Soldier Pills—an exceptionally useful shinobi medicine. Their primary function was to temporarily double the user's chakra output, enabling techniques normally beyond one's capability. They could also replenish depleted chakra reserves for a rapid restoration of combat effectiveness.
Naturally, a drug this potent came with significant costs, manifesting in two major side effects.
First: since the pills essentially used chemical compounds to force the body's cells into overdrive for chakra conversion, Soldier Pills were functionally stimulants. The temporary power boost came at the price of permanent, irreversible cellular aging. The damage per use was minuscule, but it was cumulative and could never be undone. No one took Soldier Pills unless they absolutely had to.
Second: the price. Like any high-grade stimulant, Soldier Pills were expensive. Among standard ninja tools, they occupied the same premium tier as explosive tags—roughly a thousand ryō per pill at stable market prices.
At comparable price points, explosive tags were far more versatile and lethal—useful for direct offense, traps, and tactical setups. Most shinobi preferred carrying explosive tags over Soldier Pills, and even in canon, only specialists like Kiba who needed them for secret techniques bothered with them.
But if one could disregard the cellular aging, Soldier Pills were genuinely powerful—temporarily doubling one's chakra was invaluable for enhancing ninjutsu or recovering stamina.
Right now, Naruto held a small pouch of exactly these pills. He'd purchased them from the pharmacy run by Chōji's family, where a discount brought the total to eight thousand ryō—a sum that would have taken Naruto the better part of a year to save. If Hinata hadn't paid him for the acting work, he would never have been able to afford them.
"No choice... Gotta go all in."
He raised his head and stared at the waterfall before him. This was the waterfall west of Konoha—the same place where, in the original story, he'd trained under Jiraiya. The falls were well over twenty meters wide, with a drop of roughly a hundred meters.
As a training ground, it more than qualified. Not only did the width meet the requirement, but a failed leap would only send him plunging into the pool below—not a fatal fall, at least.
Of course, that was merely the baseline. Being hammered by a hundred-meter waterfall into a pool would deliver an impact far from trivial—broken bones at best, internal organ damage at worst. Just as the Nanto Holy Fist manual had repeatedly warned: this was training that could absolutely kill you.
"I won't give up..."
Looking at the Soldier Pills in his hand, a streak of resolve crossed Naruto's still-boyish face. As if psyching himself up, the blond boy threw his head back, swallowed a pill, and charged toward the riverbank with a roar.
"Because I'm going to become Hokage!!"
Despite the temporary chakra boost from the Soldier Pill, clearing twenty meters in a single leap remained beyond him. Barely past the halfway point, the blond boy plummeted uncontrollably into the churning rapids and was hammered down the falls.
"AAAAAHH~!!"
Screaming almost reflexively amid the torrent, Naruto could feel the agony coursing through his body. The water, accelerated by a hundred meters of freefall, pounded him like savage fists. His thin frame offered no defense against the onslaught, and the impact tore through him—he could feel his muscles shredding fiber by fiber, his bones splintering inch by inch.
As the water smashed him into the pool below, Naruto—limbs gone limp—sank slowly toward the bottom. Dappled, fading light gazed down at him like the eyes of death itself.
It hurts...
But there are things that hurt worse than this...
Blood seeped from the corner of Naruto's mouth, yet what filled his mind wasn't his current predicament—it was the images that had accompanied him since childhood.
Loneliness. Hatred. Revulsion. Rejection. Ridicule.
These things clung to Naruto like a curse, shadowing him from his earliest memories. Compared to this pain—compared to the agony of having absolutely nothing—
——————
Sasuke's expression was equally grim. In an eerie coincidence, he too had prepared Soldier Pills.
But what faced Sasuke wasn't a waterfall. It was a bank of batteries wired to a chair with electrodes wrapped around the armrests—in plain terms, a crude electric chair.
By Sasuke's calculations, the rig could deliver a full five hundred volts. He'd built a simple graduated switch using five battery packs, each outputting 120 volts. Starting from a single pack, he would escalate one at a time until all five were engaged.
