What do I do?
Staring at the blank test paper on his desk, Naruto clutched his head with both hands, his arms forming a sharp inverted triangle behind him.
His usual wild blond hair was now plastered damply to his temples. The "Victory" headband on his forehead had been soaked through with sweat, the ink blurred into a mess. Even the tiny cheat sheet hidden inside had bled through, leaving dark blotches against the once-bright red cloth.
For what felt like the hundredth time, he looked up at the clock.
It was already 8:35.
There were still around ten minutes left until the exam ended, but Naruto knew very well that, for him, this test was already over.
Avoiding the cold eyes of the proctors, Naruto raised one hand to shield part of his face, as though that flimsy gesture could hide him, and glanced around.
There was barely anyone left near him.
No, not just near him. There was barely anyone left in the entire room.
Including himself, there were only twelve examinees remaining. And if he counted the roving proctors in the hallway, the examiners, the supervisors, and the graders, there were twenty-two teachers left in total.
That meant that even if each teacher watched one examinee, there would still be ten people with nothing better to do.
The instant he had looked up at the clock just now, Naruto had already caught at least five proctors locking onto him from the corners of his vision.
Cheat?
At this point, no one could cheat anymore.
The remaining examinees were simply people who could neither answer the questions nor bring themselves to give up, quietly sitting in their seats and waiting to die.
"Examinees 96, 32, and 8…"
That nightmare-like voice echoed by his ears again.
Naruto lowered his head to stare at the empty sheet in front of him, while the eliminated examinees passed by his seat one after another, their footsteps heavy with humiliation.
Monster. Loser. Dead last.
Those old voices rang through his mind.
All those times he had trained with Guy-sensei until his whole body was spent, until his arms trembled so hard he could not even hold chopsticks properly. Had he not done all that just to prove himself?
If he could not pass the Chunin Exam, then all those years of effort would mean nothing.
And Konome and Sasuke too. They were so strong. If they failed the exam because of him…
Naruto did not dare finish that thought.
If the only two friends he had ever truly had ended up hating him and shutting him out because of this, then just imagining that scene was enough to make his whole body shake.
That was ten thousand times more terrifying than being called a monster.
"Examinees 17, 26, and 21…"
Twenty-one?
That made him twenty-two.
Naruto suddenly heard the defeated slam of a pen behind him. Then came the scrape of chairs against the floor. Another three examinees were being driven out.
He could not help looking up. In the lonely backs of those three leaving figures, he saw not only frustration, but also a strange kind of relief, even lightness, as though they had cast off a terrible burden.
They did it on purpose!
Naruto immediately understood.
No. Absolutely not!
The urge to surrender began rising in his mind again, but Naruto shook his head violently, as though he could fling that weakness out of his brain.
Never giving up was his ninja way. If he betrayed that vow here, then his path as a ninja would end right here too.
Even if he got a zero, he would stay until the exam ended!
With sheer willpower, Naruto crushed the urge to yield. As soon as he did, the crushing weight inside his chest seemed to ease a little. Even the knot in his stomach loosened.
"Examinees 41, 64, and 59…"
The cold voice rang out for the third time. Accompanied by the screech of desks and chairs scraping against the floor, the classroom sank into an unprecedented silence.
Naruto lowered his head again and used his dried-out pen to draw circles on the spotless paper, like a death row prisoner waiting for the final swing of the executioner's axe.
"Kid, are you still not turning in your paper?"
A harsh, deep voice sounded from the front.
Even though no name had been called, Naruto instinctively raised his head toward the source of that voice.
Wrapped in a black leather jacket, broad-shouldered and imposing, Ibiki Morino stood there looking down at him. There even seemed to be the faintest hint of curiosity in his eyes.
"Me?"
Naruto looked around in confusion, only to realize that all the proctors in the room were staring at him. Even the last two so-called examinees left in the room were leaning on their desks and watching him, idly twirling their pens in their fingers.
Their pens spun in the exact same rhythm as the proctors'.
They were the two chunin instructors disguised as examinees. Naruto was the only real test-taker left in the room.
"If you can't answer anything, then hurry up and turn in your paper and leave. Come back again next year."
Maybe because he had come to admire Naruto's stubbornness, Ibiki's tone was no longer as aggressively oppressive as it had been at the start of the test.
The other proctors were smiling faintly too. No one understood better than they did just how immense the pressure in this exam had been. Even though Naruto had failed to cheat successfully, the fact that he had held out until the very end meant that, among all the examinees who had been eliminated, his willpower ranked first.
This unimpressive-looking kid had guts.
"No. My exam isn't over yet."
Wet bangs stuck to the corners of his eyes. Naruto looked straight at his executioner with blue eyes that held neither defeat nor fear, only the same unwavering determination as always.
The changes Konome had brought him were not limited to a stronger body. His heart had changed too.
He had fought off beasts in the Forest of Death with shadow clones.
He had even killed a Kumogakure elite jonin alongside Konome.
And he had endured five straight years of inhuman training without fail, no matter the weather.
Even Guy had once believed it would be impossible for him to master the Eight Gates, yet Naruto had done exactly that by fighting his own shadow clones until he forced it into himself.
He was no longer the dead-last loser who crouched on the ground and cried after being bullied.
"If I can hold on until the end, then no matter the outcome, I can accept it. But giving up is absolutely not allowed. That's my ninja way!"
In front of all the Konoha teachers, Naruto pressed one hand onto his blank paper and shouted out his ninja way.
His young voice echoed through the emptying classroom for a long time.
The smiles faded from the teachers' faces, replaced by solemn respect.
