(April, year 52 AK)
After the two hours long speech of the Hokage, Yuta and the other kids were taken to the Ninja Academy and then to the spacious training grounds not far away.
As the group of kids gathered at one place, Yuta looked around.
'It's at least five hundred kids here who were enrolling this year.' Yuta thought, 'And from what I saw the last year, around eighty to ninety percent will be accepted. So, I guess it's not like in the anime, where only a dozen Genins were graduated alongside Naruto, that makes sense considering the huge army that was formed during The Fourth Great Shinobi War.'
A dozen or so shinobi gathered in front of the group of kids, observing and scrutinizing them, and one of the shinobi, a tired-looking guy in his twenties, stepped forward and spoke in a loud and commanding voice.
"Be quiet!" After the crowd of kids became quiet, he waited a few more seconds and continued, "My name is Goichi Yano, and I'm in charge of this year's academy entrance exam. Each one of you will be evaluated, and if we decide that you are unfit to become a shinobi, you'll be failed and there are no second chances, so give it your all!"
After that, the shinobi that came with Goichi quickly split the kids into a dozen or so groups and led them to perform a set of simple exercises, writing down on notepads their results.
Everything was proceeding in a swift and orderly manner. Yuta's group went through the series of exercises and asked to perform things like pushups and such, all under the scrutinizing gazes of the surrounding shinobi.
One hour quickly passed during this evaluation, and all the kids were gathered again in one big group. From what Yuta saw, he was performed way above average kids here, and only ten to twenty percent of kids or so was able to perform better than him, and although only some of those kids were wearing clan crests, Yuta suspected that almost all of them, if not all, are from the clans.
There was something different about those clan kids, that makes them stand out from the rest of the group, they seem to be more mature, calm and focused than the others despite the same age as everyone else here.
'Figures.' Yuta thought, 'Kids from the clans were trained by their clan's shinobi from the young age, and there are also bloodlines and talent, although I didn't expected to be the strongest here, it's still stings a little that there are so many clan kids that outperform me. Another reminder of the unfairness of the shinobi world...'
...
'If even I feel this way, while having a cheat ability, it must be much worse for all the others who were also slapped with this reality check...'
While Yuta himself remained calm, as well as the clan kids, when he looked at the faces of the rest of the kids, he saw that most of them were dejected after seeing the difference in their performance with the clan kids.
Yuta looked around and spotted Kenta, Kiyoshi and Saki. While Kenta seemed resolute, Kiyoshi and Saki, on the other hand, glared back at Yuta with hatred and envy.
'Huh, what's wrong with those morons I wonder...' Yuta thought confusedly, 'They play games day after day and didn't train even once as I do, and now they angry at me...' After that thought Yuta looked away and didn't bother with them anymore.
"The last test will now begin!" Goichi stepped in front of the group and said loudly, "The last test is the marathon, you will run ten laps around this training grounds, and those of you who comes last – will fail!"
Kids were led by a few shinobi to run along the borders of the training grounds.
'This place is huge, it might take an hour to run all ten laps...' Yuta thought, 'If I didn't train all this time, I would've had a very bad time right about now...'
After ten minutes of running, the group started to split up. Small group of the kids went way ahead of the rest, Yuta tried to keep up with them at first, and although he felt that it was possible to sustain that pace for a while, he thought that it was likely that he would exhaust himself way before the finish line, so he slowed down a little and joined the next group of runners, who didn't lag too far behind the first small group.
Keeping up with this pace was also not easy for him, but he was sure he could sustain it all the way.
After a while, during the fourth lap, Yuta was running alongside the border of the training ground, there was some trees at his right, he briefly saw a shinobi among the trees, it wasn't unusual as there was some shinobi here and there, observing the kids and evaluating their performance, but what was not usual with this one - Yuta briefly saw that this shinobi has his hands clasped in a hand seal in front of his chest.
Yuta wasn't even had the time to register properly what he saw, how he was hit with dizziness, his senses of directions were all messed up and he immediately fell hard on the ground, unable to cushion his fall even slightly.
'What... what is going on!?' Yuta's mind was racing in panicked mode, trying to comprehend the situation, as he was trying to stand up from the ground and falling again, 'The hand seals... Were that guy using some kind of jutsu on me!? WHY!?'
...
'Think!' Yuta concentrated, trying to calm down, 'It must be a genjutsu, he was trying to sabotage me... How do I deal with it? I remember from the anime that you need to disrupt your chakra flow to break the genjutsu, but Manabu didn't teach me how exactly I need to do it, damn it!'
