Chương 12: Top of the Class

The first two years in the Ninja Academy had flown by just like that. It was now already Konoha Year 56.......

"Shin Takami. Perfect score." Shin walked off the field under a scatter of envious stares. Four shurikens sat in a clean row on the training post. Neat, precise, exactly as drilled.

"Figured you'd throw four this time." Kiba's voice found him the moment he rejoined the group. Shin smiled faintly. Those four are a month of work. A month of getting up before sunrise and throwing until my arm hurt. Of course they look different from before. Shino watched him return with a quiet, puzzled look. Something about the throw had been off. Not wrong — different.

"Next — Sasuke Uchiha." Iruka always called Sasuke right after Shin. Shin had started to think the man did it on purpose. Sasuke stepped forward without ceremony. One hand in his pocket. The other held four shurikens pinched between his fingers, easy as holding a pen. He stood still, raised his arm, and flicked his wrist. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

"Sasuke Uchiha. Perfect score." Sasuke tucked his free hand back into his pocket and walked back. Behind him, a chorus of screams.

"Oh my god—""He's so cool —" Shin watched him go.

"No matter how many times I see it," he said quietly, "his form never stops being impressive."

"Ugh." Kiba folded his arms.

"Show-off. Always has to make it look like nothing." He turned to Shin.

"When are you going to beat him? Give that guy some competition." Shin raised an eyebrow.

"Why don't you beat him yourself?"

"..." Kiba looked away. Shin went back to replaying the throw in his mind. There was something in the grip — not the standard pinch on the ring or along the edge — something in the way Sasuke's wrist rotated just before release. It wasn't a technique the Academy taught. Shin had been imitating it for weeks now. Without the right foundation, he wasn't getting there on feel alone. Still a long way to go, he told himself, and raised another shuriken. Dawn.

Shin stepped out of his house into the quiet cool of early morning. The streets near his block were half-empty — a few neighbors heading to work, a vendor unlocking his stall. People who recognized him smiled as he passed.

"Up early again, Shin. You've got more energy than I do."

"Keep at it. You'll be a great shinobi." He smiled back at each of them without breaking stride, moving through Konoha's western streets toward the tree line. Thwack. The shuriken bit into the bark a good half-meter from the notch he'd carved. Shin exhaled. Walked over. Pulled it free. Again. He returned to his mark and ran through the motion in his memory — Sasuke's arm angle, the hinge of the elbow, the small rotation at the last instant. He matched every detail he could recall. He threw. Thwack. Same result.

The shuriken curved wide. The tree was only about twelve meters away. Using a large arcing throw to hit it with a shuriken was much harder than at the standard testing distance. At Academy testing distances you could get away with force and a flat trajectory. Real combat was different — obstacles, angles, corners. You needed the curve. Sasuke had the curve. How? Shin had been asking himself that for weeks. Sasuke made it look effortless.

One motion, clean and unhurried, like he wasn't really thinking about it at all. Because he isn't, Shin thought. It's muscle memory. He grew up with this. Even if Shin could replicate the wrist motion, he was building from imitation without any foundation to build on. He'd hit the target eventually, maybe — but it would always cost him more effort than it should, and in a real fight, effort was a liability. He let out a slow breath, cleared his head, and raised the shuriken again.

"Hey." A voice.

"What's that awkward form supposed to be?" Shin spun around. He hadn't heard a sound. Not a footstep, not a rustle. But there, perched in the fork of a tree maybe ten paces behind him, sat a young man — twenty, maybe — watching him with calm, faintly amused eyes. Black hair with a slight curl. Features almost too pretty, softened further by a pair of long, upturned eyes that gave his face a quiet, magnetic quality. On the sleeve of his black shirt: a fan. Uchiha. That's why the form looked familiar.

"Were you copying someone?" the man asked, a small smile at the corner of his mouth. As he spoke, he reached into — somewhere — and produced a single shuriken, balanced in his fingers without looking at it. Sitting in the branch, he raised his arm in a loose, one-handed arc. And threw. Thwack. The shuriken hit Shin's carved notch dead center. Shin turned back to face him.

"Excuse me — who are you?" The man dropped lightly from the branch. One moment he was up there. The next he was standing two steps away. Shin blinked. Shunshin. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Up close he was younger than Shin had first guessed. Relaxed posture, unhurried expression. Those fox-like eyes studied Shin with a sort of quiet curiosity.

"Who were you copying?" the man asked, ignoring Shin's question. Shin hesitated. There was nothing to hide.

