Chapter Text
“Today’s lesson on chakra is a little different,“ sensei said in his usual monotone as he picked up a piece of chalk and turned to the blackboard. “I’m sure many of you have already heard about our topic and have been waiting for me to bring it up.”
Gai sat up straighter and craned his neck to see over the spiky ponytail of the Nara boy in front of him. He squinted at the jerky movements of his teacher’s hand, watching them draw big white characters that almost seemed to exude a strange kind of glow.
Chakra Bond
Sensei took a step back to admire his work before he turned around and faced the class again.
Meanwhile whispering had broken out and quickly spread from the back to the front rows, the tension in the room so high that even Gai could feel it like ants crawling up and down his limbs. The kids around him were talking – not to him of course since he was still the dead last weirdo – but loudly enough that Gai could hear them.
Do you think we’re gonna…?
Finally?
No way…
My mum said…
For a few seconds, sensei waited, his arms folded across his chest. After a minute, he began to tap his foot. When the volume only rose, his eyes narrowed.
Gai’s palms were damp. He squeezed his hands into fists and felt the moist heat of his soaked bandages. Nervously, he glanced over to his rival who sat in the first row, as motionless as ever, the back of his head like that of a statue.
“Hm, do you not want me to continue? We don’t have to talk about the Bond today. I’m sure we could push it back a few weeks if you’re not ready.” Sensei hadn’t raised his voice, he hadn’t glared or thrown chalk the way he sometimes did, but the effect he achieved was instant and breathtaking. It was as if he had triggered an exploding tag, a collective gasp, then silence.
Everyone’s mouths were clamped shut. They were all waiting.
A small smile crept across sensei’s face. “Okay,” he said. “We already talked a bit about chakra last week. It is the first topic covered in your first week as students of Konoha’s shinobi academy. You know all about the elemental nature of your chakra.”
A tiny thrill went through Gai as he remembered that day when sensei had handed out those pieces of paper to them all and Gai had found out that he had lightning chakra, just like his rival! He’d kept the crumpled piece of paper, had taken it home to show his papa and then he’d put it in his special box under his bed with all his other treasures.
“Today you’ll learn about a different aspect of your chakra, called the chakra bond.” A diagram of the chakra pathway hung on the wall next to the blackboard. Sensei walked over to it and pointed to the center of the stylized ninja where the light blue lines representing the path chakra travelled through the user’s body curled into a spiral. “You know that chakra flows through your entire body.” He traced one of the lines with his finger, from the stomach up to the figure’s head. “Like your blood, and also like your blood it has a certain type. However, you know that while your chakra has one main element, it is still possible for a skilled ninja to mold chakra of different elements and even combine them for their jutsu.”
Sensei was drifting away from the main point, Gai thought. He tended to do this, and the class was getting impatient, the children were exchanging annoyed glances, a few of them starting to whisper again.
Sensei cleared his throat.
“What I am trying to get at is, your chakra may be categorized according to its main element – wind, fire, lightning, water or earth – but it is still unique, like a fingerprint. A few weeks from now, you will start learning how to identify shinobi by their chakra signature and how to suppress your own, so the enemy won’t be able to recognize you.”
“There is another thing that is unique about your chakra. It is tied to one other person’s chakra. That’s what’s called the chakra bond. Everyone has it; your chakra is tied to the chakra of one other person. That doesn’t mean that their chakra is like yours, though. It’s more like a lock and key relationship.”
Again the whispers were starting to swell. A girl giggled, then was shushed by another kid. Gai stared hard at the back of his rival’s head. His heart was pounding; his mouth was desert-dry. Was today the day?
“At your age and skill level, you can’t sense your bond yet,” sensei droned on, “but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Believe me, in a few years, you’ll understand. For now what you have to know is this: your chakra bond is unique. It can only be broken if you or the person who shares the bond with you dies. There aren’t any jutsu that can break or somehow create a chakra bond. Once the bond is broken, it is broken for good. You’ll feel it.”
Like all the other children, Gai was on the edge of his seat, silently begging his sensei to get to the point. They really just wanted to know one thing. Who is it?! When are you going to tell us?!
