By the last day before the finals, Konoha felt like it had taken a deep breath and then forgotten how to exhale.
Everyone was still doing normal things—buying groceries, yelling at kids, sweeping stoops—but there was this held note underneath it. Extra shinobi on the streets. More ANBU masks on rooftops. A few more glances up at the sky than usual, like people were waiting for something to fall out of it.
I was supposed to be "resting."
Which was why, obviously, I had my sketchbook out and was hunting down all my friends like I was building a bingo book of bad caricatures.
I found Shikamaru first, lurking exactly where I expected him: draped over the railing of one of the academy verandas, staring up at the clouds like he was trying to intimidate them into forming the shape of a resignation form.
His chakra felt like it always did—soft gray mesh, quietly mapped over everything in a ten-meter radius. Too active for someone who complained this much.
"You look very busy," I said, stepping up beside him.
He flicked me a sideways glance. "I am busy," he said. "I'm in intense mental preparation mode."
"You're hiding from Ino, aren't you."
He winced. "…Maybe."
I flipped open my sketchbook. "Hold still."
"For what?"
"Eternal humiliation."
His eyes narrowed, but he didn't move as I put charcoal to paper. A few quick lines: the droop of his shoulders, the permanent slouch, the spiky ponytail that looked like it had given up trying too. I exaggerated the bags under his eyes, added a little storm cloud over his head, and a tiny Temari-chibi in the corner looking unimpressed.
He leaned over, squinting. "Tch. Troublesome," he muttered, but his mouth twitched. "You got the forehead lines wrong."
"You have forehead lines now?" I asked. "You're twelve."
"Chūnin exams," he said. "Aging me in dog-years."
"You'll be fine," I said. "You already ran numbers on her, right?"
He hummed, half-reluctant. "Her wind control is a pain. But she's cautious. I can work with cautious. As long as I don't get dragged into some weird honor nonsense."
"You, specifically, are allergic to honor nonsense," I said.
"Exactly," he said. "I prefer cowardice with good timing."
I made a note under the sketch: Shadow strategist: will complain his way into victory. Then circled it twice.
"Hey," he added, voice dropping a little as I started to turn away. "You gonna be okay sitting this one out?"
That one hit right under the ribs.
"I'll live," I said lightly. "That's sort of the point."
He studied me for a second, eyes a little too perceptive.
"Good," he said finally. "Having at least one person in our year who knows how hospitals work is… useful. In a not-troublesome way."
Coming from Shikamaru, that was practically a hug.
I found Ino in front of a mirror she'd dragged out into the Yamanaka shop's courtyard, surrounded by weapons-cleaning cloths and hair ties like an altar to both vanity and violence.
"Sit," she ordered the second she saw me.
"I didn't say anything," I protested.
"You thought something about my timing, I can feel it," she said, pointing to the chair. "You're on the list. I'm not letting Team 7 go into the finals looking like they got dressed in a dark laundry bin."
"It's not the finals yet," I said, but I sat anyway. My hair was still in its hacked-off, Forest-of-Death length; it did a weird little flippy thing at the back that I had stopped seeing until other people started touching it.
Ino's chakra was a busy, bright blue-yellow, all sharp little sparks as her hands moved. She tugged gently, trimming a few uneven bits, smoothing the pink closer to something deliberate.
"So," she said, casual in that way people are when they're wheeling a conversational cannon into place. "How're you feeling about tomorrow?"
"I'm thrilled to be backup support staff," I said. "It's very glamorous. I get to carry clipboards."
She clicked her tongue. "You did good," she said firmly. "You gave me one of the worst headaches of my life and made me cry in public. That's basically a win."
"That sounds like losing," I said.
"Welcome to kunoichi work," she said dryly. "Also, I'm still going to fix your hair. Promise is a promise."
"I'm holding you to that," I said, and meant it more than she knew.
When she was done, she shoved a little hand-mirror at me. The girl looking back still had the too-big shirt, the slightly crooked glasses, the tired eyes—but the hair looked… less like a battlefield casualty. More like a choice.
"Cute," Ino said, satisfied. "Now go draw me as a gorgeous future jōnin."
I already had, three pages back. I didn't tell her that.
Kiba was harder to catch because he kept moving.
I finally cornered him over by the training fields, pacing a track into the dirt while Akamaru's head poked out from the front of his jacket like a concerned furry tumor.
"You're going to dig a trench," I said.
