"What's this? Why is it so noisy here?" A lazy voice came from the doorway.
Shikamaru walked over listlessly with a "what a drag" expression. "Really... you all came to take such a troublesome exam..."
Mamoru felt like he had seen a savior and immediately cast a pleading look at Shikamaru, winking frantically and mouthing a silent scream. 'Save me! Help me, fast!'
Shikamaru received Mamoru's distress signal, but he just scratched the back of his head helplessly, thinking, 'Who cares about you?'
Then, he decisively looked away, pretending he hadn't seen anything.
Choji, who was walking beside Shikamaru, was as usual fully focused on munching his potato chips, as if all the surrounding conflict had nothing to do with him.
"What? Isn't this the Idiot Trio?" Naruto shouted without thinking as soon as he saw Shikamaru, Choji, and Ino a few steps away.
Upon hearing that, Shikamaru's face immediately showed extreme annoyance as he retorted, "Idiot! Don't call us that! Honestly... what a troublesome guy."
"Hehe." Naruto grinned, hands on his hips as he looked around.
He said with some emotion, "I didn't expect that all nine of us who graduated from the Ninja Academy this year would actually come to take the Chunin Exams."
Sasuke threw a bucket of cold water on him at the right time, hands in his pockets, his tone carrying its usual mockery. "You're not nervous at all now? Even though a certain someone's legs were shaking uncontrollably at the entrance just now."
"Who are you saying had shaking legs!" Naruto was like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, instantly bristling.
He turned to glare at Sasuke, pointing at him and shouting in embarrassed rage, "Damn you, Sasuke! Don't look down on me! I definitely won't lose to you in this exam!"
"Hmph, just a dead last who loves to talk big." Sasuke maintained his cold expression, continuing to strike at Naruto without mercy.
As if suddenly remembering something, Naruto's originally angry expression suddenly cooled down, and a hint of complexity flashed in his deep blue eyes.
"Acting all high and mighty now..." He curled his lip, his voice carrying unabashed contempt. "I wonder who was just beaten by that bushy brows guy until they couldn't even fight back."
He let out a scornful sneer, his eyes deliberately scanning over Sasuke. "You're nothing special either."
"You..." Sasuke's face darkened instantly.
Having his wound reopened in public, his fists clenched involuntarily.
"Alright, alright..."
Sakura hurriedly stepped between the two, spreading her arms like a mother hen protecting her chicks to block their line of sight.
She first turned to Sasuke, her voice softening. "Sasuke, don't lower yourself to Naruto's level."
Then she turned her head to glare at Naruto, her tone suddenly becoming stern. "Naruto, you shut your mouth!"
"Sakura, it was Sasuke who started it..." Naruto tried to explain, feeling wronged.
"Shut up!" Sakura interrupted him, raising her fist high, her eyes wide and round. "If you keep rambling, I'll use my fist to shut you up!"
"..."
Naruto looked at Sakura's blatant favoritism, his lips moving slightly, but he eventually shut his mouth in silence, only his drooping eyebrows showing his frustration.
Just as the atmosphere reached a stalemate, a gentle but somewhat helpless voice cut in.
"You guys... it's better to be a bit quieter."
Everyone looked toward the source of the voice and saw a young man wearing round-framed glasses walking toward them. He pushed up his glasses, his gaze scanning over the faces of the nine rookies, a faint, ambiguous smile on his lips.
"You're the rookies who just graduated, right?" He shook his head slightly, his tone carrying a bit of senior-like teasing.
"You look so cute, yet you're so noisy. Honestly, this isn't a field trip."
"Who are you?" Ino immediately retorted with dissatisfaction, hands on her hips. "Why are you acting so high and mighty?"
Mamoru quietly sized up the newcomer, Yakushi Kabuto, Orochimaru's right-hand man. He noticed that his classmates were all curiously focusing their attention on this young man who had suddenly appeared.
"Mamoru, I'm talking to you!"
Tenten puffily reached out and pinched Mamoru's cheek, forcing him to turn his gaze back. Her rounded cheeks were slightly flushed from anger, and her eyes were wide. "What are you looking around for again?"
"Sorry."
Mamoru rubbed his pinched, reddened cheek in pain and scratched his head helplessly. "Anyway, it's not what you think, it's all a misunderstanding."
Seeing that his image was about to completely collapse if this continued, he decided to just bluff his way through for now.
Tenten gave a light huff and turned her face away, but at least she didn't press the matter further.
Mamoru felt slightly relieved and walked over toward Kabuto with a swagger.
Before he even got close, he heard Shikamaru's listless complaining.
"You've taken it seven times? Are the Chunin Exams really that hard? This is getting more and more troublesome."
"Well then, let me, your senior, reveal some intel to you cute juniors."
A gentle smile appeared on Kabuto's face as he reached into a leather pouch at his waist and pulled out a stack of cards. The backs of the cards were a vibrant orange with dark green borders, and in the center was a white circle with the black character for 'ninja' printed on it. With a light flick of his wrist, the cards spread out.
"Use these ninja registration cards." He explained.
"Ninja registration cards?" Sakura tilted her head curiously.
"To put it simply, they use Chakra to convert information into symbols and store them in the cards..."
As Kabuto spoke, he crouched down and laid the entire stack of cards flat on the ground.
"This is the intel I've gathered over the past four years to prepare for the exams. I've prepared nearly 200 of them in total."
At this point, Mamoru, who had squeezed into the crowd, couldn't help but watch curiously. He crossed his arms, and as he watched, a sense of déjà vu grew stronger.
After a few seconds of pondering, he realized where he had seen a similar scene before.
The iconic moment from Hunter x Hunter, the performance of the great Tonpa.
While Mamoru was lost in thought, Kabuto had already flipped over the top card. The face of the card was blank, with nothing on it.
"As you can see, the front is blank right now. To read the information on it..."
He lightly pressed his middle finger onto the center of the card. As Chakra was injected, the card began to rotate slowly.
"What are you doing?" Sakura couldn't help but ask.
"If you don't use my Chakra, you can't see the contents of the card." Kabuto explained while raising his left hand to form a hand sign. "For example, like this..."
Poof—
With a soft sound, the spinning card suddenly stopped. Clear images and text emerged on the previously blank surface.
"Wow! Amazing!" Sakura exclaimed. "What information is on there?"
"The total number of participants in this Chunin Exams, the participating countries, and how many candidates each hidden village has."
(End of Chapter)
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