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Saying I wanted to save my sister was easy, actually doing it was a whole new challenge. For starters, I very nearly failed the entrance exam. The test had mainly been on writing and reading, but surprisingly also included chakra control with what I quickly recognized as the so-called "leaf-exercise". I guess they wanted to weed out those with potential from the very start. Luckily dad, and many other shinobi parents, had known this ahead of time and taught us the basics a few weeks earlier. For this reason, kids like Gai failed right from the start. However, within the first week, Gai was added as an alternative to the class, meaning he'd be added in if anyone dropped out.

No one did drop out, but Kakashi had quickly moved into the grade of above, and ironically his future-eternal-rival was the one to take his place. Truth be told, I didn't even get the chance to notice him before he was gone. The first few weeks were packed with the ground rules and an outline for our entire time at the academy. The standard graduating age was nine, and next year we'd start hand-to-hand combat. In preparation for that, we had exercises such as 'tumbling' which was basically training in how to break our falls and soften blows. Along with that, we had a whole slew of physical strengthening, sometimes designed as games, and sometimes flat out running and jumping back and forth.

It was simultaneously easier and more difficult than I had expected. On one hand, we were children, on the other, there were much more strenuous routines such as hell week during the navy seals. Participants in there went five days with basically no sleep going through calisthenics, mud crawls, cardio, freezing temperatures, carrying their boats over their heads, and for pretty much the entire day too.

While I doubted we'd ever do any academy training as arduous as that, the thought of it did make me a little more obliging to what was mandated.

The academics were equally surprising.

There was some emphasis on history, but Konoha was a young village, just like the rest of the hidden villages. The Third Hokage himself was only forty-seven. Furthermore, there was no world history, only the Land of Fire history. So it's not like we had a lot of material to cover in that regard. Beyond this, the math was basic, the science was laughable, and the arts were completely nonexistent.

Well, for boys the arts were nonexistent, for girls who went to kunoichi classes Fukuda-sensei would rapt for hours on how ikebana "was a medium of expression which, through natural materials, conveys a sense of identity for the space it represents." She was a regular Van Gogh, I just hoped she didn't cut her own ear off at this point.

She talked a lot about nature and the cycle of life, to the extent where I wasn't all sure if it was subtle conditioning for our lives ahead or if she was just genuinely in love with this stuff. Nevertheless, Ikebana and hanakotoba, the language of flowers, went hand in hand. And for our first week of kunoichi class, we had an assignment to design an ikebana display for our tokonoma, which was a decoration space in traditional homes, but for those of us without it, we'd just put it in the living room or something.

Because most of the students couldn't afford the hanakotoba textbook, it wasn't required, and thus we all formed a circle around Fukuda-sensei's desk looking at the pictures while she slowly flipped the pages explaining everything in simple words. It was kind of endearing being taught like this, in my old world we would have just been at desks staring up at the projector. And for all Fukuda embellished the art of flowers, I couldn't say with all certainty that I hated the class. In fact, when put against the extreme exercise and confounding chakra control, it may have been my favorite part of the day.

Chakra control, as I soon found out, was not my strong suit. Not that I had ever intended to become a med-nin or genjutsu specialist. I had already decided, albeit, a little grudgingly that I'd focus on ninjutsu.

I was starting from the top anyway. In my previous life, I'd never had any formal training in martial arts or even a class in psychology so it made sense to me to start entirely from scratch with ninjutsu. The only problem was that I was fairly sure my chakra reserves were in the average to the below-average range. Meaning I'd have to exercise daily using it to near exhaustion in order for my reserves to grow to their highest potential. Naturally, chakra was used during physical activities such as running or jumping, pumping through the muscles in order to extend their innate limitations. So it wouldn't be going too much out of my way to do this. Especially now when my chakra reserves were still pitifully small. Briefly, I remembered kid Kakashi performing a jutsu at some festival. To have that amount of chakra at such a young age was breathtaking when put into this new perspective. And then later the fact that he acknowledges both Sasuke and, more obviously Naruto due to Kurama and Uzumaki genes, would grow up to have even larger reserves than him was absolutely mind-boggling.

There was no way I could ever compete with that, yet I also couldn't let Rin compete with that. In canon, she had ended up on Team Minato through what I assumed was from her being at the top of the class. But Team Minato would practically be a death sentence for her!

