The chalkboard had stopped being the enemy and gone back to being just a chalkboard when Iruka finally let Naruto back inside.
Naruto, tragically, had not stopped being Naruto.
He stomped into the classroom like he'd been personally wronged by architecture, throwing himself into his seat in the back row. The desk rattled. A couple of kids jumped. Someone muttered, "Here we go," under their breath.
From my spot near the windows—third row, girls' side—his chakra felt like it always did when he was mad: bright, unstable, sloshing right up to the edges and looking for something to crash into.
"Uzumaki Naruto," Iruka said warningly, without even turning around.
"What?" Naruto complained. "I just sat down!"
Iruka wrote something about the First Hokage on the board with unnecessary force.
On Naruto's other side, Uchiha Sasuke sat like he'd been carved there: straight-backed, arms crossed, eyes half-lidded. His chakra was tighter, hotter, coiled in on itself. If Naruto was a bonfire, Sasuke was a forge someone had shut the door on.
In front of the two of them, there was an empty desk. Sakura's spot, in the world I used to know. Here, it was just… empty. A quiet hole in the seating chart.
I tried not to think about that too hard.
My own desk was a disaster—in a controlled way. Textbook open, actual notes on one side, doodles creeping down the margins like ivy. Little seal designs wound around the kanji for "fire" and "water," spirals and interlocking lines that might do something one day if I ever figured them out.
"Pssst."
A pink-tipped pencil poked the edge of my paper.
I glanced sideways.
Yamanaka Ino had somehow achieved maximum elegance while slouched at her desk. Her hair was pulled back with a neat clip; her writing was tidy and slanted. Her chakra felt like a sharp, clear pool—surface-bright, with things moving thoughtfully underneath.
She tilted her head toward the back of the room.
"So," she whispered, lips barely moving, "how bad was it?"
Naruto chose that moment to lean back in his chair and put his feet up on his desk, earning himself another "Naruto!" from Iruka. He flailed, overbalanced, and almost fell. The room tittered.
I kept my voice low. "Define 'bad'."
"On a scale from 'mildly scolded' to 'lifelong ban from the market district'?"
I thought of Iruka's headache face, the buckets, the climb, Naruto nearly slipping off the Third's nose twice.
"Mm. Somewhere between 'irreparably disappointed' and 'personally offended on behalf of all Hokage everywhere.'"
Ino covered her mouth, shoulders shaking.
"Serves him right," she said, once she'd wrestled the laughter down. "Drawing that mustache on the Third was a crime."
"It was a conceptual statement about the burden of leadership," I said. "You just don't understand his creative vision."
She snorted. "Please. Naruto's 'creative vision' is 'what if I made this worse and louder?'"
She wasn't wrong.
Iruka cleared his throat pointedly. We both dropped our eyes to our workbooks like model students.
"…and so," he said, tapping the page with his chalk, "the First Hokage founded the village with the goal of bringing peace to the warring clans—"
My attention drifted.
Information was important and I wasn't about to flunk Academy. But my brain kept wandering away from the words to the people saying them. And the ones listening.
Hinata, two rows ahead, shrank into her seat like she was trying to fold herself into a kunai holster. Her chakra flickered and dimmed every time Iruka called on someone. When he called on her, it sputtered like a candle in a draft.
Kiba was the opposite. Even with his head on his desk, he radiated loud heat, the kind of restless sharpness that made dogs excited and teachers tired. Akamaru, tiny and warm on top of his head, yawned and shifted, their chakra patterns overlapping like two versions of the same song.
Shino sat next to them, steady and muted, like a hummed note under their noise. His chakra felt… organized. Strange, but structured. I filed that away for later.
And then there was Shikamaru.
He was slouched so low in his seat he was practically melting, eyes half closed, hair tied up in that lazy spike. From the outside, he looked like he might drift off at any second. From the inside, he felt like a river with deep, slow-moving currents—calm on top, strong underneath.
If I hadn't already known he was a genius, my weird chakra sense would've ratted him out.
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At lunch, the Academy loosened its tie a little.
Kids poured out into the courtyard in noisy clusters, bento boxes in hand. I ended up on a low wall under one of the scraggly trees with Naruto, because of course I did. He ripped open his lunch like it had personally wronged him.
"Iruka-sensei is such a drag," he said around a mouthful of rice. "History this, treaties that. Who cares what a bunch of dead guys signed a million years ago?"
