“I’m hungry!” Meiko yelled out in an annoying tone, the likes of which is given by nature to babies to be so annoying that they raised their very parents from dreams, sweet and horrific alike, in order to feed them.
“Yes, let us leave from this point of the line and just dump everything to stuff your cute belly up. That’s why you’re not the main strategist of our team…” Kiyomi cheeked at Meiko playfully poking the blacksmith’s abdomen with her thumb, something the blacksmith found hilarious as she began to chuckle like a baby whose parent was blowing air in a tickling manner on their abdomen.
“Manaaaa!” Meiko mooed like a bored cow.
“I’m sorry, I have to agree with Kiyomi on this one. This is very tiresome but it’s a part of the process.” The magician could only innocently shrug at her friend advising her to get herself together and toughen up.
“Hey, isn’t that Kouta? Could we maybe ask him to let us cut the line behind him!?” Meiko’s eyes began to wonder, as did those of children when they were denied their capricious desires and were looking for satisfaction of their very down to earth fix on colors and noises elsewhere.
Mana’s eyes unwillingly wandered a bit further down the line as she took a couple of steps forward since one more chain of the line had filled up the documents and left. Indeed the young man she had feelings for was standing around and chatting with two other people farther in front. One of his friends was a tall and equally fit to Kouta young man with a large sword on his back and a messy hairdo of dark purple shades that extended well past the young man’s shoulders. The swordsman’s affinity for denim could literally not escape the observer’s eye either.
“Wow, that guy is pretty hot!” Kiyomi smiled shyly while messing up her own hair by rubbing her ponytail with her hand out of emotional and physical tension.
“His sword looks pretty amazing too, look at those curves, the craftsmanship, the rugged material of the scabbard!” little stars lit up in Meiko’s eyes as her slobbering tongue very nearly escaped the confines of the blacksmith’s mouth.
Despite her friends’ mad obsession with the young man Kouta was talking to, whom Mana also secretly found to be quite a looker, though with more success concealing that, her own attention easily focused on the very energetic young girl with braided grey hair and flaring heavenly palm leaf colored eyes.
“That guy may be pretty hot, but I’ll never betray you, Meiko!” Kiyomi jokingly slapped the blacksmith’s back to which the blacksmith responded by catching the Yamanaka’s arm halfway back to neutral position and bending it in a very uncomfortable hold. Ignoring the childish squabble of the two friends of hers, Mana kept her eyes on the short young soul who wore a very pocket and pouch heavy belt with a beetle-themed buckle that had fake plastic gemstones in it. Something uncomfortable was beginning to stab at Mana’s lung from deep inside, ripping and tearing as it crawled all the way to her throat beginning to gnaw and attempt its escape from deep down.
“Smelly Mana, eating vermicelli, nothing but a belly full of J-E-L-L-Y… Shit, doesn’t rhyme nearly as well as it did in my head…” Kiyomi smacked herself in the face after realizing she messed up the modified childish tease.
“Jelly? I’m not jealous, why would I be jealous?” Mana pouted crossing her arms on her chest, hiding the fact that she may have been immensely jealous of the attention that the young female teammate of Kouta’s must’ve received as the three looked to be pretty close, likely from training they’ve been doing together.
“Mmmm… Jelly…” Meiko began daydreaming and humming a tune from some strawberry jelly commercial she once saw on the primitive boxes that passed for television in her universe. A far cry compared to the sophisticated panels of the Naruto universe Mana had visited some time ago…
“Look, it’s fine, trust me, as someone who once tried romancing that scumbag Eiju, I. of all people, know jealousy.” Kiyomi teased the magician, one of very few things that the Yamanaka future heiress found entertaining in this immensely slobby day which wasn’t even close to being likely to get better soon.
“It’s just… He pushed me away, I’m not mad at him, I don’t feel anger or think badly about that teammate of his or anything it’s just… It hurts… Being alone.” Mana sighed sadly.
“Heh, we should go out and shop for clothes or something, that much is long overdue…” Kiyomi grinned in a suggestive tone.
