Tick, tick, tick...
The sound of the second hand turning was like a hammer driving nails into a coffin lid one strike at a time. Naruto felt like three corners of his coffin had already been nailed down. Only the last one was still stubbornly holding on.
Staring at the blank test paper in front of him, his forehead and chin itched nonstop. No matter how much he scratched, it did not stop. His knees knocked together faster and faster. If someone rolled up his pant legs, they would probably find bruises forming on the insides.
Again and again, Naruto glanced at the clock above the blackboard.
The exam had started at eight sharp. Twenty minutes had already passed.
Aside from Konome, no one had turned in a paper yet, but the classroom had still grown noticeably emptier.
From the podium, you could now see small hollow gaps opening up in the once-dense crowd of test takers.
"Candidate No. 22 cheated five times. Score reduced to zero. No. 31 and No. 37, get out with him."
A proctor sat with one leg crossed over the other, notebook in hand, a cold smirk on his face.
Three Rain shinobi clenched their fists, stood up, lowered their heads, and walked out of the room.
"Candidate No. 15, score zero. His teammates can leave too."
"No. 72, cut the crap. What I say is the rule. You do not want to be a ninja anymore, is that it, loser?"
In the blink of an eye, another nine shinobi were thrown out of the room.
Roughly every five minutes, Naruto heard another roar from a proctor, followed by more and more contestants getting expelled with their heads hanging low. A few had tried to argue back, only to be knocked unconscious on the spot and dragged away like pigs.
If a proctor said he caught you cheating, then you were cheating. No proof was needed. Those accused did not even get a chance to defend themselves.
Under the combined pressure of force and intimidation, the rate of cheating mistakes had skyrocketed.
At one point, someone even tossed a tiny slip of paper onto Naruto's desk. It scared him so badly his heart nearly jumped out of his mouth. He smacked it away with his elbow without even daring to look up.
But when he looked back down at his nearly blank test paper, regret crept into his chest.
If he had just unfolded it and glanced once, maybe he would not be heading for a zero. As long as he did not score zero, then with Konome and Sasuke's academic ability, they could definitely cover for him.
What do I do?
Should I gamble on it?
Naruto clawed at his hair as if trying to whip his barren brain into action.
Beside him, Hinata was just as distressed.
How can I help Naruto-kun?
She had already finished her own paper. Watching Naruto grip his hair in agony, her small hands clenched into fists, her pale Byakugan eyes filled with worry.
She had already tried once, tossing him a note, only for Naruto to bat it away with his elbow. She wanted to try again, but with her Byakugan she could clearly see the two proctors on either side watching her suspiciously.
If she got caught cheating too many times and her score was reduced to zero, then Kiba and Shino would be dragged down with her. She could not be that selfish.
"Sensei, I want to hand in my paper."
"Me too."
Kiba's bright voice rang through the room. At the same time, Shino adjusted his shades and raised his hand as well.
Hinata was not surprised. As Konoha's sensory specialist team, this exam could only be described as a basic quiz for them.
She watched Kiba and Shino walk to the front and hand in their papers to be graded. Kiba even jerked his chin at her, as if asking what she was still waiting for.
Hinata bit her lip. Her pale eyes reflected Naruto's figure. Then she looked at the questioning expressions on her teammates' faces. Her clenched fists loosened at last. She picked up her paper and stood.
"I... I'm handing mine in too."
Her soft voice echoed through the room. Hinata was so nervous she barely dared to breathe. She held the paper out to the grading teacher, stiff as if someone had coated her in glue.
Very soon, Team 8's scores were entered into the system.
Their combined total was eighteen points, enough to win them three tickets to the Forest of Death.
"Why is my score so low?"
Looking at the score on the screen, Kiba looked completely stunned. He had only scored a miserable two points.
Ibiki bared his teeth and sneered.
"You Inuzuka brat, did you really think your cheating method was subtle? That dog peeked at someone else's paper four times. I docked you eight points in total. Got a problem with that?"
Kiba's expression darkened. Compared to the Byakugan or insects, his method had indeed been far too obvious. If Akamaru did not have such a strong memory, he would not even have gotten those two points.
Beside him, Hinata saw her own six points and turned pale. She hurriedly looked back at her desk.
The bandage-faced proctor was holding the second note she had tried to leave for Naruto before getting up, grinning at her coldly.