"People who don't want to die in wars," I said. "Also people who like not being on fire."
He made a face and kicked his legs. Chakra buzzed around him—restless, bright, like a storm cloud made of orange paint.
I was halfway through my own onigiri when my weird sense prickled.
Someone small, fast, and overly determined was moving through the crowd like a guided missile. Their chakra was sharp and young and trying way too hard to be sneaky.
I turned my head just in time to see a blur of beige and scarf bolt past.
The blur tripped on absolutely nothing, face-planted, and slid in the dirt.
Naruto burst out laughing. "PFF—ha! You good there, little guy?"
The kid sprang back up like a rubber ball. He couldn't have been more than… eight? Brown hair stuck out from under a too-big Konoha forehead protector. A green scarf trailed behind him like a cape. His cheeks were smudged with dirt and pride.
"I-I totally meant to do that!" he blurted, then froze when he actually focused on Naruto. His eyes went wide. "You're Uzumaki Naruto!"
Naruto blinked. "Yeah? And you are…?"
The kid straightened, puffed up, jabbed a thumb at his chest.
"I'm Konohamaru!" he declared. "Grandson of the Third Hokage! But don't call me 'Honorable Grandson' or I'll kill you."
That last bit came out with the exact intonation of someone quoting themselves from a hundred tantrums.
I almost choked on my rice.
Oh. Right. Him.
Konohamaru's chakra jittered impatiently, like it was trying to climb out of his skin. He kept cutting glances toward the tower where the Hokage's office sat, visible over the rooftops.
"Okay, Konohamaru," Naruto said, grinning. "Why were you sprinting like a weirdo?"
Konohamaru's ears went pink. "I—I was going to challenge Gramps. I mean… the Hokage. Again." He scowled. "But I slipped. Stupid floor."
"The ground hates all of us," I said solemnly. "Equal opportunity."
He only then seemed to realize I existed. His gaze flicked to me, then to my hitai-ate-less forehead, then down to the ink stains on my fingers.
"And you are?" he asked, slightly suspicious, like I might be a secret ANBU in disguise if he didn't check.
"Sylvie," I said. "Random orphan. Resident Naruto-enabling committee."
Naruto elbowed me. "Hey! I don't need enabling!"
"That's exactly what someone who needs enabling would say."
Konohamaru watched us bicker, eyes shining in that way kids get when they've just realized older idiots are, in fact, idiots.
Then he leaned forward. "Boss," he said.
Naruto jerked. "Huh?"
"Teach me," Konohamaru said, dead serious. "You painted the Hokage Monument. You don't care he's the Hokage. You talk to him like he's just some old man. Nobody else does that. So… teach me how to beat him."
There it was: the little tangle of envy and resentment in his chakra whenever he said "Hokage." Big shadow, small kid.
Naruto stared at him, caught somewhere between flattered and baffled.
"Beat him?" he repeated.
Konohamaru nodded so hard his scarf flapped. "So I can be Hokage next!" He clenched his fists. "I don't want people to only see me as 'the Third's grandson.' I want them to see me as me. As the next Hokage."
For half a second, Naruto's expression shifted—like someone had hit him with a mirror.
I could feel it, too: that sting under the words. People only seeing the demon, not the boy. People only seeing the title, not the kid underneath it. Different shapes, same wound.
Naruto scratched his cheek. "Heh. I get that," he said, voice softer. Then he brightened. "All right! I'll teach you."
Konohamaru lit up. "Really, Boss?!"
"Boss?" I repeated, amused.
Naruto straightened, puffing his chest out like a pigeon. "Yeah, that's right. From now on, I'm your boss. Lesson one: you can't beat the Hokage by tripping on the ground."
"I didn't trip!" Konohamaru protested. "It was… a surprise attack."
"In that case," I said, "the ground surprised you back."
He spluttered.
They were about to devolve into a slap-fight when a new chakra signature approached—smooth, controlled, and deeply annoyed.
"Konohamaru-sama!" a voice snapped.
A man in dark clothes and a standard-issue flak vest marched toward us, sandals clicking on stone. Dark glasses, tight ponytail, hitai-ate worn perfectly straight. His chakra felt like a lecture.
He stopped, hands on his hips.
"There you are," he said. "I turn my back for one moment and you're fraternizing with… with this delinquent again."
Naruto bristled. "Delinquent?!"
"Ebisu-sensei," Konohamaru groaned. "I told you not to call me '-sama' in front of people."
