Dad met us at the door wearing the expression of a man who had just been handed evidence that his life choices were paying off.
He liked having children in the house.
Not in the vague, abstract village sense where adults say they care about youth and then immediately start talking about how to sort it, direct it, or sacrifice it properly. I mean he genuinely liked the presence of young people. The noise of them. The appetite of them. The fact that they arrived carrying their whole unfinished selves around in plain view.
When he saw Choza, he brightened.
When he saw Mikoto beside him, he somehow brightened further without becoming louder, which I took as proof that Tomi's influence was not entirely wasted.
"Welcome!" he said, with just enough restraint that it didn't count as an ambush. "Come in, come in. Wash first. A Youthful meal deserves clean hands."
Choza was already moving toward the wash basin like a man hearing the call of destiny.
Mikoto bowed politely. "Thank you for having me, Might-san."
Dad put a hand to his chest as though personally honored by the courtesy. "Any friend of Tai's is welcome here."
That made Mikoto glance sideways at me.
Not because of the invitation. Because of the word friend.
At school, children our age tended to orbit one another while pretending not to name it. That was safer. Less embarrassing. Less binding if the social weather turned. But something about hearing Dad say it plainly in the middle of the kitchen settled the matter. She didn't argue. Just lowered her eyes a fraction and let the corner of her mouth lift.
Adorable again. It was becoming a problem.
Lunch was simple. Rice, eggs, butter, a little chopped onion, a little sauce, bread on the side, broth to start. Not fancy. But our ingredients were good, and good ingredients make liars out of plain recipes. Dad plated the omurice with more flourish than it warranted, then stood back like a chef unveiling statecraft.
Choza stared at his serving with reverence.
"I would like," he said slowly, "to thank your family for its contributions to civilization."
Dad laughed hard enough that the room started to smell like sunshine and I could tell he was holding back from using his special genjutsu trick.
Mikoto took her first bite more carefully. She did most things carefully at first. Then her eyes widened just a little.
"That's good," she said.
I gave her a look.
She met it and corrected herself.
"That's very good."
"There," Choza said, pointing with his spoon. "Now you sound like a truthful person."
Mikoto ignored him and took another bite.
Dad sat down with us. In a lot of households, adults fed children and then moved back into the adult world where the real conversation happened. Dad had never been like that. He talked across the table the same way he talked in the yard or on the road: like whatever was in front of him deserved his full attention.
"So," he said, "Class S."
Choza straightened a little at the words.
Mikoto set down her spoon.
I kept eating. Somebody had to maintain standards.
"It looks that way," I said.
Dad nodded once, pleased but not surprised. He had been expecting it, which I found both flattering and irritating.
"That means they've started sorting harder," he said.
"They have," I said. "Mixed ages too. More specialists. More individual training plans."
Mikoto glanced up. "You like that."
"I do."
"Why?"
"Because pretending every child needs the same thing is lazy."
Dad pointed at me with his chopsticks. "Exactly."
Mikoto's eyes moved from him to me, and for one brief second she looked almost amused by how annoyingly aligned we were.
Choza, to his credit, was chewing too earnestly to interrupt with something foolish.
Dad went on. "A village ought to know what it's growing. And a teacher ought to know what kind of tree he's been handed before he starts cutting branches."
"That is either wise," I said, "or concerning, depending on how literally one hears it."
"It is both," Dad said proudly.
Mikoto laughed into her sleeve.
There it was again, easier now. Not the bright crack I'd gotten at her birthday, but something close. The edges of the school-princess façade kept slipping every time she forgot to hold it in place. Home had done something good to her. Or maybe being here had. Or maybe it was simply that children relax faster around honest strangeness than adults do.
After lunch I took them back outside to Brindle.
That had been part of my plan all along. I wanted them fed first so they'd have enough strength to appreciate the glory of cattle.
Choza walked into the yard still chewing the final bite of bread.
Mikoto went straight to the calf fence as though pulled.
Brindle had been waiting in the shade, but the moment she saw me she perked up and came loping over with that absurd, loose-jointed enthusiasm young cattle have before they discover the dignity of their own weight. She had grown even in the last week. Not in the gaunt, stretched way sick miracles grow. Properly. Broader through the chest, stronger in the legs, her coat already carrying more shine than it should have.
Choza looked from the calf to me.
"She's bigger."
"Yes."
"How much bigger?"
"Enough that I'm pretending not to be alarmed."
Mikoto crouched at the fence and held out her fingers. Brindle sniffed them with the solemn suspicion of a noblewoman investigating a suspicious introduction, then decided Mikoto was acceptable and pressed her nose into her palm.
Mikoto smiled fully.
That did me in a little.
I had grandchildren once. I knew exactly what that look did to old men who had survived long enough to become soft in the right places. It was the same look my granddaughter wore the first time a bottle calf had followed her around the pasture, convinced she was a new and interesting kind of cow.
"She really is beautiful," Mikoto said.
"She is growing too fast," I replied.
