"Huh, Ino? What are you doing here?"
Chie Mai was lying in a hospital bed. When she saw Ino walk in with a bouquet of flowers, she was quite surprised.
She and Ino hadn't interacted much. They were just ordinary classmates.
Ino smiled faintly. "I heard you were injured and hospitalized. I happened to be passing by, so I came to see you."
As she spoke, she arranged the flowers in a vase and set them on the windowsill. Then she asked, "We only got assigned to teams today, and we haven't even started any missions yet, right? How did you end up like this?"
"Don't even ask!" Chie Mai said, looking thoroughly dejected. "The teacher we got assigned is a total lunatic. He doesn't even want us to become ninja. He said it was a practical exam, but he went straight for the kill."
"We only just graduated from the Ninja Academy. How could we possibly stand a chance against a Jonin?!"
A subtle, gloomy look flashed through Chie Mai's eyes. Ino seemed to have had a smooth path to becoming a ninja, which stirred up jealousy and resentment in her.
"Your Jonin teacher went straight for the kill?" Ino asked, slightly taken aback.
Wasn't she supposed to have been caught in the aftermath when Mo Chen lost control of his abilities and had her Chakra drained?
But after a moment's thought, Ino understood. Chie Mai must not dare tell the truth, and blaming the Jonin in charge was the most plausible excuse.
Only then did Ino realize that Mo Chen and his two teammates had fallen out so badly that they couldn't possibly stay on the same team.
So could Mo Chen still become a ninja?
"Who knows what he was thinking!" Chie Mai scoffed. "If he didn't want to lead a team, he shouldn't have taken ours. He took us on and then deliberately stopped us from passing. He seems like a complete psychopath!"
"Well, what's done is done. There's no point dwelling on it," Ino comforted her gently. "Even if you were dismissed, that doesn't mean you have to repeat a year at the Ninja Academy. Just spend some time making up for it and earn your teacher's approval, and you'll be assigned to a team again soon."
"But the most important thing right now is to recover. That way, you can catch up as soon as possible."
When a student was sent back to make up for their shortcomings, the Jonin in charge would report the reasons for their dismissal.
All they had to do was correct their weaknesses, make up for their deficiencies, and earn their teachers' approval at the academy. They would soon become full-fledged Genin.
However, these "makeup exam students" didn't have a Jonin teacher assigned specifically to them.
Even if they were assigned to a powerful captain, that person was just a captain. Their superior-subordinate relationship was only temporary.
This wasn't something Ino needed to concern herself with. She pretended to comfort Chie Mai, then took advantage of a moment when she wasn't looking to add something to the IV bottle.
Outside, below the windowsill, Shikamaru and Choji were hiding. They saw Ino's little trick.
Choji looked as if he'd expected as much. Ino really had come to stir up trouble—he just had no idea what she'd put in Chie Mai's IV bottle.
"Looks like the juice of some kind of flower," Shikamaru guessed. "Ino wouldn't go too far. She probably just wants to teach her a lesson, so at most it'll have a mild effect—something like poisoning, numbness, pain, itching, or hallucinations."
"If that's all it does, it probably won't be much of a lesson, will it?" Choji didn't really understand what Ino was trying to accomplish.
Would a little lesson like that really make Chie Mai change her attitude?
Even Choji, as naive as he was, didn't think so.
"Maybe she just wants to get it out of her system!" Shikamaru didn't really understand either, but that didn't stop him from taking Ino's side.
Shikamaru thought it over, then said, "If she used the same trick on both Chie Mai and Ryota, Ino would be exposed in no time. She probably wouldn't get into too much trouble, but secretly harming fellow villagers for no reason wouldn't look good."
"I don't consider them our teammates!" Choji immediately objected.
"Yeah, of course. I don't either!" Shikamaru smiled and led Choji toward the neighboring room. In a low voice, he said, "So we should help Ino out. If anything happens, Team 10 will take responsibility together!"
Ino chatted with Chie Mai for a while, then left after a bout of insincere pleasantries.
But as soon as she stepped out of the room, she noticed a commotion in the next ward. A crowd had gathered at the door, excitedly discussing something.
"What happened?" Ino asked, walking over curiously.
If she remembered correctly, Ryota was staying in the room next door. He was one of her targets, too.
"The young man in there might have gone crazy. He actually jumped onto the bed and started peeing. We couldn't stop him." A nurse couldn't hold back her urge to share the gossip.
As soon as Ino asked, the nurse blurted it out without even checking who she was talking to.
Peeing on the bed?
Ino stared in astonishment and instinctively peered through a gap in the crowd.
She could only see half of Ryota's back, along with a short stream of urine landing on the bed.
Inside the ward, two nurses were trying to hold Ryota back, but they couldn't move him at all.
They were also afraid of getting splashed, so they didn't dare get too close and couldn't put much strength into it.
Just as Ino looked over, Ryota's body gave a few shudders, and the stream stopped.
"What the hell! That's so disgusting!" Ino's face darkened instantly.
She'd been planning to put something in Ryota's IV bottle, too, but now it seemed completely unnecessary.
Just looking at him was disgusting. She'd better go home and wash her eyes.
Just as Ino turned to leave, the corner of her eye caught a shadow by the windowsill quickly shrinking out of sight.
At the same time, Ryota toppled onto the bed, landing in the puddle.
"Ah!!!"
"How could this happen? I didn't do it!"
"Listen to me! My body just went out of control. I don't know what happened!!"
Ryota's screams came from inside the ward. He tried to jump off the bed, but he was still hooked up to the IV, and the two nurses who'd gone in held him down firmly.
The nurses gently tried to calm him, while the people outside watched with disdain and whispered among themselves.
But none of that had anything to do with Ino anymore. She hurried out of the hospital ward and around to the back.
Sure enough, Shikamaru was crouching in the bushes outside Ryota's window.
Choji stood in front of him, using his chubby body to block him from view.
"So it was you two!" Ino didn't come closer. She only looked at them from a distance, her face full of disdain.
"Shikamaru, are you done yet? Ino spotted us," Choji said casually, still eating his chips.
Shikamaru emerged from the bushes, fastening his belt, with a mischievous grin on his face.
He'd used the Shadow Imitation Technique to extend his shadow through the window and take control of Ryota's body.
Ryota had wet the bed and humiliated himself in front of everyone.
Meanwhile, Shikamaru had hidden behind the bushes, with Choji blocking the view. Even if someone had seen them, they'd only have been accused of having no public decency.
"Why would you do something so unnecessary?" Ino immediately figured out what had happened.
She voiced her displeasure, but deep down, she was rather happy.
A teammate this considerate really did seem much better than someone like Sasuke, with his cold, poker-faced manner.
Shikamaru and Choji only grinned. Neither of them said anything about how they'd helped.
After all, they didn't like Ryota or Chie Mai either.
"All right, let's hit the dessert shop. My treat!" Ino genuinely accepted the two of them as her teammates at that moment.
As they left, they heard Ryota screaming from the ward, along with a commotion from Chie Mai's room.
They could even faintly hear Chie Mai singing foolishly—
"I'm gonna fly~ to the sky~ to the sky~!"
Before you continue