Autumn sunlight slanted through the classroom windows. Kazeki Sora sat by the glass, middle of the pack, not too far forward, not too far back.
He wasn't up front with the star students basking in the teacher's attention. He wasn't in the back with the slackers bouncing off the walls and drawing every eye in the room. He was exactly where a person sat when they wanted to be forgotten.
His cheek lay flat against the desk, face turned toward the window. The wind had painted the Academy trees in every color it could find, and now it was tearing its own work apart, sending leaves of red and gold spiraling across the schoolyard. The village wore that same desolate look. The Third Shinobi World War raged along the borders of the Land of Fire, and Konoha felt it. The streets were half-empty. The people who remained rarely went out, and when they did, worry sat heavy on every face.
No one looked more worried than the teacher at the podium. The man's anguish was written so plainly across his features that you'd think these students weren't graduating, they were being marched to an execution. He feared the war. He couldn't say how brutal it truly was. On the battlefield, the only ones who came back alive were those who swallowed their terror and kept moving forward.
He repeated the graduation exam requirements once, twice, three times, until the students' faces glazed over with mounting impatience. Only then did he dismiss the class.
They filed out in twos and threes. Every last one of them would become a household name in Konoha someday: Guy, Asuma, Kurenai, Shizune, and more.
"Sora! Finally done. Let's go!" The short, stocky kid from the back row, Tejuno, shuffled over and nudged him.
"OK." Sora peeled himself off the desk and fell into step beside his friend.
Tejuno had long since stopped noticing the strange words Sora let slip from time to time. They'd grown up next door to each other. It was just one of those things. Tejuno had even picked up a few of the odd phrases himself. Couldn't spell them, but he knew what they meant.
Our protagonist, Kazeki Sora, was a transmigrator. When he'd first arrived in Konoha, he'd been full of fire. Grand ambitions. Plans to conquer the world, the whole deal.
Six years at the Ninja Academy had beaten that right out of him.
His teachers' assessment: unremarkable aptitude, with a somewhat rare wind-attribute chakra.
Taijutsu, average. He'd gone through bursts of furious effort, training himself half to death, but he lacked the freakish natural talent of someone like Might Guy. Progress came, sure, just never enough to turn heads.
Ninjutsu, average. His chakra nature followed his father's: wind, and only wind. His father, Kazeki Taira, was a retired chunin who'd left active duty early due to injury. The man's arsenal was shallow. He'd managed to pass down exactly one technique to his son: Wind Release: Gale Palm, a C-rank jutsu. Simple enough. Hand seals: Monkey, Bird, Tiger. Once you had it down cold, you pressed your palms together, gathered wind chakra between them, compressed it, and blasted the whole thing forward in one burst.
Genjutsu couldn't even be called average. Sora had no idea where a person would go to learn it. That kind of refined art was a luxury item, well out of reach for a civilian ninja like him. As for his family's legacy of techniques... calling it "better than nothing" was generous. He still wasn't sure where his father had gotten their surname. Probably made it up himself. Picked a given name, then picked a family name to go with it. You've got to hand it to the man, he commits.
Taira had made a point of calling him by the surname "Kazeki" since he was small, rather than his given name. Sora could guess why. His father wanted the family name to mean something, wanted people to remember it.
It was just a name. Sora didn't care. His father could arrange things however he liked.
Back in his previous life, Sora hadn't exactly been a model student or a diligent worker, either. But the Book of Changes had fascinated him, and he'd spent a good stretch of time studying it.
Come to think of it, had he been so obsessed with the mysteries of Yin and Yang and the cycle of rebirth that he'd accidentally cycled himself right into another world?
Superstition kills, people. It really does.
On most days, Sora would stare at his reflection in the mirror and see nothing but dark clouds gathering between his brows. The face of a man who had violence and misfortune bearing down on him any day now.
He wondered sometimes: if the chance ever came, if he could sit down with the Sage of Six Paths and Otsutsuki Kaguya, could he talk Yin and Yang and reincarnation with them? Maybe send them spinning off into another life for a change?
And so our transmigrator protagonist, unremarkable in every measurable way, stood on the edge of graduation knowing exactly two things: the Academy Three Techniques and Gale Palm. Credit where it was due, though. Without Kazeki Taira, without that single entry-level C-rank ninjutsu drilled into him early, Sora would never have landed in the same class as Konoha's golden children.
The Ninja Academy graduated over three hundred students each year. Class One was the fast track, the elite, the experimental honors section. Every prodigy from every year ended up there, either by bloodline or by talent. Sora had earned his seat by mastering a real jutsu ahead of schedule, which was enough for the Academy's higher-ups to wave him through the door.
Sora and Tejuno walked the familiar route home. Both their families lived near the Sarutobi clan compound. That was how civilians mapped their world: the great clans' estates sprawled across entire districts, their buildings tall enough to serve as landmarks.
The streets were quiet. They walked fast. A handful of food stalls dotted the road, the smell enough to make an empty stomach howl, but empty pockets won out over empty bellies. No snack money today.
"Teju, we're about to graduate." Sora glanced at his friend.
"Yeah." Tejuno laced his fingers behind his head, casual as ever. "No clue if I'll even pass. If I don't, every ryo my family spent on me these last few years goes straight down the drain. We weren't exactly wealthy to begin with. That'd be salt in the wound."
"I'm more worried about what comes after. Whether they ship us straight to the front lines the second we get our headbands." Sora frowned. "If you go and die for the Will of Fire on your first deployment, that's not salt in the wound. That's an avalanche."
"Oh, listen to you. The genius civilian who learned ninjutsu in his third year, scared of the battlefield?" Tejuno grinned. "I hope we end up on the same squad. When the avalanche hits me, I'll make sure to splash some snow on you on my way down."
"At the rate I'm going, I'll still know exactly one jutsu thirty years from now. Some genius." Sora's voice steadied. "But I'd bet money we end up together."
He could afford to be confident. Sora was a transmigrator, and he'd seen the anime. He and Tejuno were Background Character A and Background Character B. They'd been on the same squad in the show. The one cheat code he could actually cash in right now was knowing their team assignments. Not exactly world-shattering, but he'd take it.
"I hope so." Tejuno's tone dipped, rare and honest. "I don't like anyone else in that class. You've at least got one jutsu. I've got nothing. If my father hadn't begged that Sarutobi jonin for a favor, I wouldn't even be in Class One." He paused, then the grin came back. "So I'm latching onto your leg. I'll be the proud little hair fluttering on your mighty thigh. Ha!"
The low moment lasted about half a second. Tejuno's heart was too wide for gloom to stick. That was probably why the rest of him was wide, too.
"Hey, your trap work is solid," Sora said. "Once we're teamed up, we run combos. We'll show everyone that the Weakling Duo can still squash a few bugs."
They reached their street still talking. The two houses sat close together in the same narrow alley. Lanterns were beginning to glow at dusk, but only a few homes had lights on.
Not far from their doors, the Sarutobi clan compound blazed bright. The Third Hokage, home from whatever business occupied a wartime Kage, was still the Hokage. People streamed in and out of the compound gates, footsteps hurried, never stopping.