“Nah, I’m fine, I have like five more T-Shirts left that aren’t even torn once…” Meiko dismissed with a mouth full of a chocolate bar she remembered in her backpack. “Though my ninja kit supplies are running bit thin, refilling it often feels like a chore. Guess it’d feel better if a friend was there with me, feel more compelling, you know?”
“Done.” Mana smiled pleasantly struggling to move her completely irrational feelings of hurt and dismissal deeper down. Something she knew never lead to good as that which was shoved to the bottom of the luggage always resurfaced with a boom which ended up tossing the clothes all over the room.
At least the other girls completely forgot about asking Mana to get them to skip the line. After a long and just as tedious of a wait as it sounds the three finally approached what seemed like the upper part of the line. Once Kouta and his team had finished signing up for the exams and left with a bunch of documents in their hand the two shared a bunch of uncomfortable looks. Luckily enough Kiyomi’s playful “Hello” directed at the medical ninja’s moody eyed yet upbeat lipped friend distracted and cheered Mana up a little.
“I could beat him in a fight, you know…” Meiko crossed her arms on her chest raising an eyebrow.
“I never doubted it for a second…” Kiyomi giggled.
“There are so many ninja here… From all over the world.” The magician raised her eyebrow noticing a couple of her old classmates in the Academy “ Inuzuka Kidenshi and Aburame Juhi further back in the line as well as a bunch of strange looking people wearing the Kumogakure headbands like an albino boy with a flashy training hoody and torn up halfway green hat that reminded more of a sock. Then there were some very tough looking young men and women from Iwagakure, several of them wore battle armor similar to Meiko’s but with much flashier designs and tougher looking alloys as Iwagakure was the country of the most luxurious gemstones and rarest minerals as well as the most plentiful steel markets. Some headbands like the one on the head of a short young man with spiky brown hair and a very early stubble of facial hair the magician couldn’t even identify. Having in mind that the symbol on it looked like a star they must’ve been from the Hoshigakure “ the Village Hidden in the Stars but Mana only assumed that much and didn’t confidently know it.
Finally the three were called up to an office in the second floor, after waiting their time and slowly ascending a spiraling staircase all the way up there. The three girls were gestured to sit down and take up the pens that were placed in front of them.
“So… You three are an all-girl team, huh? That’s a bit unusual, must be a custom requested team, let’s see… Oh boy, I see now, kinda feel bad, the expectations must be immense!” the office worker tried making some small talk as he struggled to input the endless tables and pictures into his computer. The digital advancements were at a very early and experimental stage… The man of course noted of the fact that the trio was gathered by the Fifth Hokage by her requesting each and every member of the team instead of them being assigned to her. Then he noticed Mana in her typical magician’s uniform.
“Oh, big fan…” he smiled before giving them a bunch of papers to sign. “We actually had a test in mind for this stage, maybe a bit of good old misdirection about the office’s coordinates or a riddle but given how many entrants there are into this year’s exams… We’d be here all night.” The man smiled before wiping his sweaty forehead with a hanky.
“Yeah, what’s with that?” Kiyomi wondered after putting her signature down and gently handing the office worker the documents.
“Well, it appears that a lot of teams in other villages missed the timing of their own Chuunin Exams and opted not to wait for three whole years until the next ones. A lot of them chose to instead send Konoha their applications after finding out that we’re holding one just now.” The man smiled before admiring the endless piles of documents he had filled up on his desk. “Over a hundred and fifty teams this year, goddamn insane, usually we barely get one fifth of that to begin with, by the time the finals roll down there are supposed to be ten or so genin left… Will be a tough competition this year.”
“What do you mean?” Meiko relaxed on the back of her chair, very nearly opting to raise her legs on the poor office man’s table but then somehow finding the common sense to not do that.
