"First, get yourself a girlfriend.
"Second, study the Will of Fire until you understand it inside out.
"Those are your homework assignments. I'll check on you whenever I feel like it, so don't think you can bluff your way through."
Yan Uchiha sounded nothing like he was joking.
Itachi was stunned. His brain felt as though someone had filled it with paste.
The corner of his mouth twitched uncontrollably, and his eyes rolled upward again and again.
"Teacher, are you serious, or are you messing with me?"
He held a hand to his forehead, his voice heavy with helplessness.
"Could you please be serious?"
He truly felt at a loss.
It wasn't as though he had never heard of the Will of Fire.
The clan didn't teach it, and he hadn't officially started at the Ninja Academy yet, but everyone in the village brought it up every other sentence.
Of course he knew about it.
When he first encountered it, he had been quite taken with its ideals. He had even spent some time giving them serious thought.
But after becoming Yan Uchiha's student and learning to think on a deeper level, the holes in that whole framework had become impossible to hide.
Wherever leaves danced, fire would burn on, or so they said. Shinobi were supposed to burn themselves up to protect the village's budding shoots.
It certainly sounded beautiful.
Yet once this war broke out, the ones actually thrown into the fire were all students who had barely graduated.
Some hadn't even reached graduation age. They hadn't submitted any applications, either—the village had simply forced them to graduate.
Before they had even finished their basic training, they were shoved straight onto the battlefield.
His teacher, Yan Uchiha, had been sent there in exactly that way.
Then there was