Setting aside everything that had happened along the way, Ye Xuan eventually made it to the door of his classroom.
For some reason, a classroom that normally felt so close to the school gate now felt like it was worlds away. That feeling usually only hit him at the end of the day when he was trying to get home, but somehow it had caught up with him on the way in.
"The world really has changed." Ye Xuan muttered to himself without thinking, then reached out to push the door open. But just then...
*CLACK!*
A student with his right eye wrapped in bandages shoved the door open from the inside and burst out. His face was twisted with fury. He slammed the door behind him and screamed back at it:
"Hiruzen, you'll regret this!"
*BANG!*
The door shuddered violently. Ye Xuan could actually see chalk dust raining down from the door frame. He stood there with his breakfast bags, frozen, genuinely unsure whether he should walk in now or wait.
At that exact moment, a roar came from behind the door.
"Danzo, I'm the Hokage!"
Ye Xuan: "😐"
(Out of every iconic scene in Naruto, why this one? Why did it have to be this one?)
(If that door breaks someday, that's entirely on you two.)
The sound of desks and chairs crashing around came from inside, as though someone was in the middle of a full taijutsu duel. Ye Xuan sighed and knocked.
"Hold on!"
There was a scramble of hurried footsteps from inside.
"Just let me finish the hand seals! Snake, Goat, Monkey, Boar, Horse, Tiger..."
Ye Xuan pushed the door open with a blank expression and walked into the sight of a student wearing a Hokage hat, frozen mid-seal. The classroom was in complete disarray.
The desks had been rearranged to form a makeshift Hokage's office. The blackboard was covered in drawings of the Konoha emblem. Someone had even taped several sheets of paper to the ceiling, labeled as "Explosive Tags."
Made of plain paper, obviously.
"That, uh... I was actually going to open the door once the seals were done."
"You know today's Wednesday, right? Wednesday belongs to the Naruto faction."
The student in the Hokage hat lowered his hands awkwardly.
"I'm well aware."
The corner of Ye Xuan's mouth twitched. He was a student in this class. Of course he knew.
Because there were so many anime titles and everyone had their own preferences, the class had gone through a long series of debates before dividing into factions. Weekdays rotated among the factions with the most members, Monday through Friday. As for weekends, if there were supplementary classes, those operated under a free-for-all system.
Bleach, Naruto, One Piece, Dragon Ball, Hitori no Shita, Hunter x Hunter, Fairy Tail, Fox Spirit Matchmaker. All Ye Xuan could say was that short-form video really had made it possible to absorb every iconic moment of a long-running anime in under an hour.
Whoever invented short-form video, and whoever first started narrating anime summaries, was a genuine genius.
"You didn't finish the seals, which means you should be suffering some serious backlash right now."
"Should I go call the medical team?"
Ye Xuan studied the student with a perfectly straight face.
"Pfft!"
Suppressed laughter exploded across the classroom. The student in the Hokage hat turned bright red and stammered out a response.
"N-no need..."
Ye Xuan made his way to his desk, breakfast in hand. As he passed by, he reached over and straightened the Hokage hat, which had gone crooked.
"Watch your hat, Third Hokage."
The class dissolved into laughter. The student immediately crouched down, covering his face in embarrassment, and started ordering everyone to put the desks back and erase the Konoha emblem from the blackboard.
They knew the drill. If Ye Xuan had arrived, class wasn't far behind.
The "Danzo" who had been standing outside the door had already vanished somewhere.
He was obviously from another class. Though having Danzo as a favorite character was a very specific choice. If that person ever actually awakened an ability, he'd probably make excellent material for a backstabber or a scapegoat.
"Ye Xuan!"
A student with round glasses poked his head out from the back row. Unlike the others, he wasn't wearing anything flashy, just a small red bow tie hanging at his collar, whether it was the Conan version or not was anyone's guess.
His name was Li Wen, and he was more or less the class encyclopedia.
Anything going on in the class, who was dating whom, the teachers' phone numbers, exam scores, the unofficial holiday schedule, how many students at school had awakened abilities and what those abilities were, who had found a cross-dimensional treasure and which world it came from. All of it could be sourced from him.
