The days after the bell test blurred together, kind of… uneventfully.
Hayate-sensei put us straight onto D-rank missions one after another.
They weren't dangerous or even exciting, and definitely not worth telling heroic stories about.
If you don't count chasing the Fire Daimyo's cat, Tora, through the whole village, that is.
I refuse to believe that cat is anything but a ninja summon.
We chased it across rooftops, through alleys, and even into someone's house.
That was the most embarrassing game of tag I had ever played.
Looking back, it's obvious that each mission was a training exercise in disguise.
We worked as waitstaff at a barbecue place for a week. Supposedly to "build teamwork." In reality, I was pretty sure it was meant to teach Kuro some politeness and ease Misaki out of her awkward shell.
It failed on both counts.
Misaki tripped on the second day and somehow managed to pour an entire bowl of barbecue sauce over a customer's head. Kuro's sharp tongue nearly reduced her to tears right there, to the point that the customer started defending her.
That was about the peak of our teamwork.
Another time, we had to help a drama group perform for the Daimyo's wife.
We were just supposed to help them carry all the props and help with things behind the scenes. But 'somehow' Misaki had to fill in for one of the actresses, who all of a sudden called in sick.
She struggled at first, tripping over herself and her dress, but in the end, she somehow pulled through.
The other performers treated her kindly, and that seemed to help much more than Kuro's yelling.
We delivered meals, cleaned drains, pulled out weeds, ploughed fields and even walked dogs.
In short, we did everything that needed doing in the village.
But at least we got paid.
For the first time in my life, I had money. Not a lot, but enough that I could finally move out of the genin barracks.
I'd been kicked out of the orphanage the moment I officially became a ninja and dumped into the barracks instead. They were supposed to be an upgrade.
And they were, especially in the food department. But in some ways, they were way worse. For example, I had absolutely no privacy there.
Since I still had to share the room with others, and now, with actual ninjas, it became very inconvenient to use my cheat to pass out every night.
So, the moment I could afford the rent, I moved out.
I found a cheap place on the edge of the village. It was quite small.
The windows had old newspapers taped over the cracks, and the floorboards creaked every time I took a step.
But it was all mine.
And that made all the difference.
Plus, I could just upgrade the windows and floorboards. Though ordinary items didn't have stats, they could still be upgraded and improved, just not by much.
The place ate up most of my earnings, which meant ninja tools were still… limited.
So, I had to keep working with paper shuriken for now.
Not that it would make any difference what my shuriken were made of.
For the most part, ninja tools were just thrown around as distractions in most fights.
An Iron shuriken wouldn't make much of a difference, especially since my paper shuriken were just as sturdy and lethal now.
It might become more lethal with my upgrades, but I would still have to hit my target with it.
But a +10 shuriken would surely give me an edge if it unlocked a useful effect.
Until now, I'd only managed to make a handful of +9 paper shuriken. But the success rate was surely getting better with each upgrade; I knew it was only a matter of time.
Till then, I was content with the absurd recovery the cheat gave me.
Another problem was that I couldn't use my stronger shuriken openly.
+7 or even +8 could be passed off as basic chakra reinforcement. But a paper shuriken that cut clean through metal would draw attention I didn't want.
Not yet at least.
So, in between missions, I carved a wooden sword and brought it to Hayate.
[Ordinary Wooden Sword]
Attack: 5
Upgrade Requirement: 1 Chakra Point.
After upgrading all kinds of junk, I'd started noticing patterns.
Most useless or everyday things—clothes, stationery, soaps—were, well, ordinary. Most of it didn't even have any particular stats to begin with, and no matter how many times I upgraded them, they barely improved. 1-2 points on average. A few points if it is well-made.
Then there were ordinary items that were special.
Paper shuriken started with an attack value of one, and got noticeably better with every upgrade.
Nonlethal weapons like wooden shuriken and training swords hovered around five. Actual iron shuriken and kunai started at ten.
And that was just the baseline.
Ninja tools went much higher, especially once Chakra metal got involved.
So I upgraded the sword a few times.
[Wooden Sword] +5
Attack: 5
Additional Attack: 5
Upgrade requirement: 6 Chakra Points
That finally made it sturdy enough to trade blows with Hayate's training sword without snapping in half.
Which was important, because he was a kenjutsu specialist.
And to my surprise, Hayate agreed to teach me the basics of Leaf-style kenjutsu almost immediately.
I didn't have to pass a test or anything.
At first, I thought it made sense. Leaf-style kenjutsu was basic enough to be listed in the village library. Hardly a secret art.
Then the first training session happened.
And I realised that by "teach," Hayate apparently meant beat me black and blue with a stick.
Every mistake earned a strike, every hesitation earned two and every bad habit was corrected by making me repeat the same move a hundred times.
When I complained, he said, while coughing, "This is the Hayate Method."
At the end of every training session, I would lie on the ground with aching ribs, staring at the sky, and wonder if this was really how he'd trained Uzuki Yugao.
…Somehow, I doubted it.
'Sexist piece of shit!'
It didn't take long for me to realise that Yugao wasn't the only one getting special treatment.
Cause apparently not everyone's ninja career was like Naruto's.
Team Seven had already been sent out on a C-rank while we were still cleaning drains.
We would have complained if not for the fact that our next assignment was to dig a grave.
A real one.
At the village cemetery.
We were burying a genin who'd died on a mission.
He was an orphan, like me. No family to claim the body. His team was badly injured and still in the hospital.
I recognised his face. I'd seen him at the orphanage a few years back.
We didn't talk much while we worked. Hayate didn't rush us either. He just stood there, watching, making sure the grave was deep enough.
When we were done with the mission, Kuro looked back at the empty cemetery.
"Kind of messed up," he muttered. "Dying like that. No family. No one to even cry for you." He looked at us over his shoulder. "I'd hate it if nobody showed up to my funeral."
"It is sad," Misaki said softly, nodding.
I watched the sun sink lower, its light stretching long across the graves.
"The dead don't care about funerals." I couldn't help but say. "They are for the living so they can mourn their loss."
They both turned to me.
I didn't mean to go further. The words just kept coming.
"He's already gone, but if no one's here to cry for him, he likely had no one there to laugh with him either."
I paused as memories started surfacing uninvited.
I'd lived that life once, and when I died alone on that hospital bed, I realised what was more painful.
Kuro shifted in his place awkwardly. Misaki looked a bit unsettled.
"Takumi-kun…" she said carefully.
"It's nothing," I said, smiling. "I'll see you guys tomorrow."
The missions only got darker from there.
The next one had us work at a slaughterhouse, putting down pigs and cleaning the floor afterwards.
The one after had us scrub blood stains at the Konoha Hospital.
And then we had to put down an old Ninken, who was, well, too old.
None of it was framed as training.
But it was.
Every mission was chosen to get us used to the smell of blood and to the weight of death.
To make us comfortable with doing unpleasant things without freezing up or looking away.
I could tell that Misaki wasn't doing so well.
But ever since the bell test, I hadn't seen her cry, tho she was still clumsy.
Even Kuro was affected. He'd become much quieter since the day we buried that genin, but not by much.
Sometimes it bothered me, too.
Especially the animals. Especially the dogs.
But I also understood why. This was the world we lived in.
And honestly… I was lucky. All I had to kill were animals.
In some places, they made you kill your friends just to graduate.
Hayate wasn't trying to make us emotionless killing machines. But he was trying to make sure we won't freeze up when the time comes.
After a month of that, he must've decided we were ready.
Because that's when we were assigned our first C-rank mission.
-To be Continued...
Dayum, it got real dark, real quick, huh?
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