Ramen Shop

Ramen shop.

Warm steam mingled with the rich aroma of pork-bone broth. It was one of the few places in Konoha where people could briefly forget they were ninja and enjoy some peace.

"I'm telling you... it's been two weeks! Two weeks!"

Uzumaki Kushina listlessly poked at the naruto fish cake in her bowl with her chopsticks. Even her vivid red hair seemed to droop with boredom.

"That Jonin named Orochimaru—what kind of long-term S-rank mission is he on? Why hasn't he come back to the village yet?"

Hiroki ate his noodles at a leisurely pace. Unlike Kushina, who was growing restless, he was happy to take things easy.

Those two weeks had given him time to optimize the [Muscle_Sustainable_Growth_v0.2.bat] script to near perfection. As long as the big rat didn't suddenly drop dead of kidney failure like last time, he planned to use it on himself for human testing.

And he was also making rapid progress in exploring the system.

For example, he'd now organized the files on his Memory Disk. He'd discovered that tagging and renaming specific memories, then creating a separate folder for them on the disk, made those memories much clearer.

He could even vividly recall memories from ten or twenty years ago, back when he was still in school, before he'd transmigrated.

Like when he'd conducted experiments on the rats and recognized kidney failure at a glance—a feat that the programmer Hiroki could never have managed.

After all, ever since university, he'd forgotten everything he'd learned and given it all back to his teachers. But now things seemed different. Through his Memory Disk, he could force himself to recall every book he'd read, every subject he'd studied, even the finer details of manga.

For example, Hiroki had only recently learned that, according to the official character profiles, Namikaze Minato had graduated at ten, while Uzumaki Kushina had originally graduated at twelve. That meant Minato had graduated two years before Kushina!

Considering their ages now, perhaps it was because Minato had saved Kushina from the Cloud Ninja in the original timeline that he'd made a name for himself and rapidly shot up the ranks to become Hokage.

In short, Hiroki's past two weeks had been both quick and fulfilling.

"Don't worry. The Third must have a plan," he comforted her. "This just gives us more time to prepare."

"Prepare? I'm about to rot from boredom!" Kushina grumbled. Just then, a conversation at the next table caught their attention.

"Look, it's them..." A young mother lowered her voice and spoke excitedly to her husband. "They're the geniuses who graduated early!"

"Oh, wow! So that's Sawada Hiroki and Uzumaki Kushina! They look even better in person than in the papers! I wish our kid could be as outstanding as they are!"

"Exactly! Daimaru, take a look at them. You should learn from them."

Before long, the couple approached with their child, who looked about five or six. They seemed a little embarrassed.

"Sorry to bother you! Um... our Daimaru really admires you two, and he insisted on coming over..." The man scratched his head awkwardly, then shot the boy an exasperated look before continuing. "So, could you... could you sign his back?"

As he spoke, he even turned his child around and lifted his shirt.

Little Daimaru looked thrilled, stars practically shining in his eyes.

The boy's mother scolded her husband. "Honestly! How many times have I told you not to compare him to other people's kids? You're just bothering them!"

"..." The husband looked awkward.

"..." Hiroki and Kushina looked awkward too.

Staring at the little bare back, Hiroki and Kushina had no idea what to say. Should they comment on how much the village admired its young geniuses?

Or should they say this family was a little too enthusiastic?

In any case, after scrambling to deal with the overly eager villagers, the two of them fled with their ramen in hand.

"No, no. This place draws way too much attention." Kushina's cheeks flushed as she grabbed Hiroki and dragged him toward the hills behind the village. "Let's go somewhere else!"

A breeze brushed across the grass on the hillside, and at last they had some peace. But before they could even sit down, a voice sounded behind them.

"Sawada Hiroki. Uzumaki Kushina."

The two whirled around. An Anbu Ninja wearing an animal mask had appeared silently beneath the trees, though neither of them had noticed him arrive.

"By order of the Third," the Anbu said in a completely emotionless voice, "Lord Orochimaru has returned to the village. The two of you are to go to Training Ground 44 at once. He will personally assess you."

The excitement on Kushina's face froze, replaced by shock and displeasure.

"What?! Another assessment?! Didn't we already pass?"

"This was requested personally by Lord Orochimaru. If you have any objections, you may report them to the Third."

Meanwhile, at Hiroki's home.

The place was empty. Only a row of rat cages on the windowsill bore witness to their owner's recent, busy work.

A figure appeared in the middle of the room like a ghost, without making a sound.

It was Orochimaru.

Rather than wait at the training ground for the two children to arrive, he'd come to Hiroki's house first!?

He ignored everything else in the room, his golden slit pupils sweeping over the row of cages with interest.

He saw the healthy, normally active rats in Group A's cages, serving as the control group.

He also saw the stiff corpses in Group B's cages, left behind by failed experiments. Their muscles were abnormally developed, and the tops of their heads were pointed.

Finally, his gaze fell on the cages in Group C. The hamsters there were clearly stronger and more robust than those in Group A, but they weren't deformed like the ones in Group B. They hopped about in their cages, brimming with life.

Orochimaru extended a pale, slender finger through the cage and teased one of the Group C hamsters.

He didn't need to look at any experiment logs. Those three groups of cages alone told him everything Hiroki had done over the past two weeks.

A controlled experiment to enhance muscle growth?

That was the sort of thinking a researcher would have. Orochimaru's lips curled. He wondered whether the Third knew that the next candidate he'd chosen was more in line with Danzo and the Second Hokage's approach.

Orochimaru's lips slowly curved into a playful smile, tinged with a hint of menace.

Someone like him wasn't likely to become Hokage so easily.

And besides...

A trace of malice showed in Orochimaru's eyes. He was growing ever more curious about where Hiroki had learned all this.

The records from Root and Anbu showed that none of the knowledge Hiroki had encountered so far included anything that could have enabled him to conduct experiments or develop ninjutsu.

Could he be a Cloud Ninja spy?

Orochimaru thought he'd better be. That way, he'd have an exceptionally interesting test subject.