—————
The classroom smelled like wood polish and chalk dust. It always did, but today Kim noticed it more than usual — the way you notice small things when your heart won't stop hammering against your ribs.
He dropped into his seat three rows from the back, left side, near the window. His usual spot. The desk had a gouge in the corner where someone — possibly him — had tested a kunai's edge during a particularly dull lecture on the history of the Second Hokage's infrastructure reforms.
Okay. Breathe.
He set his elbows on the desk and lowered his head onto his forearms, the posture of a boy settling in for a nap. A familiar pose. Nobody would look twice.
Beneath the table, his fingers moved.
—————
It had taken a year.
The dreams had started on a Tuesday — he remembered because Tuesdays were fish-grilling days at home, and his mother made the sauce he liked, and he'd fallen asleep on a full stomach thinking about nothing in particular. Then he was somewhere else. Not a place, exactly. More like looking through a window smeared with petroleum jelly. Blurred images. A glowing rectangle — a screen, he'd later understand — with faces he recognized rendered in hard outlines and bright colors. Naruto. Sasuke. The village. All of it flattened into lines and motion and a story that someone had written.
Not a good story, if you were one of the people living inside it.
The dreams came back. Not every night, but often enough. Fragments. A war that swallowed nations. Gods descending from the moon. Children turned into weapons and called heroes for surviving it. The details were maddeningly incomplete — like reading a book with every third page torn out — but the shape of the thing was clear enough.
This world eats the weak and calls it natural selection.
Kim had spent two weeks after that realization doing absolutely nothing different. He went to class. He practiced his clone technique. He sparred and placed comfortably in the middle-upper range, where nobody watched you too closely. He went home and helped Karen with her shuriken grip and made sure Mina ate her vegetables and didn't tell his mother about any of it.
Then, on another Tuesday, he'd sat on his bed and stared at the wall and done the math.
He was eleven. Mediocre body. Decent chakra reserves — not exceptional, not tragic. Fire affinity. No clan bloodline. No legendary mentor waiting to adopt him. His father had been a chunin, and chunin was what dead looked like in the dreams he kept having.
The math said: find an edge or become a statistic.
So he'd started reading. Not the Academy texts — he'd been through those. He went to the public library and pulled everything on chakra theory, sensory techniques, medical ninjutsu fundamentals (his mother's shelf at home helped there), and the one deeply boring scroll on "Resonance Phenomena in Group Chakra Exercises" that had been checked out exactly twice in twelve years.
The idea had come slowly. Then all at once.
Chakra was, at its base, vibration. Frequency. Every person's chakra signature was unique, but not incompatible. The Academy taught you to mold your own chakra in isolation — your body, your coils, your output. But what if you didn't isolate? What if you listened?
Not copying. Not stealing. Synchronizing.
A tuning fork didn't take sound from another tuning fork. It resonated with it. Matched its frequency. And in doing so, it vibrated more efficiently than it ever could alone.
It had taken eleven months of quiet experimentation. Meditating in crowded rooms. Sitting next to his mother while she practiced her medical techniques and trying to feel the texture of her chakra through the air. Holding his hands under his desk during lectures and reaching — not outward, but open. Like cupping water. Like opening a window just a crack.
Last night, at 2:47 in the morning, sitting cross-legged on his bedroom floor with Karen snoring softly in the next room, it had clicked.
The Synchronization Jutsu.
He'd felt it — a hum beneath his own chakra, not foreign but adjacent. Like hearing a harmony he hadn't known existed. His chakra pathways had shifted, microscopically, into a pattern that wasn't entirely his own. It lasted nine seconds before his concentration broke and he'd nearly bitten through his own tongue.
Nine seconds. And in those nine seconds, his chakra flow efficiency had improved by what he estimated — conservatively — at eight to twelve percent.
From nothing. From ambient resonance with his sleeping family.
Now imagine a classroom full of ninja students. All of them molding chakra. All day.
Kim smiled into his forearms.
—————
The limitations were significant. He wasn't the type to ignore limitations — that was how you ended up in the hospital explaining to your mother why your chakra coils looked like overcooked noodles.
