CHAPTER 21

The moment Yuske's chakra was restored, marking the end of his hour-long meditation, the training to improve his control resumed, not letting his previous progress to be wasted.

The trickiest aspect was the understanding of how to direct the chakra correctly, it acted unruly and just passed in waves through the body, but with each new attempt more and more insight into the details of this complex energy occurred.

Strangely enough, help came from something he definitely didn't expect, namely the black substance. Well, there was no direct help from substance which was located somewhere inside him. Speaking of which, he still couldn't figure out where exactly this unique matter was located. As far as he was able to understand, it was a kind of inner space that didn't acknowledge the rules of this world, but at the same time, it had its own bizarreness.

Yuske could definitely feel the accumulating weight of the black substance, but he didn't feel an increase in his own weight or any discomfort within himself, which should have appeared if some part of him suddenly started getting heavier.

He could clearly 'see' the available substance, as if there were two planes, where the first tells him how much that very substance will weigh once it passes into the second, forming into the material world.

Only from the moment of materialization there is some discomfort, because the resulting black substance has to be put somewhere.

The help mentioned earlier came rather from his understanding of handling the black substance. He would envision the point at which he wanted it to appear when he used it, and it would begin to form at the exact desired spot.

The way the chakra was channeled was quite identical to the black substance. As he found out shortly after starting the practice, launching the chakra in waves as he had done at the beginning was not quite the right approach. Rather, he had to set an end point, in this case the forehead, and only then visualize a straight line of chakra from the chakra in the abdomen to that exact point.

Yuske even made a mistake once, thinking of both chakra and black substance at the same time - as a result, both matters moved towards his forehead.

Figuring out the reason for the misstep, he simply stopped thinking about the black substance and concentrated only on chakra, correcting his lapse.

Of course, it wasn't possible to fix everything right away, and there was some difficulty in the beginning, in the form of a still emerging thin layer of black substance on his forehead.

Not only did his thoughts often drift toward the black substance, it was easier for his body to deal with the black substance than his own chakra.

If chakra needed a few seconds to reach his forehead and gain a foothold there, the black substance did it instantly and he didn't even need to imagine its materialization for a long time, so easy it was.

Yuske found out about the emergence of black substance simultaneously with the chakra not because he had a mirror nearby, or saw his reflection with a blackened forehead, but for the simple reason that he felt a decrease in the stock of black substance.

By the end of the day, the boy had learned to separate the use of chakra from black substance, and even began to visualize several points on his body, leading a thread of chakra to each of them, attaching several leaves at the same time, but this was draining his chakra reserves even faster. Attaching the leaves themselves did not cause any difficulties, as if the chakra was pre-programmed for one single function - to glue objects that touched it.

Yuske wondered how long it took for geniuses like Itachi or Shisui to master this primary stage of chakra control training. Perhaps they didn't even waste time on such a thing and went straight to walking on vertical surfaces, but alas, Yuske had no way of knowing that, but Shisui becoming a genin at the age of five said a lot about his superior talent.

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- There you are. How was your day, Yuske-kun, were you bored? - Yoshida Hana was a little worried about her son, especially because she found him in his room again, sitting and thinking about something of his own, with a couple of pieces of wood in his hands.

She preferred to see him in the backyard, as she had on her return earlier in the afternoon, during lunch time, when he was once again busy with his strange games.

Yuske intentionally picked up the branches lying nearby as soon as he heard footsteps approaching his room. He had placed them by his side beforehand to give the appearance of being engaged in conducting a game of sorts.

Every day he had to resort to something new, for instance tomorrow he planned to replace the branches with stones or something else in order not to arouse unnecessary suspicion.

The youth spent entire day practicing, but he had to hide his activities from others, even having to go outside during lunch so his mother wouldn't catch him practicing with chakra in his room when she returned.

- No, I'm fine.

- If you want, I can come back early if you don't feel good being home alone.

- No need, I'm fine. – Yuske had to try hard to make his speech seem as childlike as possible, without using overly complicated expressions, or going overboard with colorful turns of phrase.

- All right, but if you want me to stay with you or take you to the store with us, just say it. What have you been doing all day? – Until recently she had always taken him with her, even having to often leave her husband to deal with work alone, but now Yuske didn't want to go with her, preferring to stay home alone.

He reasoned that the store would often get quite noisy, and, in fact, he was alone there too, as his parents were busy with their own affairs.

At least she was reassured by the fact that her baby boy was beyond his years and was already displaying mature behavior, fully aware of what could and could not be done. However, even though she had confidence in him, she was still worried, and even moved away all the sharp objects in the house.

- I was throwing pebbles in the backyard and doing a lot of other things. - Yuske was aware that he couldn't say that he wasn't doing anything, for it might raise suspicion to his overly reserved behavior, but he couldn't voice the truth either.

His mother left to prepare dinner, telling him to come downstairs soon, and in the meantime, Yusuke resumed his training. After the dinner, the training found its continuation, for there was no reason to slack off from the relentless desire to explore chakra.

It made him uncomfortable at times with the amount of pretending required, but there was nothing he could do about it. He even had to pretend to be asleep when his mother came to check on him before going to bed. At least he considered himself lucky to be the only child, because otherwise it would have become nearly impossible to hide his training.