Konoha Hospital.
Taiichi arrived at the hospital early in the morning, neat and ready after finishing his training. Watching the crowds constantly entering and leaving through the hospital entrance, he could not help but sigh. No matter where one was, hospitals would never lack business.
As soon as he stepped through the doors, Taiichi stopped a young nurse and asked, "Miss Nurse, do you know where I can find the dean?"
"Such a sweet talker, little brother. Tell me, what do you need the dean for?"
Taiichi did not hesitate. He took out the internship certificate Tsunade had given him and handed it to the young nurse.
The nurse accepted it suspiciously. After scanning it twice, she stared at Taiichi in surprise. "Is this talking about you?"
"Yep, genuine and guaranteed!"
The nurse looked over the internship certificate again. Once she confirmed it was valid, she pointed him in the right direction. "Take those stairs to the top floor, then turn left. The first room is the Dean's Office. Dean Biwako should be in there right now."
"Thank you, sis. Well then, see you next time!" Taiichi said politely before leaving.
Arriving outside the Dean's Office, Taiichi knocked politely. After hearing a voice call, "Come in," he pushed open the door.
He casually shut the door behind him. The first thing he saw was a desk piled high with documents, followed by the beautiful middle-aged woman seated behind it, reviewing paperwork.
"Hello, Dean. I'm Taiichi Matsushita. Sister Tsunade referred me here for an internship. This is my internship certificate." As he spoke, he handed over the document.
Biwako had just finished reviewing her files. She raised her head at his words, accepted the certificate, and gave it a quick look before saying warmly, "So you're Taiichi. Tsunade already told me about you. She praised you to the skies—I've rarely seen her praise anyone so much!"
"Sister Tsunade taught me well," Taiichi said. He could not undermine Tsunade here.
"Hehe!" Biwako chuckled as though she had remembered something.
"Since Tsunade referred you, and the hospital happens to be short on staff, you can stay. Come to the hospital every morning for your internship." Biwako did not beat around the bush. "Come with me. I'll show you around the hospital first, then take you to the department where you'll be interning."
Dean Biwako led Taiichi down corridors scented with disinfectant. Sunlight slanted through the frosted windows, casting long strips of light across the gray-white tiles. As they passed the infusion room, several bandaged children poked their heads out through the doorway and curiously stared at the short sword on Taiichi's back.
Three scratch marks marred the sign for the Trauma Department. When the door opened, its hinges let out an under-oiled creak. A female ninja organizing rolls of bandages turned around, her neat short hair visible beneath her headband. Biwako patted Taiichi on the shoulder. "Director Fujita, this is the child Tsunade recommended."
Fujita Sana adjusted her round-framed glasses, her gaze sweeping over Taiichi, who was not even tall enough to reach her chest. "Excellent Healing Technique examination results?" Suddenly, she grabbed a medical chart from the desk and flung it at him. The pages scattered through the air like a fan. Taiichi instinctively raised his hand and caught the sheet nearest his face while the rest fluttered down around his feet.
"Your reaction speed passes." Fujita picked up the scattered charts. "But there won't be time for you to slowly organize things on the battlefield." She kicked aside a transport bed blocking the way, its metal wheels scraping sharply against the tiles. "The Trauma Department handles more than sixty emergency patients every day. Your task today is to assist Haruno."
The nurse named Haruno was sterilizing wound-cleaning instruments. She brushed aside loose strands of hair stuck to her neck with sweat and motioned for Taiichi to lean in and inspect the tweezers soaking in medicinal solution. "Seventy-five percent alcohol for fifteen minutes. It's much faster than boiling." As she spoke, the sound of stretcher wheels rolled in from the corridor. Haruno grabbed a tray and rushed out, but not before reminding him, "Put on your mask!"
The first patient was a Genin whose palm had been sliced open by a kunai. Haruno cleaned the wound as though she were dismantling an explosive tag, using tweezers to wipe the turned-out flesh with a cotton ball. Taiichi noticed rust deep inside the wound and was just about to warn her when Haruno had already uncapped the hydrogen peroxide. "Hold down his arm."
Amid the sizzling of the solution touching the wound, the Genin's scream made even the instrument tray tremble. Haruno took the opportunity to probe the wound with tweezers and remove the debris. When she turned around, she found Taiichi already waiting beside her with needle and thread in hand. Bloodstained cotton balls were continuously thrown into the trash. When Haruno cut the suture thread, Taiichi promptly handed her gauze soaked in anti-inflammatory medicine.
"Have you studied battlefield first aid?" Haruno raised an eyebrow as she tied off the bandage. Taiichi was wiping bloodstains from the instrument table. Hearing that, he pointed to the chart of human acupoints on the wall. "Sister Nonō taught me how to apply pressure to stop bleeding."
The late-morning sun began to burn hot, and the newly delivered patient bore fresh burns. When Director Fujita opened the window for some air, she saw Taiichi crouching in the corner of the treatment room. The boy was using green chakra light to envelop a crying child. The blistered knee was scabbing over at a visible rate beneath the glow.
"The Healing Technique isn't for treating scrapes." Fujita appeared behind Taiichi with her arms folded. "A ninja's chakra is limited. It should be used where it is needed most. Scrapes like this only need disinfection."
"Understood, Director," Taiichi answered, but the Healing Technique in his hands did not stop.
Seeing this, Fujita did not get angry. Instead, she placed two boxes of brand-new medical gloves by his feet. Outside the window, the cicadas suddenly sounded shrill. The wheels of a stretcher approached from afar, and Haruno's shout rushed into the room together with the patient's groans. "Open fracture! Prepare a splint!"