Two attempts to pass notes. Four points deducted.
Team 8, one of the strongest sensory teams present, had lost a full twelve points through cheating. One more point lost and they would have been eliminated.
That was how absurdly difficult this exam was. Ordinary genin had no chance of passing.
Even shinobi with secret techniques had to be incredibly careful to scrape through.
Beep.
A faint mechanical sound rang out.
The number on the counter above the podium changed, finally settling on 92.
Before Team 8 passed, not counting Konome, only five people had made it through.
Hinata and the others handing in their papers seemed to trigger a chain reaction. The test takers who had been waiting for their chance began to move one after another.
"Sensei, I need to use the bathroom."
Kankuro, face painted in purple markings, raised his hand. A stiff-moving proctor immediately slapped handcuffs on him and led him out.
A proctor chuckled and scribbled something into his notebook.
Seeing the proctor's attention shift away, Gaara, seated in the back row, quickly covered his left eye. Sand gathered in his hand. Visual nerves formed within it.
The sand eye dissolved into grains and scattered. In the next instant, it reformed above another examinee's paper.
But the first thing Gaara saw was not the answer sheet.
It was another eye.
In the southeast corner of the room, Suigetsu clutched one of his own eyes. The remaining eye flew wide open in shock.
His Water Transformation Eye and Gaara's sand eye stared at each other across the room for a moment. Then, with perfect tacit understanding, both eyes turned toward the test paper.
Got it.
The two of them covered their eyes and began copying answers onto their own sheets.
Finally got it.
Chojuro nervously adjusted his glasses. His expression was grave as he magnified Gaara's paper tenfold. A strange watery sheen shimmered over his lenses.
Water has a higher refractive index than air. When light passes from air into water, it bends. By maintaining the water flow in a stable convex-lens shape and pairing it with the concave effect of his glasses, he could alter the focal length of the entire optical system.
Tap tap tap tap...
Listening to the rhythm and force of Chojuro's writing, Dosu's ears twitched. His pen movements quickly began syncing to the same tempo.
Right behind him, Sasuke's crimson eyes flowed with chakra light as he mirrored Dosu's hand movements exactly.
Before anyone realized it, the three of them had fallen into perfect writing synchronization.
"Heh."
Noticing the strange synchronicity between the three, Kurotsuchi covered her mouth and laughed softly. With one hand hidden in her sleeve, she formed the Ram seal.
Tap tap tap...
The chunin teacher disguised as an examinee kept writing, completely unaware that a thin layer of gray dust had quietly formed over the tip of his pen.
Lava Release.
Kurotsuchi changed seals. The dust coating the pen began to tremble. A faint gray layer peeled off from the written characters, twisted into identical letters, drifted through the air, and settled onto her own paper without missing a single mark.
It matched the original handwriting exactly, as though it had been photocopied.
She calmly traced over the pale gray script with her pen.
Hidden in her lap, a tiny clay figure clung to the edge of the desk. Its little head bobbed along in time with her writing. Neat rows of text were silently carved across its brown-yellow body.
Once the little clay figure was covered in tiny writing, Akatsuchi used a fake nose scratch as cover, swept his eyes over the proctors' positions, and quietly retrieved the miniature piece of art.
Seeing the little clay figure hopping away across the floor, Tobitake Tonbo's eyes sharpened. He rapidly took notes, but before he could finish writing, an odd sound suddenly came from behind him.
Chirp chirp.
Chirp chirp.
He turned and found a sparrow plastered against the classroom window, peering at the paper of the examinee seated beside it while chirping noisily.
There are experts here too?
Tonbo's head snapped back as he swept his gaze across the room. He searched twice through the bowed heads of the test takers and still could not find who was controlling the sparrow. In the end, all he could do was shake his head helplessly.
Even if he knew someone was cheating, if he could not identify the culprit, he could not dock their points.
This batch of examinees was really something else.
Whew.
Dropping his head, Jugo quietly let out a breath of relief and released the mice hidden inside his coat. Carrying tiny slips of paper filled with answers, they scurried off and delivered them one by one to the Sound shinobi.
At the same time, Karui and Omoi's eyes flickered. Their papers were still blank, not even their names written.
For shinobi who worshipped strength the way the Cloud did, disguise and information gathering really were their weak points. But that did not mean they were out of options.