"Sasuke Uchiha." The man went still for half a second. He knows him. Then the smile returned, a little warmer and a little more amused.

"Then you're..." He tilted his head.

"Shin Takami?" Shin blinked.

"You know me?"

"Top students tend to be known. Every cohort, people pay attention to the top of the class." He glanced at the shurikens scattered in the grass.

"Though the throw you were using just now — Sasuke didn't teach you that."

"No." Shin shook his head.

"I picked it up from watching him. I wouldn't expect him to teach me clan technique."

"Clan technique." The man repeated the words with something between agreement and amusement. He pulled out another shuriken, not theatrically, just naturally, and studied it.

"You noticed the difference in grip from observation alone."

"But I can't replicate it," Shin said.

"I don't know the principle behind it." The man looked at him. Then at the target tree. He raised his arm and threw again — same form, same ease, same satisfying thwack into the notch.

"Watch again." Shin watched. He threw once more.

"And again." Shin's eyes tracked every detail — the fingers, the elbow, the wrist.

"Did you see it?"

"... I saw the motion," Shin said carefully.

"But I don't understand the mechanics." The man stepped aside and gestured for Shin to take his place.

"The grip isn't on the ring, and it's not on the blade edge. You hold it between the edges — the flat gap between two points. When you release, you rotate the wrist slightly inward." He paused.

"Try it yourself. Do what I described." Shin turned to face the tree. He adjusted his grip — not the ring, not the blade. The space between. Ran his fingers along until they found the thin flat gap between two shuriken points. Odd, he thought. But not unstable. He breathed out. Let his mind go quiet. Found the notch with his eyes. And threw. Thwack. Dead center. Shin stared at his own hand. First try. A beat of silence behind him.

"... Huh." The man's voice had shifted. Shin turned to find him looking not amused now but genuinely surprised, his eyes sharper than before, studying Shin the way Shin had been studying the target.

"That was your first attempt."

"Yes."

"Your talent," the man said slowly, "is something else." Shin looked at him. The question had been sitting in his chest since the man first spoke, and now it came out before he could stop it.

"Why?" he asked.

"Why show me this? We don't know each other. This is Uchiha technique — your clan's technique. You don't know what I'll do with it. You don't know if I'll use it to get ahead of Sasuke." He paused.

"Are you asking something of me in return?" The man looked at him for a long moment. Then he laughed — not loudly, just a quiet exhale of genuine amusement — and turned away. He walked toward the edge of the forest without explaining himself, his hands loose at his sides.

"You don't owe me anything," he said, without looking back.

"Just stay at the top of your class." He stepped up into the branches. One motion, two — and he was gone. Shin stood alone in the early morning light, surrounded by scattered shurikens and the smell of pine.

"... Who was that?" His words dissolved into the quiet. The second practice field. Shuriken test. Weekly, same as always.

"Does Iruka-sensei ever get tired of this?" Kiba muttered. Akamaru echoed the sentiment with a small, resigned woof.

"It keeps you from getting rusty," Shin said.

"Without regular testing, everyone slacks off."

"Kiba Inuzuka."

"Tch." Kiba handed Akamaru to Shin — the little dog immediately made himself comfortable in the crook of Shin's arm — and ambled onto the field. He dropped into a slight crouch, crossed his arms, drew two shurikens in each hand, and released all four in one fluid arc. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

"Good. Perfect score." Iruka made a mark in his register.

"Keep it up." Kiba walked back looking entirely unbothered. Akamaru scrambled back onto his head.

"What's wrong?" Shin asked. Kiba had that flat, restless look he got when something was annoying him underneath the surface.

"Nothing. Just — I've already got it down, you know? What's the point of drilling the same thing over and over."

"Your shuriken form is still nowhere near Sasuke's," Shino said.

"Or Shin's."

"Yeah, well — " Kiba waved a hand.

"Shuriken's a basic. I need to be working on real jutsu. Not throwing bits of metal at a post."

"Aiming high before you've built the foundation isn't ambition," Shin said.

"It's just skipping steps."

"I know, I know, stop lecturing me—" Kiba turned his face away. Shin and Shino exchanged a look.

"Ino Yamanaka." Ino walked onto the field with her chin up and a small smile already in place. She'd always been that way — confident in a way that came from actually putting in the work, not just from wanting to seem like it. She raised both hands. Three shurikens in each. Crossed her arms. Her shoulders dropped once — a breath — and she threw. Six blades cut through the air and landed in a neat line across the post. The crowd around the field broke into noise.

