(April, year 52 AK)
Half a year has passed since Yuta's first time-travel. During this time Yuta was training as per usual, he also practiced the Tree-Climbing exercise almost every day, although he didn't have enough chakra yet to confidently walk all the way up of the tree, but his progress was evident and his chakra control was precise.
At this point he was using this exercise more so he could deplete his chakra so it would regenerate and improve over time, and less so for the chakra control exercise itself.
He also tried the next chakra control exercise – Water-Walking, but it was much harder to accomplish, as to stay on the water surface requires much more chakra and the surface of water is unstable and moving, hence it needs constant and precise adjustments to chakra flow, sadly such complex chakra manipulations is still beyond what Yuta was able to do.
The main difficulty was not in the precision of his chakra control but rather in the amount of the chakra that needs to be concentrated and controlled constantly, hence he has a hard time with this exercise due to his still insufficient chakra reserves.
Although his progress is not as fast as he would like it to be, his chakra reserves are steadily growing, and his chakra control is improving each passing day.
Although such results were less than stellar, Yuta was more or less satisfied with his progression. In his understanding, if he keeps this pace, he would probably be at least on the level comparable to the "Konoha 11" by the end of the academy.
Without a clan, any bloodline or a good talent, in his understanding this is already great progress, and there is also the Time Control ability on top of that, so Yuta wasn't worried anymore about his future, everything is in his reach, he believes.
And sensing his progress over the past half a year, Yuta recently tried again the time-travel for the second time. By using up all his spiritual energy he managed to time-travel five days into the past this time.
And although this indicates that his spiritual energy had grown almost two times of what it was before, as well as his chakra, he was still well aware that in a grand scheme of things it is still quite low and probably way below the level of an average Genin.
'I'm making good progress, but there is still a long road ahead...' Yuta thought, 'Although it'll take some time to reach the level of a Genin in terms of chakra, still with just this pace of improvement who knows what level I would achieve during the six years of the academy, I didn't even learn any jutsu yet...'
"Koboshi-sensei, why did you call me here?" Yuta asked as he entered the small room at the orphanage, where Manabu had taught him some shinobi-related stuff a few times.
"It would be for the best if you stop calling me sensei from now on, I will no longer teach you, and I didn't teach you a lot in the first place." Manabu said seriously, "Tomorrow is the academy's entrance day, and with your training for the past year and a half, you shouldn't have any problem passing the entrance test, but you must give it your best."
"Understood, Koboshi-sensei." Yuta calmly replied.
"Sigh, listen!" Manabu's voice became heavier as he sighed, "I already told you that my reputation in the village is bad, and warned you that by associating with me you'll make your life harder, and this is the time for you to learn the truth about it. Maybe then you'll understand why it's for your own good to forget about me and to not call me sensei. With how little I taught you, you shouldn't have much trouble if you don't associate with me any further."
"I'm listening, sensei." Yuta said, becoming serious as well.
"It happened during The Second Great Ninja War." Manabu started calmly explaining in a heavy tone, "I was a Special Jonin, I was on a team lead by a Jonin, we carried an important covert mission deep behind enemy lines, and even though the mission was carried successfully in the end, during the mission I've disobeyed the direct order of the team leader and it resulted in our mission becoming more difficult in the process."
Manabu sighed heavily and continued, "Afterwards I was reprimanded and demoted to the rank of Chunin, and even if there was no further punishment for me at the time, it was evident that my ninja career was over. I was thrown out from my previous team, and there was no one willing to accept me on their team either, getting good assignments became impossible, nothing remotely important was ever assigned to me from that day, only most unimportant and remote missions and patrol duties was available to me."
"What happened after that?" Yuta asked.
"After a decade of futile efforts to redeem myself in hopes that everything will come back to the way it was, I was finally allowed to retire. During that time, I wasn't able to find a team and only allowed to carry missions that no one else wanted to take, like patrol duties in remote regions, or long-term garrison assignments to the remote places of no strategic importance whatsoever."
"I see..." Yuta said deep in thought.
'Just a one mistake, one insubordination, and that was enough to ruing Manabu's whole life...'
"What was the order, why you disobeyed it?" Yuta asked a little anxiously, as he knew that he was overstepping by asking this question.
