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As the winter warmed, biting winds turned into cool breezes, which Taro appreciated greatly. If he was to struggle under the sun all day long, then it would very well be with gentle currents keeping him nice and fresh, something that was difficult to maintain with most of his time spent in the gruesome basic training inflicted upon him by the musclebound gorilla of an instructor, Chunin Yoshio.
He wanted to sit, if not lay down on the grass and enjoy the pleasant weather, but the fear of Yoshio's beating kept him standing— the madman broke bones first and thought about it later.
But he had come to appreciate the time spent staring at the large wall as his groupmates tried to run up the wall using only their legs and chakra to scale the wall to complete the tree-walking practice challenge set by Yoshio.
He would prefer if he had a book in hand to read because watching them put in so much effort and struggle to make it just a few steps higher on the wall than before was honestly exhausting. Alas, reading time outside was limited to when he was patrolling the beat or during lunchtime if he was luckily left alone.
However, things had changed on the wall. Back at the start, every person in Yoshio's group would be boosting up the wall, falling down, and then trying again. Repeating the process until the time was over, and they could return to their sweet homes. But for the last few days, the wall had turned empty.
He looked at the ground between him and the wall and a dozen people awkwardly walking around, pulling up grass and bursting the ground with their insufficient chakra control. Every step was slow as they took time to apply the chakra grip and then detach it before taking the next step and repeating the process over and over in hopes that it would allow them to scale the wall better and faster.
'Idiots,' he thought.
Hadn't they seen how Takuma had done it while practicing on the ground? His awkwardness had lasted less than fifteen minutes before reassuming a natural gait. It wasn't that Takuma had learned something they hadn't— he still blew up the ground under his feet plenty of times on the first day. Takuma's 'easier' ground exercise was to eliminate the vertical complexity̦— and made them understand the natural motion of the foot when someone walked.
In the backfoot, the heel rose first, putting the weight and pressure on the front half, making it so that the chakra going to the entirety of the sole's surface needed to be redirected to only the tenketsu present in the ball and toes to counteract the shift in surface area. The same action happened in the forefoot but the opposite— the grip needed to be established the moment the heel made contact before the chakra was evenly distributed to the entire sole when the whole foot was planted on the surface.
By not walking naturally, they were wasting most of the benefits derived from the exercise. Taro silently shook his head. Making all that effort only to waste it because they weren't putting it in a proper manner.
He glanced at his teammates. At least there was someone who wasn't wasting their efforts altogether. Nenro, Ai, and Masaaki clearly had some additional pointers from Takuma as they walked naturally when walking on the ground. Smart of Takuma to leave the finer detail to only his team and let the others struggle their way to the realization— it paid off as Nenro, Ai, and Masaaki had already moved onto the wall and were scaling up to good heights.
Takuma's ground-walking exercise had swept over the group like wildfire after he had successfully scaled the wall in four days, faster than anyone— much, much faster. So much so that it was already the sixth day, and no one else had made it atop the wall. That had swayed more than half of the group to follow in his footsteps. He glanced up at the wall; some still followed the traditional method, those who had a shinobi background in their family or clan like him.
Maybe the other guys didn't want to admit that Takuma, the dead last orphan from the academy, could be better than him. Or perhaps they simply were getting the hang of tree-walking through the traditional approach and didn't want to go the other route.
'Or maybe their mom forces them to practice tree-walking at home after they're run ragged from a long day of harsh training,' Taro thought. The time dedicated to tree-climbing practice in the training regiment was his time to rest. After making sure Yoshio was actually not keeping an eye on them, Taro had found that as long as he practiced in the last half hour, Yoshio wouldn't break his legs. His mom made him practice tree-walking for an hour at home, so he worked the same ninety minutes as everyone else— and he really didn't want to work more than that.
In his opinion, it was a win-win for everyone.
A rackety scream followed by a loud "FUCK!" sent birds in the trees flying away with their flapping wings echoing in the field. Taro's eyes twitched— it had happened a couple times a day, but he hadn't gotten used to it.
Everyone looked at the wall, or to be precise, tried to imagine the scene behind the wall. The front side of the wall was for climbing up, but only those who had scaled up to the top could go on the other side to practice coming down. And out of twenty-five members of Yoshio's group, only one had reached the top and thus practiced scaling down on the other side.
