They had chosen a flat clearing inland, far from the harbor and prying eyes.
Kimimaro sat cross-legged on the bare ground, spine straight, hands resting lightly on his knees.
He had been working for months on strengthening his body toward the Eight Gates, but progress with even the first gate remained slow.
Tonight, Emi was here to try and change that again.
Her Byakugan activated, veins standing sharp around her temples, she studied the flow of chakra inside his body as he meditated.
To her eyes, his network lit like rivers under pressure, surging against the narrow choke point that was the Gate of Opening.
Every few nights, once things were secure, Kimimaro would sit in meditation while Emi watched carefully.
It wasn't about dramatic leaps forward, just chiseling away at the same wall over and over until he understood its shape completely.
Tonight was no different.
His breath moved steadily, chest rising and falling like a metronome.
Inside his coils, the pressure built, always against that same stubborn latch of the first gate.
Emi's pale eyes traced every detail.
"The recoil isn't as wild anymore," she murmured. "Last month, it kicked your flow back like a hammer. Now it just… pushes. Softer. That means your body's starting to recognize the strain."
Kimimaro's lips moved with the faintest ghost of a smile. "Adaptation. Good."
"Not good enough to break through yet," she countered, folding her arms. "But yes, you're closer. You used to fumble for the latch half the time. Now you find it every session."
He didn't open his eyes. "Repetition makes memory. Memory makes instinct. The first gate isn't something I want to stumble into. I'll know its contours first."
"You guide. You keep me aligned. That's useful."
His voice was flat, but the meaning was clear.
She let out a quiet scoff, hiding a smile. "You're welcome."
Silence stretched.
Kimimaro adjusted his breath again, chakra pulsing in subtle waves, syncing to the rhythm she had drilled into him for weeks.
Emi tracked it without effort now, seeing each push brush against the unseen latch.
Never enough to force it, but enough to leave faint impressions on it.
"That's the point," she said softly, almost to herself.
"Wear it down. So when the time finally comes, it opens on your terms, not by accident."
Kimimaro opened his eyes just long enough to glance at her. "Exactly."
Then he closed them again, sinking back into rhythm, carving patience into his bones.
Kimimaro knew that with Emi's constant guidance, he would reach the first gate far faster than if he trained alone.
But it was still not the time.
As for why the Hyūga themselves had never mastered the Eight Gates despite their Byakugan's perfect view of the body, the answer was obvious to him: the Gates clashed with their art.
Gentle Fist demanded precision and restraint, while the Gates were pure overclocking, raw strain against nature.
It suited those who embraced power in bursts, practitioners of Strong Fist, or in this case, Kimimaro's own brutal, unorthodox taijutsu.
Kimimaro was still early in his climb with elemental jutsu.
He had begun working on a handful of B and even A-rank techniques, both Earth and Water, but they were still very much incomplete.
The same went for the deeper path he was carving.
The yin–yang–inspired exercises he had derived from Saya's Chinoike heritage gave him new angles to explore.
Even so, All-Killing Ash Bones remained a far horizon.
He wasn't close yet.
But now, for the first time, he felt like the path itself had become visible.
Not a door he could open, not even a wall he could touch, but a shape in the distance he could walk toward.
Progress. Not arrival.
But progress nonetheless.
When Emi finally let her Byakugan fade, she sat back, rubbing at the corners of her eyes.
"At least it's calmer now," she muttered.
Kimimaro opened one eye at her. "Calmer?"
She tilted her head, expression unusually serious.
"The Main Branch hasn't tried to fry my brain again for weeks. You noticed, right? At first, when I started helping you like this, they kept sending that ethereal pulse through the seal. Maybe they thought I was being… disobedient."
"Testing their leash," Kimimaro said flatly.
"Exactly. And each time, I felt it burn. But…" she frowned, fingers brushing the skin near her temple, "something changed. The last few attempts didn't hurt as much. My absorption started pulling even more of that energy into me. I think they realized it was backfiring."
Kimimaro closed his eyes again, calm. "So they stopped wasting effort."
Emi let out a breath that was half a laugh, half a shiver. "Stopped altogether. Can you imagine? The Hyūga Main Branch — giving up. It feels… strange. Like my first real victory against the system." She looked at him then, long enough that the silence stretched.
He met her gaze for a moment, weighing.
Sometimes he wondered if her coy smiles and feigned lightness were still just an act, or if this rawness was the real Emi bleeding through.
"You shouldn't think of it as luck," he said at last. "That energy isn't wasted. I plan to use it."
She raised a brow. "Use it how? More of your creepy experiments?"
His smirk was faint, deliberate. "Eventually. For you first. If I can refine it properly, I can even strengthen your eyes, harden your resistance to that cursed seal fundamentally. Maybe even completely free you from its grip eventually."
Emi's breath caught, though she covered it with a smirk. "You make it sound easy."
"It isn't," he admitted. "We'll need more precision than you have now. Microscopic vision. Better understanding of your own cells. Right now, you can see chakra coils. One day, I'll have you looking at individual cells themselves. Only then can Yang Release be applied in the right places without burning you apart."
She blinked, startled.
Kimimaro leaned back slightly. "You forgot again? Biology. Basics. I mentioned it to you before." His tone was matter-of-fact, as though saying he'd just teach her how to cook rice.