Anyone who made never giving up into their ninja way, and fought with everything they had to uphold it, deserved respect, no matter how strong or weak they were.
"…Sorry. Go ahead."
Admiration showed plainly in Ibiki's eyes. It was rare for him to apologize, but he stepped aside and gestured for Naruto to keep going with his ninja way.
"Th-thank—"
Naruto's grateful words died in his throat.
His eyes suddenly froze on Morino Ibiki's hand. More precisely, on the direction that hand was pointing toward.
It was the side panel of the podium desk.
A tiny square seal sat embedded there, no larger than a fingernail. It looked like the sort of meaningless doodle a mischievous Academy kid might scratch on a desk out of boredom.
But Naruto knew that was not what it was.
It was an extremely compressed sealing formula.
He had seen Konome do this kind of thing before. She had once inscribed over a thousand characters of a sealing technique into a strip of bandage no bigger than a candy bar.
That had been his birthday present years ago, the bandage that could seal heavy weights.
And a formula so compressed it barely even looked like a seal could only have been left there by Konome.
The proctors noticed where he was staring and looked toward the tiny square as well.
Their eyes showed confusion. A seal that merely absorbed chakra needed at least fifteen symbols. What possible effect could something this small even produce?
It looked like nothing more than a random scribble on the podium.
Ibiki, too, lowered his head to look at the mark on the desk, his face full of puzzlement. This classroom had been checked before the exam started. He did not remember ever seeing that doodle.
Ah.
Before anyone could think further, Naruto suddenly sprang to his feet, picked up the exam sheet on which he had written nothing but his name, and shouted excitedly:
"Sensei, I'm turning in my paper!"
The teachers all snapped back to attention and instinctively looked at Naruto's paper.
The answer section was so blank it was almost terrifying. The only real writing was the name in the corner. Even from a distance, every one of them could already assign him the same perfectly reasonable score:
Zero.
"You're sure?"
Even Ibiki's eyes were full of suspicion now. He prided himself on judging people well, but Naruto's contradictory behavior was impossible to understand.
Then he looked again at the tiny square mark on the podium.
Everything about Naruto's change in attitude had begun the moment he spotted that so-called doodle.
"Of course!"
Naruto grinned with complete confidence, holding the blank exam paper in his hand as he strode toward the podium.
No, not toward the podium.
Toward that tiny square mark.
Konome knew very well that he could not answer a single question on the paper, so of course she would never just leave him sitting there without help.
She must have left him a way to cheat.
The trust and understanding they had built over five years surpassed words.
Naruto stared at that square mark, his eyes shining.
As long as he reached that place, he could get the answers Konome had left for him. And if he wanted to approach the podium naturally, there was only one path he could take:
Turn in his paper.
Konome had already written the formula for victory.
All Naruto had to do was trust her completely and walk forward without hesitation.
The exam paper rustled in the air.
Under the gaze of everyone in the room, Naruto boldly walked to the side of the podium, chakra gathering at his fingertips, and pressed his hand directly onto the seal.
A blue current flashed through it.
The ink-like mark peeled away from the podium in front of everyone's astonished eyes, then slithered like a snake onto Naruto's exam sheet.
Line after line of sharp, powerful handwriting crawled across the answer section.
Naruto looked down at the now completely filled-in paper and slapped it onto the grader's desk.
Ibiki tilted his head and looked.
Translation of the code:
"Follow the advantage of military principles, hone the path of every art and talent, and in all things none shall surpass me…"
That handwriting looked awfully familiar.
Then he read farther. The answers in the sections below were even more complete and insightful than the official standard answers.
This was Konome's handwriting.
That tiny doodle-like seal had been left behind by her.
In the first five minutes of the exam, in full view of all the proctors and all the examinees, she had silently left the answer key behind for her teammate.
In terms of knowledge and intelligence, she surpassed everyone.
And in terms of disguise, intelligence gathering, and intelligence transmission, she still stood above everyone else.
So this was the legendary Number One Genius of Konoha.
Ibiki swallowed hard as he looked at Naruto's perfect paper and felt, for the first time, just what kind of monster-level talent that silver-haired girl truly possessed.
"Ei-eight points!"
After deducting two points for cheating, the grader quickly entered Naruto's score into the system.
Beep.
On the computer screen, Konome and Uchiha Sasuke both had bright 10s next to their names. The previously greyed-out Uzumaki Naruto lit up, and an 8 appeared beside his name.
Their average score came to an incredible 9.3, instantly placing them first among all the teams.
Naruto felt a surge of joy, but when his eyes moved to the silent counter on the podium, his heart tightened again.
Because so many examinees had been staring at the counter before, Ibiki had turned it to an angle only he could see. Naruto still had no idea how many slots remained for passing.
If Konome and Sasuke had already handed in and passed, and if too many people from the other exam rooms had already done the same, then his team could still miss the cutoff.
Beep.
His worry proved groundless.
The counter gave a faint electronic chirp, and on the grader's screen, the words Team Passed appeared.
"Yes!"
Naruto pumped his fist hard.
Only he knew how many times he had teetered on the edge of collapse during this exam. At that moment, he almost wanted to cry.
"Careful. That's proof you passed."
Watching Naruto celebrate, Morino Ibiki actually smiled and gave him a rare reminder.
He took the counter from the desk and slowly turned it around.
Naruto's blue eyes widened instantly.
The bright red number on the screen was:
There had originally been one hundred available slots. After Naruto finished, there were still fifteen left.
That meant only eighty-five people had passed the written exam in total.
If the total number of examinees had been around two hundred and fifty, then the pass rate for this first stage had been only:
34%.