“Don’t you get it? The more competitors there are, the stricter the rules are, the tougher the tests must be to eliminate so many people…” Kiyomi explained with her face souring up and getting serious all of a sudden. “On one hand it hardly seems fair, the one year I finally make it in time and am ready to participate is the toughest year ever, on the other, there would’ve never been any competition otherwise, bring it on!” the smiled as the blonde’s face shifted from seriousness to hype.
“That’s not all we’ve heard.” Mana couldn’t settle down and fill her papers. “A lot of more obscure villages are also participating but only because they have no funds to host such an event themselves. What’s that all about?” she remembered the unpleasant encounter outside.
“Ah, yes. You see… Every hidden village wishes to breed many high ranking ninja, it’s a competitive market, a village must attract clients to come to them with their missions. If a small village doesn’t have the funds to host the Chuunin Exams of their own, that may be a problem because they’ll be stuck with a bunch of low ranking ninja and incapable of competing. It’s a sad cursed circle that leads only to oblivion…” the office man stroke his too scarcely shaved stubble and then wiped his sweating forehead again. Even if outside was almost total winter conditions the heating inside and the tense schedule kept the poor man sweating out of his last trousers, thankfully, not literally.
Mana contemplated the sad and depressing situation before signing the papers and being given more and more files to sign.
“Alright, this looks like it’s all set!” the office man checked through the signed papers and placing them amongst the pile of the completed ones. “There’ll be a written test tomorrow at three PM, we thought of omitting it this year because the usual gimmicks were getting stale but… With this number of teams? No way, that shit is definitely happening…” the man rubbed his tired eyes before wishing the girls farewell.
“So I assume there’ll be no more shows until the exams are over?” the office man then asked one final question before Mana was almost out the door.
“I think so, I really need to pass this one…” Mana admitted.
“Doesn’t everyone? Anyways, too bad. It’d be a good chance to show your tricks off to a vastly different international crowd, a business opportunity, you know…” he smiled before returning to the papers.
“Yeah.” Mana just nodded. After apologizing herself and wishing the man the best of luck she then finally left. Almost instantaneously a feeling of liberation hit her chest “ the excessive wait was finally over! Then again, it was followed by a sense of looming threat not too long after. The Chuunin Exams were here at last, and as she said to the overworked gent in the office “ she absolutely had to pass or else she’d get booted off the team.
*****
That evening Mana was meditating. She hadn’t done this in a long time, something was very off with her Ego stage. The meditational stage where she could almost communicate with her entire body, like she could view it all in the shapes of an infinite cosmos with stars, large flaring ones and little dwarf white ones. This wasn’t how her body usually looked, how it was supposed to be. The magician tried looking around, browse the endlessly vast spaces of her own inner mind and figure out what was wrong but she couldn’t influence those stars.
Usually, when she was in a state of complete calm of mind and tranquility she could not only see the flaring supernovae of the problems in her body but she could somewhat focus her own body and prioritize it into fixing them. It was a promising meditational skill which may have one day made Mana skilled enough to overcome the effects of poison or especially powerful illusion through the power of her mind and communication with her body alone. Now this was nowhere near to being the case. She was stuck just watching at the stars, large and small scattering around like she had absolutely no control over them anymore…
A large, bursting with nuclear reactions, like fiery dragon heads extending from it, star closed in to Mana. The magician tried to wrap her mind around it, to comprehend the size and the absolute might of it but she couldn’t. The kunoichi was abruptly woken up from her meditation screaming. Her father was standing right in front of her with a curious set of eyes and an eyebrow or two raised, clearly wanting an explanation for Mana’s distress.
“I’m working on meditating battle scenarios in my mind…” Mana lied shyly, allowing herself to be seen like that by father felt embarrassing, she just wanted to burrow herself deep underground and never come out. “Not going too well…” she then kept on talking just to distract her and her father from the game of “catch the liar”.
“Hmph, sure…” father’s eyebrow raise sharpened, “One “Juugo Kouta” has come to see you. I assume you know him?” he wondered.
“Now!? Here!?” Mana jumped up on her feet and ran downstairs.
