Becoming a Chunin had officially become an urgent matter.
Kiyohara tucked the scroll away in his ninja pouch, shut his eyes, and dropped onto the bed. There was barely any entertainment at the frontier camp to begin with, and after everything that had happened at Kannabi Bridge, his body felt as if someone had scooped the marrow out of his bones. He was tired down to the soul.
That was not to say entertainment didn't exist. Where there were people, there were always ways to pass the night. A few shinobi could put something together if they really wanted to—cards, dice, crude drinking games, a little gambling, a little nonsense—but Kiyohara had no interest in any of it right now.
He had spent the whole day traveling, and the fatigue wasn't only physical. His nerves had been stretched so tight these past few days that even now, in relative safety, they still hummed inside him like drawn bowstrings. If he had any energy left over, he would rather have used it on cultivation before sleep, but even that wasn't worth the effort tonight.
Chakra was a mixture of mental energy and physical energy. Break that down further and, at the root of it all, it still came back to the body's reserves. If he kept squeezing chakra out past his limit, all he would do was damage himself. Recovery mattered just as much as training.
So Kiyohara lay there quietly and waited for sleep to take him. If he couldn't cultivate and couldn't be bothered with entertainment, then the only sensible thing left was to rest and wait for the order to return to the village.
***
The next day, well past noon, Kiyohara was still asleep when he heard someone enter the tent.
His eyes opened a sliver at once. Instinct moved before thought; his hand slid toward the ninja pouch beside his bed, ready to draw steel the moment he needed it. Then he saw who it was and, just as smoothly, let his hand drift back as if he had never moved at all.
It was Yuhi Kurenai.
Kurenai crouched beside the bed and studied him for a moment. In sleep, the wariness had faded from his face, leaving his features unexpectedly soft and clean. He looked annoyingly good like this, she thought. Better than when he was awake and saying things that made people want to hit him.
She reached out, half wanting to poke his cheek just to see what kind of expression he would make.
Kiyohara opened his eyes fully and looked straight at her. "It's not right to take advantage of me in secret."
Kurenai froze, ruby-red eyes widening. For one brief second, she looked as though she had been caught stealing state secrets. Then she tugged at the hem of her clothes and blurted out the first excuse she could find. "I just saw it was already midday and came to wake you up to eat. Minato-sensei said the transfer order should arrive this afternoon."
"Mm." Kiyohara sat up and stretched until his joints cracked. He wasn't interested in pressing her any further. If the order really came down this afternoon, then by evening they would be on the road back to Konoha—and once he got back, there was a very good chance he could settle part of his debts.
The thought of the spoils in his sealing scroll put an involuntary smile on his face. It was the satisfied smile of an old farmer at harvest time, the kind that came from seeing a whole season's worth of toil piled up in tangible form. The Iwagakure ninjas had truly been admirable. They had delivered him results, and they had delivered him money.
Kurenai frowned. "What are you smiling at? Why do you look so strange all of a sudden?"
"I was thinking about you," Kiyohara said casually.
Then, without waiting for her reaction, he picked up the water cup on the crude wooden table, took a sip, and headed for the exit.
"Where are you going?" Kurenai asked.
Kiyohara gave her an incredulous look. "To the toilet."
The first thing a person did after waking up was not to flirt, scheme, or show off. It was to deal with basic human needs. A truly disciplined ninja understood priorities. Kiyohara considered himself a sigma man in that respect. Beauty was beauty, sure, but beauty was not going to interrupt a trip to the toilet.
He lifted the curtain and walked out without another word.
Behind him, Kurenai ground her teeth softly. She had no idea what went on inside Kiyohara's head. If she asked Sarutobi Asuma something, he would answer with that simple, guileless grin of his. Kiyohara, on the other hand, never seemed to move along the line anyone expected.
***
By the time Kiyohara returned, Kurenai was still there, arms folded as if she had been waiting specifically to settle accounts with him.
Instead, she took out a thick wad of banknotes. "Minato-sensei asked me to give this to you."
In that instant, Kiyohara felt Kurenai become several times more beautiful. Her brows looked gentler, her eyes prettier, her whole person more pleasing to behold. If she had come in announcing from the start that she was delivering money, all the earlier misunderstanding could have been skipped entirely.
He took the cash with the seriousness of a man receiving a sacred relic and immediately began to count it.
War changed the rules of everything. Under ordinary circumstances, every mission had to be reported back to the Hokage's office before payment was distributed, but on the front lines that kind of process was too slow. The commanding officer of a stronghold had authority to reward shinobi on the spot, partly to keep morale from crumbling and partly to soothe frayed minds and exhausted bodies.
Kiyohara's mind and body were definitely soothed by money. The weight of the banknotes in his hand brought with it a deep, reliable sense of security.
"A joint A-rank mission," he murmured after counting it through. "After the village takes its cut, my share comes to one hundred and thirty thousand ryo."
That sounded about right. Strictly speaking, he had not even been qualified to join that mission in the first place. The village had only stuffed him in because manpower was so tight. In theory, his role had been little more than bait—to draw attention, buy time, and survive long enough for the bigger pieces on the board to move.
In practice, he had wrung every bit of value he could out of it.
Before Kurenai could say anything else, the tent curtain lifted again.
Genma Shiranui stood outside, senbon shifting faintly at the corner of his mouth. "Let's go. The transfer order's here. We're heading back with Kakashi and the others."
Kurenai pressed her lips together, then turned and followed him out. Kiyohara tucked the money away and went after them, mood significantly improved.
***
Several days later, Konoha finally came into view.
Nohara Rin stared at the village gates with a dazed expression. They had left with light hearts, full of mission talk and youthful confidence, and returned with something much heavier weighing on all of them. Obito had remained behind forever in a foreign land.
