Following the acquisition of my first calf, the days sped up.
That happens sometimes when a man gets exactly what he has been wanting for too long. Time stops behaving like a road and starts behaving like a hill. You look up, and somehow evening is already sliding down toward you.
Brindle did that to me.
For the first three days after Dad brought her home, I was tempted to get a halter and lead rope and simply take her with me everywhere like a man who had finally lost the last useful part of his mind. I did not trust the world with her yet. I did not trust fences with her. I barely trusted the sky over her.
Dad put an end to that fast.
"You are not bringing a calf to the Academy," he said.
"Why not? She is my Ninja Support animal."
"No she isn't and because it is a school"
"So?"
He stared at me.
Then he said, very slowly, "Because calves do not attend school."
"That sounds made up."
"It is a rule of civilization."
I argued. Of course I argued. Brindle had taken to feed well, which made me feel vindicated in a way that no child should probably feel over livestock. Better than well, really. She was thriving.
My alchemy sang when I used it on her.
That was the part I could not stop thinking about.
With every other animal I had ever used it on, and even on myself, there had always been a sense of compromise. Just a faint, irritating feeling that I was pouring through a channel too narrow for what I was trying to do. Like the body receiving it could only accept so much and the rest had to go somewhere I couldn't quite follow.
Brindle was different.
With her, it felt like a reservoir with no end.
She took the alchemy the way good soil takes rain. I was beginning to believe that this thing had always been meant for cattle and everything else had just been me making do. I had the feeling that this was true much earlier but I didn't know if it was just emotional bleed off from my obsession.
She was growing at a pace I would have called impossible if I had seen it happen in anyone else's barn. Five times faster than she ought to have, with none of the wrongness that usually comes with unnatural growth.
Brindle was happy as a pig in shit, without the signs that can come from cows with abnormal growth.
Dad still made me leave her at home.
So I spent the week after our argument reinforcing the fencing around her little lot until even I had to admit she was safer there than she would be following me around the village like some kind of sacred agricultural mascot.
That same week, the Academy posted second-year placements.
The redesign of the Academy meant age no longer dictated everything. They took you abilities, work ethic, and bonds into account, which I thought was smart. If the village was serious about building future teams instead of just sorting children into stacks by talent and hoping affection showed up later, then friendships and temperaments needed to be part of the calculation.
Men will fight for duty. They fight harder for people.
Choza and I had agreed to go see the sorting together. I had seen him a few times over the break, usually under conditions involving food, and we had settled on a morning to meet at the Academy. By the time I got there, the grounds were already full.
First-year families were everywhere. Children running around with that particular kind of useless energy only the very young can produce before they're given structure. Parents hovering, encouraging, worrying, bragging, and pretending not to do any of those things. Chunin instructors sat behind long tables in the yard with papers, lists, forms, and expressions that smelled unmistakably of bureaucracy.
Choza was already waiting for me near the second-year board, lunch packed, hair neat enough that his mother had clearly won a battle before letting him leave the house.
"You're late," he said.
"I was checking a fence."
"You have calf eyes."
"That is not an insult."
"No," he agreed. "but I am surprised it has not worn off yet."
We went to the second-year postings together.
Our names were under Class S.
I read it twice just to make sure my eyes weren't inventing things.
Class S: Future Elite Jōnin Track.
Well.
That was one way to make a point.
Choza made a surprised noise beside me, halfway between delight and alarm. I couldn't blame him. That kind of label meant opportunity. It also meant pressure, scrutiny, and a village taking official notice of what you might become.
Mikoto's name was there too.
So were Shikaku and Inoichi, which made sense. The Hyūga twins were listed. So was Aburame Shibi, older than us by enough to notice. Shino's father, if I was remembering correctly. A few names I didn't know yet. A few I expected.
I looked through the other tables for Minato and didn't find him.
That could mean a few things. Too young this year. Not enrolled yet. Placed elsewhere for reasons I didn't understand. It was a useful reminder, if I needed one, that the future I remembered was not a clean map. It was weathered notes scrawled over a land that kept changing shape under my feet. I also didn't think Kishimoto had a great timeline when he started and thats why half of Naruto is just flashbacks.
I asked the chunin behind the table how the mixed ages would work.
He was the sort of man who had long since made peace with children asking anxious questions over administrative matters and answered me without irritation.
"Core lessons stay shared," he said. "Academic work is similar to your first year in that it is still groups by advancement. Physical programs are more individualized in S Class. You'll all be assessed again. Training plans will be written per student."
That got my attention.
"Written by who?"
"Instructors, specialists, and whichever clans or departments are providing support in the area you test well for." He glanced over the board as if reminding himself who he was talking to. "S Class gets more resources. That means more investment. It also means higher expectations."
Choza swallowed.
I asked, "And if a student doesn't keep up?"
The chunin shrugged with professional calm. "Then they drop to A Class and the slot goes to somebody who deserves the investment more."
I liked that.
It would suck if you were the one being dropped. but it was honest in the intentions of the village which is usually better than kind when you are building something that needs to survive.
It also fit with what I had been slowly noticing since my first year. Hiruzen was trying. Not perfectly. No system built by people ever was. But the design had intention in it. Somebody at the top of the village understood that if you wanted Konoha to endure, you could not simply wait for gifted children to appear and then applaud them for being exceptional.
By the time I finished speaking with the chunin, I saw Mikoto arriving with her family.
And, naturally, half the Uchiha district besides.
Say what you will about that clan, and Lord knows many people did, but unity was one thing they understood. Even their errands had the shape of a procession. Mikoto came with her parents and a cluster of relatives around them, all orderly movement and expensive cloth and faces composed just enough to suggest that everyone else in the yard should consider standing straighter.
