Once the three of them finally stopped celebrating, they looked around and realized Hayama had vanished from where he'd been standing. He was now sitting by their improvised campfire, having lit it while they were distracted and set another round of prepared skewers over the flames.
He waved them closer, and they obeyed – Yohei practically skipping, still buzzing with giddy energy.
"Hmmm…" Hayama hummed once they were all seated, fixing Yohei with a knowing look. "It's interesting that you didn't notice it."
"Notice what, Shirakumo-sensei?" Ren asked with a small frown.
The older man gave a sly little smirk – and burst into white mist.
"That he was a clone," said the real Hayama as he dropped from a tree and landed in the very spot his clone had occupied a heartbeat before, laughing at the stunned expressions on his genin's faces.
"Wait- does that mean-?"
"No, don't worry. I said you passed, and you passed," Hayama assured them with a casual wave. "The truth is, it was a clone all along. Ever since you met 'me' at the gates, you've been following my shadow clone. I stayed hidden, observing the three of you."
"Why though?" Yohei asked, grabbing one of the skewers. The meat was still rare, and he took a bite without hesitation – prompting Ren to stare at him in open disgust.
Souma, watching this, grabbed a skewer for himself… took a bite… made an immediate face… and silently returned it to the fire to finish cooking.
Hayama chuckled at all three of them, resting his forearms on his thighs.
"To explain that, I should explain the purpose of this test," he said, lips twitching faintly when he said 'purpose.' "Ren-kun here got most of it right."
Ren's dusty skin instantly flushed red, mortified at the realization that their jonin had overheard him earlier telling the others about the information his family shared. Hayama only laughed and waved it off.
"No need to get embarrassed. Information gathering is one of the most essential parts of shinobi work. Nothing is 'unfair' in our world. Even if you didn't obtain the information personally, having a network that can supply it is just as valuable – and what matters is how you used what you had. Though in the future, make sure you do your own research. Secondhand information always carries bias and can often be faulty… though in this case, it wasn't."
Ren nodded vigorously at the instruction, earning a satisfied look from Hayama – before the man's expression shifted, turning stern.
"As you already know by now, I'm a search-and-destroy specialist," Hayama continued. "Most of my missions involve hunting down bandits and other criminals plaguing the Land of Fire and the surrounding nations. But it also means going after missing-nin and foreign shinobi who enter our territory without clearing it through official channels."
He leaned back slightly, the firelight catching on his eyes.
"It's hard work – dangerous too, too. I can spend a whole day, sometimes more than that, even, running after a target nonstop. And all the while, I have to conserve enough energy to subdue or defeat them once I catch up. Otherwise, all that chasing would be pointless, no? So yes, I need genin who can keep up with me and not hinder my missions. It's an important duty, and it can't be half-assed. However-" he stressed the word as he reached for a skewer, "this is where Ren-kun missed the point of the test. You are genin. Fresh genin. Straight out of the Academy. I'm an active jōnin with years under my belt. You would never, ever catch me if I didn't want to be caught, make no mistake. No matter how many soldier pills you swallowed – even if I followed the informal rules of staying in sight whenever you three were together – you would burn out long before I did."
"I suppose we weren't just supposed to fail, though?" Yohei asked with a grin.
"Heh. No. The purpose of the first part of the exam was to see how you would handle the situation. Would you give up when faced with an impossible task? Would you throw everything you had at it without thinking of the consequences? Would you coast? Would you pace yourselves? One way or another, I would've slowed down when time was almost up and allowed you to catch me. By that point, the clone would be nearly out of chakra, making the fight closer to your level. If you managed to land even one solid hit, you'd win. Of course," he added, "that would depend entirely on your skills and how exhausted you were by then. And the time limit was meant to force you into confronting me directly instead of relying on more traps – because once I stopped running, the point was to measure your combat capabilities."
Ren let out a strangled groan and buried his face in his hands. "So my plan really would've royally fu- messed us up," he said, voice dripping with embarrassment.
Yohei patted his back in sympathy, and Souma awkwardly mirrored him a beat later.