Choza blinked. "Can things grow too fast if they're still healthy?"
"Yes," I said. "That's usually when you start getting interesting problems later."
Choza, who had no respect for the sanctity of serious thought, pointed at Brindle and said, "Can I ride her later when she's bigger?"
"No," I said.
"Why not?"
"Because she is not a cart."
"She could be."
"She will not be."
Mikoto actually laughed out loud at that.
It was a good sound. Better when it came unexpectedly.
We spent another hour in the yard after that. Not doing anything grand. That was the charm of it. Choza helped Dad with one of the feed buckets because he had the sort of straightforward decency that made him useful when work was visible. Mikoto asked sensible questions about the herbs I had near the shed and the chicken feed mix. Brindle followed me along the inside of her little pen as I checked the fence again, which was flattering and dangerous because it made me want to mover her in the house.
By the time my friends left, the afternoon had gone soft around the edges.
At the gate, Choza said, "Your house always smells like useful things."
"That is one of the best compliments you've ever given me."
"I know."
Mikoto hesitated a moment before stepping out into the lane.
Then she said, "Thank you. For lunch."
"You're welcome."
"And for Brindle."
That was not how that sentence ought to have been arranged, which meant it was honest.
I nodded once. "Anytime."
She gave Brindle one last look over her shoulder before she followed Choza back toward the main road.
Dad watched them go with his thumb up, teeth gleaming, I copied his form and managed to get a laugh out of both of them once they left the gate.
The next week ended summer and started the work.
S Class assessments began on the first day back.
That alone set the mood. There was no easing into the year. No soft return to drills and posture and polite expectations. They had us in the yard early, names checked, forms distributed, water stations set up, instructors already waiting with the kind of quiet organization that told me somebody had spent serious time planning how to break children down into measurable parts.
Kuma-sensei led the S class.
That pleased me more than I had expected.
He looked exactly the same as last year—broad, scarred, patient in the way only hard men who like children manage to be. But the yard around him was different. More staff. More equipment. Additional teachers from other disciplines watching from under the eaves. Targets set at varying distances. Weighted practice gear laid out in rows. Tables for written evaluations. Even a medical station off to one side.
The class itself looked sharper too.
Shikaku stood like a boy who had already decided most of the day would be predictable and was saving his energy for the parts that he couldn't sleep through. Inoichi looked bright-eyed and observant, the sort of child who probably heard tone before words. The Hyūga twins had that placid, impossible composure their clan seemed to issue with the milk. The older Aburame boy held himself with a reserve so complete it felt almost professional. Choza looked determined. Mikoto stood with her usual neat poise, though I noticed she was still a little looser with herself than she had been before summer.
Good.
Kuma-sensei let us settle before he spoke.
"Last year," he said, " for the second year students the Academy taught you how to stand up in the same room together without embarrassing your families every hour."
"For the older children last year was spent refining what you already knew and working out the kinks of resource allocation."
A few children smiled despite themselves.
"This year, the standard rises."
His gaze moved over us.
"Class S is not a prize. It is an investment. The village will spend more time, effort, and training on you than on any other students your age. That means you will be measured more often, corrected more directly, and tolerated less when you waste what is being given to you."
That shut the yard up nicely.
He went on.
"Some of you are here because you are talented. Some because you are disciplined. Some because the village sees signs of future usefulness. None of those things guarantee you stay. If you do not work, you drop. If you do not improve, you drop. If somebody in A Class proves they deserve this investment more than you, they take your place."
Choza swallowed hard beside me.
I didn't blame him. Those were not gentle words.
Then Kuma-sensei gestured toward the instructors waiting near the yard.
"Over the next two weeks, you will be assessed in academics, physical capacity, chakra control, tactical thinking, weapons familiarity, emotional stability, and specialization compatibility."
Choza raised a hand before anyone else could.
Kuma-sensei looked at him. "Yes?"
"What does specialization compatibility mean?"
One of the other instructors snorted softly. Kuma-sensei ignored him.
"It means," he said, "we are going to find out what kinds of training your body, mind, and temperament actually suit before you start inventing nonsense about what you want because it sounds impressive."
That was an excellent answer.
Mikoto's eyes flicked sideways toward me, because she knew perfectly well I liked it.
The first assessment was endurance.
Nothing reveals character faster than asking children to keep going after pride stops being enough to carry them.
We ran first. Yard laps, then obstacle lanes, then longer distance outside the Academy grounds under supervision. Not sprinting. Sustained pace. Recovery windows measured. Breath checked. Posture observed. The point was not merely who finished. It was how.
Choza handled the early part well. Better than last year. His lunch had improved, and his mother had clearly been feeding him with the same seriousness Duy applied to most things. He still ran hot, though. Still had a tendency to brute-force pace until his breathing started to mess him up.
The Hyūga twins moved like metronomes. Efficient, infuriatingly tidy, and likely born with better posture than most grown men. Shikaku did that lazy-looking thing clever people do when they're actually pacing themselves properly and everyone else mistakes it for indifference. Inoichi looked lighter on his feet than I expected. Mikoto was not the fastest, but she was steady, which matters more over distance than speed.