The other stuff, pretty much all of it, they’d already heard. Everyone knew about the bond, even Gai. Shinobi were bonded by their chakra to their one person. That person made you stronger; they were your best friend. By default. And when you were old enough, you got married and had children. That was just how it was. Gai knew that his own parents had shared a chakra bond. His papa had told him how they’d found each other at the academy. They’d been together until the day Gai’s mom had been killed on a mission in the Land of Rivers.
“Today,” all of a sudden sensei’s voice rang out much more powerful than before, “today, you will learn about your en and the person who shares it with you.”
He marched over to the door, pulling it open with one hand while still addressing the class, “For this purpose, I have invited a few specialists who will help us see the connections between all of you.”
Two women and one man stepped into the classroom, all three of them wearing the standard blue Konoha uniforms with chûnin vests. One of the women smiled at the kids in the first row, but her two colleagues greeted sensei with a curt bow, then stared impassively ahead.
There was some uncomfortable shifting. Gai found himself rubbing the tops of his thighs, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth.
The smiling woman stepped forward. She had long brown hair and pale eyes. “This won’t hurt a bit,” she said, “we’ll just need you to follow us into the classroom across the hall. One at a time. Mitokado-sensei will wait here with the rest of you, won’t you, Mitokado-sensei?”
“Of course.” Sensei nodded.
“My name is Hyûga, by the way. And these are Inuzuka-kun and Yamanaka-san. Okay, I’ve got the attendance list right here, so first up Aburame Iroha-chan, please follow me!”
It was startling how little ceremony there was. For a beat, the room was completely still, everyone locked in their own shattered expectations.
“Aburame Iroha,” Hyûga-san repeated, untouched by impatience, her smile unwavering.
All eyes were on Iroha. She was sitting two rows in front of Gai and it took her a couple of seconds of glancing around nervously as though she too was looking for herself, before she finally stood up.
“Yes?” Iroha’s voice was barely above a whisper and seemed to lose itself in the classroom.
“Come on, Iroha-chan.” Sensei waved her over, “you heard Hyûga-san. Let’s go.”
***
After that everything happened fast. Names were called and children got up and were taken through the door into the hallway and presumably beyond. From where he sat, Gai only saw their backs as they walked stiffly, looking small next to the adult by their side.
Mitokado-sensei leaned against his desk, watching everything with a bored expression on his face and when the children resumed their whispered nervous speculation, he ignored it.
Gai tried to focus on himself. He didn’t really want to listen.
Who do you think you’ll get?
I hope it’s…
Girls and boys were furtively glancing around, then turning to their neighbors, leaning close to them, entrusting their confessions to their friends’ ears.
With nothing to do but wait for his inevitable turn, Gai let his eyes wander the classroom. When he accidentally locked gaze with Yamanaka Miko, the girl made a show of recoiling as if stung by a bee.
“Ew! That’d be the worst!” she whisper-yelled for the gaggle of girls around her to hear. They giggled.
Sufficiently shamed, Gai lowered his eyes. Tell-tale pressure was building in his chest, making him swallow against the tears that threatened to well up. There’d be more laughter if he cried. He knew he was no prize. He was still dead last, competition to no one, except maybe Obito-kun whose grades were closest to being as abysmal as Gai’s.
“Hatake Kakashi!” The man’s voice startled Gai from his thoughts. He looked up in time to see Kakashi already on his feet, walking calmly to the door.
You could almost feel hope rising in the classroom. Silent prayers being sent out, reaching for whatever powers there were to be the chosen one to share a bond with Hatake Kakashi. Gai bit his lip and added his own wish. That Kakashi would get someone weird and silly. A nose-picker, a farter, a bed-wetter. Maybe someone who didn’t wash their hands after bathroom breaks or someone who never brushed their teeth properly. Truth be told, Gai wouldn’t have called any of the girls in his class gross or weird. They were just girls, all different yet not so different somehow and certainly all unified in their complete and utter rejection of him. Which was different, yet not so different from the boys’ complete and utter rejection of him. The methods varied but the results were the same. Tears and anger and sensei yelling at him and banning him to the back row.