Takuma cursed when he was frustrated; he had done so since they were in the academy and had gotten in trouble for it. Taro had heard Takuma curse more than speak when they were in the academy, but that was because Takuma pretty much never talked to anyone when they were in the academy. Even now, Takuma mostly spoke when he was spoken to.
There was another loud scream, and Taro's eyes automatically moved to the left of the wall. After half a minute, Takuma came into view with his hand holding his opposite shoulder as he limped to the Iryo-nin sitting in the distance under a carousel umbrella. Yoshio didn't appreciate cursing while in the presence of a superior-ranked shinobi, and the madman had no qualms about hurting the offenders to get his point across. Takuma was a fool to not understand after having a kunai slice his ear the first time around.
"Oooh!"
Taro turned his attention away from Takuma to the wall and found himself looking at Ai running up the wall. She rose up, and in a couple seconds, Ai was in the lead, leaving everyone else on the wall was left behind. Ai didn't stop and seemingly had gotten the key to chakra control as she only stopped when she reached the top of the wall.
The second person in the group to reach the top wasn't from a shinobi clan, he wasn't even from the Leaf village. That was going to sting many people. Taro glanced at the 'proud' members of Leaf's shinobi clan.
'Good for them,' Taro was happy for his teammate's success.
And he was happy with the breeze on his face.
———
.
"Taro, you need to practice more."
Apparently, others weren't happy with his happiness, which wasn't surprising to him as other people seemed to think to make his business their business and poke their noses where he didn't ask them to. It was quite annoying if he was being honest.
Taro gazed at his teammates standing in front of him. Usually, they would practice at the wall, but today they seemed to have gained an unwanted interest in him.
"May I ask why?" he said. "I'm doing well enough." He wasn't last in the group because Yoshio punished the people lacking behind, so he had kept himself in the middle of the pack, where it was safe.
"Because you're going to make us lose," said Takuma standing a step behind others with his arms crossed.
It was the first time since Taro had turned away Takuma's approach that he said a word to him. Takuma had clearly taken some offense to that. They were still civil, but just not on talking terms.
"What he means to say is that we want our team to be the first to complete the challenge," Nenro interjected and said with a disarming smile. Taro had to say Okubo Momoe had nothing on Nenro when it came to popularity; his teammate was disgustingly popular among their rookie batch. Mister Sunshine seemingly could get along with anyone thrown at him.
"Is it really important for us to come first?" Taro sighed.
"It absolutely is," Ai said. "I want to win the prize."
'Ah,' Taro forgot Ai's obsession with coming on top of the weekly leaderboard. They had to do it. But it seemed she was more interested in the prize than coming first.
''Well, to be honest, I'm not interested in coming first," he shrugged.
"Eh, why?!" Masaaki sounded confused. "If we win, we get mission points. We can buy jutsu from that, you know. How cool it would be to learn cool jutsu! So, come on, let's come first— we can even brag about it. It'll be fun."
'Too bright,' Taro sighed. It was like Masaaki had an IV drip of sugar solution attached to him, keeping him hyper every second of the day.
"Na, I'm fine," he said.
Mission points were the internal currency prevalent in the Leaf shinobi organization. They had many uses and could purchase everything from everyday groceries to vacation packages. But one of the most pervasive uses was to access jutsu from the official jutsu archives maintained by the state. With enough mission points, any shinobi could purchase a jutsu scroll and increase their military strength. It was the primary way for shinobi to gain access to the jutsu of their choice— and similar systems existed in the other four major shinobi organizations.
However, Taro wasn't in dire need of mission points. It was true that he was a rookie genin who needed to learn more practical jutsu to use them on the field, and mission points would be vital for him to not only keep himself safe but also grow as a shinobi... would be... but for him, he didn't need to slog for hours to get few measly points.
After all, he could just ask his—
"Oh, you pathetic piece of shit!" said Takuma, his brows hooked and mouth pursed in anger.
"Takuma, that was rude!" Ai was shocked as she scolded Takuma.