"... I can't tell you, it's all classified." Manabu's eyes wandered in reminiscing of the past, "But If I were to make that choice all over again, I would've done the same thing." Manabu looked at Yuta resolutely, "Let this be my last lesson to you, but what to get from this lesson is all up to you. Now go, tomorrow you'll leave the orphanage for the academy and its accommodations, leave and forget about an old failure like me, and never mention to anybody that I taught you anything."
"..." Yuta wanted to reply with something, but ended only closing his mouth silently, he turned around and left without saying a word, as he wasn't able to decide if he wants to follow Manabu's advice and stop associating with him and stop calling him sensei, or if he wants to refuse to do so, in the end he just left silently, wasn't able to make a decision.
As he went through the door outside of the room with Manabu, he thought, 'What the hell am I even thinking about, it's not that complicated!'
With that thought he quickly returned to the room with Manabu and said confidently, "Koboshi-sensei, you are the first person who cared about me and who taught me important things, even if as you said it wasn't much, at the very least I can call you sensei in private and maybe I could visit you once in a while without anyone noticing. This much shouldn't put me in trouble with the higher-ups if they are still upset with you, right?"
"Sigh, do as you must..." Manabu replied tiredly and shook his head, but there was an almost unnoticeable smile formed on the corners of his mouth, "Now go, tomorrow is an important day for you!"
"Yes, sensei." Yuta replied with a smile and left.
'Although Manabu was only taught me basic things about chakra and helped me to fix and improve my workout routine, I shouldn't forget that it was thanks to him that I managed to learn chakra control at all, if not for Manabu, I would only be able to learn it after entering the academy, and without chakra control and it's exercises I wouldn't be able to grasp my Time Control ability this soon either, I should be grateful.'
The next day the time had come, Chitose gathered Yuta and three other kids that came of age of six years, and they left the orphanage for the Ninja Academy entrance ceremony.
Although all the kids in this orphanage were enrolling into the academy by the age of six, it wasn't hard for Yuta to convince Chitose to be allowed to do it a little bit early, now that he was five and a half years old, since Yuta was always diligent in his training and had a reputation of a good and hardworking ninja-wannabe kid.
As they followed the road in the direction of the center of the village, Yuta felt somewhat nostalgic, it was almost the same as the year before, even kids that would be enrolling – were boasting about becoming ninjas the same way as the last time.
Yuta looked at the other three kids beside him, Kiyoshi and Kenta, two boys both slightly taller than him, and Saki, a girl of the same height, all three of them doesn't have a last name. Kenta has a friendly attitude and tries to make friends with everyone, including Yuta, as he recently was trying to talk to Yuta as if they are buddies, but that didn't go well as Yuta was feeling cringe when he tries to participate in the naive and childish talks like that.
As for Kiyoshi and Saki, their relationships with Yuta was even worse, as Kiyoshi seems had developed some hatred towards Yuta, probably that happened when Kiyoshi learned that Manabu was a shinobi and he teaches Yuta, and after Kiyoshi asked Manabu to teach him as well – he got rejected. While Saki was just following Kiyoshi everywhere and copied his attitude towards Yuta.
'Sigh, I'm tired of this life of a child, there is no one to talk to, talking with the kids in the orphanage always felt weird and cringe, Manabu is not much of a talker, Chitose is always looked at me and other kids as if she scrutinizing and calculating our value all the time. That other caretaker woman at the orphanage always avoids the conversations, and outside of the orphanage I'm usually busy with my exercises at the training grounds and there wasn't much time to go socialize with someone, as I'm only allowed to go outside for two hours a day...'
'Finally, some long-awaited changes were coming, I'll be living in the academy-provided housing, and I generally would be able to do whatever in my free time. The Ninja Academy, here I go!' With such elated thoughts Yuta followed Chitose to the Ninja Academy entrance ceremony, although his enthusiasm was slightly worsened with the boring two hours long Hiruzen's speech that came shortly after...
--- AN ---
If you like the fic, please consider supporting me on patreon.
Currently there are 3 advanced chapters on Patreon (patreon dot com /SycoreNovels).
There will be up to 20 advanced chapters in the future.
Thanks to Loalola, Jayroy_63, Samot_Sempai, jv1juncjvc, and end_of_time for the power stones! Yesterday we almost got into the power ranking, we had 13 stones and the rank 200 work had also 13, but our fic didn't make it into the list.