Anyway, Gai knew what he needed to happen. The girl he got had to be better than the girl Kakashi got. That was the rival competition now.
He kept waiting, even more impatiently because Kakashi was ahead of him – like he always was – and that was unbearable. Children were called and left. Gai chewed on his lip, scratched his neck under his scarf, kicked his feet against the wooden bench.
After an eternity: “Maito Gai!”
The Hyûga woman had returned and called for him. She was alone – so far none of the other children had returned, which wasn’t exactly encouraging.
Gai walked past Miko-chan’s row, not sparing her a glance. He walked like his rival had walked, in slow measured steps, eyes forward. Because Maito Gai was just as cool as Hatake Kakashi.
***
To his mild surprise, Gai really was taken to the classroom across the hallway. It was kind of dark inside and the air smelled of chalk and dust.
“Okay, we just have to confirm something. This won’t even take a minute.” The Hyûga woman put one hand on his shoulder and hissed “Byakugan”.
Gai felt a sudden shift inside of him, like a spring coiling. Instinctively, he closed his eyes.
The hand tightened around his shoulder. “Look.”
When he opened his eyes, the room was illuminated by a weak blue flame. Gai gazed down at his hands. The light was emanating from them and the rest of his body. It took him a second to understand that it was his own chakra he was seeing for the first time.
“Wow… How did you do that?”
“It’s a pretty high-level ninjutsu, kid. But look closely. Do you see it?”
He blinked. The blue flame wasn’t bright enough to hurt his eyes, but it still felt strange to focus on it so completely, like looking directly at a skinned knee or into a cut on your hand. You expected it to hurt, and then it did.
Gai swallowed. There really was something there. Red among the blue. Like blood flowing into water, there was a streak of red winding through the blue like smoke.
“That’s your bond. It’ll keep you connected your whole life. See where it goes?”
Gai nodded. His eyes had traced the red thread to the door. The streak had gone beyond where his chakra reached, beyond where he could see.
“Okay, let’s do it then. Come on in!“ the woman sounded incredibly cheerful while Gai felt like he needed something to hold on to. This was the moment, now he’d see the person who was going to be on his team in his quest against his rival! From what his papa had told him, they would be the best friend he would ever have! His most precious person!
The door was pulled open in slow motion. Gai could make out a big shape – an adult – who walked in front of another smaller shape engulfed in the same blue Gai was. Now he could see that the red thread was between him and the other kid, connecting their flames.
Gai willed his pounding heart to slow. He wanted to look cool and self-assured for his new best friend. Whatever had happened between them before this moment would be erased because from now on they would be best friends! Maito Gai would work hard and be the best friend anyone had ever had!
The other child walked closer – something familiar in the way they moved… something kind of irritating. And, then, suddenly, the lights were switched on, and Gai could see clearly who was on the other end of his red chakra.
Silver hair, pale skin, a mask and usually droopy bored eyes for the first time impossibly wide with shock.
“Kakashi?!” Gai stumbled backward as his stomach convulsed.
Kakashi didn’t move. “That’s not a girl,” he said, his voice as inflectionless as ever. “Isn’t it supposed to be a girl?”
“I’d say in about eighty-five percent of cases people are bonded to someone of the opposite sex, but sometimes it’s like this. Your teacher will explain the details later.” Hyûga-san leaned down and patted Kakashi’s hair, which he tolerated with a look in his eyes that clearly seemed to say I am tolerating this. “Don’t worry, Kakashi-kun, it’s no biggie and I’m sure this little guy will be a very good friend to you. He looks really fun!”
Kakashi said nothing and finally the man standing next to him sighed, mumbled something that sounded suspiciently like shame - a word Gai was so famailiar with he would have recognized it anywhere - which earned him a glare from Hyûga-san, and told them it was time to return to class.
***
Gai was in a daze. He had no idea what to do now. How could he be Kakashi’s rival and share a chakra bond with him at the same time? Was that even possible?
Besides, you were supposed to get married to the person who was your bond, you were supposed to have children with them! But that couldn’t happen with Kakashi! It was weird! Once again, Gai realized, he had failed to be normal.
Only this time, somehow, Kakashi had failed too.