The roar of the crowd echoed off the stone walls of the arena, a wave of sound that vibrated straight through the dirt beneath Akira's sandals. High above, spectators waved paper fans against the heat. Down below, the air smelled of sun-baked earth and nervous sweat.
Akira stood in a quiet, shaded corner of the viewing balcony, leaning against a cool stone archway. He had been pulled out of the exams during the preliminaries—officially listed as a "medical withdrawal."
Beneath his high-collared jacket and tight chest wraps, a strange, steady pulse throbbed right over his sternum. It didn't feel like his normal heart. It felt like a tiny engine, humming hot one second and ice-cold the next.
"Still breathing, or are you just standing there trying to look broody?"
Akira didn't jump, but his jaw twitched. He turned his head to find Mitarashi Anko leaning against the adjacent pillar. She had a stick of dango dangling lazily from her fingers, syrup glinting under the sun. Her trench coat hung open, revealing her high mesh collar, and her sharp brown eyes scanned him up and down.
Having the notoriously unpredictable Special Jōnin standing three feet away, grinning with razor-sharp teeth, made a sudden flush of heat creep up Akira's neck.
"Proctor Mitarashi," Akira said, catching himself and adjusting his collar.
"Shouldn't you be up in the proctors' box?"
Anko snorted, taking a bite of a red bean dumpling.
"Watching a bunch of twelve-year-olds flex their family jutsu gets boring. Besides, it's suffocating up there. Too many fake smiles."
She pointed the bamboo skewer right at his nose.
"I came down here to see if my favorite miracle was still alive, or if your lungs turned into ash."
"I'm alive, Proctor," Akira said calmly. "The medics said I was stable enough to watch."
"Stable," Anko repeated, rolling her eyes. "Those medics don't know a damn thing about what's actually sitting in your chest. If they did, they'd have locked you in a basement."
Akira kept his hands in his pockets. "The official report said my squad got ambushed by a paper bomb trap."
"Official reports are lies for people who want to sleep at night," Anko dryly replied. She tossed her skewer over the railing. "Tell me... what do you actually remember about the forest?"
Akira took a slow breath. "I remember the insects stopped making noise. Then a man in Grass-nin clothes stepped out. He moved... wrong."
"Wrong how?" Anko asked, stepping a little closer.
"Too fast. Too quiet," Akira said softly. "I tried to surrender. I dropped our scrolls. But he just thought it was funny. When he caught my sword, I panicked. I called myself a 'Demon of Konoha'—just last-second big talk because I knew our scout squad had that suicide seal on us, and I thought I was dead anyway."
Anko let out a sharp, sudden laugh, though there was an icy edge to it. "A 'Demon of Konoha'? You tried to act like a scary suicide trooper to frighten a monster!"
Akira raised an eyebrow. "Who was he, Proctor?"
Anko's playful smirk faded. "His name is Orochimaru. One of the Legendary Sannin. A war hero who turned rogue years ago."
Akira frowned slightly. "A Sannin... in a Genin exam?"
"He didn't come for the exam, kid," Anko said bitterly. "He came because he treats this village like his playground. And when you claimed to be a 'Demon of Konoha', you handed him the punchline on a silver platter."
"How so?"
"You had our suicide seal inked on your chest, right?" Anko asked, tapping her own collarbone. "The kind that turns a soldier into a bomb so enemies can't read their brain?"
"Yeah," Akira nodded. "I thought if he killed me, the mark would take us both out."
"And that's where you got naive," Anko said, smirking a little. "Orochimaru helped design those seals years ago. When you called yourself a 'Demon of Konoha', he looked at your chest, recognised the mark, and decided to show you what a real demon looks like. He rewrote the formula in a second."
Akira blinked. "He rewrote a seal mid-fight?"
"Yep. He turned your suicide bomb into a slow fuse," Anko explained. "He left you screaming in the dirt because he knew the proctors would see the chakra flare. He knew whoever was in charge of that area would run to help."
She pointed at her own chest. "He set that trap specifically to force my hand. He knew I would run to save a kid carrying that mark."