Which meant, either some other kunoichi would have to score better than her, or I'd have to score better than her. Both were unlikely scenarios seeing as at the end of the first month, when the results were posted, Rin came in first for the entire class.

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Every day after school we stayed at our grandfather's tiny grocery store in the Minami neighborhood. It was an old two-story building with a low slung roof, the cerulean blue sky behind it matte and vast. When we arrived mom was already in full swing at the cashier and gave us a pointed look to the back storage; where we were supposed to stay while consumers were around.

Before deciding to work for her father, mom did accounting for local suppliers. Only quitting once she had us for the more flexible hours her dad could give her. It wasn't a bad setup, not even when crowded in the back where all the supplies and produce was kept. When we had been really young we used to make forts out of the sacks of rice and cardboard boxes. Now Rin used those same materials to fashion a desk and began her homework.

It wasn't that Rin was doing better than me in studying. That would have just been embarrassing. It was from having the highest average of classwork and timed physicals. Since I was constantly wasting my chakra during exercise in an attempt to empty my reserves, when we were actually tested I always did poorly because I was exhausted. Chakra reserves were like a muscle. To make a muscle bigger it has to break under stress and build itself up again stronger. Normally this is done through lifting heavy weights, but I couldn't exactly bench press my chakra. Or I could but it would take an insane number of repetitions to make it worthwhile. Emptying chakra reserves was a task much better suited for endurance running or other forms of cardio. However, In the long term, continuing to do this wasn't a good idea because I'd end up with truly abysmal chakra control.

I sighed, rubbing my face with my hand.

"What's wrong?" Rin asked, pausing to chew on her candy. "Did you do the homework already?"

"No," I peered over her shoulder. "What is it on again?"

On the page was a simple diagram, one that I slowly recognized. It was the same from the manga when Ebisu was assigned as a teacher to Naruto, after the second part of the chunin exam.

"Oh isn't stamina supposed to be the term for spiritual and physical energies?" This was another problem. Over time, I would gradually forget the finer details of the canon-verse. I could simply write them down, but I had been waiting for a less risky way to go about it. Unfortunately, nothing brilliant had popped up, so the best I could do was write in English.

Rin flipped through her notes for a few minutes, before deciding I was right.

"Then," I pointed at the second bubble. "This next section underneath it would be chakra I guess…"

"With ninjutsu and genjutsu after it!" Rin finished, quickly writing it all down.

On paper, it was laid out almost like an engine chamber. Chakra itself was the piston, constantly moving as the result of mixing between the spiritual and physical energies. While hand signs were like valves, depending on which you choose to use, ninjutsu or genjutsu would occur. Taijutsu on the other hand came directly from what was called "stamina" and required no hand signs. Even while opening the eight gates Rock Lee and Gai didn't need to use hand signs. I suppose this meant taijutsu was purely physical energy, which would make sense; however, it also arose the problem of me disproportionately building physical energy over spiritual energy. This wasn't a problem for taijutsu specialists, but since I wanted to specialize in ninjutsu...

I twirled my pencil, pulling out my own homework, and began to fill it out. The only way to practice spiritual energy was through studying, meditation, and experience. The latter being the hardest to achieve. I guess I'd just have to start reading more to make up for the rest.

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For the next few days of class, I spend most of my time trying to cram everything I could remember from the Naruto series in my notebook. I sat by Rin in class, and no one else. When she asked what I was writing I told her I was developing a secret language for us.

However, today we were doing probability experiments so I had to put my notes away. It started by flipping brass coins. About one-thousand brass coins were equal to a single ryō so each student got one to themselves. We were to flip the coin ten times and record whether it had landed on heads-or-tails for each time. The experiment was supposed to show that while ideally the chances of it landing on either side would be fifty-fifty, in reality, this ideal was very unlikely.

Although having done this before I knew it was actually very easy to alternate between heads and tails each time and get the perfect fifty-fifty. By keeping the coin over my thumb and applying the same relative force it would only flip once and therefore change sides each time without any unnecessary additional flips to try to achieve a 1:1 ratio. If you weren't actively thinking about it, like most of the kids in the class, it was difficult to accomplish this at random, but it was actually very simple if you were paying attention to the results or had done something similar before, as in my case.

