Chapter 238: The Chūnin Exams
Guy knocked again, scratched his head, and muttered to himself, "I definitely heard something a moment ago. Did I mishear it? That shouldn't be possible."
He liked to think his senses were reasonably sharp — taijutsu specialist or not, a shinobi shouldn't miss something that close.
The door opened from the inside before he could puzzle further. A very familiar face appeared.
Guy's surprise broke instantly into delight. "Ryū-sensei!"
The volume startled a stray cat by the road. Several pedestrians on the street nearby flinched too, glancing over with mild alarm at the source of the noise.
Ryū's expression stayed flat, though internally he was reconsidering his earlier decision to let Guy down gently rather than bluntly. Subtlety had clearly not registered. And here they were.
He exhaled. "What's the good news? Spit it out, no dramatics, or I'm closing the door."
"Right! Ryū-sensei, you've only just gotten back, so you probably haven't heard — after discussions between the various Kage, the Chūnin Exams are resuming after years on hold. The first one since the war, and it's being hosted right here in Konoha!"
"It's scheduled to start in two weeks. The village is already filling up with visitors from other villages — every inn is full, and a lot of civilians are renting out spare rooms just to handle the overflow."
"…That's the good news? A Chūnin Exam?"
Ryū's face stayed flat. He had no shinobi obligations, no Will of Fire, nothing personally invested in this. If it had been the version from canon he half-remembered, maybe there'd have been some passing curiosity. The post-war restart specifically meant nothing to him.
Should I rent out a spare room too? Capitalise on the tourist surge?
He considered it for half a second and dismissed it. Minato's payment for past services was still sitting mostly untouched — he'd been spending it freely and was still at roughly ninety percent of the original sum. If he'd been more frugal he wouldn't have made a dent at all.
"That's the good news, huh. If that's all, go back and keep working on your Powers training. Not interested, and I'm not going to pretend to be."
"No — wait, there's more! Sensei, the Hokage is inviting you to the Exams personally. He asked me to deliver this."
Before Ryū could close the door, Guy pulled an elegantly produced invitation from his pouch and held it out.
Ryū took it, read the contents, and his expression — flat as ever, normally — registered actual surprise.
"He wants me as one of the judges? Is Minato serious? I'm not even a shinobi."
Guy shook his head. "All he told me was to deliver this. No other context."
"I see. Minato. The Chūnin Exams. Interesting timing." Ryū laughed quietly. "Is he trying to bring me into his orbit a little? Among Konoha's Hokage history, he's apparently a comparatively low-power-base one — Hiruzen and Danzō both still active and influential."
Whether that read was accurate, he wasn't sure. But it was Minato's invitation specifically, and Ryū had a measure of genuine goodwill toward the man — courteous, straightforward, none of the oppressive atmosphere Danzō radiated by default. Danzō produced zero goodwill on first impression and hadn't improved since.
Honestly, his short list of people he had any kind of rapport with in Konoha was small: Guy, Kakashi, Minato, Orochimaru, and the ramen stall owner. Everyone else registered as more or less a stranger, regardless of how many times they'd crossed paths.
Guy asked, curious, "Are you actually going to go, Sensei?"
"He asked nicely enough. Be rude to brush it off completely, even if Minato probably doesn't care much about that kind of formality. And there's free food involved."
He hadn't paid much attention to the rest of the invitation's contents. The phrase that had actually registered was meals provided.
With the Exams two weeks out and the village already flooded with visitors, every restaurant and noodle stall was going to be packed solid unless you showed up at dawn — and Ryū was not a dawn person. The invitation also mentioned coming early to help with exam preparations, which meant free meals starting today if he showed up now.
"Tell the Fourth I'll be there tomorrow morning."
Guy nodded with visible excitement. "Understood, Sensei! I'll be watching the Exams myself when they start — that's youth in action! The genin's youth deserves admiration and study in equal measure!"
The enthusiasm was probably rooted in pride — his own teacher being treated as a peer of the Hokage was, fair enough, a genuinely notable thing.
The word "youth" had been deployed enough times in one conversation that Ryū's ears were starting to register it as background noise.
He watched Guy go and shook his head with a faint, rueful laugh. "Future Might Guy, the legend, currently functioning as my errand boy. If his future fanbase ever found out, I'd probably get torn apart."
He tucked the invitation into his pocket, locked up, and stepped out.
He hadn't actually encountered many out-of-village shinobi until now — the few he had seen had already transferred their registration to Konoha. Which meant the village really was busier than usual lately.
Worth a walk. Staying inside was starting to feel stale.
Less than a year since the war ended, and they're already letting outside shinobi back in. No risk of old grudges flaring up? Lingering resentment didn't dissolve in a few months. If something went sideways — a fight breaking out between rival villages, someone important dying — the Fourth Shinobi World War could restart early, and the whole continent would be back in the same misery.
The political calculus of the various villages' leadership was, frankly, beyond him.
On the main street, he confirmed it for himself — visitors dressed in styles that didn't match Konoha's at all, vendors lining the road who hadn't been there before, and a scattering of forehead protectors from other villages. Kirigakure, Sunagakure, a few he couldn't place at all — probably minor villages he had no frame of reference for.
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