First: proximity. Five meters, give or take. Beyond that, the signal degraded into noise. He'd tested this at home, moving room to room while his mother practiced downstairs. Five meters was the wall.
Second: exposure time. The synchronization didn't snap into place. It built. Like soaking in a hot spring — the warmth crept in gradually. He needed targets to remain within range for an extended period. Minutes, at minimum. The longer, the better.
Third: he had no idea what happened if he tried this near someone with genuinely massive chakra reserves. The tuning fork analogy was comforting in theory. In practice, tuning forks didn't explode when placed next to industrial speakers. Probably. He hadn't tested that either.
Baby steps.
The classroom door slid open. Kim didn't lift his head, but he tracked the sound. Light footsteps, deliberate, a slight pause at the threshold — cataloguing the room, deciding where to sit.
Sasuke.
The Uchiha moved to his seat without a word. He never said a word. Kim had once counted — Sasuke had gone an entire school day speaking only four times, and two of those were "hn." The boy sat down two rows ahead and to the right, and the air around him did that thing it always did, where it seemed to get three degrees colder and vaguely offended.
Five meters. Just barely in range.
Kim kept his breathing steady. Beneath the desk, his fingers held the last sign. He wasn't reaching toward Sasuke specifically — the jutsu didn't work like that, or at least he didn't think it did. It was omnidirectional. Passive. A window, not a hand.
But he could feel something. A faint texture at the edge of his awareness, like brushing fingertips across sandpaper. Dense. Tightly controlled. Whatever Sasuke's chakra felt like, it was wound so tight it practically vibrated on its own.
Interesting. File that away.
More students filtered in. Shikamaru slouched past, and Kim nearly lost his concentration because the Nara boy's chakra felt like nothing — not absent, but so low-energy it was almost indistinguishable from sleep. Which tracked. Ino. Kiba and the dog. Choji with something crinkling — chips, always chips, the boy had a medical condition that Kim suspected was simply being twelve.
Hinata entered so quietly that Kim only noticed because his jutsu caught a new frequency — soft, flickering, like a candle in a draft. Shino was a blank spot that made his synchronization itch in a way he didn't enjoy.
Each arrival layered something new into the ambient field. It was like — and Kim would never admit this comparison aloud — like the first chapter of Icha Icha Tactics, where the protagonist walks into the bathhouse and every woman is a -.
I really need to stop reading those.
The door opened again. Iruka-sensei walked in carrying a stack of papers and his usual expression of a man who had chosen this career path and was going to see it through even if it killed him, which, statistically, it might. His chakra was steady, practiced, warm in a way that reminded Kim faintly of his mother's. Reliable.
The synchronization deepened. Kim could feel it now — a low, constant hum in his coils, his own chakra subtly adjusting its rhythm to match the aggregate field of twenty-odd developing ninja. Not copying anyone. Resonating with everyone.
It's working.
He tightened his fingers under the desk. Not from strain — from the effort of not grinning.
The classroom door slammed open.
"MADE IT! I'M NOT LATE, BELIEVE IT—"
Naruto Uzumaki announced his existence to the room with the subtlety of a paper bomb in a library. Orange jacket, goggles, grin wide enough to split his face. He skidded into his seat, knocking his bag off the desk, catching it, dropping his pencil, kicking it under Kiba's chair, and generating more ambient noise in four seconds than the rest of the class had in ten minutes.
And his chakra—
Kim's eyes snapped open.
What the—
It was enormous. Not just large — enormous. A deep, rolling current that Naruto seemed entirely unaware of, like a boy sitting on top of a geyser and complaining about the weather. It crashed into Kim's synchronization field like a wave hitting a tide pool, and for one alarming moment his carefully maintained resonance wobbled, distorted, nearly collapsed.
He clamped down. Adjusted. Let the frequency settle around the new input rather than trying to match it directly. Like — like standing in a river and letting the current pass around you instead of trying to drink it all.
Nine tails. Right. That's the nine tails I'm feeling. The big angry fox sealed inside the loud kid in the orange jacket.
He exhaled slowly through his nose.
Baby steps. Very careful baby steps.