I waved her over.
She saw me, then Choza, then the board.
The smile started before she reached us. Small at first, then larger once she found her name.
There was more of that at home-Mikoto in her these days. Not all the way. Her dream was to be the clan head and she was committed to her role but around us, the wrappings of perfect Uchiha princess loosened just a bit.
"You're in S too," I said.
Her eyes moved from her name to mine, then to Choza's.
"I see that. I am glad to be with you two again."
"Me too," I said. "It's shaping up to be a fruitful year."
That was, admittedly, a ridiculous thing for a child to say. Mikoto gave me the look I deserved for it.
Choza, who had no shame in practical matters, said, "I'm just glad I know where to sit."
That got a short laugh out of her.
I would never admit it to her, but I was genuinely relieved.
A track like that could have split children apart just as easily as it gathered them. We were still young enough that we could make new bonds. I just happened to really like the ones I had already made.
The chunin had more to say once Mikoto asked him about the elective list at the bottom of the S-class student role. Normally specialization courses didn't begin until the third year. In S Class, that was being pushed earlier. It was a two fold approach. The class was going to have all ages within it so they already had students in there who had electives, so for us second years the idea to start identifying strengths sooner made sense.
Kenjutsu. Fūinjutsu. Sabotage. Ninjutsu theory. Diplomacy. Seduction, which I thought was an insane thing to hand to children but was apparently being taught more as social disguise and manipulation than anything salacious. Tracking. Stealth. Logistics. Linguistics which included code breaking and sign language. Specialized martial arts. Weapon forms. More than that besides.
It looked, to my eye, as though Hiruzen had gone to the clans and the specialist departments and said, in essence, teach the village what you can spare, and let us stop pretending broad foundations and deep specialization are enemies.
Good policy.
S Class students would be required to take five elective subjects. Three would be assigned by the village after testing. Two would be our choice.
We wouldn't get to choose them until after the assessments.
That seemed sensible too. Children are often enthusiastic about the wrong version of themselves.
By then the yard had grown hotter and louder. Parents kept pouring in. Paperwork changed hands. A boy near the first-year tables had started crying because he thought "assessment" meant "punishment." Somewhere behind us an instructor was explaining, for the third time, that no, being from a respected clan did not exempt your child from writing practice.
Choza tugged lightly at my sleeve.
"Lunch?"
I looked at Mikoto. "Come with us."
She blinked. "Where?"
"My house."
Choza brightened immediately.
I went on. "Dad made omurice."
This was technically true.
Our "secret family recipe" was rice, eggs, a little hot sauce, and ingredients improved by alchemy. But the result was sound, and I had reached the age where any dish wrapped in egg acquired a prestige it did not entirely deserve.
Mikoto hesitated the way well-raised girls do when they have already decided yes but understand they still live in a world with mothers.
She looked back toward her parents.
Her mother saw the look, saw me, saw Choza, and smiled in that slightly dangerous way mothers do when they already know more than anyone else in the scene.
Mikoto went to ask.
I took the moment to glance back at the S board one more time.
It still looked real.
Not because of the prestige. Prestige is mostly a trick played by institutions to make young people tolerate pressure they would otherwise question. What mattered was what the posting represented. More resources. Better training. A serious attempt by the village to shape its future deliberately.
I was a simple man in that I liked deliberate things.
Mikoto returned a moment later.
"My parents said yes."
Choza, hearing this, looked as pleased as if the permission had been granted for his benefit.
So the three of us set off.
The walk to my place was an education for Mikoto and a delight for Choza.
Choza had been before, though not often enough to lose the pleasure of it. Mikoto had not. She had seen the yard from outside, heard about the animals, and no doubt built some image in her head that fit the village gossip about the Might household.
It did not, I think, prepare her for the reality.
We came in through the gate to the familiar smell of dust, straw, feed, old wood, and something cooking in butter.
Home.
The chickens made themselves known first. Then the goats. Then the pigs, who announced our arrival with the sort of ugly, enthusiastic noise that makes a man understand why poetry prefers songbirds.
Mikoto stopped just inside the yard and turned once slowly, taking it all in.
The coop.
The pens.
The shed.
The patched fences.
The training post.
The little house holding itself together by work and intent.
I watched her face do the careful thing it always did when she encountered something that mattered to her more than she wanted others to know. Then Brindle spotted me.
The calf made one of those absurd little bouncing starts only young livestock can manage, all legs and optimism, and came trotting at the fence of her lot.
That finished the matter.
Mikoto forgot to be composed.
"Oh," she said.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just that one soft sound girls make when something hits them squarely in the heart before manners can intervene.
Choza laughed.
"You've got the same face I had."
"She's beautiful," Mikoto said.
And she was.
Not in the refined way her clan would mean by the word. In the honest way healthy young things are beautiful. Bright eyes. Quick ears. Curious, eager movement. A body already blooming hard toward the life inside it.
I walked to the fence and held out my hand. Brindle came forward at once.
"This," I said with all due ceremony, "is Brindle."
Mikoto came closer.
"You named a brown calf Brindle?"
"She objected to my first two choices."
"That is not how naming works."
"It is if you're paying attention."
That got the smallest smile from her, but she was too busy looking at Brindle to keep it up. The calf stretched her nose out toward Mikoto's sleeve, sniffed once, and then sneezed.
Mikoto laughed.
There it was again. That same home-laugh from her birthday. Less princess, more child. Adorable in the exact way my granddaughter used to be adorable when she tried to stay dignified around baby goats and lost the fight.
Choza folded his arms. "I think she likes you."
"She sneezed on me."
"That is affection in animal language," I said.
"That explains a great many things about your life."
It was hard to argue with that.
From inside the house Dad called that lunch was ready.