Sunday dawned with a heavy, gray quality that Asahi felt behind his own eyes. The headache from overusing chakra was real. It wasn't sharp pain, but a dull pressure, as if his brain were too big for his skull, like someone had tried to fit a V8 engine into a toy car.
He skipped his calisthenics routine. His muscles were fine, but his mental battery was at twenty percent and dropping faster than the stock market in 1929.
'No point in training the body if the chakra engine is fried,' he thought bitterly, chewing his bland rice breakfast in the orphanage dining hall. The air smelled of cold tea and burnt toast. No one was watching. No one noticed. As always.
He slipped out of the orphanage unnoticed, as usual, and headed to his private clearing.
The log was still there. The clearing was silent. Only the murmur of the stream and the crunch of dry leaves under his feet broke the calm.
Today, the goal was Process 2. Or, as Asahi had renamed it in his mind: "Telekinetic Log Launch."
He set down his backpack and stood in front of the log (Point B). His destination (Point C) was the large tree on the far side of the clearing, its rough bark and outstretched branches like tired arms.
'Yesterday, my intention was split,' he analyzed. 'My body wanted to move, so my chakra grabbed the first thing it could (the log) and sent it to the destination my body wanted (there).'
'What if… I have no intention of moving?'
He planted his feet firmly in the ground, anchored to the damp soil.
He formed the Ram seal. Focused intensely on the log. Visualized the tree.
'Move.'
Nothing.
'More chakra.'
He formed the seal again, pouring in as much energy as he could.
POOF!
A cloud of smoke emerged… from him. The log remained still, mocking him with its inertia.
Asahi frowned. 'Why isn't it working? My intention is clear. My power is there… but it… doesn't connect?'
'The chakra leaves me. How do I make it enter it?'
An obvious, annoying idea arose.
'…Do I have to touch it?'
It felt like admitting defeat. Cool ninjas were supposed to fling things with their minds. But Asahi knelt and placed a hand on the rough, damp bark of the log.
He closed his eyes.
'Okay. Don't think about moving it. Think about… filling it.'
He inhaled deeply and exhaled, pushing his chakra, not outward, but through his arm, down his palm, into the dead wood.
The sensation was… strange.
It was like pouring water into dry sand. The log seemed to drink his chakra. There was no resistance. He could feel his energy swirling inside the wood fibers, a tactile sensation that wasn't really there. The log felt… warm. Alive. As if he had given it an artificial heart.
He opened his eyes. The log didn't look different. But to his chakra sense—that vague sixth sense he was just beginning to develop—the log now glowed with a faint blue hum, matching his own.
'It's… tuned.'
He stood, hand still on the wood.
'Okay. Attempt number two.'
With the log "filled" with his chakra signature, he visualized the tree (Point C).
POOF!
There was a dull thud, a puff of smoke from the log, and a jolt under his palm.
Asahi coughed, waving away the smoke.
The log had moved.
It had slid half a meter toward the tree, leaving a furrow in the earth.
"Ha!" Asahi let out a short, breathless laugh.
He had done it. He had moved an inanimate object with pure chakra. He felt like a god… for about three seconds, before dizziness hit and he had to lean on the log to keep from falling.
'That… consumed an absurd amount of energy.'
He sat heavily. It took several minutes to catch his breath. Cold sweat ran down his back. The chakra fatigue weighed on his bones.
'So… Kawarimi isn't a two-step process. It's three.'
He pulled out his notebook and began to write, his handwriting trembling slightly.
Step 1: Tuning – Touch the decoy, infuse it with chakra.Step 2: User movement.Step 3: Decoy movement.Step 4: Synchronization – Execute Steps 2 and 3 at the same time.
Asahi looked at the list. 'This is ridiculous. It's like juggling three balls while solving a math problem… aaahh.'
A thought struck him. 'Is that why…?'
He remembered the anime. The Academy. Students always practiced with the same type of log.
'It's not just any log. It's their log. An object they've already tuned. They probably spend the first week just "getting to know" a piece of wood.'
He realized Iruka-sensei had given them a simplified version, assuming innate talent or clan instruction would fill in the gaps. But for a reincarnated orphan with no manual, it was a brick wall.
Asahi wiped the sweat from his forehead. His headache had returned, more insistent now, like a hammer pounding from within.
'Okay. Forget moving it further.' He already knew he could do it, even if it was costly. 'The problem is long-distance tuning.'
He couldn't run to an object, touch it, then replace it mid-battle. He had to tune it from afar.
He spent the rest of the day in a form of frustrating meditation.
He would stand a meter from the log. Form the Ram seal. Focus on that feeling of filling, trying to push his chakra across the empty space and into the wood.
For hours, nothing happened.
The sun began to set. He was pale, trembling from chakra fatigue and frustration.
'Come on… connect…'
He visualized a cable, running from his stomach, through the air, and plugging into the log.
Click.
The log… changed. He felt that familiar hum.
It was connected.
Asahi, standing a meter away, raised a hand. He focused.
'Come.'
The log wobbled. It moved, perhaps half a centimeter toward him.
Asahi collapsed to his knees. The world spun. He had expended every last drop of his mental chakra.
But he was smiling.
'I've got you.'
He picked up his backpack, feeling as exhausted as after a ten-kilometer run, but with an entirely new kind of satisfaction.
'Tomorrow,' he thought, staggering back to the orphanage under the orange sunset, the sky streaked red and gold as if the world were applauding his small triumph.'Tomorrow, Iruka-sensei will see that I still can't do the Kawarimi.'
And in his mind, that was exactly what he needed.