Chapter 292: Karin's Chuunin Exam 26

Karin did not say anything at first, but she understood the sentiment. Rock Lee might be Might Guy’s student, and that alone meant she could not dismiss him completely, but Gaara was not merely strong.

He was unfair.

There was a difference.

Naho watched the green-clad boy with a thoughtful tilt of her head. “Kaguya-sama warned you about his teacher, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” Karin said.

“Then perhaps he has something hidden.”

“Perhaps.”

Tōji glanced between Lee and Gaara. “Enough to survive that?”

Karin looked back toward Gaara as he reached the arena floor.

His sand shifted faintly inside the gourd, not quite moving but not resting either. The chakra within it was thick and heavy, mixed with something that was not entirely his. It had always felt like that, but now, with the fight about to begin, the sensation became sharper.

A container.

A bad one.

Naruto’s seal had been tampered with, tangled and disrupted by Orochimaru’s work, but it was still a seal made with skill. Gaara’s situation felt different. Less like something properly controlled, and more like something trapped under pressure until the container cracked.

Suna truly did not know what they were doing.

“Enough to survive?” Karin finally said. “Maybe.”

Tōji’s eyes shifted toward her.

“To win?” she continued. “That is something else.”

Rock Lee jumped down a moment later, landing lightly across from Gaara. He bowed, and not in the careless way some shinobi did before a match. It was proper. Respectful. Sincere.

Gaara did not return it.

Karin’s mouth twitched.

Rude, but expected.

Hayate stepped between them, looking even more tired than before.

“The next match will be Gaara versus Rock Lee.”

Hayate looked between them, then raised his hand.

“Begin.”

Lee moved first.

He crossed the distance quickly, faster than most Genin in the room could have followed, and struck toward Gaara’s face with a sharp, practiced punch.

The sand moved before Gaara did.

Karin was not surprised by that.

She had already seen enough of the red-haired Suna boy over the past five days to know that the sand protected him. She had felt it shift whenever his mood darkened, had watched it twitch inside the gourd when someone annoyed him, and had experienced enough of his presence during their own little clash to know that getting close to him was never as simple as closing the distance.

No, the surprise was not that the sand moved.

The surprise was how little Gaara needed to do.

His arms remained crossed. His feet did not shift. His eyes followed Lee with dull disinterest, but his body gave no command that Karin could see. The sand simply rose between him and the fist, taking the blow with a dull thud before curling back into position.

Lee changed angles.

The sand followed.

Fist, kick, sweep, elbow. Each attack came cleaner than the last, and each one was met by a wall of sand that rose quickly enough to block him before he could touch flesh.

Karin leaned against the railing, eyes narrowed.

So that was how it worked in a proper fight.

The sand did not merely answer Gaara’s will. It protected him as if protecting Gaara was its purpose, its instinct, perhaps even its obsession. There was chakra in it, of course. Gaara’s chakra, and something else layered beneath it, something heavier and older that made Karin’s skin prickle when she focused on it for too long.

His mother, he had said.

The sand wanted blood, he had said.

Karin did not believe that was the whole truth, but she was starting to understand why Gaara believed it.

Below, Lee pushed harder. His movements were sharp, disciplined, and entirely physical. There was no ninjutsu hidden beneath the blows, no genjutsu, no weapons, no trick beyond the simple fact that his body had been trained to move faster and strike harder than most people expected.

Against another opponent, that might have been enough.

Against Gaara, it was not.

The sand blocked everything.

Tōji made a quiet sound beside her. “That is just unfair.”

“It is,” Karin said.

Naho watched the arena carefully. “Can the green one get through?”

“Not like that.”

That was not an insult. Lee was good. Better than his appearance suggested by far, and certainly better than most of the Genin gathered here. But Gaara was a bad opponent for almost anyone. He had an active defense, an automatic defense, armor beneath it, monstrous chakra, and the kind of killing intent that made normal children freeze before they even started fighting.

A normal Genin could do everything right and still lose.

Lee jumped back, landing near the side of the arena, breathing a little harder than before. Gaara had not moved.

Not one step.

That, more than anything, made the difference obvious.

Then Lee looked up toward the balcony.

“Guy-sensei.”

Might Guy smiled, bright and ridiculous, teeth shining as he gave his student a proud thumbs-up. “Lee.”

Karin’s eyes shifted to him.

Again, she found herself stuck between mockery and caution. The man looked absurd. Everything about him looked absurd. The hair, the eyebrows, the green jumpsuit, the pose, the sheer unbearable sincerity.

And yet Kaguya-sama had warned her about him.

“Take them off,” Guy said.

Lee’s face lit up. “Yes, Guy-sensei!”

Karin blinked as Lee sat down and began unfastening the weights around his legs.

