A good man at gunpoint!

When Amamiya Maki walked into the classroom the next day, Jiro Matsumoto was already in his seat.

He caught sight of Amamiya Maki entering the doorway. His gaze froze for a moment before he quickly looked away, lowering his head to stare fixedly at his open textbook.

His posture was especially proper that day, his back ramrod straight with a deliberate stiffness.

As though this feigned concentration could conceal his panic and let him ignore the person entering the classroom.

The dull pain of yesterday's punch to his abdomen on the training ground still lingered in his muscle memory.

Amamiya Maki walked slowly past his seat, his steps pausing for an almost imperceptible half beat.

Jiro Matsumoto abruptly began turning pages faster, hurried and flustered.

But the pages he was turning to were yesterday's assigned reading. Following the lesson schedule, he had no reason to be looking at them today.

His clumsy attempt at concealment was plain to see.

Amamiya Maki did not stop. He went straight back to his seat, set down his bag, and quietly sat down.

He was waiting.

Waiting for Jiro Matsumoto to stand up of his own accord, walk over to Nonō, and honor the promise he had made yesterday.

A public apology.

That was the wager Jiro Matsumoto had publicly agreed to during yesterday's duel on the training ground. The loser had to follow through.

Amamiya Maki had never considered this condition harsh.

He had not demanded that the other boy publicly expose his wrongdoing or write a self-criticism for everyone to read. He had merely asked him to sincerely apologize to the person he had hurt without cause.

It required no courage, only the most basic decency and integrity.

He had intended to give Jiro Matsumoto a chance to salvage his dignity and prove that he still had some standards.

But Jiro Matsumoto played dead throughout, saying nothing.

Morning reading ended. No one apologized.

The first lesson ended. Still, nothing happened.

Even when Junji Ito came into the classroom during the break to announce what the final assessment would cover, Jiro Matsumoto kept his head buried in his textbook, motionless the entire time.

Whenever Amamiya Maki's gaze swept his way, he immediately raised the textbook, using its pages to firmly shield the side of his face.

He fooled himself into believing that as long as he could not see the other boy, the other boy could not catch him evading his obligation.

Amamiya Maki slowly put down his pen. A chill crept into his eyes as he prepared to stand.

He had countless gentle ways to make Jiro Matsumoto relive yesterday's agonizing abdominal injury, breathlessness, and helplessness within thirty seconds.

He would not even need to lift a hand. Just one quiet question in front of everyone: "Haven't you forgotten something?"

Yesterday on the training ground, he had been full of bravado, declaring, "Fine. How do you want to settle this?"

Now that the storm had passed and his debt had come due, he had retreated into his shell.

Amamiya Maki could tolerate a weak opponent, but never a sore loser who broke his word.

A coward could be afraid, but he could not take his cowardice for granted and pay no price whatsoever.

He was just about to brace his palm against the edge of the desk and stand.

A warm, slender hand gently covered the back of his, firmly pressing it back against the desktop.

Nonō looked straight ahead without turning to glance at him.

Morning light fell across her profile, tracing soft, clean contours, serene and gentle.

She said nothing, but her touch was utterly steady.

Amamiya Maki swiftly weighed the pros and cons.

Jiro Matsumoto's broken promise and shameless evasion would yield twenty stress points at most. A meager return.

"Let it go. Someone like him isn't worth it."

"All right."

"You're right. The weapon of criticism cannot replace criticism by weapons."

Nonō frowned slightly at that.

"Could you stop using those strange metaphors all the time?"

With that, she slowly withdrew her hand.

Amamiya Maki straightened up again, picked up his pen, casually spun it between his fingers, and suppressed the violence stirring within him.

Hiding behind his textbook, Jiro Matsumoto knew nothing.

Just then, Nonō had quietly dragged him back from the brink of a second public execution.

Nonō lowered her head to her medical handbook again, calmly turning past a chart of toxin metabolism cycles.

To her, stopping him seemed as insignificant as gently nudging an apple back into place before it rolled off the desk.

During the break, Senju Nawaki arrived.

He stood at the rear door of first-year Class A, holding two skewers of Three-Color Dango.

A breeze swept through the corridor, lifting the dark brown fringe over his forehead. The boy's features were fresh and open, his smile clear and untainted.

He quickly scanned the classroom, pinpointed Amamiya Maki, and immediately broke into a brilliant smile without a trace of gloom.

"Maki!"

Amamiya Maki turned toward the boy at the door.

A third-year upperclassman making a special trip to a first-year classroom was unusual enough.

They were on different floors, with different break lengths.

Nawaki had clearly run all the way here, barely managing to arrive before the break ended.

He had come expressly to see them, surely not just to chat over two skewers of dango.

Nonō closed her medical handbook, stood, and bowed politely.

"Nawaki, what brings you here?"

"I heard about what happened yesterday."

Nawaki offered one skewer to Nonō and pushed the other straight into Amamiya Maki's hand, then plopped down in the empty seat beside them.

His shoulders rose and fell slightly, his breathing still hurried, his eyes brimming with barely restrained curiosity.

"I wanted to come find you first thing this morning, but a teacher had me organize some documents. That held me up until now."

"I heard you challenged someone on the training ground and knocked him flat. That's amazing!"

Amamiya Maki took a bite of dango.

The sweet red bean filling was a little too sugary, but the soft, chewy rice dough was just right.

"What's with that look?"

"Admiration, obviously!"

Looking perfectly serious, Nawaki glanced around, searching the crowd.

"Hardly anyone in our year dares arrange private duels. Anyone who gets into a fight ends up cleaning the toilets as punishment."

"Oh, right, where's the person you fought? Did he follow through on what you agreed to yesterday?"