Mother with the richest ironic smile was feeding the young boy some of the remaining chicken wings that the family had for dinner. The magician could only imagine how much the boy had told her mother over the moments they were left alone. Chicken wings were a powerful interrogation device. Kouta may have been mighty but to someone who loved food as much as he did the battle was hopeless.
“So you and my daughter are… A thing, huh?” the woman smiled staring at Mana while the boy was stuffing his face full, completely unaware that the magician got downstairs. “I seem to have heard something of this manner but it’s strange that she never invited you over…” the woman’s eyes sharpened, they were actual knives stabbing at Mana’s general direction.
“Mhm…” the Juugo finally stuffed whatever was in his mouth down before noticing Mana had come. His childish glee of being treated to some tasty chicken switched to embarrassment and shyness.
“You’re not too subtle about it…” Mana bitterly cut him down trying to look and act angry.
“Hmmm? Well, I tend to be a pretty simple guy, I answer what I’m asked…” Kouta innocently shrugged with a smile on a face that the magician just physically couldn’t be angry at.
“That’s why you were invited in and fed chicken, instead of being sent off. My husband is quite in a sour mood since his injury.” The woman sighed.
“So…” Kouta let on dragging before switching into a playful whistle, “Ummm… These are good.” He noted, switching the subject from what he came here for to compliments about food.
“Yeah? Mana mostly made those. God knows where she improved this much, you’d have never believed her horrendous cooking before a short while ago… Well, I’ll leave you two alone for a while…” the woman shrugged before making her way out the kitchen.
Kouta stopped eating and wiped his face and his greasy fingers before an uncomfortable silence took over. Mana just couldn’t realize why would he come here now of all times, right when he should’ve been at the peak of his training.
“Look… I told Budoki, a teammate of mine, about our last encounter… She has a habit of being interested and invested into our relationship. She sorta informed me that I’m an idiot and that I need to apologize and make it up to you.” Kouta uncomfortable explained.
“You don’t. My reaction was illogical and overblown. The Chuunin Exams are important for both your own career and the interests of the village.” Mana shook her head sadly. Seeing her boyfriend here, for some reason, just hurt her more. Her own wrongness and immaturity being rubbed in her face, the young man feeling like he had to apologize for something the magician felt.
“That is true but… I shouldn’t have let it cut into the middle of our date. Now our bad-to-good date ratio is kinda lame.” Kouta uncomfortably stroke the back of his head. “Also I don’t care who was right or wrong, it hurt you, I don’t want you to feel hurt.”
For the second time that day, the magician felt that uncomfortable entity inside her claw at her innards from in her guts, her lungs and throat. Trying to cause her so much discomfort and pain that she’d cry like a little baby. No. She wouldn’t cry. Mana’s hands wrapped around Kouta, she calmly whispered to his ear and backed up a bit, feeling uncomfortable about her position since father was walking past the kitchen to check if the door was locked.
“Tomorrow’s the written test, you want to stay over?” Mana asked with a smile, realizing that maybe just this once she could balance the young man’s training with their relationship as no one was quite sure what the written test would be about.
“Awww… I’m really not feeling confident about that. No one knows what that’ll be about, father said they usually mess with one’s mind in those and make up crazy tests that aren’t as much quizzes as they are psychological torture.” Kouta sighed looking into the dark starry night’s sky and observing the dance of the late autumn snowflakes outside. His eyes actually looked pretty worried.
The boy turned his head back once a surprising sensation of warm and gentle worms wrangling around his hand alerted him. It was just Mana placing her hand on top of his and wrapping her fingers around it locking them both together. “You don’t really have to shoulder that alone.” she faintly whispered. Exerting a very minimal amount of force the girl slowly lead the young man upstairs to her room.
Father, following the two with his eyes briefly wrapped his still aching and wounded arm around his wife’s frail figure and pressed her to him only for the woman to rest her head on his shoulder while the two kept on blindly switching the channels. The man placed the remote down settling down on a funny strawberry jelly commercial, feeling the chill of an approaching winter biting at him, the man breathed in and out living in this moment in time, letting his roots in completely.
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