"Breathe in through your nose, hold it, and out through your mouth. Feel the chakra move through your center."
I squinted at the squat orange toad across from me. "He's mocking me, right?"
"Gamakichi is being very serious," Jiraiya said without looking up from his notes.
"He's wearing a tiny vest and humming to himself."
"He's more spiritually centered than you."
The toad gave me a slow blink and resumed whatever deep-seated spiritual ritual it thought it was performing. Meanwhile, I sat cross-legged on a rock trying not to fall asleep while aligning my so-called chakra 'core.'
Jiraiya called it training. I called it suspiciously close to joining a forest cult.
I was supposed to sense Nature Energy. Feel the world breathing, connect to the stillness in all things. But every time I tried, all I felt was damp wind and my stomach arguing with my soul.
The toads meditated. I fidgeted.
The toads sat still for thirty minutes. I picked a fight with a leaf.
Gamakichi offered me a snail. I didn't ask questions. I just declined.
Eventually, I did feel something.
Not Nature Energy. Not yet.
But my own chakra began reacting to the stillness around me. It didn't settle like the others. It warped the stillness. Bent it.
Instead of becoming one with the environment, my chakra seemed to push against it—ever so slightly. Not hostile. Not aggressive. But… curious.
I described it to Jiraiya later.
"Like pressing into a soft surface," I said. "Like the air isn't air. It's pressure. And I'm not blending into it—I'm denting it."
He went silent.
"That's not… how it usually works," he muttered.
"Figured."
He didn't stop the training, though. Just told me to keep going.
"Even if it's not normal?" I asked.
"Especially if it's not."
Days passed.
I trained Earth and Wind release forms. But the more I focused on structure, the more my chakra rebelled. It refused to become walls or weapons.
But it would shift terrain. Collapse a rock into powder. Make the wind curve unnaturally around obstacles.
The techniques didn't look flashy. But they were effective. Disorienting. Silent.
I wasn't learning jutsu.
I was learning how to interfere.
Jiraiya stopped correcting me. Started observing more. Writing more.
Then one morning, I woke to find him already waiting.
"You've got three minutes," he said.
"For what?"
"To hit me."
I stared.
"That's it?"
He nodded.
So I tried.
Wind chakra? He dodged.
Earth pulse? He stepped over it.
Basic kunai throw? He caught it and flicked it back like an afterthought.
My frustration built.
And then… I let my chakra go—not in a burst, but in a pull.
Not shaping. Just disrupting.
The ground between us shifted—half an inch, barely noticeable. But Jiraiya's stance wobbled. Only for a second.
But I saw it.
And so did he.
Later that night, he sat across from me, scribbling something I couldn't read.
"You're not meant to form the world," he said. "You're meant to tilt it."
"What does that even mean?"
He looked up and smiled. "It means your chakra doesn't follow the current. It makes new ones."
I didn't respond.
But deep down, I knew what he meant.
Because when I closed my eyes and reached inward…
I didn't feel a spark.
I felt the stillness bend around me.
And I liked it.
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- void_chakra