The morning Duy took me to the Academy district, he behaved as though we were marching to war, temple, and festival all at once.
"My son," he declared while tying his sandals with heroic force, "today you look upon the next field where youth shall be tested!"
"It's paperwork," I said.
He laughed loud enough to startle one of the hens, then looked offended when she objected from the yard.
Tomi-sensei was in the house already, which told me two things.
First, Duy had found another excuse to "stop by" the library early to invite her to this momentous occasion.
Second, whatever excuse he'd used had either been transparent or successful, and given the way she was pretending not to smile at him while straightening the collar on my shirt, I judged it to be some of both.
"You'll stand still," she told me, smoothing the fabric flat at my shoulders.
"I am standing still."
"You're fidgeting."
"Prove it."
She gave me the dry look I'd come to know well. "Your father does enough proving for this household."
Duy put a hand over his heart. "I prove that YOUTH conquers all!"
Tomi-sensei ignored him with the quiet expertise of a woman who had already decided that total surrender was worse than selective tolerance.
She stepped back and looked me over.
I was wearing a black sleeveless shirt with green pants and a white belt tied to hold them up that trailed slightly in the front. My arms were abnormally large for being almost 5. The alchemy has been making sustainable gains.
My face was still a compromise between fate and mercy.
The brows were heading toward the Might family disaster line, but my mother had saved me from complete ruin. The eyes were too fine-shaped for blunt-force family resemblance. The mouth, too. Enough softness lived in the face to keep it from looking entirely like I'd been carved from a determined brick.
Tomi-sensei noticed what she always noticed.
"You've grown again."
Duy swelled with pride instantly. "The body answers effort!"
"And eggs," I said.
"And eggs," he allowed nobly.
Tomi-sensei's fingers lingered for half a second at my collar before she stepped away.
"Don't let him shout at the instructors," she said to me.
"That seems outside my ability."
We left a little after that, Duy carrying himself like a man escorting royalty to a military parade. The village was already awake around us.
Women sweeping dust from thresholds. Vendors laying out produce. A pair of genin jogging with the weary bitterness of boys whose instructor believed speed built character. Somewhere farther in, someone was already arguing about fish prices with the full emotional force usually reserved for inheritance disputes.
Konoha breathed differently in the morning than it did in the heat of day. More work in it. Less theater.
We passed two civilians talking by a well, one with his hands deep in a carpenter's apron.
"I'm telling you," the older one said, "Mito-sama shut it down herself. Right there."
"Shut what down?"
"Some council nonsense about reallocating stores. My cousin heard it from a clerk."
Duy strode past like a man trying very hard not to hear gossip and failing because he liked village life too much not to.
I tucked it away. Any news about Mito was important to me.
By the time we reached the Academy district, the streets had thickened with children and their families.
Some were nervous, some were excited, some were already posturing so hard you could see the future cringe coming off them in waves.
There were the boys who had been fed well enough to mistake early luck for destiny. The girls with sharp eyes and careful mothers. The children who moved with the loose confidence of clans that had already decided they would matter. And the others, the ones whose parents hovered too close, whose sandals were a little older, whose bodies had not yet been given enough to build much on.
The village sorted them before any instructor ever had to.
That was the first ugly thing the Academy taught, whether it meant to or not.
Duy put a hand on my shoulder and steered me toward a side courtyard where parents were gathering around a clerk with a stack of forms.
"Observe, my son," he said. "This is the threshold of your next youthful ascent!"
"Its a line dad."
"Every great ascent begins with a line!"
"That is something only a man who has never worked with cattle could say."
He looked genuinely stricken. "You wound me."
I left him to his suffering and looked around.
A little knot of children had gathered under the shade of a wall near a candy seller's cart. Three boys and two girls, all with sticky fingers and the expression children get when they're very pleased to be unsupervised for exactly four and a half minutes.
One of the boys was already showing off a leaf stuck to his forehead like he had personally invented chakra.
"See?" he said, crossing his eyes to look at it. "I can hold it there as long as I want."
"You're sweating," said one of the girls.
"Am not!"
"I can see it dripping down your face." the girl said with a dry tone.
He glared at her.
Another boy reached for a second piece of candy, got smacked on the wrist by the first girl, and yelped in outrage. The last child, a large, round-cheeked boy with a face more interested in the candy than the argument, was chewing steadily with the calm commitment of somebody who knew exactly what mattered in life.
I stopped near them without meaning to.
Then I looked at the sugar in their hands, the sweaty leaf, the early morning, and the Academy gate looming over all of it like the world's least subtle warning.
Before I could stop myself, I said, "That's a terrible breakfast."
Five heads turned toward me.
The leaf-boy frowned first. "Who asked you?"
"No one," I said. "That's what makes it advice."