"You'll learn them. You already have the eyes. You just lack the framework to use them properly and walk on your own."
She studied him, lips curling with reluctant amusement. "So what, you'll be my sensei now? Science lectures between cult meetings?"
"If it closes the gap, yes."
Her smile faltered, softer now. "Gap, huh. You mean between me and the others."
Kimimaro didn't deny it. "Your cursed seal suppressed your bloodline. You had no proper teachers. You survived by laying low, never standing out. That kept you alive, but stunted your growth. Now you finally have space to train, so you've climbed quickly, high chūnin already. But compared to me, Saya, or Reika… you're behind. You should just focus on learning science with me for now."
She dropped her eyes at that, fingers tugging idly at her sleeve. "You don't have to say it so plainly."
"Plain words save time," he replied. "And you'll close the gap faster than you think. With the right knowledge, with experiments, with basic equipment, you can catch up. The rest is just repetition."
Her lips twisted into a half-smile. "So your leash might become a weapon too."
Kimimaro's smirk returned, dry as ever. "That was always the plan."
For a moment, the salt wind was the only sound between them.
Emi looked at him differently now, not just as the captor who had spared her, or the cult leader she followed, but as someone who had given her her first real victory against the Hyūga system.
And the longer she stared, the stranger it felt.
Kimimaro noticed, of course.
Sometimes he wondered if she even realized how much her gaze had changed.
Kimimaro then thought that he wasn't pretending to be a specialist.
In his past life, biology had only ever been surface-level knowledge, scraps of common sense, fragments of school lessons.
It had taken him months just to acclimate again, to rebuild the basics using this world's resources, and then layer on the differences that chakra created.
Now he was slowly compiling his own system.
A database, not just for himself but for others.
If you can teach it, you can refine it.
That was the principle he followed.
Each time he explained something, the concept sharpened, became real.
When he finished laying the groundwork, Emi would receive it whole.
For now, he had only introduced her to the simplest ideas: cells as building blocks, energy flowing through flesh, the idea of control on a smaller scale than anyone here thought about.
Reika was his anchor for fuinjutsu; Emi was different.
She was his way into shinobi science.
Even if she lacked the monstrous brilliance of someone like Orochimaru or Kabuto, her Byakugan alone turned the path into a breeze, and she had the strongest personal stake.
For Emi, it wasn't just knowledge. It was survival. Every step she took in learning was a step toward loosening the Caged Bird, one thread at a time.
...
Kimimaro's gain was simpler, but not less. "If you walk a road with someone, you can chart it," he once said to her during one of their sessions, eyes closed, hands resting on his knees. "Your path becomes my map too."
She'd tilted her head, pretending at indifference but not quite hiding the flicker in her eyes. "So this is for you as much as me."
"Of course," he replied without hesitation. "One day, I'll need a chart of my own. After I've stolen more eyes." His tone was calm, deliberate. "I don't plan to leave Byakugan evolution only to you."
Emi had stared at him for a long moment, then, lips curving in that strange smile of hers. "You're insane. But if anyone can twist a cursed bloodline into something new… It's you."
Kimimaro didn't smile back. But the thought lingered with him, another road, already waiting.
"Also, the Main Branch will also have to pay for messing with what's mine," Kimimaro said, voice calm and steady, as though he were promising the tide would rise tomorrow.
Emi froze, her eyes widening. For a moment, she wasn't sure she'd heard him right.
"You… you say that like it's nothing. Do you even hear yourself? That's the Hyūga Main Branch. One of Konoha's pillars. No one's ever touched them. Not even Kumo managed to steal a single Byakugan."
Kimimaro's gaze slid toward her, pale green and unflinching. "Then no one competent ever tried."
She should have laughed, or scoffed, or called him insane.
But she didn't.
Because the way he said it, so absolute, so certain, made something twist in her chest.
He wasn't saying it to mock her.
He was venting for her, and she knew it.
Maybe it was fake.
Maybe it was calculated.
But hearing someone, anyone, declare that the Main Branch would pay on her behalf… it felt good. Too good.
Her lips curved, shaky at first, then sharper. "You're crazy. Do you have any idea what kind of storm you'd unleash?"
"I don't unleash storms," he replied evenly. "I chart them. And then I walk through."
Emi looked at him too long, heart pounding in ways she hated.
That calm certainty made her want to believe him; worse, it made her feel like she already did.
For the first time, revenge didn't feel like a childish dream.
It felt like a real road, one she could walk behind him.
She thought of the Main Branch elders, of their cold eyes and endless chains.
She imagined their faces crushed into the dirt, their pale eyes gouged out, stomped beneath her heel.
The image made her stomach flip in dark delight.
"…Maybe I want that too," she admitted, her voice quieter now, almost dangerous.
"To see them broken. To watch those perfect eyes bleed."
Kimimaro studied her, calm as ever, though the corner of his mouth ticked in faint amusement.
Emi's cheeks flushed, but she didn't back away from it.
It was the first time she'd said it aloud.
Her first victory against the system had been surviving its punishment.
But revenge, true revenge, that was something she wanted to taste.
And if following him meant it could happen… then maybe that wasn't chains anymore.
Maybe it was freedom, the uppermost goal of her entire life, even if it looked the same.