Kiba jumped. "Don't sneak up on people like that," he snapped automatically. His chakra was jittery, bright red-orange, flickering all over the place. Nervous dog energy, dialed up to eleven.
Akamaru barked once, then whined. I reached over and scratched under his chin.
"Tomorrow's not even your match," I pointed out. "You get to sit and judge everyone else."
"Yeah, and?" Kiba scowled. "Gaara's still in it. That sand freak. You saw what he did to Bushy Brows. I'm just—"
He broke off, jaw flexing.
"Just what?" I asked.
"Just… thinking," he muttered. "About how fast people get wrecked out there. Prelims were supposed to be the warm-up. Then we get that. Makes me feel like a mutt chasing the wrong cart."
I elbowed him lightly. "You're allowed to be freaked out," I said. "That was… a lot."
"I'm not freaked out," he said too quickly. "I'm—amped. In a responsible way."
"Uh-huh," I said, deadpan.
He made a face at me. "Why're you drawing?"
I flipped my sketchbook so he could see what I'd been working on while he paced: a Kiba with overdramatic fangs, Akamaru twice as big as him, both of them standing triumphant on a pile of defeated alarm clocks and "QUIET HOURS" signs.
Kiba snorted. "Heh. That's right. We're terrifying."
Akamaru barked once in agreement.
"See?" I said. "Channel that."
He rolled his shoulders, as if settling his skin back on. "Yeah. Yeah, okay. Tomorrow we cheer you losers. Next time we're all in, I take everyone down. Including you."
"Scary," I said. "I'll add a note."
Under the sketch, I wrote: Will bark at trauma until it backs down.
Shino was by the trees at the edge of the training ground, where the shade was deep and the noise dropped sharper.
He stood still enough to be mistaken for a particularly suspicious shrub. Only the faint buzz around him betrayed movement—tiny dots of dark-green chakra drifting under his coat like a cloud of very opinionated dust.
"Afternoon," I said.
"Sylvie," he replied.
I sketched quickly. Shino was all simple shapes—rectangles and circles and vertical lines—but the more I looked, the more details there were. The tilt of his hood. The angle of his sunglasses. The way his posture shifted minutely when a beetle crawled along his sleeve seam.
"I have a request," he said suddenly.
"Oh?"
"In your drawings," he said, "kindly refrain from depicting my kikaichū as… cartoonishly large or covered in inappropriate accessories."
I blinked. "…Did Naruto show you something?"
Shino's mouth compressed. "He insisted I look," he said. "At an artistic rendering of my clan's trump card wearing sunglasses."
"I didn't draw that one," I said, scandalized. "I would've at least given them tiny ties."
He made a faint throat noise that was probably the Aburame version of a sigh.
"I believe," he said, "that tomorrow will… not be simple."
"That seems to be the theme," I said.
He adjusted his collar. "Kankurō forfeiting the match will not make his future actions less problematic," Shino said. "Puppeteers are rarely wasteful with their pieces."
I nodded. His chakra tasted like dark green resin: slow, thoughtful, glueing things together in patterns only he saw.
"I'll be watching," I said. "If you need med support after, I'll be around. Try not to get disassembled."
"I will endeavor to remain in one piece," he said solemnly. "For your convenience."
I smiled. "Appreciated."
I added a little note under his caricature of a bug with a tie anyway. Small. Tiny. Probably he'd never know.
The Sand siblings were the last on my unofficial farewell tour.
They stood together near the edge of one of the main streets, just far enough away from the market traffic that nobody could say they were loitering, but close enough to watch. Temari's fan was folded and slung over her shoulder, Kankurō's puppet bundle hunched at his back, and Gaara…
Gaara just existed.
Even relaxed, his chakra felt like dry sand in my lungs—grainy, shifting, full of something else moving under it. I stayed a healthy distance away from that.
Temari noticed me first.
"Pinkie," she said, nodding. Her eyes flickered over my bandages, the med-nin armband tied loosely at my elbow, the sketchbook. "Working hard?"
"Trying to keep you lot from breaking too many of my friends," I said.
Kankurō winced. Just a twitch, but I caught it. His chakra had a sluggish, bruised quality; we both knew exactly which fight I was thinking of.
"That wasn't… exactly the plan," he said, glancing at his brother.
Gaara's gaze shifted toward me, the dark-rimmed eyes flat. The gourd on his back sat heavy, full of muted, wrong-colored chakra.
"I know," I said. "Plans don't seem to matter much in this exam."