After all, getting caught cheating only cost two points at a time.
"Sensei, I'm handing mine in."
"Me too."
Karui and Omoi raised their hands. Then they picked up their papers and walked toward the podium.
Unseen by anyone, a layer of blue-white lightning had already begun crawling over their bodies.
Whoosh!
The instant the two of them passed a pair of Rain shinobi, they froze for a split second. The muscles in their arms bulged at once. Their motion blurred like a quickdraw slash.
"Sorry. I forgot to write my name."
Karui flashed a confident grin as she returned to her seat holding a paper now mysteriously filled out. She crossed out the unfamiliar name on top and rewrote her own.
That was the true meaning of being Karui.
The Rain shinobi she had switched papers with sat there paralyzed by lightning, his tongue hanging uselessly out of his mouth, unable to say a word.
He could only stare helplessly at the paper he had painstakingly completed as it turned into a blank sheet without even a name on it.
His teammate, who had only just passed him the answers, was staring in utter disbelief at his own blank paper.
"Oh, I forgot to write my name too."
As if reminded by Karui, Omoi scratched his head with his lollipop in his mouth and calmly walked back to his seat. But the name he wrote down was not his own.
It was Atsui's.
The two of them could use Lightning Release and quickdraw techniques to perform a paper swap faster than the eye could track. But Atsui specialized in Fire Release. He could not copy their method.
So Omoi's eyes sharpened. Carrying a completed paper, he walked to Atsui's desk, exchanged it for the blank one there, then shifted his focus to the last remaining member of that Rain team.
One, two, three, four. One more time.
Scratch scratch scratch.
The proctors were writing so frantically their pens nearly smoked.
The Cloud's cheating method was obscenely brazen, but with Lightning Release combined with Iaido speed, it truly was too fast. Their movements were subtle too. The proctors knew they were up to something, but simply could not see what they had actually done.
Only Ibiki had vaguely figured out the trick. But seeing that the three Rain shinobi were merely paralyzed rather than injured, he chose to pretend not to notice and let the Cloud trio slide.
Night Ferry had warned him:
"Be strict with Konoha's shinobi. Stricter than strict. Do not let a single one slip through. As for the shinobi from other villages, you can be somewhat more lenient. Let as many of them pass as possible."
Faced with such an absurdly compromising instruction, Ibiki had no idea what that grand boss was thinking.
He had gone to report it to the Third Hokage, only for the old man to tell him to obey the order.
Unable to understand what either of those big shots were up to, Ibiki, a mere small fry in comparison, could only comply.
Time flew by.
More and more examinees raised their hands to hand in their papers, while even more were thrown out.
The more people submitted and passed, the more anxious the remaining contestants became. Expulsions were no longer happening once every three minutes. Now, every half minute or so, another examinee caught cheating was being kicked out.
Gradually, the huge exam room became eerily spacious. The remaining test takers were scattered far apart, almost fewer in number than the proctors watching them.
In those conditions, cheating had become hellishly difficult.
Sasuke clenched his fist, picked up his already completed paper, and felt damp sweat coating his palm.
His seat was in the upper-left corner of the room. Naruto's was near the middle. The distance and angle were wrong. He could not replicate the Cloud's paper-swapping tactic.
At first he had dared to glance back at Naruto. But now, with the room emptied out, the black forest of desks between them had vanished. It was an open plain.
At that point, merely turning his head would attract the attention of five or six proctors at once.
I can only rely on myself.
Sasuke let out a powerless sigh, picked up his paper, and walked to the podium.
During the grading interval, he shot a glance at the dreaded counter, but Ibiki's body blocked his line of sight completely.
Damn it.
Everyone else could see it.
Sasuke's face darkened. The feeling that he was being singled out intensified. He had seen the Cloud and Sand shinobi look at it. Was this retaliation for him beating up one of Ibiki's companions in front of Root's gate?
Beep beep.
The counter chimed, signaling that another slot had been taken.
Looking at the bright 10-point marks beside both his and Konome's names, Sasuke nodded toward Naruto, whose face had gone pale, then turned and left the room.
By then, fewer than ten people remained in the classroom.
Konome and Sasuke had both already walked out. Naruto stared at the blank paper on his desk, despair written all over his face.