The round-cheeked boy paused mid-chew and looked interested.
The girl who had been policing candy narrowed her eyes. "What's wrong with it?"
"It's sugar," I said. "Quick energy. No staying power. You'll feel grand for a little while, then stupid and tired before noon."
Leaf-boy scoffed. "I'm not stupid."
"That has yet to be proven," I said. "Give the candy time."
That got a snort out of the round-cheeked boy.
His laughter had weight to it. Pleasant, unembarrassed. He wiped sugar from his fingers and asked, "So what should we eat?"
There are questions a man answers from his head.
That one came from the bone.
"Rice, eggs, broth, greens, decent fat if you can get it," I said. "And beef, if the gods love you."
"Beef?" he repeated, with sudden reverence.
Now we were getting somewhere.
"Yes," I said, warming to the subject despite myself. "Proper beef. Not gristle sold by liars. Good beef. Rich beef. Meat with enough life in it to do something once it hits you."
The candy girl blinked. "You talk weird."
"I talk accurately."
Leaf-boy folded his arms. "What do you know about training?"
"More than you know about lunch."
That made the round-cheeked boy laugh again, harder this time.
He shoved the last of the candy into his mouth and stuck out one sticky hand. "I'm Choza."
I looked down at it, then at him.
Large hands already. Good appetite. Open face. The kind of body the village would either feed into something formidable or ruin through indulgence and assumption.
I took his hand.
"Tai."
"Do you really know about beef?"
"I know it is one of the higher mercies available to mankind."
He looked delighted.
Leaf-boy rolled his eyes. "You two sound like old men."
"Old men survive longer," I said.
"That's not true."
"That," I told him, "is because you haven't listened to enough of them."
Candy girl snorted.
The second girl, who hadn't spoken much, was holding a little paper packet of seeds instead of sweets. She crouched near the wall where someone had planted a narrow strip of herbs and touched one leaf carefully between two fingers.
That caught my eye immediately.
Not because it was rare to see a child look at a plant. Because of how she looked. It was curious in the precise way of someone who actually wanted to understand what made a thing grow.
She noticed me noticing and straightened.
Dark hair. Quiet posture. Smart eyes.
I nodded toward the plant. "It's thirsty."
She looked at the herb bed, then at the soil, then at me. "I know."
"Then why not water it?"
Her mouth twitched slightly. "Because it isn't mine."
That was a better answer than I had expected.
Choza, meanwhile, was still on the important subject.
"So if candy's bad before training," he said, "when do you eat it?"
"After," I said. "Or during festivals. Or when you've already eaten something useful and want to make a bad decision from a position of strength."
He considered that with full seriousness. "That seems wise."
"It is."
Leaf-boy threw up his hands. "It's candy!"
"Yes," I said. "Which is why you should enjoy it properly. Even if you wont enjoy the consequences that come after."
The seed-packet girl made a small sound that might have been a laugh.
Interesting.
Duy appeared behind me then, carrying papers and looking proud enough to rupture something internal.
"My son!" he declared. "You are already forging bonds of youth!"
"I'm criticizing their breakfast."
"Excellent!"
That was not helping my case.
Choza looked up at him with open curiosity. "Your dad is loud."
"Yes," I said.
Duy beamed. "And you are a young man of admirable size!"
Choza sat up straighter at once.
"You see?" Duy said, pointing at him as if unveiling a principle of nature. "Potential!"
Choza's face lit up. "You really think so?"
"I think," Duy said with total sincerity, "that the body is a banner the spirit raises through effort, discipline, and proper nourishment!"
There was a beat of silence.
Then Choza turned to me and said, "I like him."
"That's how he gets people."
Candy girl had now fully lost the battle against amusement. "You really are like an old man."
"No," I said. "Old men usually have worse knees."
That got a proper laugh out of all of them except leaf-boy, who appeared committed to hating me on principle. Fair enough. Every generation needs a boy with bad breakfast and too much confidence.
Duy finished the paperwork in record time mostly by overwhelming the clerk with earnest politeness. We were meant to come back later for the next step. Of course we were. Bureaucracy never misses a chance to justify its own existence.
That left enough time for the truly important part of the day.
Choza, having decided I was now a food authority worth following, attached himself to us on the walk toward the market like a very cheerful ox calf. His mother spotted us from half a street away and, instead of dragging him off, came over with the practical patience of a woman clearly accustomed to feeding a son who treated appetite like a calling.
He introduced me at once.
"This is Tai," he said. "He says candy is weak and beef is glory."
His mother looked at me.
Then at Duy.
Then back at me.
"I see," she said. "You found each other."
That was fair.
Choza and I ended up sharing a skewer from a meat stall while Duy talked to his mother about the Academy and somehow managed to sound both inspiring and like a mild public hazard. The beef wasn't the best I'd ever had—not by a long shot—but it was hot, salted right, and had enough fat in it to make the juice drip down my fingers.