"I am your elite private tutor," Ebisu said, without a trace of irony. "It is proper to address the Hokage's grandson with respect."
He gave Naruto a once-over like he'd found something moldy in the fridge.
"And it is proper," he added, "to keep him away from bad influences."
His gaze flicked to me, clearly lumping me into the "bad influence" bucket by proximity.
I smiled, sharp and sweet. "Hi," I said. "Random orphan. Zero political power. I have a name too, but by all means, keep objectifying us."
His mouth pinched.
"Uzumaki Naruto," he said, as if reciting a wanted poster. "Perpetual Academy failure. Repeated vandalism. Chronic disrespect for authority. A boy like you will never become Hokage."
Naruto flinched. Just a tiny twitch around the eyes. But his chakra spiked like someone had jabbed it.
"You don't know that," he said. "I'll show all of you. I'll—"
"Konohamaru-sama," Ebisu cut in, turning away from Naruto as if he'd ceased to exist. "We are going. Now. You have chakra control exercises to complete. If you waste your time with the class clown, you will never catch up to your grandfather's legacy."
He reached for Konohamaru's scarf.
Konohamaru jerked back. "No! I'm training with Boss Naruto!"
"Absolutely not," Ebisu snapped. "That boy will only drag you down."
My fingers curled around my bento box.
"I don't know," I said lightly. "Naruto seems pretty good at dragging people up, actually."
Ebisu's lip curled. "You children don't understand how the world works," he said. "Ninja ranks exist for a reason. Status exists for a reason. Talent exists for a reason. Hokage is not a title for clowns and strays."
My ears buzzed. Stray.
Naruto was shaking now, just a little. Anger rolling off him like heat.
"Take it back," he said.
Ebisu ignored him, putting a hand on Konohamaru's shoulder. "Come, Konohamaru-sama. We'll work somewhere you won't be corrupted by—"
Naruto moved.
It wasn't the wild, flailing charge he'd used on the training field. It was faster—offense braided with spite.
"Heh," he said, backing up a step and folding his hands into a familiar seal I'd only ever seen as a joke on a screen. "If I'm a clown anyway… might as well use my best gag."
My brain took a second to catch up.
Wait.
No.
He wouldn't—
"Don't tell me you're going to—" I started.
Naruto grinned, sharp and wicked.
"Sexy Jutsu!"
He slammed the last hand sign.
Chakra flared, hot and ridiculous, and smoke exploded around him.
When it cleared, Naruto wasn't there.
In his place stood a tall, curvy girl with long blonde hair spilling down her back in soft waves. Same bright blue eyes, now framed by thick lashes. Same grin, turned devastating. The standard censoring smoke curled around her at strategic points, but there was enough visible skin to make the point extremely clear.
She giggled—high, breathy, weaponized. "Ebisu-sensei," she cooed, leaning forward just enough that physics had a panic attack. "Isn't it lonely~ doing private lessons all day?"
My jaw dropped.
Konohamaru shrieked, "WHOA—BOSS?!" in a tone that was forty percent horror, sixty percent spiritual awakening.
Ebisu made a strangled noise.
For a split second, the entire courtyard seemed to pause. Even my chakra sense kind of blue-screened.
Because, sure, I knew about this jutsu. I'd watched Naruto do it. I'd laughed at the nosebleeds.
Knowing it and seeing it from three meters away, in real air, as someone whose whole brain was already a tangled ball of gendered wires, were very different things.
My thoughts did a hard crash and reboot.
Henge can do that? my brain screamed. That's legal? That's on the menu?!
There was a dizzy, lurching moment where my body felt both too real and not real enough. Naruto had just flipped a switch and become, effortlessly, something I wanted so badly it hurt to look at.
Shock hit first—sharp, electric.
Right behind it: envy. Hot and sour and ridiculous, because it was a joke, it was a gag, it was meant to humiliate an uptight tutor, not rip open my carefully labeled "Deal With This Later" box and dump it on the floor.
I must've made some kind of face, because Konohamaru glanced at me and then did a double take.
"Uh, Sylvie?" he whispered. "You okay? You look like you ate a ghost."
"Working on it," I croaked.
Ebisu, meanwhile, was losing a battle with his own circulatory system.
He stumbled back, glasses slipping down his nose, red gushing out in a classic anime nosebleed.
"Th-this… this vulgar… forbidden…" he choked, swaying. "Such… powerful… indecency—!"
