Outside the Ninja Academy.
Three figures walked past the entrance, chatting and laughing. Suddenly, the one on the left came to a stop.
She turned to look at the Ninja Academy's school building and clasped her hands to her chest without thinking. Her gaze was complicated. "Sasuke, Naruto... You must be taking the Chunin Exams right now. How wonderful."
"Sakura, what's wrong?" her teammate Yoru Ichiro asked, turning to look at her in confusion.
Harukami Satsuki sighed. "Sakura must be thinking about the Chunin Exams."
"It's all our fault."
Yoru Ichiro lowered his head in shame. "With your grades, Sakura, you could have taken the Chunin Exams this year. We held you back."
Sakura forced a smile and shook her head. "Not at all. I'm only good at theory. I'm no use in actual combat, and I'm not good at anything else, either..."
The more Sakura said, the worse she felt. Back at the Ninja Academy, she'd been one of the most popular students in her class. On every exam, aside from Sasuke, which of those loudmouthed, whining boys hadn't begged her to "let" them peek at her answers? But once she left school, she realized that theoretical knowledge was the least valuable thing of all!
Iruka-sensei had placed so much importance on theoretical scores, and emphasized it countless times. And yet, and yet...
Sakura's expression grew complicated. Now she thought of Naruto, the "Dead Last," whose theory scores had been so bad that he'd ranked at the bottom of his entire year—and, for all she knew, the Ninja Academy's entire history.
So what if his theory scores were bad?
What did it matter?
Less than half a year after graduating, Naruto had taken the Chunin Exams. With his talent for combat, even if he didn't pass this time, it