Akira looked at her, the pieces coming together. "He set a trap for you using my seal."
"Bingo," Anko corrected. "When I found you, your veins were glowing orange. You were seconds away from blowing up. I tried to suppress it with medical chakra, but the trap was built to react to my energy. Standard sealing couldn't fix it. The trap was meant to force me to choose: die with you, or unlock the one thing I swore I'd never touch."
"Your own mark," Akira murmured.
Anko reached up, slowly pulling down the mesh collar on the left side of her neck.
Etched into her pale skin was a dark, three-bladed mark, almost identical to the altered ink on Akira's ribs.
"Because I have one of his marks, too," Anko said quietly. "Ten years ago, I was his student. He branded me with this Cursed Seal and left me for dead. I swore I'd never use its power again."
She looked up at Akira, her eyes sharp. "But kneeling over you in the mud, watching you cook from the inside out... I realized what he was doing. He wanted to force me to break my own seal. So, I did the only thing crazy enough to work."
"What did you do?"
"I broke my own suppression barrier," Anko grinned, leaning in close enough that Akira could smell the sweet syrup on her breath. "I opened my Curse Mark and slammed a blast of its cold, nasty chakra right into your open chest."
Akira's heart skipped a beat—half from the story, half from how close she was standing. He cleared his throat. "You... put your Curse Mark chakra into me?"
"I had to," Anko said, stepping back with a satisfied smirk as she saw the slight blush on his cheeks. "My cold energy crashed into his burning trap. They fought inside your ribs until they locked each other down in a draw."
Akira put a hand over his sternum. "So that's why it feels like an engine in there."
"Exactly. You're not healed, kid. You're a walking physics experiment," Anko chuckled. "The suicide mark and my curse chakra fused. It put your chakra pathways under insane pressure. It's why your control is so sharp now, and why you don't get tired easily."
"Is there a catch?" Akira asked.
"Of course there's a catch," Anko said, her voice dropping. "It's a bomb on a short leash. If you waste your chakra, lose your temper, or get beat up too badly... the lock breaks. And you melt."
Akira stood silent for a second, processing the information calmly. "So... stay calm, control my energy, and don't die."
Anko stared at him, raising an eyebrow. "That's it? No screaming? No crying? No 'Oh proctor, save me'?"
Akira offered a dry, faint smile. "Panic doesn't fix a broken seal, Proctor. Besides, you already saved me once. It'd be rude to waste the effort."
Anko stared at him before bursting into a loud laugh. She slapped him hard on the shoulder—a blow that would've made a kid stumble, though Akira stayed planted.
"I like you, kid," Anko grinned, stepping dangerously close again, tilting her head up at him. "You've got a cool head for an eighteen-year-old civilian. Most guys your age would be shaking in their boots—or trying to impress me."
"I'm just trying to survive," Akira said, his voice steady, though his eyes met hers directly. "Though impressing you sounds like a decent backup plan."
Anko smirked, her sharp teeth showing. "Careful, Akira. Keep talking like that and I might actually keep you around."
Her tone turned serious again as she looked out over the railing. "He's in the village, you know. Orochimaru didn't leave after the forest."
"What happens when the tournament finishes?" Akira asked.
"The fake peace ends, and the real fight starts," Anko said flatly. She turned to walk away, her coat swishing around her boots. "Keep your head down, Akira. Don't play hero."
"Thanks for the rescue, Proctor," Akira called softly.
Anko paused on the stairs, looking back over her shoulder with a smirk. "Don't mention it. Just don't die today. I'd hate to see a cute face like yours go to waste."
Before Akira could reply, a massive roar erupted from the crowd.
Down in the sunlit dirt ring, a swirl of leaves materialised in a flash. Sasuke Uchiha stepped into the arena alongside Kakashi, his dark eyes locking onto Gaara of the Sand, who was already surrounded by a floating cloud of sand.
The air in the stadium turned ice-cold.
Anko gave Akira one last glance before disappearing up the stairs, leaving him alone in the shade, watching the sand begin to gather at Gaara's feet.