After school, Sasuke did not go straight home. Instead, he went alone to the Training Ground where he usually practiced.
The setting sun dyed the sky a warm orange. The Training Ground was empty, with no one there but him.
He picked up an ordinary wooden sword he had prepared beforehand, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes.
The Sun Breathing diagrams he had forced himself to memorize the night before surfaced clearly in his mind.
Chakra circulated through his body in time with a specific breathing rhythm, guiding his movements.
The opening stance, steady breathing, slowly channeling strength into the sword's tip. Then, First Form...
The wooden sword swung out, its swish through the air strangely synchronized with his breathing.
His movements were a little stiff at first, but the exceptional memory and physical coordination granted by the Sharingan allowed him to adjust quickly.
He practiced over and over, progressing from awkwardness to fluidity, from deliberate imitation to gradually finding a hint of rhythm.
Sweat soon soaked his bangs and back, and his muscles ached with fatigue. Yet he seemed not to notice, simply continuing to swing, breathe, and move.
Only in moments of total concentration, when his body and mind were wholly immersed in training.
Could he briefly forget the cold, awkward atmosphere between him and Naruko that day, the crushing guilt his father's defense of him had brought last night, the First Elder's knife-sharp gaze, the shadow cast by the Stone Tablet, and the doubts stirred by Obito Uchiha's file...
All his tangled emotions seemed to evaporate with his sweat, temporarily swept from his mind with each slash of the wooden sword.
Finally, when the sun had sunk completely behind the distant mountains and only a dark red glow remained in the sky, Sasuke exhausted the