He toppled backward in a perfect faint, hitting the ground with a thud.
The sexy version of Naruto dispelled in a pop of smoke, leaving regular, sweaty, smug Naruto in his place.
He planted his hands on his hips and cackled. "Hah! That's what you get, you stuck-up glasses freak! Sexy Jutsu: super effective!"
Konohamaru stared at him, eyes like dinner plates.
"That," he breathed, "was the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life."
"Right?!" Naruto beamed. "One day I'll make a whole new version and knock the Hokage flat too."
Konohamaru clenched his fists, trembling with religious fervor. "Teach me, Boss," he begged. "Teach me the forbidden art."
"Nope," I said automatically.
They both turned to look at me.
"That's a war crime," I said. "On at least three levels. The world is not ready for two of you doing that."
Naruto pouted. "C'mon, Sylvie, you gotta admit it was awesome."
"I will admit it was effective," I said. "I will also admit I am going to be unpacking my reaction to it for approximately the rest of my life."
He blinked. "Huh?"
"Nothing," I said quickly. "Just processing the fact that transformation jutsu is apparently… that flexible."
I glanced at my own hands. At the way my hospital gown had fit months ago. At the way this body still felt like a borrowed outfit, even when it was right.
A little tremor ran through me.
Naruto, mercifully oblivious, slung an arm around Konohamaru's shoulders.
"Lesson two!" he declared. "If someone tells you you can't be Hokage, you ignore them and get stronger anyway."
Konohamaru nodded, deadly serious. "Right!"
"And lesson three," Naruto added. "Sometimes, to shock the world… you gotta be a little pervy."
"Do not make that your life motto," I said. "Please."
They ignored me and started arguing about what other "ultimate techniques" they could invent.
Behind us, Ebisu groaned faintly in the dirt.
I exhaled, long and shaky, and pushed my glasses up.
"Okay," I told myself under my breath. "New note to self: talk to literally anyone about henge rules as soon as possible. Maybe quietly. Maybe in a cave."
The bell rang in the distance, calling us back to class.
Naruto helped Konohamaru pry Ebisu off the ground, mostly by dragging him by the ankles. Konohamaru promised to sneak out later for more "training." Ebisu moaned something about "corrupting influences."
We split ways at the Academy gate—Konohamaru and his unconscious tutor one direction, Naruto and I the other.
By the time I slid back into my seat, Iruka was already at the board again, chalk in hand, ready to drag us through more treaties.
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I tapped my pencil against the edge of my desk, trying to pretend I was listening to the lecture and not compulsively cataloguing everyone like a walking mood ring.
This was another thing that hadn't gone away when I'd switched worlds and bodies: the constant awareness of other people's… moods? Textures? Whatever chakra was doing, it had map overlays.
At first, I'd thought it was just nerves. Trauma brain, trying to monitor every possible threat. But with practice, I'd started to recognize patterns. Naruto's chaos. Hinata's tremors. Sasuke's smoldering pressure.
It wasn't precise. I couldn't read minds or anything. It was more like… color swatches in a paint box, except the paint was people.
"Stop thinking about weird metaphors," I scolded myself silently. "Take the note about the Second Hokage."
"Hey," Ino whispered again once Iruka turned to write dates on the board. "If Naruto gets expelled for real this time, who do you think they'll stick on your team?"
"Expelled for graffiti?" I murmured back. "That'd be a bit much, even for Konoha."
"You never know." She twirled her pencil thoughtfully. "I heard my dad say they're having a hard time balancing teams this year. Too many clan brats, not enough people who can keep up with them. You might get stuck with some super serious type."
My eyes flicked, involuntary, to the back of the room.
Sasuke was staring out the window, not even pretending to pay attention. Iruka hadn't called him out once. That was the kind of leeway you got when you were the Last Uchiha™.
His chakra was a slow, dense spin, like a storm eye. Controlled. Tense. Absolutely full of "do not talk to me."
"Yeah," I said lightly. "Can you imagine?"
Ino followed my gaze and huffed.
"Sasuke-kun would be lucky to have you on his team," she whispered. "You're smart, and you actually take notes. Unlike some people."
"I've also seen him set things on fire with his brain," I said. "I think he'll be fine."
She jabbed my notebook with the pencil again, annoyed.
"I'm serious! You always get like this when anyone says you're good at something. Just take the compliment."
"Compliments are suspicious," I said. "They mean people expect things later."