The moment he finished speaking, he spotted Jiro Matsumoto shrinking into his seat.

The other boy had buried his head in his textbook, deliberately minimizing his presence as though he wished he could vanish altogether.

Nawaki followed Amamiya Maki's gaze, blinked, and walked straight over.

"You're Jiro Matsumoto, right?"

"You fought Maki yesterday. Why haven't you honored the wager and promise you agreed to?"

Jiro Matsumoto slowly lowered his textbook. His guilty unease faded, replaced by a flicker of embarrassed anger.

Being called to account in public out of nowhere by an upperclassman from the lower years left him utterly humiliated.

"What's it got to do with you?"

"Of course it's got something to do with me!"

Nawaki stood his ground, his tone frank and serious.

"If you don't do what you promised someone, you're breaking your word!"

"As a future Konoha ninja, someone who breaks his word has no right to talk about the Will of Fire!"

The muscles in Jiro Matsumoto's cheeks twitched violently, his complexion alternating between ashen and pale.

Amamiya Maki abruptly stopped with the dango in his mouth.

Nonō's fingers froze as she turned a page.

The entire classroom instantly fell silent.

The students watching nearby quietly shifted their chairs away, putting some distance between themselves and the scene.

It was the first time any of them had seen someone invoke the Will of Fire with such frank, unadulterated conviction.

Not an empty slogan in an essay meant to flatter the Hokage, nor a shallow expression of compliance.

It was a belief upheld from the heart, an absolute standard by which to judge his own conduct and that of others.

"My sister says the most important thing for a ninja is to keep his word!"

"Your promise is your ninja way."

"If you can't even keep your own promises, how are you going to protect the village and your comrades in the future?"

Nawaki turned toward Amamiya Maki, seeking his agreement.

"Right, Maki?"

"Right."

Amamiya Maki answered mildly, his expression unchanged, though his fingers tightened slightly around the bamboo skewer.

He understood at once.

A hundred questions and every pressure tactic at his disposal could not compare to this one candid challenge from Nawaki.

He used tactics. Nawaki used moral principle.

The former was a private grievance. The latter was Konoha's code.

Jiro Matsumoto clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white, repeatedly opening and closing them as his inner struggle reached its breaking point.

Finally, he sprang to his feet and shoved his chair away.

The chair legs scraped hard against the floor, producing a sharp, piercing screech.

It was a coward's final struggle, and a surrender with nowhere left to run.

He strode over to Nonō and came to a stiff halt.

His voice was dry and hoarse, like scraping sandpaper, without the slightest sincerity.

"I'm sorry, Nonō."

"I was wrong yesterday. I shouldn't have spread rumors behind your back or slandered you and Amamiya Maki."

Without waiting for Nonō to respond, he turned and left.

Deliberately avoiding Nawaki by the front door, he fled through the rear door in disgrace.

Nonō bowed her head slightly and quietly released a long-held breath.

Amamiya Maki finished the remaining dango in one bite and turned to look out the window.

Jiro Matsumoto hurried across the training ground, his steps flustered and ungainly, with no intention of returning to the classroom.

By the look of it, he planned to hide in a corner until the bell rang.

"Thank you, Nawaki."

Nonō composed herself and rested her hand on the medical handbook's cover again, her expression returning to calm.

"No need to thank me!"

Nawaki scratched his head, his eyes full of genuine confusion.

"I just don't understand. If you've promised to do something yourself, why do you need someone else to force you before you'll do it?"

"Aren't promises something you're supposed to keep on your own?"

His confusion was clear and guileless, without sarcasm or snide insinuation. He genuinely did not understand.

"Because some people only fear being condemned in the name of a greater cause. A private grievance that barely stings will never force them to show any principles."

Amamiya Maki leaned against his chair and casually laid the bamboo skewer neatly on the desk.

"The Will of Fire."

"In your eyes, it's a banner to live by."

"To his ears, it's just a useless slogan from a textbook."

"But at the end of the day, we won today."

Nawaki nodded with only partial understanding. After a moment of silence, he rubbed his fingers repeatedly against his knees, looking hesitant.

After wrestling with himself for a long time, he finally spoke again.

"Maki, there's actually something else I came to talk to you about today."

"My sister's been in a really bad mood lately."

"The Third Hokage rejected her proposal for a medical ninja system."

"The Hokage said Konoha's fighting strength is at its peak right now, so there's no need to go to such lengths to prepare for trouble."

"And systematically training medical ninja would cost a fortune. The village's finances couldn't support it."

"My sister had a huge argument with the Third over it."

"When she came home, she shut herself in her room. She wouldn't even eat my favorite dango."

"I don't know why, either. This is only our second time meeting, but I just wanted to tell you about all this and hear what you had to say."

Amamiya Maki fell silent.

Nawaki's brief account contained far more information than an entire day of lessons.

The rejection of Tsunade's medical system proposal was a hidden development the original story had never explored in detail, yet it fit the current timeline perfectly.

It meant Tsunade had lost the crucial political leverage she needed to establish a firm foothold.

It meant her confidence in Konoha High Command and the existing system was crumbling completely.

After only two meetings, Senju Nawaki had laid bare the internal conflicts among his clan's senior members and his sister's frustration and predicament.

Amamiya Maki looked down at the bamboo skewer on the desk, then raised his gaze to the boy's sincere, guileless eyes.

"Nawaki, you shouldn't casually tell outsiders about private matters involving the higher-ups."

"But you're not an outsider. You're Maki."

"We've only met twice."

"It doesn't matter how many times we've met. I know you're a good person."

"So good people deserve to have guns pointed at them? What kind of logic is that?!"

[Detected: Host has caused mental stress to "Senju Nawaki"

Stress +20

Obtained: vitality fragment ×3]