In the early morning, Raijin was already awake, his eyes having little bags due to his sleep being compromised by his previous excited behavior. In the bathroom, he brushed his teeth with his index finger, as he didn't have a toothbrush. When finishing his morning hygiene routine, he took a look at the mirror placed above the sink of the bathroom.

'If the cowlick on your head gives away the rotation type for your chakra…' He approached the mirror and began analyzing his hair's natural whorl side. 'Then I am… A leftie, huh? Well, that explains why I felt I was swimming against the current when trying to move my chakra for the first time.'

After taking a look at that, Raijin tiptoed out of the orphanage and rapidly approached the gravel road separating the outer bounds of the household from the inner gates. Silently walking his way to the residential area, he didn't expect to see Minko beside the gates. 

Looking at the woman who looked more like a ghost to Raijin, he gulped apprehensively as he intended to go out unnoticed. "What are you doing here, Minko-sama?" he raised his question without thinking.

"That is my question, Raijin. What are you doing here on the outside?" She asked with a deep voice. Her peering gaze testified to her scrutiny of the behavior of the boy in question. His argumentative flaws would most definitely not be overlooked.

"I-I will take a look around the village!" He replied, his tone a bit unsure at the start as he was still creating a believable lie, but quickly gained determination and confidence to say the rest of his sentence. He firmly stood his ground, but still — it wasn't enough to deceive a veteran Jōnin.

"You are going to train, right?" She said with an accusing intonation while squinting her eyes. "And despite all the risks, you are going alone." she took one step closer to him. At this point, Raijin was getting uncomfortable because of her approach. "You shouldn't go." Minko concluded.

Frustrated, Raijin couldn't let his plans not go to fruition. If he didn't start today, then Minko probably wouldn't ever let him go out again. "Who are you to say what I should or shouldn't do, Minko-sama?" His words left in quick succession. 

"Are you trying to thwart my growth for what? Your own satisfaction?! As you said before, I will live the present with all my might to mold my future to the best of my ability." In a rampant state, Raijin didn't care for Minko's beliefs or worries. His actions were his to dictate, after all, in mind, he wasn't a common three-year-old to get ordered around like that. His teeth gnashed in a distressed moment and his eyes looked like fiery beasts while looking directly at the woman before him.

Seeing Raijin's behavior, Minko could only deduce that the previous events had triggered something within him. But he wasn't wrong either — in this world where any wrong move could mean your death, he couldn't just lay around if he was serious about being a shinobi. What she feared was that he would exhaust himself to death, after all, to her, his chakra wasn't yet unlocked for him to be putting that much effort into exercising.

'I might have gone a bit too far… My old age is getting me confused, I almost thought he was my grandson.' Minko thought with melancholy. Her grandson had already died and this left a big hole in her heart that she tried to fill since then. "Well, if you insist, then go. Just don't ask for my help when you might have broken one or two bones" After saying her last piece, she then began walking to the front yard without looking back.

~~

~~

In one of the abandoned training grounds within the village, a young boy could be seen running in a concentrated state. 'This is already the third lap around the perimeter. Calculating this to be a regular soccer field size, I've already run 1.2 kilometers (or 0.75 miles) this morning. I'd say this body wouldn't last past the four-kilometer mark, so I'll stop there before I risk getting injured on the way."

After three minutes or so, Raijin completed his running exercise. Tired, he stayed for a few moments in a crouching position with his hands touching his knees while emitting a few phews from exhaustion. His breathing pattern was comparable to a desperate man, the only thing he craved was oxygen to go inside his nostrils as quickly as possible.

'Ah… After all that time, I forgot this feeling. It's so… so… exhilarating! I feel like I could punch Kurama in the face right now!' Raijin felt energized from his warm-up. His small body delivered oxygen to all his working muscles, improving his aerobic efficiency by leaps and bounds for the real training section.

"I guess I will start with a normal series of three of twenty push-ups, fifty crouches, and forty sit-ups. Maybe I could use one branch from a tree to make an improvised pull-up bar and start with a three-way series of ten repetitions of the movement. Though I doubt a normal three-year-old child would be able to do this in my old world, I believe that chakra will work its magic this time." Raijin couldn't be bothered to question the inner workings of this energy at the moment. He only had in mind one thing — the grind.

While going through his initial plan, his mind couldn't register anything else besides the motion of his muscles and the crack of his bones. His improvised tree branch worked wonders as a pull-up bar, as the trees in the training ground were pretty sturdy for some reason. 'Maybe this is one of Hashirama's self-grown trees. I remember in the show that he had a hand on Konoha's current vegetation.' 

Despite some side thoughts, his focused condition wasn't to be questioned. He completed the planned training in just around fifteen minutes. "Phew… This was easier than expected" Raijin looked at his hands in an awestruck stupor. "Is this what chakra is doing? I am not even one bit sore. I think I can go a few more rounds without losing rhythm." And so he did exactly that for another thirty minutes.

In the end, his optimal training in those conditions should've been eighty push-ups, one hundred and twenty crunches, one hundred sit-ups, and twenty-five pull-ups. Raijin believed that back on Earth, those numbers for a three-year-old child would seem absurd — hell, even he wasn't sure that he had just done that.

"I think I still have energy for some other things I thought about. Let me see, from the list that I made, maybe parkour training such as climbing trees and jumping from one thing to another to try to maintain balance should be a good idea for my current stamina." Seeing some wooden platforms that were increasingly high as one jumped from one to another, he began his training with full concentration.

In a few minutes, numerous sounds of someone falling on the grass could be heard. Raijin still wasn't very good at this, so he focused on practicing his propelling motion and landing by going slowly. Still, it didn't shield him from some bruises and funny falls in the process.

After a few minutes of that, he began tree climbing with the help of tree branches. After he was done with one tree, he went to another more difficult and so on — that continued for approximately one hour before he exhausted himself. "Huff… I'm so tired! Well, I can guess I can only do that thing now and call it for a day." 

Raijin sat beside a tree that shadowed him from the rising sun. Closing his eyelids, he concentrated on his chakra one more time and began to carefully rotate it to the left, making it have a current that moved throughout his whole body. With sweat dripping on his forehead and with tightened lips, he continued to do that for another ten minutes uninterruptedly.

'This is so difficult! I definitely need to have more focus on this part of the training. I could only do it for this much time...' breaking his focus, Raijin softened the control of his body and his head slowly collided with the trunk of the tree. Looking above, he saw the light of the sun among the numerous leaves being reflected to his very place. Closing his eyes, he promptly dozed off for several minutes.

However, behind one of the trees, a figure could be seen leaning against its trunk. "It seems like I was worried for nothing. This boy isn't normal after all." After saying that, the figure left without leaving a trace of its presence, only a smile was something that they couldn't remove from their face.

~~

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A/N:

What do you think Raijin will do from now on?

And what are your opinions on the dialogues? I tried to flesh out the human side of the characters… I am still working on it, so feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks for your continuous support!

Alright, getting back to work. Peace!