Golden Light and Fangs in the Dark

Ten in the morning. Ninja Academy.

Minato had arrived especially early today. The leaf on his forehead was gone, replaced by a bright, energetic vigor that seemed to radiate from the inside out.

He sat beside En and leaned over before even opening his lunchbox, his voice low but his eyes shining like lightbulbs.

"En, I officially took on a master yesterday."

"Yeah. I know. Congratulations."

Minato grinned and scratched his head, then pushed his lunchbox over.

"Egg rolls today! Real egg rolls! I practiced several times!"

En opened the lunchbox and took a look.

The egg rolls were much better shaped than before. As for the color— the edges were still a little burnt, but at least the middle was golden instead of entirely black.

He picked up a piece and put it in his mouth.

He chewed twice.

"How is it? How is it?" Minato's head was practically in En's bowl.

"It's not salty anymore."

"Really?"

"It's sweet."

"...Huh?"

"Did you mix up the salt and sugar?"

Minato froze for three seconds, then flushed all the way to his ears.

"I-I only have one jar in my kitchen! I thought that white powder was salt!"

"Salt has fine grains. Sugar has coarse grains. You'd know if you licked it."

"I'll definitely tell them apart next time!"

"You said that last time too."

"This time I mean it!"

En ate the sweet egg rolls piece by piece.

They tasted strange. Sweet egg rolls with soy sauce—only Minato Namikaze's kitchen could probably produce a combination like that.

But he cleaned the lunchbox.

Between classes.

In the hallway.

En leaned against the window, basking in the sunlight with his eyes half-closed. Observation Haki continued operating at low power, scanning the auras around him.

Minato leaned beside him, holding a new book on ninjutsu theory—an introductory textbook Jiraiya had given him.

"En, guess what Lord Jiraiya taught me in my first lesson?"

"The proper angle for peeping into the women's bath?"

"Of course not!" Minato nearly choked on his saliva. "Chakra nature transformation! He had me cut a leaf in half with chakra!"

"Wind affinity?"

"Yeah! He said my chakra affinity leans toward wind and that I'm suited to learning Wind Release. He also said that after I graduate and become a genin in a while, he'll take me onto his team."

Minato's two signature techniques in this life—Flying Thunder God and Rasengan—both leaned toward wind affinity.

One was the Second Hokage's space-time ninjutsu, while the other was Minato's own original creation.

The former made him the fastest man on the battlefield. The latter made him the deadliest.

Put them together—he teleported in front of you and shoved a Rasengan into your stomach, turning you into a pile of minced meat before you even had time to react.

That was the Fourth Hokage.

"Not bad," En said. "Train hard."

"What about you? Don't you want to take on a master too?" Minato suddenly turned serious. "You're actually very strong. You've just been hiding it. If you could study under a powerful teacher—"

"No rush."

"But—"

"I said, no rush." En's tone was calm, but Minato heard the unmistakable note that there was no room for discussion.

He opened his mouth, then swallowed the rest of his words.

But his eyes said it all—he would keep an eye on this matter.

This idiot.

He cared more about other people's problems than his own.

Who knew whether becoming Hokage would tire him to death someday—wait, in the original story, he really did die, though not from overwork.

En sighed inwardly.

After school.

As usual, En and Minato went to spar.

Today's training had changed. Minato had added an exercise called "Wind Release Leaf Cutting"—he held up a leaf with his left hand and cut it with chakra, while simultaneously trading punches with En using his right hand.

Multitasking.

And he was doing well at both.

For the first time, En truly experienced what it meant to be crushed by talent.

Observation Haki allowed him to predict Minato's punching routes in advance, but Minato's adaptability was terrifying—each repeated pattern worked twice at most. By the third time, he would switch things up.

In the fourteenth minute, Minato suddenly shifted from a frontal feint into a low sweeping kick from the side. En's Observation Haki caught the signal of his shifting center of gravity 0.3 seconds in advance, and he retreated half a step to evade it.

But in Minato's hand—

That leaf was split in two by Wind Release at the same instant.

The two leaf halves flew past En's face with the sharpness of chakra, leaving an extremely shallow red mark across his cheekbone.

"—!" En wiped his face with the back of his hand.

The Wind Release chakra attached to the leaves possessed cutting power even sharper than shuriken.

"Sorry! I still can't fully control the direction of my Wind Release!" Minato hurried over to check on him.

"It's fine." En waved him off. "I was too slow."

He looked at the leaf in Minato's hand, split neatly in half, and rapidly calculated in his mind.

Minato had been Jiraiya's student for one day.

Within a single day, he could cut a leaf with chakra. Though he could not yet control its direction properly, the difficulty alone already far surpassed that of children his age.

At this rate—

Within a year, Minato would learn the Rasengan.

Within three years, Flying Thunder God.

In five years—when the Third Shinobi World War broke out, Minato Namikaze would become the brightest rising star in the shinobi world.

The Yellow Flash.

It was a name destined to be engraved in shinobi history.

And he, Uchiha En, only had to—

Make sure that name would not be written on a tombstone at the age of twenty-one.

The sparring ended.

The two leaned against a dead tree trunk, catching their breath. The clouds on the horizon had been burned orange-red by the setting sun.

"En."

"Yeah."

"Have you run into some trouble recently?"

En turned to look at him.

Minato's expression was serious. His usual cheerful grin was gone.

"Yes, but it's fine. I can handle it."