Shiro woke up. Still feeling tired he quickly gulped down some juice and washed up some lettuce with vegetables, using it alongside some cheese for a sandwich.

He wasn´t hungry after just waking up and since he usually saved up his food till after taijutsu practice, he decided to stick to the habit even if there wasn´t any practice for today.

Cleaning up after himself he hurried to school, thankfull that he lived closer to it than the younger kids of the orphenage.

He arrived a little bit ahead of time as usuall, seing his teacher already in the room reading some sort of book he imeadiately felt glad.

"Im sorry Date-sensei, sir."

The teacher looked up from his book"What is it Shiro, im not on time yet so if you have difficultys with something you can ask me when the bell rings."

"Actually teacher I would like to ask who I would need to talk to, in order to skip to the next class"Shiro responded.

The teacher didn´t look that surprised, but he imeadiately shook his head"Just try to internalise everithing and you´ll be on a good track to become a shinobi, you can´t skip classes because the year for the other classes has already begun."

Shiro shrugged at this"Yes i know, but I still want to skip classes, I haven´t quite grasped everithing and im sure my grades will drop."He told the teacher to show him he completely understood the situation

"However Im ahead of the other kids here and by moving on to the next classes I will be able to learn what I don´t know yet faster then if i would continue to study in the library".

At that Date finnaly dropped his book, taking complete notice of the boy infront of him

"Fine if that´s what you want, but remember what we are teaching here is the basics to the acadamy and what they are teaching at the acadamy will be what you need to survive your first few years as a shinobi.

I know this might seem far off now kid, but there are no tests that stop you from advancing to the acadamy and i have seen many of the worse students here not being able to adabt to the acadamy.

Then they failed to graduate, or worse when they finally did they were being picked of one by one on missions."

Shiro nodded"Yes i do understand that, but any shinobi risks there lives on missions and im not planing to fall behind for long."

The teacher, after making sure his duties were fulfilled, started filling out a forum and told Shiro to take his usual place.

This week then seemingly went along as usual, but if one looked closely one of the students now went back home alone, while another staid at the library till long after school was officialy over.

On friday Shiro finally got pulled aside by the headmaster, with the other students giggling at him, thinking that he had finally gotten in trouble.

"Shiro."the headmaster asked as tough it was a question.

"Yes headmaster"came as an reply.

"Well then, you know of all the troubles that can come from skipping classes right?"

Shiro nodded.

The headmaster sized him up, then he gave him a piece of paper.

"Come to school this weekend at these times, we will test basic knowledge and taijutsu form."

Shiro was a bit shocked at this early date, but he wasn´t worried about the subjects of this year, he finally learned how to read and write, while the rest was mostly memorisation, even his taijutsu had improved.

No the true challenge would be not to get kicked in the dust by the other kids, who had one more year of experience then him, didn´t need to catch up on there studys and might be close to his age.

Regardless he would rather be average in the second year, then number 1 and one more year late for the acadamy and chakra controle at his current position.

As he left the room he finally looked at the paper within his hands, 9-15 a´clock on saturday and 8-14 on sunday...12 hours in total, just how much were they going to ask him?

The next 2 days were long and tedius, but Shiro barely kept himself from going to sleep by his hope of seing the acadamy 1 year earlier.

Tests weren´t composed of the usual questions given to them by the teachers, they had to be answered in written form, this alone made the process take much longer then it needet to.

But still Shiro did his very best and corrected all spelling mistakes he could find, while trying to write as orderly as he possibly could.

Math, biology, grammar, geography all was tested, this was made all the worse by the fact that they only had math for very long.

The other subjects were only gradually introduced as there reading and writing studys came to an end and even then they usually were still used to practice both.

As such it mostly was Shiros own knowledge that he had to fall back on, but time waits for no one so eventually even these hours came to an end.

The final 3 hours were used to practice his taijutsu on one of the teachers, the teachers weren´t shinobi, but still Shiro could barely hit them, this made it all the harder for shiro to guess how well he did.