When we all told our results to Tamura-sensei he couldn't believe I had gotten heads and tails every other time. Not because it was the ideal, as other students had managed to reach the 1:1 ratio once they realized how to make the coin land on what they wanted, but because I had done this from the start.

To prove I hadn't cheated I flipped my coin in perfect succession on his desk. Perhaps if I had done it one-hundred times in a row my hand would have eventually gotten tired, but for only ten flips this was not an issue.

"Wow!" Rin exclaimed from the sidelines with support, despite having seen it when I'd done it at our desk. "That's amazing."

Tamura-sensei ultimately and unenthusiastically accepted it. No doubt a little annoyed that his lesson had been lost on me. He knew, of course, that some students would go on to attain the precise fifty-fifty, but they would learn this through their past attempts and have to work at making sure they didn't over or under-throw their coins.

Likely he believed my passive attitude about it meant I wasn't thinking about my actions, which wasn't entirely true. While I could complete the task without consciously examining my movements, that didn't mean I didn't understand the logistics behind it. Even if it seemed we were only playing one game, it was really part of a larger game. There is always a larger game.

In the grand scheme of things, Rin's death was a catalyst. Fate in Naruto was a very real thing, and if I wanted to save her I had no doubt that her death would have to be replaced with something equally tragic.

Later in the day, we played a similar game. This time rock-paper-scissors, which basically everybody was familiar with. It was arranged as a competition where after your first five games when you lost you had to line up behind who you lost to and follow them around the room as they challenged other contestants.

Of course in the beginning, whether you won or lost was determined by luck, but the more games you played the better chance you had at predicting what the outcome would be. For instance, people like Gai and Obito did alright at the start from good intuition. Although not immediately comprehending the thought process over why some would choose to play paper over scissors in any given turn, they unknowingly had already picked up on some of the tricks used to increase the odds.

Most people fell into predictable patterns. For a while our classmate Akio was winning by rotating through paper, rock, then scissors. However, people are also influenced by their opponents. For example, when Akio lost one of his free rounds to a classmate who chose scissors first instead of rock, Akio began to rotate between rock, rock, scissors, and his original paper, rock, scissors.

Kids like Asuma, Rin, and Kurenai made it into the late game through objective reasoning. Understanding the basics of the game, picking up on the developing rules as the game progressed, and applying this to their own games. Eventually, they'd lose to someone pulling a fast one, or a good strategy. In other words, competent shinobi made excellent poker players.

In the end, I was pitted against Hifumi Yamanaka, both of us with half the class lined up behind us hooting and cheering, and I lost.

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When we went to our grandfather's grocery store that evening, grandpa was the only one there. So we went down the snack aisle picking what we wanted to eat. We settled on umaibō puffed corn and drank what was basically Calpis, strolling up and down the aisles, pretending we were actual customers. It was Friday, and we had no classes on Saturday and Sunday, so we didn't bother doing homework just yet. Despite being incredibly busy at school, I felt like we had all the time in the world. Maybe it had something to do with being a kid again that made me want to laze around during all our time off. Walking back and forth down the same aisles with my head held up high, laughing and talking about stupid things from school.

It was at the very back of the shop where the fish were kept. Eels in one tank and catfish in the other. When we finished our drinks Rin kept walking going all the way to the trash can behind the back shelf, then leaned in close to the aquarium, staring at the whiskered faces. The long spindly bristles brushed along the inside of the glass.

"It's sad," Rin stared into the murky water. "I hope none of them sell and they can live here forever."

I called to mind a scene where Sakura cut open a fish for medical ninjutsu practice. It was likely Rin would do the same one day. Not to mention, some of the fish we had for dinner came from this very tank.

"They're lake farmed," I informed her. The fish our grandfather bought all came from a large civilian-owned lake outside of Konoha, which had been dumped with catfish decades ago and raised all these years to sell.

"That's even sadder," she pressed her nose against the glass. It was cold and fogged up from her breath. "They're born to die."

'We're all born to die,' was on the tip of my tongue, but even if said in a joking manner it didn't seem that funny anymore. It kind of made me feel guilty because Rin didn't have any such filters around me. I might be the only person she truly spoke about her dreams and insecurities to. And yet there were so many secrets I was keeping from her.

"Well," I compromised instead. "We should celebrate the fish then since we have to eat."