I ran clean.
Not because I was trying to show off but because I had built a life around work before most of them had learned addition. The yard, the animals, the training, the better food, the steady Alchemy improvements in my body—those things added up.
Kuma-sensei said nothing as we finished.
He had assistants recording everything.
The second assessment was chakra control.
Leaves first, because apparently nobody in any generation gets to escape the leaf exercise. Then bark adhesion. Then balancing output while moving. Then holding a measured flow through the fingertips while performing simple written tasks, which I thought was clever and cruel in equal measure.
This part sorted people harder.
Some children who looked wonderful in the yard immediately turned clumsy the moment they had to divide attention. Some who had mediocre raw output turned out to have excellent fine control. The Aburame boy was unnervingly precise. Mikoto was clean and disciplined, though not flashy. Shikaku looked annoyed to be trying at all, which meant he was secretly trying hard. Choza's chakra clung a little too eagerly at first, then smoothed out when he stopped looking at the leaf like it had insulted him.
When my turn came, I kept things plain.
There is a difference between performing well and advertising. I wanted the first. I had no use for the second. So I did what was asked, no more, no less. Clean adhesion. Steady output. Nothing clever. Nothing that hinted at sunrise or sea wind or the fact that I now knew my father had taught me how to accidentally leak feeling into the world.
Still, I caught Kuma-sensei watching a little longer than he watched most. He likely knew I had a bunch more in the tank and made eye contact with me before writing gesturing to one of the researchers to write something down.
By midday we had been measured enough to make children irritable and hungry. Lunch was taken in the shade under instructor supervision. Not because they feared we'd riot, though that would have been reasonable. Because apparently even our eating habits were being quietly observed now. They would be sending home suggested meal plans once they had our vitals tested.
Good.
A village that wants strong shinobi should pay attention to what goes into them.
Choza sat down beside me with the air of a man who had survived dignified suffering and expected compensation in rice.
"Well," he said between breaths, "this is a lot more serious than I thought it was going to be."
"Yes."
"I liked last year's version of school better."
"No, you didn't. You only liked being less tired."
"That is a kind of liking."
Mikoto sat on my other side and opened her lunch with more energy than usual, which meant the assessments had gotten under her skin too.
"You ran well," she said.
"So did you."
She made a face that meant she knew I was being polite.
Choza, pointing with his chopsticks, said, "The Hyūga don't run. They glide and make the rest of us feel like we are still learning to walk."
"I think it might be the stick shoved up their ass," I said.
That got a brief smile out of Mikoto. Choza started to laugh and inhaled some of his food by accident.
Across the yard, Shikaku was already sitting with Inoichi and the twins, talking quietly while the instructors pretended not to notice who clustered naturally. One of the older students was glaring at a water bucket like he'd been personally insulted by pace requirements. Another boy from A Class—I knew him only vaguely—was being watched by one of the chūnin with the kind of interest that suggested someone might be moving up before long if he kept performing.
Good.
Pressure keeps systems honest, at least for a while.
After lunch came tactical evaluations and paired movement.
Not full sparring yet. That would come later. First they wanted to see how we thought.
Positioning drills. Threat recognition. Small team scenarios with incomplete information. "If your left-side runner goes down, what changes?" "If this supply line is cut, what matters first?" "If your teammate freezes, what do you do?"
By the end of the day, the children who had walked in excited were leaving quieter.
S Class was not there to tell us we were special.
It was there to see whether the village's investment would compound or spoil.
As we were dismissed, Kuma-sensei called out one final thing.
"Tomorrow," he said, "we begin compatibility testing for elective placement."
That got everybody's attention back.
His mouth moved at one corner.
"Some of you are about to discover that the version of yourselves you imagined is less convincing than the version your instructors can actually see."
Then he sent us home.
Choza groaned all the way to the road.
Mikoto walked beside us with her hands folded in front of her, composed again now that we were back in public, but I could still see the signs of the day on her. The extra brightness in her eyes. The slight quickness in her steps. She was enjoying it, even if she wouldn't have admitted that in front of half the clan compound.
At the fork where we usually split, she glanced at me and said, "You like the testing."
"Yes."
"I do too. It feels like I'm getting closer to my dream."
She gave me that small, private smile again.
Then she went her way.
I went home to Brindle and Duy but mostly Brindle.
That, more than anything else, felt like the proper reward for surviving the first day of S Class.
When I came through the gate. Brindle was at the fence almost immediately, bright-eyed and eager, as if the most important event of the day had been my temporary absence and subsequent correction of it. I don't know how I am ever going to be able to eat this cow but that is a problem for future me.
I rested my forearms on the fence rail and rubbed the white patch on her forehead.
The Academy was sorting us, the village was investing, the future was beginning to show its teeth a little and in my yard, a calf built for my strange power was growing like an answer to a prayer I hadn't expected answered yet.