It had now been half a year since I had initially been placed by Danzo-sama in the academy to spy on and observe my future colleagues or enemies, depending on which route Root forced me to take. As such, it was now halfway through the third year of the academy, with the winter holidays having commenced the day prior.
It was a one month break where we were incentivised to review previously learnt content in the lectures, practice our throwing abilities, kawarimi and more recently the bunshin jutsu that was shown to us in the same manner after everybody was capable enough with the kawarimi.
I had three goals over this break. The first was to put all my savings over the last few months into my apartment, primarily but not limited to furniture, and secondly was to source some gear for my long lost hobby, art. The final goal was to kindle a friendship or rivalry, whatever the Uchiha wanted, with you guessed it, Uchiha Sasuke. Danzo-sama would not be happy with me not interacting with him.
There were quite a few furniture stores in Konoha, but I only had a budget of about 4000 ryo, or the equivalent of 4 months of set aside stipend savings. To get a good priority list going, I took out a pen and notebook, both supplied by the academy so that wasn't another unnecessary expenditure.
1. My bare bedroom needed a closet or a wardrobe to store my spare clothes, shuriken and kunai that were currently stashed under my bedframe, also a desk and chair to study.
2. The bathroom needed no new furniture except a floor mat, but that wasn't necessary. It would however be much cheaper than any piece of furniture, keep my feet warm in the mornings and reduce the slip hazard, although no self-respecting shinobi should even face the risk of slipping on a wet floor. Warm feet this winter did sound very nice though.
3. For the living room, a proper dining table with chairs as well as a bookshelf would be nice, however neither were of much of a priority due to my lack of books/scrolls (only the one I saved from the Root base) and the fact that I never had guests over to dine with. I might also get a table runner, maybe a bunch of flowers in a vase, and fancy sets of crockery and cutlery to appear a bit more well off, but that could wait until I was actually making money.
That settled it, the wardrobe and bathroom mat were the only things I'd buy or the time being. After browsing about 10 different furniture shops in my locality, all the nicer looking wardrobes that both felt durable and functional would cost at least 3000 ryo, so there wasn't much wriggle room after also getting a mat to fit in my artistry gear, if I could even afford painting gear that was.
I settled on a nice, two door black and dark brown wardrobe that had a slide-open drawer at the bottom, which is where I chose to leave my spare shuriken and kunai. My spare clothes were hung up on some hangers I also picked up at a slight discount. Finally, the bathroom mat was a black rectangle with a grey Konoha symbol stitched in, looking like an inverted ninja headband. It looked nice whilst being a subtle reminder of what I was a ninja for. It would also be useful in dissuading any of the Sandaime's ANBU from thinking I was a foreign spy, though I was a native spy which is even better, so they'd never know unless Danzo-sama told the Hokage.
All in all, that cost me 3200 ryo, leaving me 800 to spend on art equipment.
Art equipment was expensive. There were two different types of stores for what I wanted, a civilian style art supplies store, and a ninja based one, which had its primary focus on chakra-infusible ink for purposes such as fuinjutsu. The ninja based store was much more expensive, and thus not viable for me to purchase until I became a legitimate ninja. The civilian store however was much more up my alley. In the past, I mainly drew with black ink in white books, so that was what I would get. Thankfully a brush, a few vials of ink and an empty art book with paper designed for oil and ink paintings was about 550 ryo, leaving me with more than enough to spend on something like food. A cinnamon scroll would be nice right about now.
It took me the rest of the day to bring back the pieces of wood and metal used to assemble the wardrobe and put it together in my bedroom, though the final product was more than worth it. Now I could stash away my clothes, gear and Shin's book without them getting covered in dust, also being in a much safer place. It also made my room look much more liveable.
The next day, I tore out a page of the new book from the binding so it would look perfectly new regardless and wrote a message for a certain someone. After breakfast, I headed over to a certain clan compound and used one of my shuriken to pin the note to the inside of the gate. The message said: 'Hello, Sasuke, I, Sai from your academy class, would like to either be your friend or simply training partner seeing as we are both clearly the top of our class and training alone has its limitations. My address is unit 24/513 Leaf Boulevard if you wish to find me, or head to the academy training grounds. Thank you and keep the shuriken if you'd like.'
He wasn't much of a talker, but from what I had gathered, his main goal was to increase his overall ninja capabilities and power in order to get revenge on his brother, Uchiha Itachi, an S ranked ninja, so that would require a large magnitude of ninja skill prowess. Training by himself would not garner such skill, that much we both knew. It was up to him to take me on said offer.
Two days later and the certain someone approached me while I was throwing sharp metal at tiny wooden circles with practiced ease. I stopped and turned to him: "Have you taken me up on my offer, Sasuke-san?"
"I will, if you give me three good reasons why I should train with you."
"Fair enough. First and foremost, we both know you want to get revenge, and said revenge will require power, more power than training alone will ever yield, especially in fields such as taijustu, where striking a log can only do so much. In addition, I can expose your flaws or weaknesses that training alone would never show. Ultimately, if you agree, I'd be happy to sit in the middle of a table with you on the end once the academy begins, stopping fangirls from sitting next to you."
"Alright then. When are you free?"
"Literally whenever you want to train, I'd be happy to. That being said, I'd rather not train in the middle of the night and forsake sleeping properly. A schedule that would work well with the academy timetable too would be good."
"Come by the Uchiha front gate at 3pm, or right after the academy ends. I don't like waiting."
"Sure thing. Nor do I."
He then tossed me my shuriken before walking off into the sunset. It was 5pm when we talked, so I kept going at it, practicing with my other shuriken. It was a drill that I loved to do as I had learnt it from Shin, land 9 (now 10) shuriken on the bullseye and take a step backwards. Miss any and I'd go back to the beginning. It was good in making sure that I had the fundamentals down without error and that my patience would increase. I would stop when I reached the entrance to the academy building, about 200 metres from the targets, and I performed this drill 4 times total each day, 2 with both shuriken and kunai using each hand as being ambidextrous in combat was only a good thing. All in all, it took me about half an hour to do each day now as I made fewer errors than ever before.
As I was headed home for dinner, I saw a pair of glowing red eyes staring at me, boring a hole into my mind and soul, not a pleasant feeling. That figure was seated on the top of the academy building, and the face was recognisable as ever. That certain someone then decided to hop down right in front of me, deactivating his sharingan.
"I didn't know you had the sharingan."
"I've had it for a year."
"Why have you never used it in class then?"
"I don't need to."
"Then why use it now?"
"It is only the first stage, with one tomoe," he quickly flashed it to show me what he meant, "so all its good for is perfect night vision and better perception. I rarely need either of those."
"How many stages are there?"
"Three." He stated, though I knew better than to accept everything at face value.
"You don't seem convinced about that." That brought about a frown.
"There are four, but the last is different. It is unattainable to all but kage level ninja."
"How about the others? Are they difficult to get?"
"In theory, no. All they take is more chakra than what I currently have."
"Alright… So why were you watching me?"
"To see how strong you are."
"Fair enough."
"Is there anything else? Did you want to grab dinner or something?"
"No."
"Good evening then."
He nodded with his typical grunt used with his fangirls before heading off into the surrounding tree line. It was a success. All I had set for myself in the month off had been completed within the first week. There was nothing else to do now, so I was content to have a shower to get off all the dirt and grime, eat a quick meal and flop onto my bed, and that's exactly what I did.