📖 Chapter 6 — "Sparks Beneath the Surface"
The morning sky over Konoha was clear, without a trace of clouds. Rei, now seven years old, walked toward the family's private training grounds alongside the new instructor his mother had hired: a tokubetsu jōnin named Hanzo Kirihara. The man was tall, with dark hair tied back in a ponytail and sharp eyes, wearing a standard uniform modified with red details.
"So you're the prodigy kid everyone's talking about," Hanzo muttered as they walked. "Small for someone with that look."
"What look?" Rei asked, without glancing at him.
"The look of someone who's seen more than they should. Either that, or someone who's already died once," Hanzo replied, half-joking.
Rei didn't answer. He knew that, in a way, that statement wasn't far from the truth.
The training began with fundamentals: breathing, posture, basic chakra channeling. Although his body was still developing, his control was far superior to that of any average child. He could balance a leaf on his forehead for nearly five minutes without it falling, and even walk briefly on an inclined surface without losing balance.
But then, the unexpected happened.
During a concentration exercise with basic hand seals, Rei tried channeling chakra to project it into a small pushing technique. The result was an excessive burst that threw him backward, leaving his fingers numb and a surprised expression on his face.
Hanzo approached, one eyebrow raised.
"Excellent control… until your emotions got involved. What were you thinking right before the mistake?"
Rei hesitated.
"…I thought about my mother, about whether… I'd die like everyone I saw in that other life."
Hanzo was silent for a moment.
"I don't know what life you're talking about, kid. But whatever it is you carry inside you… if you don't learn to temper it, it'll break you. We'll train harder starting tomorrow."
That night, Rei returned home to Sayuri. She was waiting in her office, reading documents about trade routes to the Land of Lightning. When she saw him enter, she set everything aside.
"How was it?" she asked, pouring him tea with honey.
"Hard," he replied. He drank in silence for a moment. "Do you think I'm weird?"
Sayuri smiled faintly, as if she'd been expecting that question for years.
"You're different. But not in the way you think. You're someone who observes more, feels more… and because of that, you suffer more. But that doesn't make you weird. It just makes you human."
Rei lowered his gaze. He didn't have the energy to argue.
"Sometimes… I feel like I'm not a child. Like I should be doing bigger things, but I don't know what."
Sayuri took his hand gently.
"You have time, Rei. Don't let the pain you carry define the child you still are."
That night, Rei meditated in silence. In his inner world, the dungeon doors remained closed… but for a moment, a faint vibration ran through his chest.
The seal on his skin glowed faintly, as if recognizing the seed of a new beginning.