Like schoolyard bullying in my previous life, the Naruto world—despite being born from a shonen manga—was no less vicious when it came to children devouring their own. If anything, it was harsher. In Konoha, standing out in the wrong way was enough to paint a target on your back.
It didn't matter whether you were a civilian or from a ninja clan. If you were withdrawn, strange, too pretty, too talented, too proud, or simply didn't blend in, someone would test you. That much was true for everyone.
Even Kushina Uzumaki, who had Mito Uzumaki, Tsunade, the Third Hokage, and the Anbu watching over her—and who was destined to become the Nine-Tails jinchuriki—had still been bullied at school. Hinata Hyuga, the eldest daughter of the Hyuga clan and future heiress of the strongest remaining clan in Konoha after the Uchiha's destruction, had also suffered the same thing.
And what did the adults do? Very little. Families rarely interfered. Schools rarely stepped in. Sometimes, they even seemed to tacitly approve of it.
In a world where manpower was scarce enough that apprentice ninja could be shoved onto a battlefield, cruelty itself became a filter. Better to be bullied into dropping out and returning home as an ordinary civilian than to freeze in terror on a mission and die with a kunai in your throat. If you didn't have the nerve to resist, then what kind of ninja could you possibly become?
Gojo Yoru had understood that less than a week after enrolling.
So he had deliberately built a persona for himself: cold, arrogant, untouchable. Then he'd picked a fight with an upperclassman and, relying on an adult mind and knowledge of ninja basics far beyond his years, defeated a sixth-year student in front of witnesses. Overnight, his name had spread through the Academy.
To the teachers and a handful of observers, he was already labeled a civilian genius. Both his parents had been jonin. They had died for the village. As the orphaned son of martyrs with obvious talent, his future looked promising.
The only flaw, in their eyes, was that he didn't fit in with the other children. But that, too, could be explained away. A boy who had lost both parents young might naturally grow strange around others.
If that knot inside him could be untied, then perhaps he really could become one of Konoha's pillars someday.
So the question became simple: what would serve as the catalyst?
Would it be a person—or an event?
***
When Gojo Yoru stepped into the classroom, he crossed the room without a word and took his usual seat: the second desk from the back, last row. The desks at the Ninja Academy were built for three students. He sat there alone.
It wasn't because he had driven everyone away himself. After the entrance exam, the school imposed a probationary period. If a child still couldn't refine chakra by the end of that assessment, then no matter how fit their body or how sharp their mind, they were considered unqualified to become a ninja and were advised to withdraw.
That happened every year in every first-grade class. Class 1 had lost three students during the probation period. Two of them had been assigned to his desk.
The room, noisy just moments before, quieted the instant he entered.
At least five children near him lowered their voices and began whispering instead of speaking normally. The students seated in front of him kept their heads down and didn't dare look back. Only a few girls who were fond of his face and impressed by his strength still stole glances in his direction—but even they didn't have the courage to walk over.
Good, Gojo thought. At least no one would bother him.
Resting his chin on one hand and lazily spinning a pen with the other, he looked like he was merely killing time. In reality, his mind had already slipped into the habitual, relentless calculations that had dominated him since the day he awakened his space-time power.
After discovering that ability, Gojo Yoru had stopped updating his game-strategy journals. He rarely went down into the basement anymore. Compared to what he had before, the appearance of a power on par with a bloodline limit had changed everything.
He no longer needed to follow his original path and turn himself into a stitched-together monster in exchange for strength. Most of the routes he had once considered—dangerous, humiliating, grotesque—had been discarded.
Still, not everything in those notebooks had become useless.
One plan remained near the very top of the list.
Intercept Kushina Uzumaki.
In the original story, Minato Namikaze hadn't risen on talent alone. He had been pushed upward by two crucial benefactors. One was Jiraiya, who gave him connections, guidance, and eventually the Flying Thunder God Technique. The other was Kushina Uzumaki, who brought him Tsunade's support and the sealing arts of the Uzumaki clan.
With those two ties in place, Minato gained the approval of two of the Legendary Sannin and the Hokage himself. Later, when Kushina became a perfect jinchuriki, he also gained the protection of the strongest force in Konoha. At that point, even Danzo Shimura could do little to him.
It was like certain men in his previous life who married well and ascended overnight.
If Gojo Yoru could steal that opportunity first—if he could reach Kushina Uzumaki before Minato did—then as a transmigrator who knew the future, he was fully confident he could rise just as fast.
