky. For the first time since she can remember, Reishi can't tell what he's thinking. She has learnt to differentiate his smiles and categorize them but his more serious expressions are still a mystery to her. A reminder that he's a much more complex person than the anime or manga could ever convey.

This time Reishi is the one to break the silence.

"I'm going to be busy from now on. I've been assigned a tutor for the evenings, so we won't be able to hang out every day like before." A small crease appears between Obito's eyebrows; a shadow of a frown. "I'll be finished by eight though, so we can still see each other after that, and I'll be free on Sundays so..."

"We will still be able to have dinner or lunch together, right?" His tone is neutral, and he's looking at her now. He's trying to smile, but his smile comes out as bitter and Reishi feels like free falling into the abyss. Like something somewhere went wrong but she doesn't know what is it that she has to fix. What part of their friendship is leaking.

"Uh, yes, of course. Actually, we should stablish a routine! Like you can come have dinner at my place, uuuhh... Tuesdays? And I'll go eat lunch with you at your place-"

"On Thursdays."

"Yeah, Thursdays sounds good."

There's silence again, there seems to be an excessive amount of silence around them lately, like an infestation they can't get rid of. Then Obito seems to finish thinking and a smile returns to his face, this time a little more lively.

"Hey we never celebrated you skipping two whole years at the academy!"

"No? I don't think so, why?"

"Let's go and have dinner somewhere to celebrate, my treat!"

Reishi sighs, it's already late and they should go to bed because they have class tomorrow. The terrible feeling of them drifting away from each other gnaws at her though, and it doesn't matter how many times she tries to convince herself of not caring, it just won't go away.

Besides, how many years does she has left until...?

"Let's go to that yatai that's usually near the main street," she says.

"The oden one that also sells that amazing yakitori?"

"Yeah, that one. Though I don't know if they still sell the yakitori, I overheard some of the boys in class say that the owner wasn't selling it much and was thinking of just sticking to selling oden."

They start walking to the yatai, Obito complaining about his stupid chicken sticks the whole time. Reishi can't find it in herself to be annoyed though, it's true that it's some good yakitori. She makes a mental note to try and copy the recipe in case they truly stop making it so she can cook it sometimes. Not because that would make Obito happy, or anything. Cough.

When they arrive at the yatai the owner just gives them a nod in acknowledgement. The amount of freedom people give to children in Konoha still baffles Reishi to this day. True, they have eaten here some other times so the owner is used to them, but she's still five and Obito is... Obito is...

Oh, right, she never asked him, did she?

"Hey Obito," Obito looks at her with a mouthful of oden and makes an inquisitive noise, there's a little bit of grease in the left corner of his mouth. She hands him a napkin, "exactly how old are you?"

Obito almost spits his oden, keeping it in his mouth only thanks to the napkin Reishi had handed him before. "You don't know?!"

"Well, we never- we never talked about it! I mean, I know that you're older than me but-"

"I was two years ahead of you in the academy! Two. Years!" Obito wriggles two fingers in front of her face and she slaps his hand away, he sticks his tongue out at her.

"Hey! There's people older than seven or eight in our class, alright? That's not a valid method of calculating it."

"Ugh, fine. I'm seven."

"Huh."

"'Huh', what?"

"Nothing, nothing."

There's a pause in the conversation, in which Obito happily stuffs his mouth some more, this time with yakitori. Meanwhile Reishi nibbles on a fishcake and thinks on the implications of Obito's age. Four to five years before he's... gone.

For a bizarre moment she thinks on doing something about it, she has already been roped into being a 'genius ninja' so, might as well, right? Maybe she could train harder and graduate as fast as possible, she has already caught up with him in terms of academy year so It wouldn't be that difficult to surpass him, right?

And then what? Pester the Hokage into sending her with him to Kannabi bridge?

Maybe she could make sure he gets an injury before the mission, that way another team would be deployed...

But what if they still send Rin and Kakashi and they die? Obito would never get over it, it would break him.

Besides, the outcome of that mission will directly affect the outcome of the war and tip the balance towards Konoha. Can she really risk that for the sake of one person? Can she let hundreds of hypothetical deaths happen just to try to avoid this?

If Konoha loses the war Ryouji's death will have been for nothing.

In the end, there's nothing she can do to prevent it.

The rest of the dinner Obito happily chats with her, telling her everything she has missed the last week, but the smile still isn't reaching his eyes. Reishi suddenly feels very tired and all she wants is to sleep for a few days. She's sure that Obito has noticed.

She goes home that night with the feeling that their friendship has been twisted in some way and there's no way to fix it so it's the same as before, like a wire that remains out of shape after it's been bent and can't be completely straightened.

She can't get Obito's fake smile out of her head, it looks like betrayal, not his, but someone's. He has never used it with her before.

Her mouth tastes bitter.

Question for the readers: if you were a character in the Narutoverse, what do you think your job would be? Would you be a ninja or a civilian?

I think I would probably be merchant or a musician, to be honest, this body wasn't made for any kind of hard labor guys. I get tired very easily.