Ken approached his father the same way he approached everything else—with calm intent.

  It was just after dinner, the dishes cleaned, the air outside heavy with mist. His mother had gone to bed early, as usual. Daiki sat near the window, reading an old mission log with a cup of barley tea resting beside him.

  Ken stood silently for a moment before speaking.

  “Can you teach me to sense chakra?”

  Daiki didn’t look up right away. When he did, his eyes narrowed—not in anger, but caution.

  “Sensory techniques aren’t standard,” he said ftly. “Why do you want to learn them?”

  Ken didn’t lie. “To remember.”

  That earned a raised eyebrow.

  “I forget things during spars,” Ken expined. “Movement, spacing… too many variables. I want a way to track without seeing. Something instinctive. Something permanent.”

  Daiki studied him for a long time. “You’re thinking like a support shinobi.”

  “I’m thinking like someone who can’t rely on a bloodline,” Ken answered.

  That silenced the room.

  The truth sat there, unspoken: Ken hadn’t awakened his Sharingan. Not even the first tomoe. Most Uchiha showed signs by seven, especially those from battle-lineage families. Ken was now approaching eight, and his eyes remained bck.

  “Fine,” Daiki said at st, setting his tea down. “But don’t expect miracles. Sensing is about stillness, not skill.”

  They began the next morning.

  Daiki walked Ken deep into a wooded section of the vilge’s training grounds, quiet and unfrequented. The trees were spaced just far enough apart to allow movement, but the canopy filtered the light, leaving the air dim and still.

  “Sensory is like water,” Daiki said, sitting down cross-legged. “It doesn’t crash into things. It fills them. You don’t chase presence—you feel absence.”

  Ken mirrored him. Closed his eyes.

  “No chakra. Just listen.”

  He tried.

  He heard wind. Branches shifting. A distant rustle of leaves. His own heartbeat. Too much. All at once. His thoughts moved like a current caught between rocks—directionless.

  Minutes passed.

  Then hours.

  By noon, sweat rolled down his neck. His legs were stiff, but he didn’t move. He just kept trying.

  Daiki said nothing the entire time. When he finally stood, he offered one sentence:

  “You’ll learn when you stop trying to control it.”

  Then he left.

  Ken stayed behind for another hour.

  By the end, he didn’t sense chakra—but he remembered how it would feel. Not sight, not thought—presence. That was enough for now.

  The next week, Ken began testing the Body Flicker Technique again.

  It wasn’t fshy, but it was functional—exactly the kind of jutsu Ken liked. Most students learned the basics: channel chakra to their feet, burst from one pce to another in a short, high-speed dash. But almost all required hand seals, especially at the Academy level.

  Ken wanted more.

  He started in the backyard, drawing the seal out slower, internalizing the process. Instead of performing the Tiger seal, he focused on timing—how chakra surged to his legs, the moment it snapped, and where the disorientation began.

  He drilled it again and again. Fall. Recover. Correct. Repeat.

  Days blurred.

  By the end of the week, he could flicker short distances with only a breath and minor visual distortion. Still clumsy. Still unstable. But his progress was visible.

  Even Shisui noticed.

  “Trying to cheat your way into teleportation?” he joked during one of his surprise visits.

  Ken just smirked. “Trying not to die.”

  Shisui ughed, but it wasn’t mocking. “That’s fair.”

  Later that month, Ken made a trip to the public shinobi library.

  Unlike the cn archives—which were sealed and guarded—the vilge’s general library was open to all students and genin. Most skipped it. The real techniques were locked away. What remained were D-rank drills and glorified Academy leftovers.

  But Ken found value in things others ignored.

  He spent hours combing through scrolls, analyzing variations of water clones, wind dispcement strikes, and smokescreen disruptions. He copied notes on chakra-conserving hand seals and jutsu yering.

  One scroll—Suiton: Suimen Hōfutsu (Water Surface Flow)—caught his attention. It allowed users to manipute surface water to trip or trap opponents with subtle movement. No fsh. No waste. Pure control.

  Another—Fūton: Saji Otoshi (Wind Palm Drop)—was a compact wind technique that disrupted an enemy’s stance without creating noise or pressure signatures.

  Ken copied both.

  He left the library with a small notebook, thin and packed with dense writing—jutsu not designed to impress, but to win.

  Back at the Uchiha compound, others had noticed.

  Whispers passed through the branch families. Daiki’s son trained differently. He didn’t use Fire Release. He didn’t awaken his Sharingan. He didn’t even attend the cn’s weekend group sessions.

  At first, it was dismissed as odd.

  But then Ken beat another senior student in open taijutsu drills—without chakra. Then he disappeared from sight during training only to reappear behind the instructor, breath steady, eyes calm.

  By the end of the month, the Elders had taken notice.

  Daiki was summoned to the inner compound—an honor rarely given to branch family members.

  He arrived at twilight, walking past carved stone walls and into a low-ceiling room filled with shadows. Three Elders sat behind a screen. Their faces were hard, their voices harder.

  “We’ve heard… unusual things about your son,” one began.

  Daiki remained still. “Ken is disciplined.”

  “He avoids cn techniques.”

  “He studies from outside the archives.”

  “He has not awakened his Sharingan.”

  Daiki didn’t flinch. “He trains in his own way.”

  A pause. A whisper of disapproval.

  “You do realize how this reflects on the cn?” another Elder asked. “An Uchiha ignoring tradition—ignoring fire, the core of our power?”

  Daiki’s fingers tightened at his side.

  “Would you prefer a weak mimic,” he said, “or a quiet original?”

  That earned silence.

  “He is not disloyal. He simply… adapts differently.”

  The Elders gave no final judgment. Only a warning:

  “Guide your son back to the cn’s path. Or we will.”

  That night, Daiki returned home without speaking.

  Ken was in the backyard, bancing on one foot over a small water basin, eyes closed, chakra steady, replicating the flow scroll he’d found.

  Daiki watched him for a moment, then turned away.

  He didn’t say a word.

  But Ken noticed the difference.

  The next morning, the pressure in the house was heavier than usual. Airi moved carefully. Daiki drank his tea in silence. Ken packed his bag for another solo training session.

  Just before he left, Daiki spoke—quiet, low, unreadable.

  “They’re watching you now.”

  Ken stopped. Turned.

  “Should I stop?” he asked.

  Daiki didn’t look at him. Just answered:

  “No. Just don’t give them a reason to stop you.”

  Ken walked into the vilge with his head high and his eyes sharp. He didn’t have a bloodline yet. He didn’t burn like his cn. But he was learning to move like water, to cut like wind, and to vanish like smoke.

  And when the time came—when the Uchiha's future started to crack—he wouldn’t be the boy no one noticed.

  He’d be the one they never saw coming.