Xero let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. *“Too close,”* he thought, wiping his forehead.

  He leaned back again, tapping the pencil idly against his as he surveyed the chaos he’d left on his test sheet. It was a masterpiece of bluff and nonserue testament to his ability to wing it under pressure.

  *“If Kurht, I’ll pass. If he’s wrong…”*

  Xero’s eyes drifted toward the window, where the sun hung high in the sky, promising freedom just beyond the walls of the exam room. He grinned zily to himself.

  “…well, there’s always year.”

  ---

  Two rows ahead, Reika’s pencil glided across the paper with effortless precision, the faint scratg sound a testament to her focus. Her answers came swiftly, as though the questions had been tailor-made for her sharp mind. Each stroke of her pencil carved solutions ience—, direct, and unshakably fident.

  Her keen eyes skimmed the text, breaking down problems into their essential parts before pieg them back together like a master tacti anding a battlefield. A quick flick of her wrist added a final stroke to her current answer, and she moved on, unbothered by the stress radiating from the others. If anything, Reika was thriving uhe pressure.

  *“Focus is a ninja’s greatest on,”* her sensei’s voice echoed in her mind.

  She adjusted her grip, her back straight as a bde, shoulders unyielding. Failure was not in her vocabury.

  Beside her, Kuro was a trast—a picture of rexed posure, yet with something far more calg lurkih the surface. While his calm demeanor mimicked indifference, his mind was already ten steps ahead of the rest.

  He gnced sideways at Reika’s paper—*of course, she’s perfect*—and then back at his own, where the bnk page seemed to hum with silent accusation. He had inteo do nothing. After all, his strategy for passing was far less reliant on ink and far more reliant on instinct, on how he would shier in the exam’s more practical tests.

  But as he casually surveyed the room, taking in the chaos brewing in subtle waves, his sharp eyes nded on Xero slouched in the back, doodling devil horns on what was *definitely not* a test ahen his gaze slid to Naruto, whose frantices at the clod muttered curses painted a picture of total despair.

  Kuro frowned slightly. *Three bnk papers.* It wasn’t a good look.

  *“Sometimes survival isn’t about your ability—it’s about pying the game,”* he reminded himself.

  With a barely audible sigh, Kuro picked up his pencil. His movements were slow at first, like a painter sidering a bnk vas. He wasn’t aiming for perfe—no, that would be too obvious. Instead, he started filling in answers with just enough precision to avoid suspi. An easy question here, a cleverly disguised guess there. Each response was deliberate, straddling the liween “capable” and “average.”

  Kuro’s strategy was clear: don’t shihtly, don’t sink too low. Be fettable. But while his pencil moved, his mind wandered freely, sing for any unusual behavior. His eyes flicked up, aed how Ibiki’s eagle-like gaze swept the room, searg for the slightest twitch or suspicious gnce. Kuro avoided eye tact like a seasoned pro, keeping his head bowed just enough to appear absorbed in his work.

  A row back, someone dropped their eraser, the soft thud eg louder than it should have. Half the room flinched. Kuro didn’t move—he didn’t o. His peripheral vision had already captured it. Someoo his left was using a mirror to refleswers off audent’s paper. Clever, but risky.

  Kuro smirked faintly. *Amateurs.*

  Meanwhile, Reika didn’t spare anyone a gnce. Her focus was absolute, her pencil moving with the rhythm of someone who’d rehearsed this moment in her mind a thousand times over. Her answers were fwless, precise, and unyielding—a refle of her own drive to succeed. Reika wasn’t just here to pass; she was here to dominate.

  Kuro’s pencil stopped for a moment as his eyes flitted back to Naruto, whose loud sighs were growing increasingly frequent. The blond ninja had now begun scribbling random symbols that looked suspiciously like ramen bowls. Kuro suppressed a snicker. *Hopeless.*

  Then there was Xero—calm, unbothered, his doodles growing more eborate by the sed. If Xero’s pn was to fail gloriously, he was certainly excelling.

  Kuro shook his head with amusement auro his work, his answers scattered in varying degrees of correess. He left the hardest questions bnk, just enough to make it believable. In the game of subtlety, it wasn’t about being the best—it was about slipping through unnoticed.

  Satisfied, Kuro leaned back slightly, his pencil spinning zily between his fingers as he sed the room one final time. Reika, still relentless. Naruto, sinking further into despair. Xero, now drawing what looked like a fire-breathing dragon version of Ibiki.

  *“Good,”* Kuro thought, smirking to himself. *“Keep ag, Xero..”*

  He sat up straighter, added a single lio one of his answers for effect, and pced his peneatly on the desk. The clock ticked on, and Kuro waited—unshakable, unbothered, and already three steps ahead.

  ---

  The tension in the room thied like a fog, heavy and suffog. Naruto could hear the faint tremble of a chair leg dragging against the floor as another partit stood up, their spirit shattered, and shuffled out of the room. The soft thuds of their retreating footsteps echoed like funeral drums. Each sound chipped away at the already-frayed nerves of the remaining didates, a cruel remihat the unfiving rules of the exam were desigo break them.

  Ibiki Morino stood motionless at the front of the room, his t figure casting a long shadow that seemed to stretch across the walls like a phantom of despair. His cold, calg gaze swept over the partits like a bde, lingering just long enough to make even the most fident ninja squirm. It wasn’t just his reputation as an interrogator that uled them; it was the way his presence alone seemed to strip away their resolve, exposing the raw fear beh.

  “The weak will leave,” Ibiki said, his voice low and deliberate, as though each word was a stone sinking into their hearts. “The strong will remain.”

  Naruto’s fists tightened until his knuckles turned white, the blood draining from his hands as if to fuel the fire burning inside him. *I’m not leaving,* he repeated to himself. *I won’t quit.*