For a moment, nobody spoke. The street noise washed around us. A kid ran past chasing a paper ball, laughing. Somewhere, a vendor yelled about dumplings.
Temari's jaw tightened.
"Look," she said. "Tomorrow, we're going to fight how we fight. I'm not apologizing for doing my job. But…"
"But," Kankurō cut in, shoving his hands deeper into his pockets, "we're not all looking to cripple anybody else's teammates for fun. Lee was… a lot. Even for us."
Understatement of the year.
I looked at Gaara. He looked back. I tried to read anything in his chakra that felt like guilt. All I got was turbulent sand and that pulsing, suffocating undercurrent that made my teeth buzz.
"Some people are better at not noticing collateral," I said quietly.
Temari flinched, the tiniest bit. Kankurō's mouth pressed into a line.
Gaara said nothing.
"Good luck tomorrow," I said. "Try not to die. Or kill anyone who doesn't absolutely deserve it."
Temari huffed. "You're weird," she said. It sounded almost fond.
"Weird keeps things interesting," I replied.
As I walked away, I added three little chibi-figures to the corner of my current page: Temari menacing Shikamaru with her fan, Kankurō tangled in his own strings, and Gaara as a tiny cactus with angry eyes.
It made me feel marginally better.
I found Naruto on the same rooftop where Iruka had once handed out hitai-ate and told us we were shinobi now.
The village spread out around us, roofs red and brown in the late-afternoon light. Banners hung over some of the streets below already, painted with the Leaf symbol and stylized wind patterns. Preparations for the big final-exam-spectacle.
Naruto sat on the edge of the roof with his legs dangling over nothing, leaning back on his hands. His chakra flickered bright orange-gold, jittery and restless. A tiny frog—Gamakichi—sat next to him, chewing on something that might have once been a bug.
"Hey," I called. "Planning to jump?"
He jerked like I'd poked him with a kunai, then twisted around. His face lit up when he saw me.
"Sylvie!" he said. "Nah. Just, y'know. Thinking. Deep ninja thoughts."
"Terrifying concept," I said, dropping down beside him.
Gamakichi gave me a side-eye. "This guy's thoughts aren't deep," he said around a mouthful. "They're just loud."
Naruto squawked. "Traitor!"
I laughed and let my legs dangle too. From up here, the village chakra blended into a big, warm wash—reds and golds and soft greens, all layered like messy watercolor. Underneath, somewhere, were the sharper lines of ANBU and barrier seals and whatever else the adults were quietly panicking about.
"So," I said. "On a scale of one to 'full body shaking,' how scared are you about fighting Neji tomorrow?"
Naruto glared at the horizon like it had personally offended him. "I'm not scared," he said, instantly, then deflated. "Okay, maybe I'm… a little. He's stupid strong. And that whole destiny speech…"
He trailed off, fingers digging into the edge of the roof.
"I keep thinking about everyone watching," he admitted. "All the jōnin. The Hokage. Kids from other villages. If I mess up, it's like—yep, there goes the dead-last, clown as always. 'Course he couldn't beat the genius prodigy guy."
He mimed people talking with his hands, then stared down at them.
"I just…" His voice went smaller. "I don't wanna be a joke. Not this time."
Something in my chest did an unhelpful somersault.
I nudged his shoulder with mine. "Hey," I said softly. "You weren't a joke when you yelled at Neji about Hinata."
"That was different," he muttered.
"It wasn't," I said. "You were scared then too. You yelled anyway. Tomorrow's the same thing, just with more punching."
"And less bleeding, hopefully," Gamakichi said.
Naruto huffed. "Look, it's just—if I lose, it's like he was right. About her. About everyone like us."
"Then don't lose," I said simply.
He shot me a betrayed look. "Wow, thanks, why didn't I think of that."
"I'm serious," I said. "You don't have to be the strongest genius to prove him wrong. You just have to keep getting up. You're already annoying destiny by existing."
He blinked, then snorted.
"You hate being on the bench though, right?" he asked suddenly. "You're saying all this but you looked like you wanted to jump the railing when Gaara—"
"Yeah," I said. The word came out rough. "I hate it. I hate watching people get hurt and not being able to stop it. I hate that my best shot at helping is… making sure the broken bits get put back together after."
He went quiet.
"But," I added, staring out at the village, "I also want to live long enough to see just how ridiculous you look as Hokage."
He jerked again. "Huh?"