"Ino, that was amazing—""She's so good—" Ino accepted it gracefully, her smile staying controlled, and returned to the group. Her eyes moved briefly across the gathered students — a quick, measuring pass — before she settled back into place.

"She works at it," Shino said quietly, watching her.

"You can tell." He turned to Shin.

"How does she compare to you right now?" Shin considered. He nodded, then shook his head — yes and no.

"What's your actual level?" Shino asked. He and Kiba both trained separately; neither of them had seen what Shin was really capable of these days. Shin looked across the field toward Sasuke, who stood slightly apart from the group.

"First," Shin said. Shino blinked." First?" Kiba turned around. He'd heard it too. That wasn't how Shin talked. Shin never said things like that about himself. Even when he was clearly better, he'd deflect, undercut, change the subject. Saying first — flat and certain like that — was something different.

"Shin Takami." Shin didn't say anything more. He just handed Shino his jacket and walked out. Shino watched his back. He said it himself. So he means it.

"You think he'll actually beat Sasuke?" Kiba asked, quietly enough that only Shino caught it.

"... Yes," Shino said.

"He said so." The field went quiet. All eyes found Shin. Shin glanced toward the group — found Sasuke already looking back at him with that flat, unreadable expression. Sasuke's chin tilted a fraction, not quite a nod. More like an acknowledgment. So you're going to try something. Shin looked away. The memory surfaced — the man in the tree, the easy arc of the throw, the single quiet instruction: Stay at the top of your class. He looked at the training post. This test isn't really for me anymore, he thought.

Not at his current level. The Academy benchmarks were set for students, and he'd stopped being a normal student somewhere in the past month. But it can still serve one purpose. He reached into his pouch. Right hand — four shurikens. Left hand — four more. Eight total. He lowered into his stance, arms crossed in front of him, eight blades between his fingers. The breath out was slow. Then he threw. The air filled with motion.

Eight shurikens crossed paths in mid-flight, arcing, weaving — their paths catching the light for a half-second like a spider's web drawn and dissolved at once. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack — Thwack — Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. All eight hit the post. When the motion settled, they formed a rough circle in the wood. Eight, Shin thought. That's the ceiling for this exercise. Any more and it's performance, not technique. He straightened and let his hands fall. The breath that left him was quiet. Sorry, Sasuke.

This one we'll have to share.

"He's—" Shino's voice had gone very still.

"He meant it."

"First..." Kiba stood with his jaw not quite closed. Akamaru tilted his head on Kiba's skull, equally baffled. The satisfaction Kiba should've felt — that's my guy, he's incredible — got swallowed by something quieter and less comfortable. When did we get this far apart? Shin's eyes moved across the field. He found Sasuke. Sasuke was staring at him. Not at the shurikens in the post — at Shin's hands. At the grip Shin had used. The release angle. The wrist rotation at the end. That's Uchiha technique.

Sasuke knew it like he knew his own name. No one else threw that way. The clan had never taught it outside the family. He hadn't taught Shin. He'd never spoken more than a handful of words to him. There was no way Shin had picked it up from— He copied me. The thought arrived fully formed and Sasuke almost dismissed it on reflex, because Shin was eight years old, and replicating a clan movement pattern through observation alone was not something a child did. It was barely something an adult with a Sharingan did.

But there was no other explanation. He sat there and watched me, and then he went home and figured it out himself. Sasuke's hand tightened slightly at his side.

"Sasuke Uchiha." He exhaled. What a ridiculous thing, he thought, walking out onto the field. He reached into his pouch. Eight shurikens — because Shin had done eight, because anything less now would read like retreat, and that was not something he was willing to give. He threw. The motion was cleaner than Shin's. Cleaner and faster, with less visible effort, the product of years of practice and a body that had grown up moving this way.

The shurikens hit the post in a pattern that nearly matched the circle Shin had made. Nearly. A muffled chorus of "Sasuke—!" and "He's amazing—!" rose from the sidelines. He walked back without looking at any of it.

"He's not happy," Sakura murmured to Ino, watching Sasuke's expression.

"He scored perfect just like Shin. Why does he look like that?" Ino watched Sasuke return to the group. The slight set of his jaw. The way his eyes went briefly and involuntarily toward Shin before he looked away.

"He's still tied for first," Ino said. A pause.

"But Shin is tied with him now." She kept her voice even.

"That's a different thing."