The Last Lesson

When he left home that morning, the sky was blue.

May in the Hidden Leaf Village rarely had weather this fine. Sunlight spilled over the eastern mountains, making the stone-paved roads of the Uchiha Clan District gleam. The air carried the mingled scent of cherry blossoms and earth—a smell unique to the Hidden Leaf Village, one Shuo Ye had grown used to over seven years of living as a transmigrator.

But today, that scent seemed especially vivid.

"I'm leaving." Takuma stood in the entryway, already dressed in his jonin uniform. His forehead protector had been polished to a shine, reflecting a streak of white light in the morning sun.

"Yeah." Shuo Ye picked up his schoolbag.

"Come home early after school," Takuma said.

There was nothing strange about the words themselves. Every parent said them. But the tone Takuma used made Shuo Ye take notice—it was not a reminder, but a request.

As though before confirming something else, he needed to make sure of this first.

"Got it."

Shuo Ye put on his shoes and pushed open the door.

Sunlight immediately spread across his face. He narrowed his eyes, and once they adjusted, he saw the scene on the streets of the clan district—everything was as usual. The neighbor's cat lay atop a stone wall, licking its paws. The auntie who sold dango pushed her cart toward the district entrance. Two Uchiha children chased each other around outside their homes.

"Shuo Ye—" The dango-selling auntie spotted him and waved. "Want some dango today? Auntie just made fresh red bean filling."

"No, thank you, Auntie."

"Oh my, you've gotten thinner. You need to eat more."

The auntie smiled and pushed her cart away, its wheels rumbling over the stone road.

Shuo Ye watched her back.

The dango-selling auntie—he could not remember her name. But he remembered that whenever she saw a Uchiha child, she would always slip them an extra dango and say with a smile, "Children need to eat more."

She was still smiling that way today.

Would she still smile that way after tomorrow?

Shuo Ye withdrew his gaze and headed toward the Ninja Academy.

The morning lesson covered the basics of shuriken throwing.

Iruka stood before the target range, holding a shuriken as he demonstrated for the first-year students.

"Pay attention to the angle of your wrist. Don't throw it—send it. If you throw it, you won't have any accuracy. You need to send it."

Several students copied the motion, their ways of releasing the shuriken wildly varied. Most went crooked. A few flew straight out of the range and embedded themselves in the fence. Iruka ran over to pull out the stray shuriken and sighed.

"How many times have I said it? Send, don't throw—"

Shuo Ye stood at the very back of the line, a shuriken pinched between his fingers, but he did not throw it.

He was watching.

He was watching every face.

Naruto stood in the third row. His throwing form was the most absurd—his whole body leaned to one side, and the kunai in his hand did not fly straight but spun through the air. One nearly struck Shikamaru in the back of the head.

"Naruto!"

"Sorry, Iruka-sensei—"

Expressionless, Shikamaru picked Naruto's kunai out from beside his hair and handed it back. "Could you keep it down? What a pain."

"Hey, hey, hey, Shikamaru, that expression you just made was way too speechless—"

Sasuke stood in the first row.

His throwing motion was clean and efficient. Once the shuriken left his hand, it traced a steady arc through the air. Eight out of nine landed within the target's center. Iruka nodded and marked an "Excellent" in the gradebook.

Sasuke put away his last shuriken and turned around, meeting Shuo Ye's eyes.

The look lasted less than a second.

But Shuo Ye understood it.

Sasuke was asking, Are you okay?

Shuo Ye gave a faint nod.

Sasuke turned back around.

Ino stood in the second row. Her results were not particularly good, but her stance was more standard than most of the boys'—she had helped carry flowerpots at her family's flower shop since she was little, so her arms were stronger than those of girls her age. Her shuriken left her hand at the correct angle. Though it was still some distance from the bullseye, at least it would not fly out of the range.

After throwing, she shook out her wrist and muttered, "So tiring," then lowered her head to fix the hair the wind had mussed up.

A small flower was pinned in her hair.

It was golden yellow, and Shuo Ye did not know what kind of flower it was. But yesterday—no, the day before yesterday—when he had passed the flower shop after school, Ino's father had been standing outside trimming flower branches. He had cut off flowers just like that one.

When Ino left home, she had taken one from a vase.

Maybe she simply thought it looked pretty.

But when Shuo Ye thought of that, something stirred faintly in his chest.

During the noon break, Shuo Ye sat on a bench outside the classroom.

Sunlight filtered through the leaves of the ginkgo tree overhead, leaving clusters of light on the ground. Whenever the wind blew, the patches of light swayed like reflections on water.

Naruto appeared from nowhere and plopped down beside him.

"Shuo Ye!"

"...Could you sit down a little more gently?"

"Hehe." Naruto grinned, revealing a missing front tooth—he had lost it last week after falling from a tree while competing with Kiba. "Iruka-sensei said we're having a taijutsu test this afternoon. I'm so nervous."

"What are you nervous about? You climb trees faster than anyone."

"That's different!" Naruto clasped his hands behind his head and crossed one leg over the other. "Climbing trees doesn't require good-looking posture, but Iruka-sensei said he'll be looking at our form during the taijutsu test. My form is ugly, right?"

"It really is ugly."

"Hey!"

Shuo Ye said nothing. He leaned against the back of the bench and looked up at the ginkgo leaves overhead.

They were green and dense, covering most of the sky. Sunlight seeped between the leaves, casting dappled shadows across his face.