He would never have entertained such thoughts if he lacked talent, if his family background were poor, or if he were not the same age as Minato and seated in the same class at the Academy. But the moment he realized he had landed in Minato Namikaze's generation, Gojo Yoru understood that fate had left a crack open for him.
He only needed to pry it wider.
That was why he had abandoned the idea of making ordinary friends among his peers. He had no interest in becoming another pleasant child surrounded by classmates or quietly befriending heirs of ninja clans. Instead, he had carefully cultivated the image of an aloof genius—someone difficult to approach, difficult to read, and impossible to forget.
Only a bond could resolve what was twisted inside him.
Kushina Uzumaki, whose clan had just been annihilated, was the same kind of existence as him. She had lost her people. He had lost his parents. In one another, they could become medicine.
With that setup, Gojo believed Sarutobi Hiruzen and Mito Uzumaki would never interfere with him getting close to Kushina. Not unless Minato Namikaze turned out to be the Third Hokage's illegitimate son and Kushina had already been prepackaged for him in advance.
If that were the case, then Gojo would admit defeat.
Otherwise, he was absolutely going to snatch Kushina Uzumaki away.
His current weakness, however, was obvious.
Chakra control. And the amount of space-time chakra he could use.
As a transmigrator, he had long since mastered tree-climbing and water-walking in secret. His chakra control was already excellent—better than that of a freshly graduated genin. Even so, that level still wasn't enough to perform ninjutsu using space-time chakra.
The black chakra could already manifest outside his body. That proved it could be used for techniques. The problem was that the difficulty was absurdly high.
So how could he improve?
There were several possibilities.
First: the Rasengan. The A-rank ninjutsu Minato Namikaze would create in the future was not only the pinnacle of shape transformation, it was also an extreme form of chakra control that required no hand seals. More importantly, the original series had actually revealed its complete training process. Gojo remembered it vividly, and the moment he regained enough mobility after his evolution, he had written the method down.
If his chakra reserves and control had already been sufficient, he would have started training it long ago.
Second: medical ninjutsu. If he could learn techniques like the chakra scalpel, his control would improve sharply. And if space-time chakra could be layered over that… then perhaps even his bare hands could become black blades.
Third: sealing techniques.
Of the three, that was the one that drew him the most.
Sealing techniques were the most advanced expression of chakra control in the entire ninja world. Much like space-time power, their lower limit was absurdly low and their upper limit was absurdly high. The same art could be used to stamp a tag on a storage scroll—or to bind something that should have been untouchable.
Seals were unreasonable. The progenitor of chakra herself had fallen to them.
That was why Gojo couldn't stop wondering whether the Strength of a Hundred Seal—the Yin Seal—might solve the invisible bottleneck inside his body. If it could store or circulate more of his space-time chakra than his cells were currently allowing him to access, then it wouldn't just be a convenience. It would become another life-saving trump card.
That thought had come to him the very instant he realized there was a hard limit within his body.
And from that moment onward, his determination to seize Kushina Uzumaki had only grown stronger.
Because to obtain sealing arts, Uzumaki bloodline knowledge, and the chance to stand close to Konoha's future center of power, there was no better route than her.
By the time the morning bell was close, the classroom had returned to its uneasy murmur. Gojo Yoru remained motionless in his seat, expression blank, pen still spinning between his fingers.
Inside, however, his thoughts were sharp enough to cut.
He no longer needed to become a patched-up monster. He no longer needed to gamble everything on the ugliest paths to power. But that didn't mean he could afford to relax. It only meant the board had changed.
He had space-time chakra now. He had the black blade. He had intangibility. He had possibilities that didn't exist in the original plot.
But the one thing he lacked most was still the same as before: time.
The Second Shinobi World War could erupt at any moment. If he wanted to survive the age he had been thrown into, he needed strength, resources, and protection—and he needed them before the storm arrived.
So until then, he would keep acting. Keep calculating. Keep waiting for the right move.
Let the others think he was just a cold little tyrant with a pretty face and a vicious temper.
That was fine.
The more they feared him, the less they would understand him.
And the less they understood him, the easier it would be to take what should have belonged to someone else.
Just then, he sensed eyes on him again.
Gojo Yoru lifted his gaze. Several students near the door jerked their heads away in panic, too slow to hide that they had been staring.
His icy blue eyes swept over them, emotionless and sharp enough to make small shoulders stiffen.
"You trash," he said coldly. "What are you looking at?"
"I-I'm sorry!"
The apology came out in a collective stammer.
Those pale blue eyes seemed colder than winter itself. One by one, the children lowered their heads or turned away, faces tense, voices gone. No one dared step closer.
Wherever the school bully went, the crowd parted for him.