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In the eastern section of Konoha's Art Store, Hizashi was still lingering on the final page of Chapter 105.
The previous pages had turned the story Neji had carried for years completely on its head. The man he believed had been killed because his life was worth less than his brother's had not been dragged to his death by force. He had chosen to go himself. Hiashi had tried to stop him, Hizashi had refused, and in the end, he had made the decision he wanted to make for the first time as a brother, rather than as a member of the branch family.
But Hizashi was no longer reading the conversation.
His eyes were fixed on the final scene, where Neji stood by the window as birds flew freely through the sky before him.
"Father… the birds are flying energetically today."
Then came the next words:
"As if they've been set free."
Hizashi stared at the scene for several moments before his expression softened slightly. He still didn't know what that child would become after this match, nor whether Hiashi's words could erase years of anger all at once, but the final page was enough to tell him that something had changed.
Beside him, Hiashi read the same scene in silence, while Masanori remained seated behind them. None of the three needed to reopen the discussion that had consumed the eastern section of the store throughout the previous chapters.
"Good."
Hiashi turned toward him, but Hizashi had already reached for the next page.
…
Sunagakure:
Inside Sunagakure's Art Store, the Third Kazekage remained stuck on a completely different scene.
Uchiha Sasuke was late for his match, and under normal circumstances, he should have been declared absent and the finals should have moved on to the next fight. Yet the man wearing the Kazekage's hat in that future did not seem willing to accept that so easily.
He wanted to wait.
More importantly, he wanted Sasuke and Gaara's match to happen.
The Third Kazekage narrowed his eyes as he reread the exchange. The interest of the daimyo and other important figures in the fight was understandable; one of the last surviving Uchiha facing a Suna shinobi who had displayed unusual abilities since the beginning of the exams was naturally a match that would draw attention.
But the man sitting there as Kazekage was not merely a spectator who had paid for a ticket.
One of the nearby Suna shinobi said, "Perhaps he simply wants to see how Gaara fares against the Sharingan."
The Third Kazekage did not lift his eyes from the page.
"To the point of interfering with the order of the finals?"
The man fell silent.
The Kazekage tapped a finger against the edge of the volume and returned his attention to the conversation between his future counterpart and the Hokage. He still did not know who that man would be, how he would attain the position, or why Sasuke's battle against Gaara mattered so much to him. The pages had not yet provided enough information to connect Gaara to him in any way beyond being a shinobi of Suna.
But one thing was obvious.
"He doesn't simply want to watch Sasuke."
One of the seated shinobi looked toward him.
"Then what does he want?"
The Third Kazekage looked at Gaara's image.
"He wants Sasuke to fight Gaara."
He paused briefly, then turned the page.
"And I'll know why when the pages decide to tell me."
…
[— Manga Scene —]
In the VIP box, the Third Hokage was speaking with the Kazekage.
Uchiha Sasuke still hadn't arrived.
His match against Gaara was supposed to begin.
"…"
But many of the daimyo and important guests had come specifically to watch that confrontation.
After a brief discussion, the decision was made.
The order of the matches would be changed.
…
In the arena, Genma raised his list.
"The next match…"
He looked toward the contestants.
"Nara Shikamaru versus Temari."
"…"
Shikamaru stood above, staring down at the arena with absolutely no enthusiasm about entering it.
Temari did not share his hesitation.
She jumped from the balcony, landed in the arena, then looked up at him.
"Come on."
Shikamaru remained where he was.
Behind him, Naruto approached.
"Get down there, Shikamaru!"
"Wait—!"
He pushed him.
"Waaah!!"
Shikamaru fell from above, but at the last second, he extended his shadow toward the wall and stopped himself before crashing into the ground.
He looked up at Naruto, irritation written across his face.
"I'm going to kill you…"
Moments later, he finally stood opposite Temari.
He looked at her, then at the enormous fan strapped to her back.
'I'm fighting a girl again…?'
Temari reached for her fan.
"If you're not coming to me… then I'll come to you."
"Hey! I haven't told you two to start yet—"
The fan opened.
Wind exploded across the arena.
"!!"
The attack swept over the battlefield, sending dust and stones flying as Shikamaru quickly moved out of its path.
When he steadied himself again, he raised his eyes toward Temari.
The laziness had disappeared from his gaze.
[— End Scene —]
…
Konohagakure:
Where the Nara clan members sat, Hiketsu and Shikaku had shifted from merely following the pages to studying the arena drawn within them. Neither spoke about the boy's identity or his relationship to them; his name, appearance, and use of shadow techniques were strong enough clues to raise dozens of possibilities, but they were not proof enough to invent a blood relationship the pages had yet to reveal.
The battle itself, however, required no assumptions.
"Long-range."
Shikaku said it while studying the area covered by the fan's attack.
Hiketsu nodded.
"And wide-range as well."
Their eyes moved from Temari to Shikamaru, then to the ground separating them. The Shadow Imitation Technique they had seen during the preliminaries needed to reach the opponent's shadow, while Temari could attack from a distance without ever needing to approach him.
Shikaku said, "If she knows how the shadow technique works, she'll keep her distance."
"And if she doesn't, one attempt will be enough for her to learn."
There was neither concern nor excitement in their voices, only a simple calculation of the advantage before them. Temari had range, her attacks covered a wide area, and she could force her opponent to move whenever he tried to close the distance.
"Chasing her directly won't work," Shikaku said.