"Shuo Ye," Naruto suddenly said.

"Yeah."

"You're really quiet today. Even quieter than usual."

"No, I'm not."

"You are. You don't talk much normally, but you look at me. Today, you haven't looked at me at all."

Shuo Ye turned toward him.

Naruto's blue eyes looked back at him. Sunlight fell across his face, making the faint freckles there stand out clearly. His expression was serious—too serious for a seven-year-old.

"What's wrong with you today?" Naruto asked.

Shuo Ye looked at him.

He remembered seeing a phrase over and over in the comment sections when he watched Naruto in his previous life—"If only someone had told Naruto when he was little, 'You're not alone.'"

He had done that.

Ever since he had helped Naruto drive away those three children in the alley a few months ago, he had kept doing it. He ate with Naruto, walked with Naruto, and sometimes walked an extra stretch with him after school.

He had never said the words, "You're not alone."

But he had always said them through his actions.

Today—after tomorrow—would he still be able to keep doing that?

"I'm fine," Shuo Ye said. "Focus on the taijutsu test this afternoon."

"Tch, all you care about is exams." Naruto got to his feet and stretched. "But it's fine. I'll definitely surpass you!"

"Whatever."

"Just wait and see!"

Naruto ran back to the classroom. His orange clothes flickered through the ginkgo tree's shadow, quickly disappearing around the corridor corner.

Shuo Ye looked at that corner.

Sunlight drew a golden line across the corridor wall. Dust floated within that beam, tiny, quiet, and unhurried.

He might miss this scene.

No—he would definitely miss it.

After the afternoon taijutsu test ended, the dismissal bell rang.

The students began packing up. Some rushed out, while others lingered in the classroom. Iruka stood at the podium organizing his lesson materials, then looked up and said, "Don't forget to hand in your shuriken homework tomorrow."

Shuo Ye put his textbooks into his schoolbag and pulled the zipper shut.

He stood up.

When he reached the classroom door, he stopped.

He looked back.

Inside the classroom—Naruto was wiping the blackboard. He had been punished. That morning, one of his shuriken had flown out of the range and smashed a flowerpot in the flower bed. Iruka had made him stay after school to wipe the blackboard and tidy the flower bed. Standing on tiptoe, he still could not reach the highest part of the board, and the rag in his hand left crooked streaks across it.

His blue goggles were pushed up on his forehead, and his lips moved as he muttered something—probably complaining that Iruka was "stingy."

Ino sat at her desk, packing her schoolbag. Her movements were slow as she stacked her textbooks neatly one by one, then placed them into the bag's inner compartment. The little yellow flower in her hair was still there, glowing in the afternoon sunlight.

Every now and then, she looked up at Naruto, the corners of her lips lifting slightly—whether she was amused by the way he wiped the blackboard or thinking about something else, no one knew.

Sasuke was no longer in the classroom.

He had already left.

He was always the first to go. The moment the dismissal bell rang, he packed up and quietly left the classroom. He did not greet anyone or wait for anyone. That was Sasuke Uchiha—quiet, independent, and aloof.

But before leaving today, he had looked back at Shuo Ye.

Shuo Ye had already understood that look.

This scene—Naruto wiping the blackboard, Ino packing her schoolbag, Sasuke already gone—would remain in Shuo Ye's mind for a long time.

Not merely a long time.

For the rest of his life.

Because he knew that after tomorrow, everything would be different.

When school ended tomorrow, several desks in the classroom would be empty. No one would ever sit in those seats again. When Iruka stood at the podium organizing his lesson materials, his gaze would pause on certain vacant seats before moving away.

Naruto would not know what had happened.

Ino would not know what had happened.

They would only hear one piece of news—"Something unfortunate happened to the Uchiha Clan."

Then life would go on.

Wiping blackboards, packing schoolbags, taijutsu tests, shuriken throwing—everything would continue.

But for Shuo Ye, today was the last "normal" afternoon he would see.

The last afternoon when sunlight fell over ginkgo leaves and dust drifted through the light.

The last afternoon when Naruto said he was "even quieter than usual."

He drew his gaze away from the classroom and walked out through the academy gates.

The moment he stepped outside, he looked back. The Ninja Academy's gates were wooden, with the words "Hidden Leaf Ninja Academy" carved into the lintel. The cherry trees by the entrance had already finished blooming, leaving only a canopy of green leaves.

Sunlight struck the gates, revealing the grain in the wood.

They were very ordinary gates.

But Shuo Ye memorized every line in them.

On his way home, Shuo Ye did not take the road along the Naka River.

He took a detour through the small streets in the eastern part of the village. There were little ramen stalls there, including the sign for Ichiraku Ramen—the place Naruto would come to every day in the future. There was a bookstore, a general store, and an old grandmother dozing in a rattan chair outside her door.

These were sights he could see every day.

But today was the last time he would see them as an "ordinary person."

After tomorrow, Shuo Ye would no longer be an ordinary Uchiha child.

He would be a survivor of the clan massacre.

If he could survive it.

He quickened his pace.

The sky was still blue. The setting sun burned the western clouds orange-red. The outline of the Hidden Leaf Village gradually blurred in the dusk, like a painting slowly fading.

When Shuo Ye entered the Uchiha Clan District, the shadow of the stone torii stretched across the ground, long and narrow like a silent threshold.

He stepped over that threshold.

And entered his final night in this world.