(14th of October, year 52 AK)
As Yuta was in the middle of training by his usual spot by the lake, Shisui came and greeted him.
"Hey, Yuta, how is your progress?" Shisui asked casually, as he appeared by Yuta's side.
"Shisui-senpai, I've got the hang of it, I think." Yuta replied as he stopped his training and looked at Shisui.
"Just call me by my name, no need for formalities. Now show me how you do it, cast the techniques on me one by one." Shisui said casually.
"Are you sure?" Yuta hesitate a little, since casting a genjutsu on someone classified as an assault in the village, no different than casting a ninjutsu or attacking with a kunai with an intent to kill.
"Don't worry, I can take it, it won't harm me." Shisui replied with a reassuring smile.
"If you say so." Yuta replied.
He focused and recalled the part of the three jutsu he never did before, the releasing part, he mentally went through all those finishing steps as he locked onto Shisui and performed the hand seals for the Sly Mind genjutsu.
The usual steps that Yuta practiced for a long time went smooth and fast, but the last steps of the genjutsu, where Yuta had to release the genjutsu and control his chakra to move it outside the body and later when he had to maintain the control over the genjutsu that was already affecting Shisui, it was quite hard and taxing on Yuta's mind as it was the first time he did it.
At first, he was even worried that jutsu might fail, but in the end, he managed to maintain control of it.
Shisui was a little surprised of how fast Yuta's hands went through a series of hand seals, and just in one second, he was hit by the Sly Mind genjutsu.
This kind of genjutsu didn't pose much threat to Shisui, as he was an experienced genjutsu specialist himself, and he was already Jonin on top of that.
As genjutsu hit him, he didn't immediately resist or dispel it, instead he looked around and analyzed it calmly.
"Not bad." Shisui said, "Your performance with chakra build up and molding, as well as with chakra control is quite good, especially for your first time of actually casting a genjutsu, you definitely have aptitude for this.
But you need practice, the final steps of the jutsu were sluggish since you didn't train it on the real target until now."
Shisui skillfully stirred his chakra and dispelled the genjutsu, and Yuta felt the loss of connection to the part of his chakra that was on Shisui, and his genjutsu was completely destroyed.
'So, I do have talent for genjutsu after all.' Yuta thought excitedly.
"Now show me the other two genjutsu." Shisui said, and Yuta performed Hell Viewing and Interrogation genjutsu on him one after another.
After experiencing Yuta's genjutsu, Shisui said.
"With how efficiently you managed to perform the initial phase of these jutsu after just one week of practicing, I would say that you can get quite good at ninjutsu as well, but that will depend on your chakra reserves more than genjutsu would. As for genjutsu, you definitely have a knack for it, but how far you would be able to advance in this field will depend on a lot of time and a lot of hard work."
"I see." Yuta said calmly, he thought that since he had an unlimited amount of those two resources – nothing is impossible for him.
"I believe that by the end of your second year at the academy you should be proficient enough in genjutsu and will have no problem with early graduation even if your taijutsu won't improve much." Shisui thought aloud, "I'll send a shadow clone to you to train your genjutsu on whenever I'm in the village."
"Thanks a lot, Shisui!" Yuta replied gratefully.
"Don't mention it." After saying that, Shisui left and Yuta continued his usual workout.
Yuta's normal everyday routine continues. He attended classes and trained every day, and most of the time Shisui, or rather his shadow clone, was visiting him during his training to help him to practice genjutsu.
Time flies by and five months passed, it was March, the end of the first grade of the academy, and the exams were in full swing.
At the written tests Yuta scored first place with a little time-travel cheating, since he was only able to get third place originally, with Itachi and Izumi Uchiha taking first and second places.
Although Yuta would be able to pass any written tests this way even without studying, he still puts a good amount of effort into studying and memorizing books and scrolls on the next grades of the academy curriculum whenever he had time during classes, or when he repeats the same classes that he already attended before with his time-travel.
Since Shisui warned him, Yuta didn't speak with Itachi even once, except that brief time after the fight with the upperclassmen, but he knew that Itachi and Shisui are still in contact with each other.
As for practical tests, with shurikenjutsu Yuta scored third place, as his aim was quite good with all the extra practice, and for the taijutsu tests, he had a spar with each of his classmates by now and he is maintaining his possition in the middle of the class.
With all the time-travel Yuta already did and repeated some spars, he thought that he could use time-travel to improve further. By accumulating the experience of sparring with his classmates he could improve his scores somewhat by beating those of them that are slightly stronger than him with his superior skills, but he still won't improve his scores that much this way for that to matter.
Yuta would still have to convince teachers with his other skills that his subpar taijutsu, by the academy's graduation standards, is not actually a problem, to be able to pass the early graduation requirements.
Hence, he was training in genjutsu under Shisui's guidance, and as more he practices genjutsu, the more he starts to understand how many nuances there are, and now he understood that he only scratched the surface and there is a long road ahead.
Shisui reassured him that with his progress he would be able to start learning some advanced stuff soon enough and should be able to pass the early graduation tests with it, but still, from how Shisui spoken, Yuta felt that although his progress is not bad, it's not exceptional either.
And since Yuta was not satisfied with such results, he decided to go back with the time-travel and repeat the process of 'learning' the genjutsu and to have more time to train with it. He just didn't want to be seen as a mediocre shinobi-wannabe with talent that is slightly above the room temperature, especially since he could help it.
By now Yuta was quite tired with being stuck with a kid's body with all the time-travels and repeats, and he really wanted to just move forward and grow up, but he also understood well, that it would be better to go through all the trouble of repeated time-travel and achieve good results from it now, so he won't be having any regrets in the future and won't be compelled to go all the way back into the past to fix some stuff.
Especially since Yuta wasn't sure he would be able to go all the way back later on, since his spiritual energy is constantly growing, and his physical energy in his past will always stay the same no matter what, so if the severe disbalance of the physical and spiritual energies will become an issue, he won't be able to go back into the past all the way anymore. Considering all that, Yuta wanted to make things right for this time period before he would move on.
'Sigh, although Shisui said back then that I do have an aptitude for genjutsu, the words he used are implying that I won't become a new Kurenai-level genjutsu specialist any time soon... Still, by spending more time I should be able to pretend that I'm a new genjutsu genius or something like that, but in reality, there won't be anything "genius" about it, just hard work and a time-loop...'
'Whatever, the result is what matters. Although Shisui might notice that there is something off, since he is the one who teaching me the genjutsu in the first place, but I don't think it would be much of a problem. Sadly, all of my efforts that I put into my physical workouts will be lost again, but there is nothing I could do about that...'
As Yuta made that decision, he went into his mindscape and initiated the time-travel, he used up almost all of his spiritual energy to test it out how much it grown during this time.
When Yuta exited his mindscape, he found himself in the middle of the night in his bed.
Suppressing his mental exhaustion, he stood up and went to check the calendar he kept in the kitchen.
'February second, I went all the way back from the end of March to the start of February. It is almost two whole months of time-travel, this means that my spiritual energy grew a lot...' Yuta tiredly thought with excitement, 'My total amount of chakra should be already on the level of Genin at the very least, well, it didn't take long at all!'
'My spiritual energy definitely grows faster than it should with just an average talent, that's for sure. After all, I have my body's physique to compare, as it didn't get enhanced by the River of Time.' Yuta thought tiredly and went back to bed. Being mentally exhausted, he falls asleep almost instantly.
--- AN ---
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