Ye Xuan's feelings about him were mixed. He couldn't stand the way Li Wen would show off after finding out everyone's test scores, but he did appreciate the times Li Wen confirmed unofficial days off before any teacher made an announcement.
That had been his honest opinion before the system awakened.
Now that the system was active, school had actually become something he looked forward to.
At the moment, Li Wen was watching Ye Xuan with barely contained curiosity.
"Why are you wearing period clothing today? Didn't you always wear the uniform?"
"Are you cosplaying as someone?"
"Something like that." Ye Xuan said easily, setting his breakfast down on his desk.
Li Wen's eyes lit up immediately.
"Who are you?"
"Honestly, this is incredible. The fabric texture, the craftsmanship on the scabbard..."
From somewhere, he produced a notebook and started scribbling while studying Ye Xuan's outfit.
"Wangquan Baye."
"Wangquan..."
Li Wen paused, then something clicked.
"Oh! That character from Fox Spirit Matchmaker? No wonder he looked familiar!"
Attention began drifting toward them from other parts of the classroom.
"Ye Xuan's cosplaying as someone from the Bamboo arc? Wangquan Fugui's father?"
"Right, right, the one with Dongfang Huai Zhu..."
Ye Xuan ignored the murmuring around him and started opening his breakfast bag. Li Wen, however, wasn't about to let it go. He leaned in and lowered his voice.
"Hey, where did you buy this outfit? The quality looks incredible, it couldn't have been cheap."
"Custom made." Ye Xuan said, taking a bite of a bun.
Li Wen was about to ask more when the bell rang. He retreated to his seat with visible reluctance, though his eyes kept drifting back to Ye Xuan, clearly mapping out his interrogation strategy for the break.
Ye Xuan looked out the window. The sunlight was warm and steady. School life like this, he thought, wasn't bad at all.
"Almost late, dammit!"
Right as that thought settled in, the classroom door flew open with a kick. A student in a purple t-shirt burst in.
He was carrying two school bags. One of them sailed through the air in a clean arc and landed squarely on the empty seat at the back. The student slid into the chair next to Ye Xuan and thrust out his hand.
"Ye Xuan, give me a bun!"
"Here."
Ye Xuan slid the plastic bag toward him.
This was Chen Hao. His nickname was "Hawkeye," and not without reason. He was one of only three students in the class who had successfully awakened a supernatural ability. His power gave him eyesight sharp enough to pick out details clearly from hundreds, even thousands of meters away, which was exactly how the name had stuck.
The ability was completely useless at school, since his grades hadn't improved in the slightest despite the sharp vision. Not entirely useless, just that the correct answers he could spot from across the room had nothing to do with his own capability.
If no method was developed to temporarily suppress supernatural abilities before the national exams, though, that power would come in very handy.
"Hawkeye, you absolute menace! You run like something's chasing you, I nearly died!"
Another student stumbled in, gasping for breath and in school uniform. He went straight for Chen Hao with a string of curses, but once he'd finished venting, Zhang Yu's eyes locked onto the breakfast bag in Ye Xuan's hand. He reached out immediately.
"Where's mine?"
Ye Xuan passed him the other bag.
"Soy milk's at the bottom. Don't knock it over."
Zhang Yu took his breakfast, and it was only then that he noticed how Ye Xuan was dressed. He blinked, then gave a firm thumbs-up.
"Nice. That outfit is genuinely cool."
Chen Hao, already stuffing a bun into his mouth, mumbled through the food.
"I was gonna ask earlier. Who are you cosplaying as today? That sword looks serious..."
"Wangquan Baye."
Ye Xuan had already lost count of how many times he'd said it.
"Who's that?"
Chen Hao's clear, guileless eyes communicated completely sincere confusion.
"You know, that underleveled player who dragged his whole party into a high-level zone to farm, and only two of them made it out." Zhang Yu explained helpfully, still chewing.
"Ohhh."
Chen Hao nodded with sudden understanding, then looked at Ye Xuan with a mildly baffled expression, as if genuinely puzzled why anyone would cosplay as someone who made such a catastrophic call.
"..."
Ye Xuan had nothing to say to that. The worst part was he couldn't even argue with the description.
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