"Like how?"

"Something reasonable," I mused. "We can't save all the fish but one一we could save one."

Past me would have no doubt said some snide remark about how 'just saving one fish is pointless compared to all the other fish in the world; it's just something stupid people do to feel better about themselves.' But then Rin turned to me, exclaiming how that was such a wonderful idea. And it was here that I began to realize that as much as I influenced Rin, she influenced me too.

Although we could take any kind of snacks we wanted for free, we had to pay if we wanted something more expensive from the shop. So Rin and I went to the storage room, digging our wallets out of our bags and combining all the money we had before taking it up to the cashier telling grandpa we wanted to buy a fish.

"What for?" he exclaimed, not unkindly.

"We're going to take it to Hanasu pond!" Hanasu pond was a place we had gone on a picnic before and I remembered seeing wild catfish in the water. I shoved forward the money we had gathered. "See! We have enough don't we?"

He counted the money out aloud but not condescendingly. If mom were here she'd shut down the whole idea immediately. In fact, if mom were here, Rin probably would have never brought it up in the first place. Like choosing who to play against rock-paper-scissors in class, Rin knew how to pick her battles, even at such a young age.

"Alright then, it's the exact amount." Grandpa got a cooler bag from his work closet and began to fill it up with water for us. Following him to the back as he got out his net and asked "which one?"

Rin pointed to one that had some yellow coloring near its back fins, and he trawled it out with the skill of having done this numerous times.

"Ok," he carefully placed it in the cooler for us. It whipped around viciously hitting up against the sides of the bag even as Grandpa zipped up the top almost all the way. "You two be back before your mom gets here, and we'll keep this all a secret, ok?"

"Yes, thanks, grandpa!" Rin leaped up and hugged him as I placed the cooler strap around my neck.

"Well be back before you know it!" I promised then we walked out the door.

Outside the sky was grey and a yawning last-of-spring rain drizzled warmly against our arms. It was about a thirty-minute walk to the pond. Half of it was downhill, so I tried my best not to move the cooler around too much, talking long careful strides. Even still I could hear the fish sloshing around and panicking.

"Don't worry," Rin bent down to the small opening that'd been left open. "You'll be free soon."

I knew animals like fish felt fear, but a fleeting kind that was gone before ever really setting root. So even when it clonked against the part of the cooler I had rested along my stomach, I kept treading forward. Turning my feet sideways every now and then to go down the slope more slowly.

The closer we got to the pond, the more weeds appeared along the dusty roadside. Clumps of tall, prickly thistles grew here and there and gradually turned into soaring grasses. Every shade between deep-green and verdigris flashed before us as we walked up to the embankment.

"Do you want to get the lid?" I crouched down, my sandals digging into the mud. Rin nodded squatting beside me undoing the zipper a little.

The strap around my neck was tugged, as it sensed its freedom.

"Ah!" Rin gasped.

The catfish sprung forward! I nearly fell over, bracing myself with my hands in the shallows. It whacked against the lid, once, twice, before Rin bent down once more and cleared the zipper all the way.

Then it really rocketed. Falling into the water with a great twank! Drenching us with water drops as it moved out from the shallows and into deeper waters.

As we stood there watching it become free, a feeling began to spread. The feeling wasn't narcissism or pridefulness, but a deeper joy. We felt alive. I thought of the negative thoughts that had weighed me down before, how it was random and unfair that we had just happened to pick this fish out of all the other fish in the tank, and out of all the other days we could have chosen a fish it was today; however, the same could be said for my own existence.

But I was standing here, alive. The fish was splashing around, alive. And most importantly Rin was beside me with a smile so big and so very alive. It resonated in our very bones, even as the last flick on the catfish's yellowish tail disappeared under the surface, and the ripples faded away. The drizzle from before disappeared, and the grey of the sky sunk into a dazzling orange sunset.

Between my toes mud squished but I couldn't care less.

We may have only saved one fish in the grand scheme, but it was enough. It was enough for me too.

"Hey," I blurted out staring at the water. There was a cluster of buildings beyond it. "Since we've spent all our money一starting from today we should save everything we get."

"What are we going to buy?" Rin turned to face me. A powerful gust of wind blowing her short hair across her face and the tall grass around us blew as flat as the ocean.

"Let's save for the house."

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