Choza took one bite and closed his eyes.
"Oh," he said softly. "That's good."
"Yes," I said. "Now imagine it in broth after training."
He looked at me like I had described paradise.
"We should be friends," he said immediately.
"On the strength of beef alone?"
"That's seems like more than enough reason."
Again: fair.
We walked a little after that, the three of us if you counted Duy only intermittently because he kept drifting half a pace behind every time he had to greet another parent or answer somebody's question they didn't ask about training. Konoha felt louder at that hour. Children darting underfoot. Vendors barking prices. Shinobi on rooftops. Women gossiping over fabric near a supply stall.
I caught fragments as we passed.
"…Mito-sama was there herself…"
"…Tsunade and her team just got back…"
"…that poor boy, all that shouting, but he's earnest…"
The last one was clearly about Duy.
Choza heard it too and grinned at me.
"I like your dad."
"Yes," I said. "It is very hard not to like genuine people."
By the time we looped back toward the Academy wall, the seed-packet girl was there again, kneeling at the same herb bed and pressing the soil down around one of the smaller plants. The others had gone. Even leaf-boy, presumably to find more sugar and worse opinions.
I stopped.
So did she.
Choza looked between us and then, to his eternal credit, occupied himself with the last of the skewer instead of forcing conversation into the space.
"You came back," I said.
"So did you."
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Uchiha Mikoto."
There it was. I had an inkling, but she is still to young to immediately put her as the mother of Itachi and Sasuke.
"I'm Might Tai."
"I know," she said. "Your father shouted it twice."
Behind me, Duy made a wounded noise. "I project with YOUTH!"
Mikoto's eyes shifted past me to him, then back to me, entirely deadpan. "I gathered that."
Choza nearly choked trying not to laugh.
I looked down at the herb bed again.
"Mint," I said.
Mikoto nodded. "And feverfew."
"They are too crowded."
"I know."
"Why hasn't anyone fixed it?"
She shrugged one shoulder. "Because it still grows."
That was the village in miniature if I'd ever heard it.
Good enough until it wasn't.
We spent the next several minutes thinning the bed with our fingers while Choza ate, offered opinions on edible leaves from the perspective of a man committed to broad experimentation, and Duy stood over us like a proud fool at a family outing.
Mikoto worked neatly. Efficiently. No wasted motion. She didn't talk just to fill silence, which I respected more with each passing second.
When she finally looked up, there was dirt at the side of her wrist and the faintest bit of green crushed into her fingertip.
"You know plants," she said.
"Yes."
"From your mother?"
There was no accusation in it. Just question.
I considered the answer.
"No, she passed when I was born. I learned at the library," I said.
She held my gaze a moment longer than most children would have.
Then nodded once, like that made enough sense for now.
Good girl.
By the time we left, the herb bed looked less neglected, Choza had declared both me and Mikoto "sensible in complementary ways," and Duy was positively radiant from having what he clearly thought of as a successful Academy reconnaissance.
On the walk home, the village felt a little different.
Not because it had changed.
Because it had faces now.
Children who weren't just part of the scenery. Not cardboard cutouts waiting for the Academy to happen to them. Choza with sugar on his fingers and reverence for beef. Mikoto with dirt under her nails and eyes sharp enough not to waste questions.
The Academy had seemed, from a distance, like one more village machine. A place where children got sorted, sharpened, and pointed outward.
But now it also looked like a place with actual people in it. Children already becoming themselves in crooked little ways. Some annoying. Some promising. Some both.
Duy must have sensed the shift in me, because he rested a hand on my shoulder as we turned onto our street.
"You are thoughtful."
"Yes."
"Good."
I looked up at him. "That's all?"
He smiled down at me, broad and ridiculous and more perceptive than the village often gave him credit for.
"For now," he said. "You looked at the path ahead and did not shrink from it. That is enough for one day."
When we got home, I checked the hens first out of habit.
Then the goats.
Then the pigs, because experience had taught me that if you ignored pigs they would use the time to become criminals.
The yard smelled like feed, dust, old straw, and work waiting to be done.
I then checked the shine, putting my hands on the crock to check if the tonic had bonded right. Ran a little alchemy through the mixture to help it along and gave it a nod.
Good.
I stood there a long moment with the evening settling around me and thought about lines.
The line at the Academy clerk's desk.
The line between candy and fuel.
The line between child and tool.
The line between a village full of strangers and a village that had started, inconveniently, to fill with people I might actually care about.
That was the dangerous part.
Not the Academy itself, though i'm sure it has its own dangers.It was the people in it.
I laughed and thought "Choza was right about one thing. A friendship founded on beef was as solid a beginning as any boy could ask for".