Weights.

He had been wearing weights.

Against Gaara.

Tōji stared. “Is he stupid?”

Karin did not answer, because at first, she agreed.

Then Lee dropped the weights.

They hit the floor with a crash that shook the chamber. Stone cracked beneath them, dust jumping into the air as both weights sank slightly into the arena floor.

Tōji slowly closed his mouth.

Naho went very still.

Karin adjusted her glasses.

Ah.

So that was what kind of stupid he was.

Lee stood again, rolling his ankles once as if he had merely removed a pair of uncomfortable sandals.

Gaara’s expression changed at last.

Only slightly, but Karin saw it. His eyes narrowed, and the sand around him shifted with something sharper than boredom.

The next time Lee moved, the sand missed.

Karin almost smiled.

Almost.

Lee appeared at Gaara’s side and drove a kick into his ribs hard enough to send him skidding across the stone. Sand cracked along Gaara’s cheek, a thin shell breaking apart beneath the impact.

So he wore armor as well.

Karin had suspected as much, but seeing it properly was useful. The sand from the gourd protected him before contact. The sand over his skin protected him after contact. Two layers, both fed by chakra, both ready before Gaara himself had to truly fight.

No wonder Temari and Kankurō feared him.

Lee struck again.

This time, the sand tried to intercept him from three sides, but he slipped through the gaps, body moving too quickly for the defense to gather in time. A punch landed against Gaara’s stomach. A kick followed, snapping his head to the side. More sand armor cracked away, falling like dry flakes from his skin.

The room reacted in shock.

Karin did not blame them.

For five days, Gaara had seemed less like a Genin and more like a bad omen sitting at the table. He had not played, had not laughed, had barely spoken except to say things that made even his own siblings look uncomfortable. The idea of him bleeding had started to seem unreasonable.

And yet Lee was making him bleed.

Well… bleed sand, but all the same, to think a Genin could get through that defense at all was already impressive enough. That speed… Karin judged it to be worthy of a Tokubetsu Jōnin.

“He’s getting through,” Naho murmured.

“Yes,” Karin said. “But getting through is not the same as winning.”

Lee seemed to understand that as well. His attacks had become faster, sharper, but each blow still lost power against the armor. He could reach Gaara now, but not yet break him. Not enough.

Then his bandages began to loosen.

Karin’s attention sharpened.

Lee ducked under a wave of sand, stepped inside Gaara’s defense, and struck upward beneath his chin. Gaara lifted from the ground, and Lee followed, bandages snapping around him as he moved.

This was the technique Sasuke had copied.

No.

Not quite.

Sasuke had copied the shape of it. Lee had built his body around it.

There was a difference.

The bandages wrapped around Gaara, binding him midair, and Lee spun downward with brutal force. The impact shook the arena, dust exploding outward as stone cracked beneath them.

For a moment, most of the room seemed to think that might have done it.

Karin did not.

Her senses were already on the sand.

It moved beneath the dust, thick and protective, and when the air cleared, Gaara stood within the remains of a broken shell. Bruised, yes. Damaged, yes. But not as badly as he should have been.

Lee landed badly and pushed himself back, one arm hanging lower than before.

The technique had hurt him too.

Karin’s mouth thinned.

So that was the price. More speed, more force, more strain.

A weapon that cut the target and the wielder at once.

Gaara’s sand shifted across the floor, faster now, sharper. His boredom was gone, replaced by something colder and far uglier.

He had been touched.

That seemed to offend him.

Karin remembered the way his chakra had pressed against hers across the table, heavy and unstable, as if something inside him hated the idea of being denied. Now that same feeling spread through the arena.

Lee had not just hurt him.

He had humiliated him.

That was dangerous.

Then Might Guy’s voice cut through the chamber.

“Lee.”

Rock Lee straightened.

Karin looked toward Guy.

The ridiculous man was no longer smiling properly. His expression had become serious, and somehow that made him look more absurd and more dangerous at the same time.

“You may use it.”

Karin did not understand at first.

Then Lee smiled.

Not arrogantly. Not with pride. With gratitude.

“Thank you, Guy-sensei.”

His chakra changed.

Karin’s breath caught.

Something inside his body opened.

No.

Something was forced open.

Pressure slammed through Lee’s chakra network, breaking past limits that should have remained closed. Karin had heard of this from Kaguya-sama, but hearing of a thing and watching a child do it in front of her were two very different matters.

The Eight Gates.

Madness disguised as taijutsu.

One gate opened.

Then another.

Lee’s chakra surged violently through his body, flooding muscles, nerves, and pathways with force they were never meant to withstand. It was not like Naruto’s chakra, vast and wild. It was not like Sasuke’s curse mark, foreign and hungry. This was Lee’s own body being driven beyond its limits by choice.

