Practice

There were twelve hand seals: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Boar. Each seal had its own distinctive hand sign.

During Houka's first practice, his fingers began trembling by the time he reached the fourth seal. By the eighth, his little finger was already cramping. After he finished the full set of twelve, both hands felt sore and painful, and he was miserable.

After practicing for a little over half an hour, Houka's hands cramped up.

"Ow! That hurts!"

But Houka knew he had to keep at it. He was only six, and his body was still very adaptable. Once he was older and his finger bones had set, practicing would probably take twice the effort for half the results.

"Keep going!"

Houka gritted his teeth as sweat dripped from his forehead, soaking the front of his shirt. He practiced the hand signs one at a time. When his hands cramped, he rested for a while, then started again. Gradually, the sun sank toward the west. The evening sky was a blood-red ocean that flooded the entire courtyard in an instant.

All ten of Houka's fingers were swollen and bruised. He could no longer press his little finger and ring finger together!

"Phew!"

Houka collapsed onto the grass in the courtyard. His hands hurt so badly that he wanted to have them amputated!

"Wait, I wonder if Chakra can fix this soreness."

Houka hurriedly closed his eyes and directed the blue Chakra in his body to flow slowly into his hands.

A faint blue glow appeared around the fingers of both hands, looking especially dreamlike in the sunset.

But since he had never learned Medical Ninjutsu, no matter how much Chakra he spread over his fingers, it did nothing to heal them.

"Ugh."

As he sighed, the carefree Uchiha Obito suddenly barged in.

"Houka, time to make dinner!!!"

Uchiha Obito's face was lit up with a happy smile. That afternoon, he had helped more than a dozen grandmothers cross the street and earned the Lifetime Achievement Award for Helping Others. He was in such a good mood that he practically floated as he walked, as if he were about to ascend to heaven.

Then he saw Houka slumped on the ground, his hands curled up like chicken claws in all sorts of odd directions.

Uchiha Obito's eyes widened. "Houka, what happened to your hands?"

As he spoke, he rushed over and grabbed Houka's hands, turning them this way and that. He looked like an old scholar examining them, and seemed about ready to bring them to his mouth and take a bite.

"Idiot, that hurts! Let go!" Houka pulled his hands back and shot Uchiha Obito a glare. "As for dinner, I'll supervise you while you cook."

"What? How can you do this to me?" Uchiha Obito looked crestfallen, but in the end, he gave in to Houka's firm insistence.

But the guy's brains were definitely out of order. Houka reminded him again and again, yet he still made one mistake after another while cooking. He either forgot to add salt or mistook sugar for MSG, and in the end, he even burned the food.

Uchiha Obito scratched his head, wearing an expression of baffled embarrassment.

"Ugh, at least the rice is cooked."

Houka sighed helplessly and made do with the meal. Then he watched Uchiha Obito wash the dishes before finally letting him leave.

With the moon high overhead, Houka soaked his hands in hot water for a while, then began practicing tree climbing and Water Walking.

Both exercises were meant to improve Chakra control. Some people were naturally gifted and mastered them as soon as they tried, while others needed to practice for a long time before gradually getting the hang of them. Fortunately, Houka had more than twenty years of life experience. After overcoming his fear of heights during his first attempt at climbing a tree, he quickly got into the swing of things.

"This is pretty fun!"

Houka stood sideways on the tree trunk, his body parallel to the ground. He occasionally turned his head to look around, enjoying the novel view the change in perspective gave him. After a while, he got used to it and walked back and forth along the trunk. Finally, he slowly made his way beneath a branch, hanging upside down from the trunk like a bat.

Gravity made Houka's internal organs feel a little uncomfortable, so he instinctively used Chakra to protect them. The discomfort soon disappeared.

"Now I'll try Water Walking!"

Houka climbed down and walked to the small pond in one corner of the courtyard. He slowly spread Chakra over the soles of his feet, then gently stepped onto the surface of the water.

Splash!

Without a word, Houka fell straight into the pond.

"Damn it!"

Houka swam back out of the water, completely soaked.

"This makes no sense. Climbing the tree went so smoothly."

Houka spread Chakra over his soles again and tried walking on the water. This time he was prepared. The moment his foot sank beneath the surface, he pulled it back. He kept trying, but even after soaking his shoes, he made no progress at all.

It was already the middle of the night, with the moon at its highest, before six-year-old Houka finally couldn't go on. He was yawning nonstop.

"Yawn... I guess I'll have to try again tomorrow."

Then Houka took a quick bath and went to bed.

The next morning, Houka was woken by Uchiha Obito next door. Still half asleep, he threw together a simple breakfast and ate it before realizing that his hands no longer hurt.

"They're healed? Could this be my cheat after being reincarnated? A quick recovery from soreness and fatigue?"

Houka carefully examined his little hands. They were fair and tender, and his ten slender fingers looked as delicate as green onions. The more he looked, the more captivated he became by them, until his eyes were practically turning into hearts.

"Ugh, perfect hands. If I'd had them in my past life and hadn't learned piano, that would've been a crime."

After shaking his head and sighing for a while, Houka began to cultivate Chakra.

With the vast amount of spiritual energy in his mind, cultivating Chakra was relatively easy for him. After all, his body had ten trillion cells, and he could draw energy from them with hardly any effort.

As Houka felt the Chakra inside him increasing bit by bit, he felt a strange sense of fulfillment.

"So this is what it feels like to get stronger."

At noon, Uchiha Obito showed up right on time again, making a racket and demanding a feast cooked by Houka.

Houka didn't mind. Smiling, he prepared enough food for three people.

"Houka, why did you make enough for three?" Uchiha Obito asked, looking puzzled as he saw the dishes on the table.

Houka rolled his eyes at him. "The other portion is for your grandmother."

Uchiha Obito froze, then tears spilled from his eyes. "Waaah, Houka, you're so kind! I've decided—I'm going to be your friend for life!!!"

Uchiha Obito planted one foot on the dining table and shouted like an angry youth, the veins on his forehead bulging. He wore an outrageously smug expression, as if he were about to stew Houka and serve him as a snack with drinks, and there was nothing Houka could do to stop him.

Houka's eye twitched. He kicked Uchiha Obito off the table.

Sorry, but Houka had a bit of a cleanliness obsession.

In the end, Uchiha Obito packed up a portion of the food, tears still at the corners of his eyes, and hurried back to the house next door.

Houka shook his head and laughed. "That Obito really is too kind."

When he thought about what Obito would do in the future after becoming Tobi—releasing the Nine-Tails and destroying Konoha, directly causing the death of his sensei's wife, Kushina, and later instigating one war after another—it was as if they were two completely different people.

"Could this be what they mean when they say the deeper the love, the deeper the hate?"

After lunch, Houka looked at his perfect hands and began practicing his hand seals again!