"Yes," Hayama said plainly. "You were wrong. That happens – all the time – even to the best of us. That's why shinobi almost never get solo missions. You're a team. You're supposed to support each other and point out what the others miss." He gave them a small smile. "That alone wouldn't have made me disqualify you, though I doubt you would've managed to pass if you'd stuck to that plan. What matters is what you did once your mistake was pointed out. You didn't blow up at your teammates, you didn't dig your heels in – you accepted you were wrong and moved on. You chose the wiser course of action, then created a plan that, while against the spirit of the test, still had a reasonable chance of succeeding depending on your execution and your luck."
He shrugged lightly. "Of course, if you had tagged the clone that early, it would've had more chakra and put up more of a fight. But on the other hand, you would've had plenty of time to prepare traps and avoid a direct confrontation. For that, I'm proud of you. All of you." His gaze swept across the three genin.
Yohei let out an embarrassed huff, smiling. Souma nodded with a soft look of satisfaction, and Ren ducked his head, trying to hide his expression – but Yohei caught the tiny, giddy smile and the tear gathering at the corner of his eye.
"All in all," Hayama continued, "this test was meant to measure your basic shinobi skills: your strategy, your ability to think outside the box, your teamwork, and your combat capabilities – all of which you demonstrated beyond what I expected. Sending you back to the Academy would've been a waste of Konoha's resources." His tone shifted, becoming more serious. "But you also showed something just as essential as all of those… something that can't be trained."
The boys straightened subconsciously.
"Luck."
"…Luck?" Yohei echoed.
Hayama nodded. "Luck is, in some ways, the most powerful thing a shinobi can have. You can't train it. You can't acquire it. It's simply a quality things – and people – have or don't have. I've seen exemplary shinobi, far stronger and frankly more talented than the three of you combined, crash and burn and lose everything – if not their lives – because they were unlucky. And I've seen bottom-of-the-barrel individuals, barely more capable than civilians, survive situations they had no right to survive. All because of luck."
Yohei hesitated, brow furrowing. "I think I get what you're saying, sensei… but isn't that a little, uh… unreliable?"
"Of course it is," Hayama agreed with a smile. "That's why you should still strive to improve everything you can improve. But don't discount luck – it'll either save you or damn you. And today is proof of that. Managing to guess something was wrong with my clone when it transformed into a bird? Actually managing to hit it and inject enough paralytic that it had to burn through most of its chakra reserves to purge it? Having brought that paralytic at all, and me giving you a task where it just so happened to be incredibly useful?"
He laughed lightly. "All of that is luck, my genin. And I'm a superstitious man – I like being surrounded by lucky people."
"I could've pushed the issue and made you fight the clone until it popped, but honestly? He wouldn't have gotten much out of you after how thoroughly you stacked the deck against him. Besides, your fight earlier against the chakra beast was enough for my purposes. Tomorrow, once we start training, I'll get a better measure of your full capabilities."
He pointed at them one by one.
"So once again, congratulations, my genin. You didn't play the game the way it was meant to be played. But if you want to be the greatest swordsma-" he pointed at Souma, "If you want to lift your name to the same heights as the Uchiha and Hyūga-" he pointed at Ren, "And if you want to change the world-" he pointed at Yohei with a smile,
"Then you can't play by everyone else's rules. You have to flip the board."
"Yes."
"Of course."
"Yes, sensei!"
Hayama laughed. "Good. In that case, let's eat. You have no idea how hungry my clone got watching you three chew through all that meat – some of that hunger carried over when it popped."
All three genin froze, sheepish realization dawning at the same time: they had made their sensei stand motionless under the sun watching them gorge themselves in the shade.
Seeing their faces, Hayama laughed louder. "Oh, don't worry about it – you did what you had to do."
Then his voice dropped, his expression sharpening into something downright predatory. "So when you experience hell again and again during training… please don't think I'm being vengeful. Or bitter. Or cruel."
A shiver ran down Yohei's spine. The man was genuinely leaking bloodlust as he took a bite of his skewer and hummed pleasantly.
"I'm just doing what I have to. Okay, my cute little genin?"
While Souma happily nodded and bit into his skewer, Yohei and Ren slowly turned toward each other. Red and blue eyes met with perfect, miserable understanding – a silent psychic bond formed in real time.
'We're fucked.'