Naho whispered, “What is he doing?”

“Breaking himself,” Karin said.

Tōji stared at Lee. “Why?”

Karin watched as Lee lowered himself into a stance, eyes fixed on Gaara.

“To win.”

Lee moved.

This time, even Karin struggled to follow him.

The sand failed completely.

Gaara’s defense rose too late, turned too slowly, chased the wrong angles. Lee struck from behind, vanished, appeared above, struck again, and drove Gaara across the arena faster than the sand could gather.

The chamber erupted into noise, but Karin barely heard it.

Her attention was fixed on Lee’s body.

Every movement hurt him. She could feel it clearly now: muscles tearing in tiny lines, blood vessels straining, chakra pathways burning under pressure. His body was not built to survive this for long. No body was. The Gates were not strength freely given; they were strength stolen from the future and spent all at once.

And yet, for those few seconds, Rock Lee was magnificent.

Karin hated that a little.

He still looked stupid. His clothes were still stupid. His hair was still stupid. His teacher was still stupid.

But this was not.

This was terrifying.

Another gate opened.

Lee’s skin reddened, veins rising along his body as the air itself seemed to shake around him. Gaara’s sand rushed upward in a desperate wave, but Lee was already past it, driving the Suna boy high into the air.

“Hidden Lotus,” Guy said quietly.

Karin heard him anyway.

Lee appeared above Gaara, bandages snapping out as his body twisted through the air. He struck once, then again, then again, each blow landing before the sand could protect properly. The armor cracked further. Gaara’s chakra flared, and beneath it, something deeper stirred.

The thing inside him noticed.

For a heartbeat, Karin felt it look outward.

A pressure like old hatred pressed against the air.

Karin smiled despite herself.

So that was awake too.

Lee finished with a final strike that sent Gaara crashing into the floor hard enough to split the stone beneath him. Dust erupted across the arena in a thick cloud.

The chamber went silent.

Even Naruto had stopped shouting.

Lee fell from the air and landed on one knee, barely catching himself with shaking arms. His chakra was ruined, burning and unstable from the strain he had forced through it, but his eyes remained fixed on the dust.

Karin did not need to wait for it to clear.

Gaara was not finished.

Of course he wasn’t.

The sand moved first, crawling through the dust like something alive. When the cloud settled, Gaara lay on the floor, armor broken, face exposed in patches, blood visible against pale skin.

For the first time, he looked truly injured.

Then his hand twitched.

Sand wrapped around Lee’s leg.

Lee tried to move.

His body failed him.

Karin’s expression hardened.

That was the cruelty of it. Lee had finally reached Gaara, had finally broken through the sand, had finally proven that the impossible defense could be beaten, and yet his own body no longer had enough left to finish what he had started.

Gaara lifted his head.

His eyes were wide now.

Furious.

Humiliated.

Alive.

“Sand Coffin,” he whispered.

The sand crushed Lee’s leg.

The sound was ugly.

Even Karin winced.

Lee screamed, and the sand surged again, wrapping around one of his arms before anyone could stop it. Gaara’s fingers twitched.

Another crush.

Another crack.

Hayate moved.

The medics moved.

Might Guy moved first.

Karin almost missed him.

That should not have been possible.

One instant he was on the balcony, and the next he stood between Gaara and Lee, his foot slamming into the sand with enough force to scatter it across the arena floor like dry dust.

For a frozen moment, Karin stared.

So.

That was Might Guy.

Not the smiling idiot. Not the man in the ridiculous green jumpsuit. Not the fool standing behind his student with shining teeth and speeches about youth.

This was the shinobi Kaguya-sama had warned her about.

Hidden beneath all that stupidity was something sharp enough to make even monsters hesitate.

Gaara stared at him, confusion cutting through his rage.

“Why?” he asked.

His voice was flat, almost childlike. “Why would you protect him?”

Guy knelt beside Lee, one hand resting near his broken body. His face twisted with grief, pride, and something so open that Karin almost wanted to look away.

“Because he is my precious student,” Guy said.

Gaara did not understand.

Karin could feel that he did not. His chakra shifted strangely, anger mixing with confusion, as if the idea itself was foreign to him.

Karin, unfortunately, did understand.

Kaguya-sama would protect her.

Not because Karin was useful, though she was.

Not because Karin was strong, though she was.

But because Karin belonged to her.

Because she was hers.

Might Guy looked at Rock Lee the same way.

Different words. Different shape. Same truth.

Hayate stepped between them properly this time, coughing once before lifting his hand. There was no match left to continue. Lee could not stand, no matter how much his spirit wished otherwise.

“Winner,” Hayate said, voice quieter than before, “Gaara.”