When Takuya came to the ninja academy again, he brought neither wooden boards nor dry grass. He only carried a very shallow bronze tray.
The tray was small, its edges polished bright with wear. It made a faint metallic sound as he set it on the desk. The children had been quietly discussing that line from last time—"put the technique into the second half"—but when they saw the tray, their voices gradually fell silent. Everyone knew that the things Takuya had brought recently never looked frightening at first, yet they always ended up exposing some part of a person's heart that had not been hidden deeply enough.
Kiyo stared at the bronze tray for a long time. "You're not going to roast us this time, are you?"
Morita Yu replied beside him, "Relax. Even if he does, he'll pick the more useful parts first."
The children in the front row laughed at once. Takuya seemed not to hear them. He simply set the tray in the center of the lectern, then took a small pouch of fine sand from his sleeve and slowly poured it into the tray.
"Today, I won't be teaching a technique, and we won't be looking at fire," he said. "We'll look at heat."
The moment those words fell, even Che unconsciously softened his breathing by half a beat.
Because heat came before fire.
Once fire appeared, many things were already too obvious. Brightness, sound, scorching heat, the sting to the eyes—anyone knew that meant danger. But heat was different. Before it revealed itself, it was easiest to misjudge, and easiest to use one's own impatience to force it ahead of time. If they could not see this layer clearly, then even if they truly learned Fire Release later, their movements and hearts could easily burn