—————
The lecture was on tactical positioning in three-man cells. Kim did not hear a single word of it.
He sat with his head down, fingers locked in the sign beneath his desk, and held the synchronization for the entire first period. Forty-five minutes. His chakra coils ached in a way that was unfamiliar — not painful, not exactly, more like the feeling after holding a stretch too long. The muscles hadn't torn, but they knew they'd been used.
The ambient field was rich. Twenty-three students, one chunin instructor, and whatever Naruto had living in his basement. Kim's own chakra had been marinating in it like a piece of fish in his mother's miso — slowly, steadily, absorbing flavor.
Terrible metaphor. I'm hungry.
When Iruka dismissed them for the break, Kim waited until the classroom was half-empty before he lifted his head, released the sign, and flexed his fingers. The knuckles popped. He stood, stretched, and walked outside with the unhurried pace of a boy who had absolutely not just spent forty-five minutes running an experimental jutsu under his teacher's nose.
The training yard behind the Academy was mostly empty. A few kids tossing shuriken at the posts. Kim found a spot behind the equipment shed, out of direct sight, and took a breath.
Test one. Transformation.
He formed the signs. Tiger → Dog → Boar → —
The jutsu snapped into place, and Kim blinked. He was looking at the world from three inches higher. He glanced down. Iruka's body, Iruka's hands, Iruka's flak jacket. The transformation was clean. Crisp. The edges — always his weak point, the places where the illusion thinned if you looked too closely — were tight. Solid.
He held it for ten seconds, then released.
Better. Noticeably better.
He ran through the standard set. Body Replacement — the log swap was faster, the transition smoother, less of that nauseating lurch he usually felt. Body Flicker — the burst of speed was sharper, more controlled, and he covered what felt like an extra meter before the chakra expenditure spiked.
Kim leaned against the shed wall and did the math in his head.
Ten percent. Maybe twelve. Across the board.
From one class period.
He closed his eyes and let the implications settle. One class period had given him a measurable improvement in three fundamental jutsu. Not permanent — he could already feel the resonance fading, his chakra settling back into its native patterns like water finding its level. But the potential —
If he held the synchronization longer, would the gains increase? If he practiced his jutsu during synchronization, would the improvements stick? If he did this every day, every class, for weeks—
I'm not a genius. I'm not a prodigy. I'm not from a clan with thousand-year-old techniques. I have a scar on my face and a dead father and a mother who works double shifts at the hospital.
He opened his eyes.
But I might have found a loophole.
—————
"Kim! Hey, Kim! You were sleeping again, weren't you? You sleep more than Shikamaru, and Shikamaru literally sleeps as a hobby—"
Naruto materialized beside him with the trajectory of a homing kunai. The boy had an uncanny ability to find people who had shown him even marginal friendliness and attach himself to them with the tenacity of a barnacle. Kim didn't mind. Most of the other kids avoided Naruto — some instinct passed down from parents who knew what was sealed inside him and couldn't separate the container from the contents.
Kim thought that was stupid. The fox was a problem, sure. But Naruto was just a kid who ate too much ramen and laughed too loud and wanted, with a desperation that was sometimes hard to look at, to be seen.
Also, he was in range for synchronization practice, and his chakra was a bonfire. Which didn't hurt.
That's pragmatism, not manipulation. There's a difference.
…Probably.
"I wasn't sleeping," Kim said. "I was meditating."
"You were drooling."
"Meditative drooling. It's a technique. Very advanced."
Naruto squinted at him, trying to determine if this was true. Kim kept his face perfectly straight. After a moment, Naruto apparently decided he didn't care either way and threw himself onto the grass beside him.
"Hey, you wanna go fishing after class? The river's been good this week — Teuchi said someone caught a bass this big—" He held his hands apart at a distance that suggested either a world-record fish or a significant relationship with exaggeration.
"Can't say no to fishing," Kim said. And he meant it. There was something about sitting by the water with a line in and nothing to do but wait that turned off the part of his brain that wouldn't stop calculating. The part that had spent the last year cataloguing threats and probable death scenarios and the exact distance between his current skill level and survival.
Fish didn't care about any of that. Fish were honest.