"That's not how that works," she hissed.
"Isn't it?" I raised an eyebrow.
She rolled her eyes so hard I could practically hear it.
"Anyway," she said, switching gears, "Sasuke's cute, sure, but have you felt his chakra? That boy is walking unresolved trauma."
I choked on absolutely nothing and had to cough into my sleeve to cover the laugh.
"Wow," I whispered. "What a wild coincidence that someone raised in this peaceful, stable village has Issues."
Ino smirked. "Hey, I never said it wasn't hot."
"You need therapy," I informed her, affectionately.
She bumped my shoulder with hers.
"Please. If I'm going to need therapy, I'm dragging you with me."
She wasn't wrong about that, either.
Iruka clapped his hands once. "All right, everyone. Open your workbooks to page forty-two. Practice questions on the founding treaties. If I see one more answer where you confuse the First and Second Hokage, I'm assigning double homework."
A chorus of groans went up.
Naruto slumped dramatically, forehead thunking against his desk.
"This is so boring," he whined, loud enough for half the class to hear. "Why do we gotta learn about dead guys when we could be learning cool jutsu?"
"Because without those 'dead guys,' there would be no village for you to practice jutsu in," Iruka said sharply. "Now focus."
Naruto made a face at his textbook like it had personally wronged him.
I flipped to page forty-two and stared at the questions.
Which treaty did the First Hokage draft to unify the clans?
Describe the significance of—
I'd done this once already, in another life, in subtitles and wiki pages. Now I was here, pencil in hand, actually filling in the answer lines.
My handwriting in this body was neater. Small, careful strokes. Easier to tuck seals between the kana.
On the other side of the classroom, Shikamaru yawned, then picked up his pencil with deliberate slowness. His chakra barely shifted. It was like watching a mountain decide to move an inch.
Behind me, Naruto's chakra flared and skittered as he tried to answer the first question, failed, doodled on his paper, got distracted, and nearly knocked his chair over. Again.
I exhaled, tension I hadn't realized I was holding bleeding out of my shoulders.
Whatever team lists the Academy had in mind, the universe clearly had a type: chaos magnets and the idiots who enabled them.
I circled the word "treaty," underlined it twice, and started to write.
If I was going to survive this world and whatever it decided to throw at Naruto, I was going to need every advantage I could get.
Even if that advantage started with knowing which dead guy signed which piece of paper.
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The candle was definitely judging me.
It guttered in the corner of my room, wax puddling like a tiny melted corpse, while I hunched over my notebook with ink-stained fingers and a brain that would not shut up.
The dorm room the Academy gave us was small but neat: narrow bed, tiny desk, window that leaked moonlight. Everything beige, like the village thought neutral colors would prevent emotional damage.
Joke's on them.
I tapped the end of my brush against my glasses and frowned down at the page.
A neat, proper seal array sat in the center—basic storage formula, the kind Iruka had praised that afternoon. Tight circles, four cardinal points, little anchors for chakra. Efficient. Safe. Boring.
Around it, the margins were chaos.
Self. Change. Body. Truth.
My attempts at the kanji crawled along the edges in uneven rows, little soldiers with broken legs.
自
変
体
真
I'd written them, crossed them out, written them smaller, tried to sneak them into sub-arrays, then angrily scrubbed them into gray smears.
"Stop looking at me," I muttered at the page.
Obviously, it didn't.
My hand moved anyway, brush gliding in automatic little loops as I sketched a new circle on the next sheet. Habit. Muscle memory. The first thing I'd really owned in this world: ink + chakra = something that listened to me.
Most days, that felt like a miracle.
Tonight it felt like a dare.
Naruto's stupid Sexy Jutsu kept punching my brain from the inside. The way he'd just—poof—flipped his body like a card trick, grinning through the smoke, not a trace of shame.
Like shifting shapes was as casual as changing clothes.
I swallowed.
My brush hesitated above the paper.
"What if…" I whispered, which were probably the most dangerous two words in any language.
I drew the basic framework of a henge seal the way I'd seen it in a library scroll: stabilizing ring, chakra flow lines, a focus at the center. Henge no Jutsu was technically just illusion—chakra wrapping around you, rewriting what people saw—but fuinjutsu could anchor things. Slow them. Freeze them.
If you were smart.
If you were stupid, you got "explodes in your face" or "your arm forgets how to be an arm."
The brush touched down anyway.
Circle. Four points. Connecting lines.