"No, that was warranted." Takuma pointed at Taro, "He's a spoiled piece of shit who doesn't want to work to gain things. He doesn't care about coming first in the weekly leaderboards or winning the challenge because it doesn't matter to him! Does it, Taro? Tell me I'm wrong."
Taro narrowed his eyes. He didn't appreciate the tone Takuma had taken with him.
"What?" said Nenro.
Takuma snorted, a strange expression on the usually calm and silent guy. "He doesn't care for mission points because they don't matter to him. He doesn't need to work for them because his parents are shinobi who can use their mission points to buy any jutsu scroll he wants. He told me his mom is a chunin, and what's a simple D-rank jutsu to a chunin, she could probably dump any amount for her pathetic son."
That was an exaggeration, and what was the repeated use of pathetic to describe him?
"Takuma, calm down," Nenro placed his hand on Takuma's shoulder.
Takuma shrugged it off and grabbed Taro's collar to pull him up. "Not all of us are as coddled and sheltered as you are, who can beg mommy and daddy to get them new toys whenever they want. Some of us have to work for our own shit and not be a mass of utterly useless with no redeeming quality. You're the laziest motherf—"
Before Takuma could continue, Nenro and Masaaki pulled him away from Taro and made him stop talking.
"Alright, alright, I'm stopping," Takuma pushed them off and walked a few steps away from them.
"Hey, Taro, come on, let's try," Ai said, her usually upbeat tone mellowed down with a pleading in her eyes.
Ai was cute, and for a moment, Taro contemplated agreeing. The charm of girls was dangerous, Taro thought. Instead, he said, "Takuma's right. I don't need the mission points," at least not for a while, "everyone from shinobi clans or those who have shinobi parents get help, and so will I. There's no need for me or anyone else like me to win the challenge or come first in the weekly rankings."
Takuma, who was facing away, turned to face Taro. "You know, I thought you were a smart guy. I once told you that," he said, shaking his head. "But it seems I had judged wrong. You're the most idiotic person I know. Kids with shinobi parents don't have to come first? Yeah, sure, that might be true, and they might not care about coming first or winning," Takuma pointed at the wall, "but at least they're fucking trying out there, trying to get better and improve themselves. You, on the other hand, are not only wasting your time but also screwing us along." Takuma scoffed, "Why stay in the Genin Corps, you said that to me. That if you have to be a genin, there are many other options. You had said that so nonchalantly. But you know what I think? You're going to be a career genin because no one will take a useless, lazy piece of shit like you because you're a mommy's boy who can't do anything by themselves. Who would like to hire someone like you? Go screw yourself."
Saying that, Takuma walked away in a huff. Masaaki threw Taro a look before running after Takuma.
"I don't want to agree with what Takuma said, but as you're acting now, I can't help but agree with him," said Nenro before walking away with Ai.
Taro watched them before sighing. He had simply told the truth. People with shinobi children had a clear advantage against civilian-born shinobi. There was a reason why so many Jonin came from shinobi clans— they had the resources and connections that allowed them to allow talented members to rise to the top.
'—You're the most idiotic person I know—'
He disagreed with that. Instead, he was being smart. He was doing what was expected of him, nothing more, nothing less.
'—You're going to be a career genin because no one will take a useless, lazy piece of shit like you because you're a mommy's boy who can't do anything by themselves. Who will like to hire someone like you?—'
Taro flicked his neck. He was an efficient person. Doing above and beyond what was mandated wasn't slacking off. He did not desire to be the best at anything because that would only attract more work. He preferred the middle because it was the coziest and most hassle-free.
'—but as you're acting now, I can't help but agree with him—'
Taro's eyes twitched as he recalled how Nenro, Ai, and Masaaki had looked at him. He covered his face with his hands and groaned.
"Shit..."
He dropped his hand to his waist and hung his head with squinted eyes.
"Shit."
He had to do it now, didn't he? He couldn't take being insulted by the dead last to his face. What would people say if they heard it? They would come to him and laugh and bother him. That sounded totally annoying. What if he scaled the wall before them— then they wouldn't be able to say anything because they were below the guy who got insulted by the dead last.
'Yeah, let's go with that,' he thought.
And with that, Taro took a step towards the wall.
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