"Sweet! Oh man, last time I almost—"
"Fell in. Yes. I remember."
"I didn't fall. I dove. Strategically."
"Into three feet of water. Face first."
"Tactical submersion!" Naruto jabbed a finger at him. "You just don't understand advanced fishing techniques."
Kim snorted. He pulled a piece of grass from the ground and put it between his teeth — a habit he'd picked up from watching his father, back when his father was alive and did things like sit on the porch and chew grass and tell Kim that the world was simpler than people made it.
It isn't, Dad. But I get why you said it.
His eyes drifted across the yard. Sasuke was leaning against a tree at the far end, arms crossed, staring at nothing with the intensity of someone practicing for a career in brooding. A few girls lingered nearby in a loose semicircle, trying to look like they weren't looking at him. Sakura was among them — pink hair, green eyes, the particular posture of a girl who wanted to approach but hadn't figured out the angle yet.
Kim glanced at Naruto.
Naruto was also looking at Sakura.
The expression on his face was — well, it was the expression of an eleven-year-old boy who had decided, with the full conviction of youth, that one specific girl was the most important person in the universe. It was earnest and hopeful and so painfully transparent that Kim felt something twist in his chest.
You idiot. She likes the cold one.
But that wasn't the kind of thing you said. Not to someone who looked like that.
"You know," Kim said, leaning back on his hands and adopting the tone of a man dispensing wisdom, "if you want Sakura to notice you, you're going about it all wrong."
Naruto's head whipped around. "What? What do you mean? How am I—"
"You keep telling her you like her. That's amateur stuff." Kim waved a hand dismissively. "Women — and I say this as someone who has read extensively on the subject—"
"You read those weird books."
"—extensively on the subject — women are attracted to displays of competence. Confidence. You need to show her that you're capable."
Naruto's eyes were wide. He was listening with the focus he never gave Iruka's lectures. "Capable how?"
Kim stroked his chin as if deep in thought. Inside, something warm and terrible was building — the specific joy of a plan that was going to be hilarious.
"Sasuke's the benchmark, right? She's always looking at him. So you need to do something that makes you look stronger than Sasuke. More impressive. More…" He searched for the word. "Manly."
"Manly," Naruto repeated, tasting the word.
"Right. So here's what you do." Kim leaned in, conspiratorial. "You walk up to Sasuke. In front of everyone. And you challenge him. Not to a fight — that's predictable. You challenge him to something specific. Something bold. And when he refuses — because he will, he refuses everything — you turn to Sakura and say…" Kim paused for dramatic effect. "'I guess some people are all talk.'"
Naruto's face went through four expressions in two seconds: confusion, comprehension, excitement, and a light that could only be described as catastrophic enthusiasm.
"That's genius."
Oh no.
Oh yes.
Kim could see it already. Naruto marching up to Sasuke with all the self-preservation of a moth heading toward a lantern. Sasuke's flat stare. Sakura's mounting fury. The inevitable escalation that would occur because Naruto had exactly one volume setting and Sasuke had exactly zero tolerance for it.
It would be a disaster. A beautiful, chaotic, entirely predictable disaster.
I'm a terrible person.
He considered this.
No. I'm a person who appreciates physical comedy. There's a difference.
"Go get her, tiger," Kim said, and patted Naruto on the shoulder.
Naruto shot to his feet, fists clenched, eyes blazing with the fire of a boy who had just received the worst romantic advice in the history of the Hidden Leaf Village.
"SASUKE! HEY, SASUKE—"
Kim pulled the grass from his teeth, leaned back, and watched.
—————
Ten percent improvement. Repeatable. Scalable.
The thought drifted through his mind as Naruto's voice echoed across the training yard and Sasuke's expression curdled like milk in summer.
It's not enough. Not yet. Not for what's coming.
He touched the scar on his cheek — a thin line, old and white, from a day he didn't talk about.
But it's a start.
Across the yard, Sakura's voice hit a pitch that probably registered on seismographs in the Land of Wind. Naruto was saying something about manliness. Sasuke looked like he was considering whether the Academy's disciplinary policies covered justifiable homicide.
Kim smiled.
Yeah. It's a start.