On monday he once again arrived in his usuall class, but the teacher stopped him from entering.

"Shiro, congratulations your new class is in room B8, or did you need anithing else?"

"No, but thank you for telling"Shiro said with a smile on his lips, then going upstairs looking for his new room.

The building had two floors, the first one was mainly used by the first and third graders, meanwhile the second one was housing all other classes.

This contrast was created by all the young students that wanted to be shinobis and nagged there parents until they finally could attend the ninja school designed for those outside of powerfull shinobi clans, but the difficulty was very steep for everyone enrolling and since the parents of the students decided if they could attend or not most flunked out in the first year.

The only exception to this rule were those that could adebt to the phisical training and the schoolwork that they usually were to young for, the only exception to this rule were the orphans like Naruto and Shiro.

They usually would quit by themselves if they weren´t good enough, but only they could decide that and since there was nothing stopping them on the way to the acadamy even the worst student could technicly continue on.

In the acadamy they usually soon realised that they weren´t fit for it and finally resigned, but sometimes it would take till graduation for them to finally be thrown out, wich would leave them far behind others of there age and often times with great trouble to get a job later in life.

Shiro finally found his class B8 he entered the class with others, who were looking much closer to his age.

He quickly introduced himself"Hello im Shiro Tsukamoto and i skipped a class so from now on i will be studying alongside you all."

The others took note of him and then focused on there studys again, the teacher, a woman who was maybe 30, told him were to sit while gave him a book.

After that Shiro just tried to make sense of this lesson he only understood by about half.

Shiro quickly caught on to the fact that these people were a lot more focused on there studys, it made sense afterall, they had seen most of there friends leave, being dragged away by worried parents, or they quit voluntarily after realising they couldn´t keep up with some subject that they concidered important to becoming a shinobi.

As such he seemed to fit in a lot more here than in the previous class that already started to be thinned out and would likely soon be overlapt with another class to maintain a good size.

Of course at first he was behind most of the students, but as the weeks passed and his pieced together knowledge was slowly expanding, he slowly went back to become one of the better students.

However he would never become one of the best again, instead he used all time he could spare to catch up in taijutsu and in the shuriken and kunai techniques that were slowly being introduced.

As such he managed to keep up with most things, only dropping his studys to hang out with some random class gatherings and very rarely to catch up to naruto, but this was becoming rarer and rarer.

This way he was not a very special student, the only excption being his maticulous need to keep up in all subjects at an even degree, even tough he was never clearly exceeding the rest of the group like he had hoped at first.

As it was he was quite bland, being neither very popular nor treated as an outsider, afterall groups were slowly being expanded as others within them quit over the years, tough it never was as bad as in the first year.

The only thing he was a little frustrated with is that whenever he had worked out a good balance for his lives it got disrupted, kunai fighting, targetting certain organs and basic chakra controle coupled with the first jutsu, the clone technique, it always seemed a little wrong how he devided his time.

This way over 3 years passed and he finally was nine years old.

The age gap between him and his classmates now had shrunken conciderebly, to a 3 year old a 5 year old might seem ancient, but in his class some were almost as old as he was, only a few months away from 9.

At the beginning his frame was smaller than some of his classmates, but now he was amongst the talles and was towering almost a (childs-) head over the smallest of them, it seemed as tough his body was determined to catch up to whatever growth it had lost in the wintermonths in that forest.

This way he was ready for the acadamy, he had the phisical and mental skills to attempt the lessons of the academy, even his chakra controle didn´t need anymore work.

The only thing that he pitied was how he had underestimated the time needed to learn the clone technique, he knew that the first jutsu usually was the hardest to learn and he would only get better from here, but as he looked at his gelatinous reflection he wondered if it would be comparable to the shinobi descendants that will be attending the acadamy.

Regardless the next day would be the official start of his training to become a genin of the leaf.