"You heard me," I said. "You, in the hat, making speeches, tripping over your robes, probably getting lost on your way to meetings. It's going to be incredible. I refuse to die before I get that entertainment."
His ears went pink.
"I wouldn't trip," he protested.
"You absolutely would," I said. "You'd try to jump off the monument or something for dramatic effect and break your ankle."
"I'd have a super cool entrance!" he said. "Like—like summoning a giant toad in front of everyone and landing on its head all like 'yo, dattebayo.'"
My brain helpfully threw up a mental screenshot of the thing I'd seen a few days ago when I'd been walking between the hospital and the tower: trees in the distance briefly shuddering, a ripple in the ground like a miniature quake, and then, over the rooftops, the unmistakable outline of a massive toad silhouette before it vanished.
"I knew that was real," I said. "I thought I imagined it. There was a day I felt this… lurch in the ground and saw something huge and froggy over the trees near Training Ground Twelve."
Naruto's grin went feral. "You saw that?! That was me! And Pervy Sage! He said I wasn't ready but I totally was—I mean, I almost died, but that's fine—"
"Not fine," I cut in automatically.
He steamrolled on. "Anyway, I got the contract and everything. The Chief is super cranky but he respects me now. Probably. Maybe. Okay, he tolerates me. Sometimes."
"Contract," I echoed, filing the word away under things to bug the Hokage about. "So summoning is like… seal work. Binding. How many people can do it? Is it a bloodline thing? A training thing? A 'sign away your soul on a dotted line' thing?"
"Uhhh," Naruto said. "There was… a lot of blood and Pervy Sage talking about guts? I kinda blacked out around the part where I fell off a cliff."
I rubbed my temples. "You and gravity need couples counseling."
Gamakichi snickered. "He screams real high when he falls," he said.
"Traitor number two," Naruto muttered.
Still. A contract, tied to chakra and seals. The Hokage had mentioned summoning circles in passing once; Jiraiya obviously had the toads; Kakashi had his dogs. If summoning was a thing you could learn, not just inherit, it opened up a whole new category of "ways to be useful without punching my own organs out."
Add it to the list.
Talking to the Third about this later was going to be fun. "So, hey, theoretical question, how many giant entities can one village legally sign deals with before the universe files a complaint?"
I flipped my sketchbook to a fresh page and started doodling.
Naruto blinked down at the paper. "Is that supposed to be me?"
"Obviously," I said.
The chibi on the page had Naruto's spiky hair and jacket, only the jacket had "#1 Hokage Dork" written on the back. He was standing on top of an enormous toad with a grumpy expression and a hat that said "please don't fall off me." Tiny chibi-villagers at the bottom held up signs that read "do taxes" and "stop yelling."
Naruto laughed, bright and loud and so honest it made my chest hurt.
"I'm gonna be cooler than that," he said, but his voice was softer around the edges. "Way cooler."
"I'm counting on it," I said.
We sat there for a little while after that, letting the silence grow comfortable. Below us, the village moved. The air felt heavier than usual. Somewhere in the distance, I could feel a cluster of chakra that was too organized and too quiet for tourists. Patrols. Barrier teams. Adults doing the grown-up shinobi equivalent of pacing.
Tomorrow was going to be a spectacle for the world.
Tonight was just… two kids and a frog on a roof.
Naruto swung his legs. "Hey," he said eventually. "When I win tomorrow—"
"If," I corrected.
"When," he repeated stubbornly, "you're gonna be watching, right?"
I rolled my eyes. "No, I was thinking I'd take a nap."
"Sylvie!"
"Yes, I'll be watching," I said. "Yelling. Taking notes. Trying not to throw up."
"Good," he said, satisfied. "Then I'll win extra loud."
"Try to win with most of your bones intact," I added. "Lee has already used up the 'dramatic collapse' slot this tournament."
Naruto sobered, just for a heartbeat.
"I'll win for him too," he said. "And for Hinata. And for you and Ino and everybody who got knocked out. I'm gonna make Neji eat those words about destiny."
"Please don't make him literally eat anything," I said. "That's a health violation."
He grinned. "No promises."
The sun dipped lower, painting the Hokage monument in orange and gold. The shadows across the village stretched long and strange.
Somewhere out there, people were plotting to tear this place apart.
Up here, on the edge of the roof, Naruto Uzumaki clenched his fists and decided the future wasn't written yet.
I hugged my sketchbook close, feeling the scratch of the paper under my fingers, and silently agreed with him.