Kiyohara exchanged a few brief words with the others, then split off without hesitation. He still had a sealing scroll full of loot to liquidate, debts to repay, and plans to make. Sentiment could wait. Money couldn't.
He took the scroll straight to a ninja tool shop.
The newer the tools, the better the resale price. The older the tools, the more the owner tried to crush the number downward while smiling as though he were doing you a favor. Kiyohara stood there bargaining for a while and came away feeling that the entire industry was shameless.
He was in urgent need of cash. Besides repaying the loan, he also wanted a proper weapon forged. The chakra metal he had stripped from Huoguang's body was too valuable to waste. If it could be reforged into a long blade—something close to the type of sword Sasuke would use in the future—then his combat strength would rise another notch.
Of course, Kiyohara knew perfectly well that Sasuke's Kusanagi-class weapon had probably been forged from first-rate material. A blade that could survive the Fourth Shinobi World War without showing signs of fracture was not something an ordinary village smith replicated on a whim.
Still, having a real chakra-conductive sword of his own would be enough.
When the appraisal was finished, he left with a bag of money and a scowl. "This place is really ripping people off."
The boss had forced the price down every chance he got. If Kiyohara hadn't been desperate for ready cash, he would have preferred taking the merchandise outside the village to sell elsewhere. Unfortunately, desperation weakened a man's leverage.
The rogue ninja Kiyohara floated beside him and said dryly, "No merchant is without guile."
Kiyohara snorted. If he had been standing on the other side of the counter, he would have cut the price too. That much he admitted freely. Still, understanding the logic behind exploitation did not make it any less unpleasant when he was the one being squeezed.
In the end, he sold the lot for seventy thousand ryo. Together with the mission reward, that was already half again the value of an ordinary operation. It wasn't perfect, but it was acceptable.
As the saying went, arsonists and murderers wore golden belts, while honest laborers who repaired roads and bridges were forgotten in the dust. Kiyohara felt the old saying had never been truer. If he wanted to make money quickly, then wartime spoils were the fastest path. And once he got stronger, he would be able to loot even more corpses with even greater efficiency.
Minato had already told him the Chunin recommendation had been submitted. That meant the assessment should come within the next few days. In theory, an internal recommendation assessment was mostly a formality. In practice, Kiyohara trusted nothing that involved official processes, bureaucracy, or fate. Until the result was in his hands, caution remained king.
So instead of indulging himself after returning to the village, he bought what daily necessities he needed and headed straight back to his old, crumbling apartment.
***
The Kiyohara residence was old, cramped, and poor enough to make pity feel tired, but it still had one thing of value: a small courtyard.
At that moment, Kiyohara stood in the yard with a shuriken in hand. A fine copper wire, thin enough to be nearly invisible, was tied to its center.
"Copper wire still isn't as good as rubber cord," he muttered.
He was practicing an advanced shuriken manipulation method. With a line attached, a thrown shuriken could be recalled, redirected, or made to arc in ways that ordinary throwing could never achieve. Under the right circumstances, it could become far more troublesome than a straight shot.
The rogue ninja Kiyohara hovered nearby and said, "This is to help you get used to the technique that comes afterward."
Normally, shinobi used special rubber cord or steel wire for this sort of thing. The rubber cord in particular was exceptionally tough. The problem was that it didn't handle heat well.
"You haven't forgotten the Uchiha clan's Fire Release: Dragon Flame Jutsu, have you?" the rogue ninja asked.
"No," Kiyohara replied at once.
He remembered it clearly. Sasuke had used the principle during the Chunin Exams: attach a line, create a path, and let the flame race straight along it toward the target. A weapon line was not just for control. It could become a guide rail.
"Exactly," said the rogue ninja Kiyohara. "And if fire can use it, lightning can use it too."
Copper wire was a conductor. That meant lightning-aspected chakra could travel through it more cleanly and efficiently than through many other materials. If he used the line properly, the effect of his technique would be amplified.
Kiyohara nodded and tried it.
He hurled the shuriken toward a wooden practice board in the courtyard. The blade missed the board by the barest margin, and then, with a flick of his wrist, the copper wire snapped taut and redirected its flight. The shuriken whipped around the board two, three, four times, wrapping it tight.
In the next moment, he formed hand seals and sent Lightning Release chakra surging along the copper line.
Crack.
Pale arcs crawled over the wire and scorched black marks straight into the wood. The smell of burnt grain rose into the air.
Kiyohara stared at the result, eyes brightening. This was still rough, still crude, still nowhere near a finished combat technique—but the shape of it was there. He could already see the next step.
"What should this be called?" he murmured.
After a moment, he nodded to himself in satisfaction. "Lightning Release: Shuriken-Guiding Thunder Technique."
He found the name excellent. Certainly much better than Minato Namikaze's naming sense.
Thinking that, Kiyohara felt profoundly satisfied.
Meanwhile, far away in the Hokage Building, Hiruzen Sarutobi was reviewing the mission intelligence and the Chunin recommendation stacked on his desk. Kiyohara's file rested right on top, impossible to miss. His background was unremarkable, his status ordinary, but Minato's evaluation was full of praise.
Hiruzen took a slow draw on his pipe and exhaled. Promising civilian talent was always valuable—perhaps more valuable than clan heirs, whose loyalties were forever split between household and village. If Kiyohara truly had the potential Minato suggested, then perhaps he could be polished into something rare.
But that judgment would wait for the Chunin assessment, which Hiruzen quietly arranged for three days later.
Back in the courtyard, Kiyohara knew nothing about that yet. He only kept practicing, winding wire, throwing steel, and sending lightning racing where his will demanded.
Because in a world like this, the only thing more reliable than talent was preparation. And the only thing more reliable than preparation was becoming strong enough that no one could force your fate for you again.