"Then he shouldn't chase her," Hiketsu replied.
Shikaku waited for the rest.
"He should make her come to him."
Shikaku's eyes narrowed slightly. The idea was obvious, but carrying it out was the problem. An opponent with the range advantage had no reason to approach you willingly, especially once she understood that your technique became more dangerous the shorter the distance between you.
The two returned their attention to the scene.
"He'll need information about the limits of her fan."
"And she'll need information about the limits of his shadow."
Silence settled between them for a few moments before a faint smile appeared on the older man's face.
"Then whoever reveals more of their hand than necessary first loses the advantage."
Shikaku did not disagree.
The match had only just begun, but to two members of the Nara clan, it was no longer a battle between a fan and a shadow.
It was a battle between two people trying to understand each other before they themselves were understood.
…
Nearby, Yamanaka Inoi and Inoichi had noticed something different.
The name Nara Shikamaru was no longer unfamiliar to them, just as the names Yamanaka Ino and Akimichi Choji had become familiar throughout the exams. Three children of the same generation, each carrying the name of one of the three clans, with enough familiarity between them to make the possibility obvious.
But neither man rushed to give that possibility a name.
Inoichi had not married yet, and the manga had not explicitly revealed those children's parentage to them, so the questions remained questions.
Inoi looked at Shikamaru in the arena.
"Nara."
Then he flipped back several pages to where Ino and Choji had appeared earlier.
"Yamanaka. Akimichi."
Inoichi immediately understood what his father was pointing out.
"All three are around the same age."
"And they know each other well."
Inoichi remained silent for a moment before asking, "Do you think the Ino–Shika–Cho formation continued?"
A faint smile appeared on Inoi's face.
"That is a conclusion I can accept."
"And the rest?"
"We leave that to the pages."
Inoichi nodded. There was no need to rush into discovering who married whom, who fathered whom, or whose features each child carried. The future was revealing itself one volume at a time, and what they knew now was enough: decades from their present, the names Yamanaka, Nara, and Akimichi still appeared side by side.
Inoichi returned his attention to the match.
"At least putting a Nara against this kind of opponent will show us how he thinks."
Inoi glanced toward Hiketsu and Shikaku, whose eyes had not stopped moving across the arena.
"Watch them too."
Inoichi did.
"Why?"
"Because they're trying to learn the same thing."
…
Beside them, Akimichi Hozho and Choza were watching Temari's opening attack. Choza raised his eyebrows when the wind swept across the arena, then looked at the distance the girl maintained between herself and her opponent.
"Getting close to her will be troublesome."
"Especially for a shadow user," Hozho said.
Choza looked at him, then returned his attention to Shikamaru. Like the Yamanaka, he did not turn the boy's name, appearance, or previous association with Ino and Choji into a family connection that had yet to be confirmed. But seeing three familiar clan names appear together in the same future generation was enough to make him more interested in the match than he would have been in some random battle between unfamiliar genin.
"If she stays there, he won't reach her."
"Correct."
"And if he runs toward her, she'll hit him with the fan."
"Correct."
Choza turned toward his father.
"Then he's in a bad position."
Hozho smiled.
"That's why the Nara are looking at the ground."
Choza followed his gaze and saw Hiketsu and Shikaku studying the arena more than the contestants themselves.
The distance between them.
The walls.
The direction of the sun.
The shadows.
"When a Nara can't reach you by the direct path," Hozho said, "he starts looking for a path you don't know exists."
Hiketsu heard the remark from his nearby seat and glanced toward Hozho.
"You make us sound troublesome."
Hozho raised a piece of food to his mouth.
"You are troublesome."
A small smile appeared on Shikaku's face, while Choza shook his head and returned to the volume.
…
Silence settled over the men of the three clans afterward, their eyes remaining fixed on the beginning of the match.
The confrontation did not carry the raw power they had just witnessed between Naruto and Neji. There was no Byakugan, no Sixty-Four Palms, and no Tailed Beast chakra exploding in the middle of the arena.
Instead, it offered a different kind of battle.
Temari had the range and power necessary to keep her opponent exactly where she wanted him, while Shikamaru possessed a technique that became dangerous only when he could connect his shadow to hers. The greater the distance, the clearer Temari's advantage became.
"A bad matchup for a Nara," Hiketsu said.
Shikaku nodded.
"On paper."
His father looked at him.
Shikaku had returned to the scene where Shikamaru dodged the wind, then to the ground separating him from Temari.
"But she gave him his first piece of information for free."
"What information?"
"The range she wants to fight from."
Hiketsu's eyes paused on him for a moment.
Shikaku continued, "She believes the distance protects her, so she'll try to maintain it."
"And she's right."
"Right."
Shikaku raised his eyes toward Temari.
"Until that distance itself becomes part of the plan."
Hiketsu said nothing.
Only a faint smile appeared on his face before he turned to the next page.
And as Temari raised her fan again, Shikamaru watched her from the opposite side of the arena.
No one yet knew who would win.
But the Nara men understood one thing.
If the boy intended to turn this matchup around…
His attack wouldn't begin with his shadow.
It would begin by making Temari believe she already understood how he intended to use it.
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Upcoming chapter titles (spoilers):
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Chapter 232: A Shadow Within a Shadow!
Chapter 233: An Innovative Fighting Style!
Chapter 234: I Give Up! (End of the Volume)
Chapter 235: What We Know About the Future
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