Even so, surviving one battery pack hardly guaranteed surviving two. And the switch mechanism locked for five minutes once activated—no manual override during that window.
Meaning: once he sat down and flipped the switch, he would endure five minutes of continuous electrocution. No matter how excruciating, there was no stopping it. And if he didn't survive those five minutes, the only outcome was—
Death.
The word seized Sasuke's throat like a hand forged from ice, leaving the boy gasping for air. Only when the sound of cold sweat striking the floor reached his ears did he realize just how terrified he was.
The sweat and trembling were his body's warning to his conscious mind—this was a trial that meant staring death in the face.
But there were things more terrifying than dying...
Sasuke slowly raised a Soldier Pill to his lips and swallowed it. Then he eased himself into the electric chair with an almost calm deliberation, connecting the electrodes to his head and both arms.
"I won't forget... I won't forget..."
The warmth and memories from before. The hatred and resentment left behind. And... the loneliness and pain of being the sole survivor...
Like a feverish mantra, Sasuke's finger slammed down on the switch. The gauge needle jerked violently, and brutal current surged into the dark-haired boy's body.
"AAAAAHH~!!!"
A scream tore from Sasuke's throat, unstoppable. He could feel the electricity carving into his organs, piercing his muscles, searing his marrow—as though the word "agony" had been made flesh and branded onto him in its most vivid form.
Wisps of acrid white smoke rose from his hair and clothes. Five minutes—a span that should have been nothing—now stretched into eternity, wracking his body and nerves with maximum-intensity torment.
His screaming stopped. He knew that prolonged howling only compounded the physical damage. The dark-haired boy's eyes bulged, his jaw clenched shut, sealing the sounds of suffering inside his body. Only the blood trickling from his bitten-through lip bore silent witness to the marks and color of his pain.
Yet—perhaps because the electricity was scrambling his brain—what floated before Sasuke's eyes were old memories, like faded black-and-white photographs. Images of the Uchiha family that once was...
A stern father. A gentle mother. And... that mysterious, admirable older brother.
All of it reduced to ash after one blood-soaked night.
Compared to this pain—compared to the agony of knowing you've lost everything—
————————
What did any of this amount to?!
————————
Clatter~!
The ballpoint pen slipped from Hinata's fingers and hit the floor. Her white eyes were frozen wide, filled with something between shock and disbelief.
"Sasuke and Naruto both skipped class?! Naruto I can understand—but Sasuke too?"
Iruka stared at his student roster in puzzlement. As the Chūnin responsible for this class, he was a kind and dedicated teacher—and the only instructor in the entire academy willing to teach Naruto.
"Can't be helped. Let's go ahead with class, everyone. When those two show up, I'll catch them up..."
He looked at the two empty seats and shook his head helplessly. But his voice cut off mid-sentence in surprise.
Hinata shot to her feet and bolted for the classroom door without looking back. Iruka, standing by the entrance, tried to call after her but couldn't stop her in time.
The rest of the class stared in stunned silence. Quiet, timid Hyuga Hinata—of all people—had just walked out of class in front of the teacher and every student.
For Hinata, this was the first time since "becoming" Hyuga Hinata that she'd broken character in front of others. She'd invested considerable effort into maintaining the meek-girl facade, but now she couldn't afford to worry about her cover.
Had those two actually gone through with that suicidal training?!
Even though it was blatantly a brush with death?!
The moment that possibility entered her mind, she found herself unable to think. A panic she'd never experienced before seized her body and soul.
No... This wasn't how the prediction was supposed to go... Why...
Activating her Byakugan to its absolute limit, Hinata's eyes stung as she strained to expand her search radius. She barely knew what she was looking for—two corpses? Two half-dead, broken bodies?
But one feeling crystallized in her heart with unprecedented clarity.
The feeling of having a lie exposed—of being called to account for it—and discovering you were utterly incapable of doing so. The shame, and the fury.
"Sure enough... I hate this feeling..."