❝Speak❞ - A Memoir (Book 1)

08 - Chunin Exams

ehem, I know there are a ton of errors since I haven't watched Naruto in soooo long. So if you find any errors or something, tell me and I'll fix it, thnks :))

 ~*MissChryss :)

Chapter 8

***

Many things happened after the paper incident, which I still don’t know what it means by the way. Team 7 had gone on some missions and they had gotten a special C-rank mission, which I think is supposed to be hard. I wasn’t sure when they were supposed to leave, but I highly doubted Kakashi could sit reading his book without a care in the world.

After waiting for way longer than necessary, he left to meet his team at the gates, and he allowed me to come along. I watched them leave and felt somewhat lonely afterward, we had become sort of close, his team and I.

The whole time they were gone, I was lonely in the house, finding entertainment in several book Kakashi bought me and throwing several kunai at random trees and other types of targets. It didn’t take long before I became bored of that. Kakashi and his team hadn’t arrived and I was getting very bored very quickly.

Instead of playing a game like other kids would’ve done, I decided to experiment with my so called paper ripping powers. I took a random sheet of my writing paper and tried to rip it, but it didn’t work. It wasn’t until I gave up that the paper ripped. It wasn’t necessarily straight, but I was just glad I was able to rip it.

From then on, I practiced ripping various things: more pieces of paper, thin slices of bread and other food items, and leaves. Over time, I became better at ripping things up and before long; I didn’t even have to touch it for it to rip. I even tried to make a tornado, but it didn’t work out to well, apparently, I needed something else besides will to make a tornado. I had no idea about chakra and its details. I would soon find out.

***

While I was trying to make a tornado one day, I heard news that Kakashi and his team had returned. I wanted to be the first to see them, but I was afraid to actually go outside. Finally after contemplating my situation, I decided that staying in the house was going to get me nowhere and if I wanted to be the first to see Kakashi and his team, I had to actually leave the house. That’s exactly what I did. I ignored everyone around me and went directly to the hospital as Kakashi had showed me before he left for the mission. When I entered the hospital, I thought that I should’ve probably thought it though before getting there. The place wasn’t packed, or anything like that, but I had no idea which room Kakashi was in.

“Ah, Ririn-chan!” I turn in utter alarm to find Sakura waving at me. Even though I’d know her for quite a while, I was still scared of her, so I didn’t exactly run to her like she had been expecting. “You came to see Kakashi sensei, didn’t you??” Who else would I come for?? I remember thinking that I had no one else in the hospital to visit, so I simply followed her down a few hallways and into a fairly small room.

A few weeks later and Kakashi was much better and so was his team. Besides that, it seemed a lot of things were going on throughout the village. Little did I know that a lot more would be going on much sooner than I ever thought possible.

***

I guess you could say it happened suddenly, but I’m not so sure since a lot of people should’ve probably seen it coming. Apparently many new people from different villages were “visiting” Konoha. Of course I had no idea why, I was still pretty new to the village, and thus not quite trusted.

One day, Kakashi came home in a weird mood. He said something Chunin Exams; of course I had no idea what it was and how it had anything to do with me. It actually didn’t, not at that time anyway. He asked if I thought his team was ready, even though he had already recommended them. I simply shrugged for I didn’t know what scale he was going by and whether or not to answer to actually answer the question.

I wanted to cheer them on in the Chunin exams but to be honest, I was scared. Then again, I had been scared of a lot of things and this was no exception. I soon found out that I couldn’t even watch the first test, or the second, so I settled for the third, which happened to be the preliminary matches.

Even though I went to cheer them on, I wasn’t exactly doing any cheering; I was silent after all. I couldn’t exactly control the fact that I couldn’t cheer anyone on even if I wanted to, so I stuck by Kakashi, and simply watched the matches. There were some that I wasn’t so happy about, but there were some, like Naruto’s and Sakura’s that were worth watching, in my opinion anyway.

I didn’t like seeing those people get hurt and I especially didn’t like what I saw on Sasuke.

One of the matches I absolutely hated was the match between Hinata and her cousin Neji. Even though I had no idea who they were, I thought Hinata’s cousin should’ve been a little more lenient to his cousin. For once in my life, I actually thought that maybe people weren’t so bad when I heard Naruto cheering for Hinata. At that moment, I wished nothing more than to have been able to cheer  her on also.

***

After those select matches, the people who passed went off to train, so was left alone while Kakashi trained Sasuke and any other people he happened to train, I never really paid attention.

As you probably already know, while I was alone, I found many things to entertain myself with, one of which was a scroll I happened to find lying around. Of course I wondered where it came from and what it was doing in Kakashi house, but I paid no mind, and so began my self-trained ninjutsu. I learned the different hand signs and what each of them did, and before I knew it, I was learning what it meant to be a ninja. Even though I still had no real idea what a ninja did.

Through my ‘training’ I learned that a measly scroll could never substitute a real teacher, and knew that soon enough I’d have to learn how to be around people, as much as I hated the thought of it. I just never thought that I would learn it on such short notice.

Of course, you have no idea what I’m talking about. Sigh, let’s just say, it all started in the third stage of the Chunin exams.