...
Yuta sensed his chakra, taken control of as much of it as he could at once and commanded it to trash around chaotically inside of him. The next instant he felt sharp pain inside around the places he moved his chakra rashly, it was obvious that he caused some internal injuries to himself this way, but it didn't seem serious, as the next moment Yuta's senses were cleared up and the pain started to subside.
'It worked! Hope I didn't break anything important inside of me with that stunt...', He thought as he stood up and resumed running.
The shinobi behind the trees was surprised, "He managed to break my genjutsu huh, seems he has some skill... Too bad kid, orders are orders, nothing personal..." The man said quietly with some regret as he was performing another series of hand seals.
As Yuta stood up and continued running, he was only able to make a few steps as his senses were hit again, this time it was much more intense, Yuta fell again and immediately lost consciousness, unable to resist at all.
...
...
...
"Hey you, you are finally awake!" The stern voice of a man entered Yuta's mind, "Stop laying on the ground, the exam is over, it's time for you to go!" The voice said, urging Yuta to get up.
As Yuta stood up and looked around, he saw that kids were leaving and most of them were left already, he was lying on the ground on the sidelines, and Goichi, the shinobi in charge, stood beside him, looking at Yuta coldly.
"What happened?" Yuta asked anxiously, feeling a bad premonition.
"You passed out in the middle of the test, you fail." Goichi replied coldly and left, leaving Yuta alone.
"I failed..." Yuta mumbled, unable to believe it.
'How did that happen?' His mind was in shock, 'The genjutsu! There was a shinobi in the trees, that bastard hit me with genjutsu the second time, and it was much stronger than the first time, I stood no chance from the start...'
...
'How could they've done it to me...' Yuta's mind was in a disarray as he followed the rest of the kids and left the academy, 'Just like that, some random guy thrown a jutsu at a kid and ruined his entire shinobi future this easily... Well, let's be real, that was anything but random!'
Yuta found Chitose and approached her absentmindedly, 'That trash of a shinobi, who was fine with ruining some kid's future when the kid did nothing wrong, he must be Manabu's hater. That's the only possible explanation...'
Chitose said something with coldness and regret in her voice, Kiyoshi said something mockingly and with disdain, Kenta said something nice and comforting, but Yuta wasn't even listening to any of it, deep in his own thoughts, to the outside world he appeared as an emotionless puppet pulled by the strings.
Chitose didn't linger and led the group back to the orphanage.
As they returned to the orphanage without Yuta even realizing, his mind was still in a disarray, he felt being wronged, he felt like a powerless victim, he felt like he was severely punished while he did nothing wrong.
At some point Yuta found himself standing in front of Manabu, he looked up at Manabu's face and saw something unusual. Manabu looked like he was aged by a decade in an instant, a strong sense of regret was on his face, and his eyes looked like all the life was extinguished out of them.
"I shouldn't have registered you as my student, this is all my fault." Manabu said in a raspy voice, "I didn't expect them to fail you just like that! If only I known the higher-ups are still keeping tabs on me and would target even someone who has nothing to do with what I've done in the past..."
As Yuta looked into the lifeless eyes of Manabu, he felt this was all wrong, Manabu, the man who taught him some basics, he shouldn't feel that bad about him, Yuta, some random kid, they are not even that close aren't they?
Yuta didn't know what to feel about this, he knew that he was able to fix the situation by time-travel, he just felt bad because that would take a lot of time to travel all the way back, especially when he could only trave five days back at a time and would need at least a day to restore his spiritual energy to travel again...
And after that here would be a year and a half to relive all this time and redo all his physical training to return back to this point... Yuta felt that the thing he worked so hard all this time was ruined by someone, and now he has to do everything all over again...
But still, while Yuta didn't feel too bad about himself getting screwd by this situation, as he looked at the aged face of Manabu, he felt a strong sense of anger and frustration, not directed at Manabu, but rather at those who targeted him.
'Some dumb fcks really pissed me off, fine, I'll travel all the way back and relive all this, redo all my training, all while I won't be asking Manabu to become my teacher, that time when he officially registered me as his student, he mentioned some paperwork being done, that's how those fcks found out about my connection with Manabu and decided to screw me over. There will be a day when I found out who was behind it all and pay them a visit, just you wait!'
--- AN ---
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