Asahi stayed slumped against the tree for several minutes, staring at the displaced log.
The dizziness from chakra expenditure was fading, but the mental confusion intensified, like a storm refusing to break.
'I moved the log.'
He repeated the phrase in his head, trying to make sense of it.
'Kawarimi is supposed to be an evasion technique. The user moves, the decoy replaces them. I stayed still, and the decoy… evaded.'
He stood on trembling legs and walked over to the log. He kicked it. Solid. Real. He had moved it with chakra.
'How?'
He sat on the dusty ground, pulled out his notebook—the one he used to track push-ups, running times, and calories—and tore out a clean page. He drew a diagram with clumsy lines and cramped letters.
Me (Point A) → Log (Point B) → Destination (Point C)
'The goal was: I move from A to C. Log moves from B to A.'
He crossed it out forcefully, leaving a black mark that tore the paper.
'What I did was: I stay at A. Log moves from B to… where?'
He looked at where the log had landed. About three meters to his left. The exact spot he would have landed if he had done a basic lateral evasive jump.
'No…' The realization hit him like a body blow. 'I moved the log from B to C. And my destination C was… "there." My intention was so vague that I just told the log "move there."'
He put his hands to his head. This was far worse than a simple mistake.
'Kawarimi isn't a single command. It's two. It's… multitasking.'
His programmer brain from his past life kicked in.
'It's not Swap(User, Log). This shit is asynchronous.'
'Process 1: Move from User to Destination.'
'Process 2: Move from Position to User.'
'And these two have to execute in the same instant tick… God, what have I discovered.'
Asahi dropped the pencil. It sank into the soft earth, like a tiny monument to his frustration.
'I'm trying to rub my stomach and pat my head at the same time, neurologically. And I can't even do one of the two properly.'
His problem was dissociation. His brain had to send two completely different sets of instructions to his chakra system simultaneously. And his chakra system, currently, could barely handle a Henge hair-color change without overheating.
'My muscle instinct overrides Process 1. And my lack of control makes Process 2 a disaster.'
He stood up.
'I can't run a marathon if I can't crawl. I can't do Kawarimi if I can't do the individual parts.'
He looked at his diagram. 'Okay. Forget Process 2. Forget the log entirely. Let's isolate Process 1.'
This, he realized, was the foundation of something else: Shunshin no Jutsu (Body Flicker Technique). High-speed movement using chakra as propulsion.
'No decoy. No replacement. Just go from Point A to Point C.'
He stood in the center of the clearing. His "Destination" (Point C) would be the large tree across from him, about twenty meters away.
'Same logic as before,' he thought. 'Relax the legs. No physical jump. Let the chakra do the work.'
He formed the Ram seal, a generic seal for chakra activation.
He closed his eyes. Visualized jet engines in the soles of his feet. Visualized the tree.
'Move.'
POOF!
There was a burst of smoke and a tugging sensation.
And pain.
He opened his eyes. The world was blurry. He was on the ground, about five meters from where he started. His right shoulder screamed in protest.
He had crashed into one of the rotting training posts that wasn't even in his path.
'What the hell…?' He sat up, rubbing his shoulder. 'I veered. I veered a lot.'
He tried again, this time aiming only three meters away.
POOF!
Ended up two meters, stumbling forward, almost face-planting.
It was horribly inconsistent. Like trying to drive a race car with terrible alignment. You aimed straight, but the car veered violently left.
'My… my chakra output… is unbalanced.'
He tried again and again.
POOF! → Moved one meter.
POOF! → Didn't move at all, just smoke.
POOF! → Moved five meters, but backward.
"BACKWARD?!" he shouted into the clearing, his voice hoarse. 'How is it possible to go backward?!'
He collapsed, completely out of breath—not from physical effort, but mental strain. The headache slammed back, like a hammer pounding behind his eyes.
'My control is worse than a kid trying to use a firehose.' Pressure was there, his vitality gave him a huge fuel tank, but the nozzle… the nozzle was broken and spraying everywhere.
He looked at his hands. 'Naruto and Sasuke did it. They made it look easy.'
Envy and resignation surfaced again. 'Is this some innate talent scripted into the protagonists? Does Sasuke's Sharingan let him "copy" the feeling? Does Naruto's Yin chakra give intuitive control?'
'And me? What do I have?'
He was exhausted. The sun was high. He had been at it for hours.
'No.' He clenched his fists. 'No. Talent is just a starting multiplier. Hard work is the foundation.'
He stood once more.
'Enough big jumps. Back to basics.'
He stood one meter from a post. 'Objective: move to the other side of the post. A distance of one foot.'
Closed his eyes. Relaxed his muscles.
'Intention: move.'
Poof.
Opened his eyes.
He was on the other side of the post.
It was the smallest, ugliest, most pathetic chakra movement in ninja history. Left him dizzy and sweaty.
But it had worked.
He did it again.
Poof.
To the other side.
Poof.
Back.
'Okay,' he thought, stomach churning from the "teleportation" dizziness. 'I have the control of a drunk driver, but I'm in the car.'
He looked at the log, still abandoned where he had accidentally moved it.
'Tomorrow,' he decided, gathering his backpack. 'Tomorrow, we work on Process 2: moving the log intentionally.'
He had all of Sunday.