Chapter 110: A Gift for Kiba

Kiba presented Tonbo's offer to his parents as if negotiating an alliance on behalf of the future Hokage.

Hana supplied the missing details. She explained the promise of perfect Academy marks, the imaginary rivals studying in secret, and the ninken festival Kiba intended to establish for Akamaru. By the end, her parents understood why their son had become eager to begin lessons more than a year before enrollment.

"If he wants to study, we should allow it," his mother said.

His father asked what Tonbo intended to teach first. Hana could only repeat what she had heard: Academy preparation and a secret path toward becoming Hokage. Neither parent believed the second description literally. They did believe Tonbo had found a way to make their son request the first.

The Inuzuka clan did not lack jōnin, but its active shinobi had missions, teams, and clan duties. Kiba received irregular family instruction in tracking, cooperation with ninken, and basic combat. None of his relatives had the time or patience to build a complete academic foundation around his temperament.

Tonbo's offices raised questions. The head of the Analysis Team should not need tutoring income, and he had trained Hana without charge. Yet Hana's progress proved his ability. Whatever amusement motivated the offer, Kiba would benefit.

"I'm going to be Hokage!" Kiba shouted when they agreed.

Akamaru barked until the household dogs joined him.

Several days later, the family visited Tonbo's home with gifts. Kiba entered first and found Tenyu and Maki playing on a padded mat.

"You're Tenyu, and you're Maki," he said after checking their scents. "I'm Big Brother Kiba. Say it."

"Brother," Tenyu said.

"Big Brother," Maki corrected with greater care.

Kiba beamed. "I'll look after both of you."

When he turned toward the adults, the twins exchanged a solemn glance beyond their months, then smiled innocently when he looked back.

Kiba spent several minutes crawling beside them while Akamaru investigated the woven toys scattered across the mat. Tenyu reached for the puppy's ear; Maki offered him a cloth block. Kiba intervened with great seriousness, explaining rules neither infant understood and accepting every sound as agreement.

Tonbo and Kiba's parents settled upon two hundred thousand ryō per month. The amount reflected regular access to a jōnin instructor and a curriculum designed for one child. Kiba's parents considered it fair; they also valued several quiet hours in which someone else would be responsible for their son's energy.

Tonbo specified that clan secret techniques remained the family's responsibility. He would teach general foundations, analysis, chakra theory when appropriate, and habits that supported Kiba's eventual partnership with Akamaru. The parents could observe any lesson and end the arrangement if they considered his methods harmful.

Lessons would begin the next day.

After the visitors left, Tonbo returned to his study. The Kurama record had advanced two related projects.

Reinforced Frame now possessed a safer branch. Instead of multiplying the strength of one limb until the rest of the body failed, Illusion Body: Balanced Frame distributed a smaller enhancement across the entire line from foot to hand. The result lacked the wall-breaking force of the original test, but it no longer tore tendons or fractured bone under ordinary use. An unusable forbidden technique had become a practical A-rank method.

The second project concerned Insert History.

Kurama theory had clarified the necessary balance. Mind Body Switch, Shadow Imitation, ordinary genjutsu, and Living Weave all depended upon different expressions of Yin Release. Tonbo was attempting another: a pattern strong enough to guide understanding without replacing the student's own spiritual energy. Developing the transformation fully might require a year or more, even with his talent and Shadow Clones. Guided Insight would begin as a narrow application.

Tonbo placed a small instruction seal upon the desk and turned it between his fingers. The seal held no memory by itself. It served as an anchor for a constructed mental space in which a student could follow an organized path of reasoning.

Earlier versions of Insert History focused upon enemies. Alter memories, insert false causes, and the victim might accept a different account of past events. Genjutsu Reincarnation showed the extreme danger of that direction. A change in perception could persist far beyond the moment of capture and influence every later decision.

The Kurama theories also suggested a safer use.

Tonbo did not intend to place false memories inside Kiba. Knowledge received without effort could make a student dependent, and direct alteration of a child's identity would be an abuse of the authority his parents had granted. Instead, the instruction seal would present Tonbo's method of approaching a problem: what details he noticed, which questions he asked, how he discarded weak explanations, and how he tested the answer.

Kiba would still solve the exercise himself. For a controlled interval, he would experience the structure of expert attention.

The technique would not tell him that an answer was correct. It would make overlooked details easier to notice, encourage comparison between competing explanations, and reproduce the pause Tonbo used before accepting an attractive conclusion. If Kiba guessed carelessly, the construct would offer no reward. If he reasoned well, the pathway would become easier to recognize next time.

The distinction resembled showing a road instead of carrying the traveler to its end. Repetition might help Kiba build comparable habits without replacing his own judgment.

Tonbo wrote safeguards before designing the first lesson. The construct would contain no personal memories. It would end if Kiba showed distress, abnormal chakra flow, or confusion about events outside the exercise. Its complexity would remain below what a four-year-old mind could process, and every session would be followed by ordinary questioning to determine what Kiba actually understood.

He could test more dangerous forms of memory insertion upon captured enemies through authorized Analysis Team work. An ally—and especially a child—required restraint.

The authority attached to his office made that distinction essential. Tonbo could read an enemy's memories under Konoha orders and could alter hostile minds when missions demanded it. None of that gave him the right to reshape a student for convenience. Tutoring created trust, not ownership.

This educational branch did not match the scale of Genjutsu Reincarnation. Yakumo's technique shaped many minds and records around one recurring person. Tonbo's seal would shape one temporary learning environment around a single student. The difference was enormous, but both depended upon the relationship between accepted experience and later behavior.

He revised the project name in his notebook. Insert History would remain the hostile application. The supporting technique became Guided Insight.

Tonbo selected Kiba's first subject: observation and classification. The boy had an Inuzuka nose, a ninken partner, and a habit of leaping toward conclusions. Rather than suppress those traits, the lesson would teach him to separate what he smelled from what he assumed the scent meant.

Kiba believed tutoring would reveal a secret route to the Hokage's office. In a sense, it might. A leader who could not distinguish evidence from confidence would eventually mistake his own desire for truth.

Tonbo expected the first version to fail in small ways. Kiba might focus on the wrong scent, become distracted by Akamaru, or treat the mental guidance as another opponent to overpower. Those failures would tell Tonbo whether the technique taught a process or merely imposed his own habits.

Tonbo closed the Kurama volume and prepared the seal.

"A small advantage," he murmured, "provided you learn how to earn it."