I added a tiny auxiliary ring, like a satellite. Labeled it 自 in the narrow space.
Self.
My fingers trembled.
Okay. Hypothetically. If you made a seal that latched onto your own chakra signature—your "self" pattern—and then cross-linked it with a long-term henge matrix, you could maybe—
"Lock it in," I said under my breath. "Make it real."
Make me real.
My chest tightened. The room seemed to shrink around me, walls pressing in, memories pressing harder.
Hands grabbing the back of my neck. Voices hissing what are you like it was a crime. Mirrors avoided like landmines. Clothes two sizes too big so no one had to see.
I blinked hard until the candle smear on my glasses turned back into a flame.
"Bad idea," I told the paper. "Terrible, terrible idea."
The brush hovered anyway, inching toward the center of the array.
傍 — body.
変 — change.
真 — truth.
If I got it right, I could anchor this body, this shape, this self. Tell the world: this is not a costume, this is not temporary, this is not negotiable. If I got it wrong…
I pictured my chakra snarling into a knot. Muscles spasming. Skin not matching the map underneath. Getting hauled into the hospital and having to explain why my soul had tried to jailbreak through a seal designed by a freshman fuinjutsu gremlin.
Hubris, my brain offered primly. Classic cautionary tale stuff. Girl flies too close to the sun, falls, breaks her everything.
Also extremely, soul-breakingly tempting.
I drew one more line.
It almost completed into something like a stabilization loop—half self, half body, feeding back into the center. A "stay like this" command.
My hand started shaking so hard a droplet of ink splattered right across the middle.
"Shit—"
I jerked back, heart slamming, brush clattering onto the desk. The half-formed seal stared up at me with a bleeding black eye.
For a second, the air felt thick with wrongness. Not real chakra, just… the knowledge that if I pushed even a little further, I'd be testing something I absolutely wasn't ready for.
I pressed my hands flat on the desk until my knuckles went white.
"Okay," I said out loud, to the room, to the candle, to myself. "New rule. No experimental soul surgery after midnight."
My laugh came out thin and jagged.
I flipped the page over so I didn't have to look at it and grabbed a fresh sheet. This time, I forced my brush to draw something safe. A simple tag. Explosive, yes, but predictable—tiny controlled burst, not existential detonation.
Seal for "push." Seal for "stop." Seal for "heal bruises," the one I'd been trying to improve so Naruto didn't have to pretend he didn't care when he tripped over his own feet during training.
Useful things. External things.
Things that weren't my reflection on a page.
My chakra pulsed faintly in my fingertips, eager to be used, to flow into the ink and animate the shapes. I held it back. I didn't activate anything. Not tonight.
The candle hissed as a bit of wax fell, collapsing the wick slightly.
I leaned back in my chair and rubbed at my face, leaving a streak of ink on my cheek. My glasses were smudged; the world blurred at the edges.
"What if it fades?" I asked the ceiling quietly.
This body. This voice. This chance.
What if someone decided it was all a fluke and took it away?
My heart did that awful drop again. I had no guarantee. No contract. Just… waking up one day and discovering I'd been slotted into a life where people called me "she" without flinching.
It still felt fragile. Like henge smoke. Like breathing too hard might break the illusion.
I clutched my hitai-ate where it lay on the desk, thumb tracing the spiral of the Leaf. The metal was cool and solid under my skin.
"This is real," I whispered. "I'm real."
No seal. No jutsu. Just words.
They felt small. They were all I had.
Ink-stained fingertips, light brown hair falling into my eyes, glasses sliding down my nose, oversized clothes hanging off a body that finally felt like it belonged to me.
I almost reached for the half-finished self-henge array again.
Instead, I blew out the candle.
Darkness surged in, soft and absolute. Moonlight painted a pale square on the floor. My eyes slowly adjusted.
In the quiet, with no brush in my hand, it was easier to choose not to tempt fate.
"I'll get strong first," I told the dark. "Smart first. Live first."
Then, maybe, someday, I'd earn the right to write seals about truth and self and body.
For now, I shuffled to bed, leaving the dangerous page buried under safer diagrams.
Behind my closed eyes, Naruto exploded into a cloud of smoke again, reappearing in that ridiculous girl form and cackling.
"Must be nice," I mumbled into my pillow.
Sleep finally dragged me under.
On the desk, unseen, the half-finished array dried into permanent hesitation—one ink-black loop short of rewriting the girl who'd drawn it.