Gently and carefully, I used my newfound sense to softly manipulate the pool of Chakra within me, with great care I drew strands of it out and imitated Tokei's actions to the best of my ability.

The pool was slippery and tough, not nearly as pliable as the natural circulation through my body would suggest. In areas where the Chakra was concentrated, it seemed that it went through a qualitative change that made it "thicker" or more accurately, more "dense".

I would pull on the pool, and it would slip.

Pull… slip.

Pull some more… slip even more.

It took over 20 minutes before I managed to spool out a significant amount, this time as my manipulation was done tenderly, there was no burn or painful sensation. I was grateful for the fact cause it hurt like hell.

Imagine stubbing your toe, but your toe is connected to your soul.

Ouchie.

"Alright, finish up for now" Tokei ordered.

I really wanted to keep going, every moment I spent interacting with Chakra felt like a gift… it was borderline addicting.

But if I disobey him, the man's gonna ban Chakra usage again…

Reluctantly, I let go of the grasp I had on my main Chakra pool and relaxed my body, allowing it to settle down into place like before. Tokei stood up and seemed pleased.

"Much better, Aoki," he said with a smile, I nodded back and returned the grin, Tokei wasn't so bad when he wasn't trying to test my patience or blowing up at me.

Tokei told me to take a five-minute break, after which he had me exercise once again to make sure that using Chakra had no adverse effects on my body, thankfully everything seemed to be fine.

We did two more Chakra control training exercises broken up by training drills before the session ended, by the end I was much more confident in controlling and sensing my Chakra than before.

By the end I was sat on the floor in a lotus position, exhausted but still giddy from playing around with my Chakra.

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"That's all for today, from now on we will add Chakra control to your daily training, once you get a better grasp on this we can move on to more advanced classes," Tokei said with a serious expression.

I seriously think that if I was less tired I might have been tempted to hug the man.

Chakra… every day?

Fuck yeah.

Still sitting on the floor, I thanked him for having taught me to which he sheepishly looked away slightly and nodded.

'Maybe this means he's warming up to me' I thought happily, I always wanted to have a good relationship with my teacher. As long as Tokei doesn't feel the need to annoy me, I think that we could maybe even grow to be friends someday.

"Ready?"

"Wait no! Let me get up fir-"

*SHOOM*

I take it back.

-----

"Aki, gimme mo!" Kuma said, waggling a finger at a tub of sugar sitting on the dining table.

I wanted to reject his plea but he stared at me with eyes as big as saucers… were they twinkling? How did he manage to do that?

"Pweasseeeee?!" he asked, sticking out his bottom lip in fake sadness.

I was too weak to recover from this super-effective attack and gave him a couple spoonfuls of sugar in the bowl he had in front of him. Curse cuteness, it's unbalanced and needs to be nerfed, get on it God.

Not wanting Numa to be left out I offered him some too but the boy was sprawled out across the floor, intently drawing on a piece of paper with some markers strewn about, curious, I looked over to see what he was doing.

The drawing consisted of one large house with seven poorly drawn-

Expertly drawn stick figures. There were two identical ones holding hands, I guessed that this was supposed to be the twins, next to them stood an elderly woman with greying hair, Tomo, holding what looked like a large bean... was that Amaya?

I saw a boy whose distinctive feature was the red marker Numa had used for his eyes, not gonna lie, I looked pretty cool even in stick figure form. There was also a stick figure that had no hair and two buck teeth coming out of his mouth… I'll make sure Sasuke doesn't see this picture to preserve his dignity.

But what my eyes gravitated to in the image were two people, adults who stood behind the twins holding hands. One man and one woman; they didn't have any features on their face that distinguished them from any other but the way Numa had drawn their hair and eyes showed a sense of familiarity with the people.

Numa noticed me staring and smiled, a rarity these days. He sat up straight and with both hands, showed off the drawing to me with a little giggle.

"Famiwy!" he said with another small laugh at the end. He pointed to the red-eyed boy and jabbed his tiny finger at me with a wide smile.

"..." I didn't say anything for a moment.

"It looks wonderful Numa, well done." I did my best to smile and ruffled his straw-coloured hair, he laughed and sprawled back on the floor, grabbing a blue marker and scribbling on the background, crafting a sky for the picture.

I stood up and looked over at Kuma who had somehow managed to get sugar on his forehead, "Yummy Aki! Thanku!" he said before putting his fist into the bowl and scooping out some more sugar.

They were good kids.

The more I looked at the two boys, the blurrier my vision got for some reason, I acknowledged Kuma's thanks with a nod and yelled out for Sasuke.

Once he arrived, I instructed him to watch over the kids for a while and headed outside.

For some reason, I had the uncontrollable urge to train.