When Taiichi rushed out after her, he saw that the ninja transporting the patient was covered in his companions' blood. A fractured shinbone had pierced through the combat pants, and Haruno was trying to straighten the twisted lower leg. Taiichi's hand moved faster than his thoughts, pressing against the patient's bleeding groin. The green glow in his palm turned the spurting blood into slowly oozing droplets.
"Blood pressure!" Director Fujita's voice was taut as steel wire. Taiichi maintained the chakra output until Haruno had secured the splint around the fracture. As the patient was wheeled toward the operating room, Haruno pulled off her blood-red rubber gloves and noticed that the hem of Taiichi's white coat was still dripping blood. Yet the boy was staring blankly at his trembling right hand—his fingertips still twitched faintly from the sustained chakra output.
When boxed lunches arrived from the cafeteria, Taiichi was practicing knots in the break room. Haruno snapped apart a pair of disposable chopsticks and poked him. "Suture knots are different from ninja knots. You need to leave room for swelling." The square knot she demonstrated formed a small mound on the gauze. By his third attempt, Taiichi's knot already looked convincing.
Director Fujita returned from the X-ray room while chewing on a rice ball and caught sight of the anatomical diagram Taiichi had drawn in a medical chart. His charcoal pencil was sketching a cross-section of a tearing wound caused by a kunai. The accuracy of the marked blood vessel locations reminded her of a certain blonde woman. When Taiichi handed over an organized checklist of sterilized instruments, she finally pointed at the storage cabinet and said, "Starting tomorrow, you'll be responsible for restocking supplies."
When the bell signaling the end of lunch break rang, Taiichi's white coat pockets were already stuffed with fruit candies fed to him by the nurses. As Haruno pinned a new name tag to his chest, she discovered that the boy had fallen asleep against the wall, still clutching a worn-out hemostat—one he had secretly picked out of the waste bin that morning to study. The cicadas outside were still chirping noisily, but no one woke the child whose eyelashes were still flecked with dried blood.
Taiichi's first morning of internship passed amid this bustle. Hospital training was far more difficult than he had imagined, but the gains were also much greater than expected. During just this one morning, he received constant notifications from the panel.
[You performed medical practical procedures. Related insight increased!] [You used Healing Technique. Related insight increased!] [Your skill Healing Technique improved. Experience +1] [You used Mystical Palm Technique. Related insight increased!] [Your skill Mystical Palm Technique improved. Experience +1] [You focused on medical practice. Genin profession experience +1]
That single morning not only pushed his already proficient Healing Technique to LV7, but directly raised the Mystical Palm Technique he had only recently learned to Lv2.
That afternoon, Taiichi dragged his exhausted body home. The morning internship had consumed too much chakra. Thinking about it now, Director Fujita had been right: a ninja's chakra was indeed too limited and should be used where it was needed more. Still, Taiichi had never regretted healing that child that morning. He simply understood better how to exercise restraint in the future.
Hokage's Office.
The doors were thrown open, and Danzo's wide sleeves swept in a gust of cold air. Hiruzen Sarutobi set down his pipe as blue smoke formed a spiderweb between them.
"Hand that orphan over to me." The fingers gripping Danzo's cane had turned white. "Flowers raised in a greenhouse cannot withstand wind and rain."
Sarutobi leisurely arranged the internship certificate beneath the crystal ball. Biwako had just delivered the certificate and report, and Tsunade's elegant signature had bled ink across the parchment. "Dean Biwako praised the child's suturing skills this morning." He blew away some ash. "The Medical Team is short on promising seedlings like him."
The cane slammed heavily against the ground, making the vermilion ink in the inkstone ripple. "Your idea of training him is having him bandage wounds?" A cold gleam burst from Danzo's single eye. "Root's training camp can temper his blade with real blood!"
"What he needs now is to form deeper bonds with everyone, not to have his blade taste blood immediately. Besides, this morning he used the Healing Technique to save three burned Anbu." Sarutobi rose to his feet, the flame patterns on his Hokage robe rising and falling with his movements. "Do you know how that child trains? He uses chakra every day to set broken bones for stray cats."
The scent of disinfectant drifted in through the window, while the wheels of the emergency team's stretchers crushed the silence below. Danzo suddenly snatched up the Ninja Academy report from the desk, leaving creases in the photograph of Taiichi sparring with Kakashi in swordsmanship. "A little brat with discipline this terrifying will become a second Orochimaru in twenty years!"
"That's why what he needs is Sister Nonō's ginger soup, not your Curse Mark." Veins bulged on the back of Sarutobi's hand as he pressed it against the desk. "Back then, Nawaki..."
The teacup swept away by Danzo's cane exploded into porcelain shards in the corner. A faint chakra glow flashed across the dark patterns on his sleeve. "Womanly sentiment! When an enemy's blade is at his throat, you'll regret not letting me saw off those weak branches!"
"Danzo, I am the Hokage!" Sarutobi suddenly raised his voice, making the window frames rattle. An image appeared in the crystal ball—the hospital corridor, where Taiichi was crouched down and offering candy to a crying child, the short sword on his back wrapped in cotton cloth to prevent accidental injury.
Danzo fell silent for a long time, as though suppressing the anger in his heart. It was impossible to tell whether he was angry at Hiruzen Sarutobi's softness or at his own hesitation back then.
At last, Danzo sneered. As he turned, his sleeve knocked over the bonsai Tsunade had sent. The purple clay flowerpot rolled across the red carpet, leaving a wet trail behind it. The roots of the half-withered pine sapling were covered in dirt. The gust from his slammed door sent documents flying across the desk. The internship application stamped by the Medical Department drifted through the air, finally covering the face of the child in the crystal ball as he smiled through his tears.
Before you continue