The "Taunts" from Uchiha

The days at the Ninja Academy felt like a carefully choreographed silent play to Kyohaku Uchiha. He played the role of a reticent character to perfection, one who seemed introverted and somewhat reclusive due to physical disability and family misfortune. In academic classes, he displayed moderate effort and decent comprehension, neither leading nor falling behind, firmly occupying the middle ground and blending completely into the background. During theoretical explanations, he always kept his head down, appearing to listen intently while actually reviewing and deepening the knowledge gained from his father's notes and the library in his mind.

The real challenge came from practical classes.

On the training ground, the other children engaged in basic physical training, running, jumping, and drilling. Kyohaku could only lean on crutches, performing extremely limited, teacher-assigned adaptive activities off to the side. Every movement clearly revealed the discomfort radiating from his right foot. He always chose the outermost corner, minimizing his presence as much as possible.

Yet the Uchiha clan crest was far too conspicuous, much like a beacon drawing moths in the dark. Even though he deliberately kept a low profile, that "pride" and "uniqueness" rooted in their bloodline still prevented the children of the same clan from ignoring his "abnormality."

At first it was merely whispering and strange looks. Gradually, certain voices began to grow clear and grating.

One afternoon, during basic shuriken-throwing practice, the children took turns throwing wooden practice shuriken at a wooden target not far away. Kyohaku was also called upon to participate; leaning on his crutches, he struggled to maintain his balance standing on one foot, then used his left hand (his dominant hand) to toss the shuriken with extreme clumsiness. Lacking power and with a skewed trajectory, the shuriken struck the edge of the wooden target feebly and clattered to the ground.

A few muffled snickers sounded from the line.

One voice stood out, exceptionally loud and carrying unmasked contempt, "Hey, cripple, what's the point of you practicing shuriken like that? You threw it shorter than my grandmother!"

Kyohaku raised his head to see that the speaker was a stocky black-haired boy among his peers, sporting spiky hair, thick eyebrows, and the arrogant look common to Uchiha children, blended with a sense of innate talent and familial superiority. He remembered the name: Tetsuzan Uchiha, the son of some minor leader within the clan.

Beside him, a taller, thinner boy with an equally critical gaze chimed in. This was Daiichi Uchiha, whose family seemed very close to Tetsuzan's. "Exactly, wouldn't it be better to just honestly stay at home? You have to come to school and embarrass us Uchiha. My father said that someone like you shouldn't even be a ninja, you should just honestly live as a normal person!"

These words struck precisely like cold pebbles. The children from other classes nearby also looked over curiously, their gazes a mix of curiosity, sympathy, and detached indifference. The non-Uchiha children mostly remained silent; they neither wished nor felt it appropriate to meddle in Uchiha internal affairs.

Teacher Mizuno spoke up immediately to stop them, "Tetsuzan, Daiichi! You are not allowed to say that to a classmate! Everyone has their own pace, and Kyohaku is working hard to adapt!"

Tetsuzan Uchiha curled his lip, looking somewhat unconvinced, but he stopped shouting out loud, merely murmuring quietly to Daiichi, "Did I say something wrong? A cripple, what can he even do? He's just an eyesore to look at..."

Daiichi also chuckled in agreement, the derision in his eyes not diminishing in the slightest.

Kyohaku silently lowered his head, picked up the fallen shuriken, and using his crutches, shuffled step by step back to the end of the line. There was no expression on his face—no angry retorts, no aggrieved tears, only a blanket of dead silence, as though those hurtful words were merely a breeze blowing past his ears.

Deep within his lowered gaze, however, the cold flame of another soul burned quietly.

Tetsuzan Uchiha: reckless personality, high desire for attention, heavily influenced by family values, typical holder of Uchiha arrogance. His strength should be in the upper tier among his peers; note that his provocative behavior may escalate.

Daiichi Uchiha: follower type, led by Tetsuzan, similarly lacking empathy, enjoys gaining a sense of superiority by belittling others.

The majority of other trainees remain silent observers, a minority show a hint of sympathy in their eyes but no one speaks up to stop it. This confirms the widespread indifferent attitude toward the weak within the Uchiha clan.

His brain functioned like a precision instrument, calmly recording and analyzing everything, instantly converting this humiliation into raw material for intelligence processing. Anger? Grievance? Those emotions belonged to a real five-year-old child, not to him. He simply found it laughable: a bunch of brats blinded by clan glory and immersed in a false sense of superiority had no idea what kind of soul—one that had survived a genuinely cruel world—was hidden inside the target of their mockery.

This level of verbal attack didn't even count as harassment to him; it was merely noise. Instead, it provided him with an exceptional sample for observing the mindset and internal atmosphere of the next Uchiha generation.

In the days that followed, similar scenes occurred from time to time. During physical education class, or during group practice, Tetsuzan Uchiha and Daiichi would always find an opportunity to use various childish yet hurtful words to taunt him for "holding everyone back," "shaming the Uchiha," and "being better off lying down at home."

Kyohaku consistently responded with silence, occasionally displaying a fleeting, age-appropriate sense of embarrassment and withdrawal when the teacher's gaze swept over, perfectly playing the role of a bullied wretch. This submissive appearance seemed to make Tetsuzan and Daiichi lose interest, and the frequency of their taunts gradually decreased, yet that unmasked look of contempt never vanished.

Kyohaku Uchiha, the crippled orphan who "wasn't fit to be a ninja" in their eyes, continued his school life amidst silent ridicule and isolation just like that. He stood like a silent reef, letting the tides of discrimination crash against him without budging an inch, his focus entirely concentrated on absorbing knowledge, observing his environment, and... utilizing every single crack of free time to carry on a far more clandestine training regimen known only to himself.

To him, those taunts were nothing more than background noise, even serving as the ideal cover for his flawless disguise. No one would ever remain on guard against someone universally recognized as "dead weight."