Hinata's name lit up on the board like an accusation.
HYŪGA HINATA
Click.
Click.
Click.
HYŪGA NEJI
Her stomach dropped. The arena suddenly felt colder.
Of course, she thought. Of course it's him.
Neji stood a little distance down the balcony, arms folded inside his sleeves, posture perfect. He glanced up at the board, then at her.
His face didn't move at all.
A familiar tightness curled under her ribs. Years of sparring yards, of white eyes watching her misstep. Main house. Branch house. Cursed seals hidden under cloth. Expectations like hands on her shoulders, pressing her down.
"Hinata." Kurenai's hand landed gently, anchoring. "You don't have to do this."
Hinata's fingers dug into the railing. Her palms were clammy.
"I… I know," she whispered. "I… want to."
Kurenai's brows knit, then smoothed. "You're not required to prove anything to your clan," she said. "Or to him."
Hinata wished that were true. It wasn't.
She dipped her chin in a tiny nod anyway, because Kurenai believed it and that mattered.
On her other side, Kiba leaned in, Akamaru hanging bonelessly over his shoulders like a sleepy scarf.
"Oi, Hinata." Kiba tried for a smirk; it came out too sharp. "If that jerk cousin of yours does anything really outta line, I'll jump in and bite him. Clan rules can suck it."
"That would be unwise," Shino said mildly. Then, after a beat, "But I understand the impulse."
Hinata's mouth almost twitched.
She forced herself to look out across the arena, toward the opposite balcony.
Her father stood near the railing, hands folded inside long sleeves, face carved in stone. Hiashi's gaze was turned their way, pale and heavy. He didn't motion. He didn't speak.
He didn't need to.
Hinata's heart drummed against her ribs like it wanted out.
The board still glowed with her name, waiting.
She risked a glance sideways.
A little knot of orange and pink and black clustered at the railing further down.
Naruto was there, practically hanging over the edge. He'd already bounced back from his fight enough to grin at her like she'd just performed some impressive magic trick by existing.
"HEY, HINATA!" he bellowed, waving one arm so hard he nearly lost his balance. "YOU CAN DO IT! JUST… UH… DO YOUR BEST! Y'KNOW!"
His voice hit her like warm air.
Next to him, Sylvie raised a bandaged hand in a careful wave. Even from here Hinata could see the wrap at her temple, the faint stiffness in her shoulders.
"You survived an entire murder forest," Sylvie called, voice rough. "This is just one obnoxious boy."
Hinata's cheeks warmed.
Kurenai was right; she didn't have to prove anything to Neji.
But her friends were watching, and something in Naruto's shameless, loud faith always made the part of her that wanted to disappear go quiet for a moment.
'If he can stand there getting laughed at and still shout about being Hokage…then I can stand here.
Just once.
For myself.'
Hinata stepped up onto the railing, knees trembling. The drop looked higher from here.
She drew in a breath, jumped, and let the air grab her.
For a second she was weightless, jacket flapping, hair tugged upward. Then her sandals hit stone, knees bending automatically.
The arena up close was enormous. The cracks from earlier fights spiderwebbed across the floor, dark lines of broken stone. The walls loomed. The crowd's noise pressed down.
Neji dropped down after her, landing with a softness that mocked gravity. He straightened, sleeves just so, eyes on her.
"Hinata-sama," he said. The honorific sounded wrong from his mouth now, like it was being used as a blade. "You should forfeit."
Hinata swallowed.
"I… don't want to," she managed. Her voice almost disappeared into the murmur around them.
Neji's pupils didn't change, but his gaze sharpened.
"Why?" he asked.
She blinked. "Wh-what?"
"Why stand here?" His tone was calm, almost bored. "You know your own limitations. You know you cannot defeat me. You know the main house has already deemed you unfit."
The words were clean cuts. This was not a shout; it was dissection.
Her shoulders curled in before she caught herself.
"I…" Hinata's voice scraped inside her throat. "I… came to… to change."
His mouth went thin.
"Naive," he said.
Hayate staggered into place between them, already coughing.
"N-next match," he wheezed. "Hinata Hyūga versus… Neji Hyūga. Begin when I— kh— say begin!"
He stumbled back out of range, hand over his mouth.
Hinata exhaled shakily.
Her feet slid into the Gentle Fist stance on instinct, arms lifting, hands open. She could hear every tiny rustle of her clothes, every breath.
Neji didn't bother raising his.
"Begin!" Hayate rasped.
Neji moved.
It wasn't a rush. It was a simple step forward. Then another. The measured, grounded advance of someone who had never had to run from anything.
Hinata stepped in to meet him.
Their palms met with a soft crack.
Chakra sparked between them. Years of training made her body move the way it was supposed to—redirect, guide, deflect. She nudged his strikes off-line, caught a wrist, turned it.
He let her.
She saw that clearly with her Byakugan dormant. The slight allowance in his joints. The way his weight never truly committed.
She kept moving anyway.
Her hand caught his forearm, fingers grazing the point above his elbow. A clean Gentle Fist strike would have dimmed his chakra there, made his arm sluggish for a heartbeat.
Neji's chakra flickered the smallest fraction at the point of contact.
Then his other hand slammed into the side of her chest.
Pain flared. Her breath hitched. The chakra flow down her right arm stuttered.
He hadn't hit hard enough to break anything. Just hard enough to make the message clear.
"You've always been like this," he said quietly, following as she staggered back. "Your stance is full of holes. Your spirit is weaker than your body. You tremble, you apologize, you cling to others and call it kindness."
Another strike, this one to her ribs on the opposite side. She felt something spasm deep inside—her network blinking like a light with bad wiring.
Up above, she heard Kiba's snarl. "Neji! Cut it out, you bastard!"
Shino's more contained voice. "He is attacking her chakra points. This is still within the rules, for the moment."
Hinata's arms felt heavier.
She lifted them anyway.
"I'm… not apologizing," she whispered. "Not this time."
Neji's eyes narrowed.
"You should be," he replied. "For making others watch this."
His hand blurred.
She barely caught the next two hits. A third slipped through, numbing her left shoulder. Her own strike grazed his sleeve, accomplishing nothing.
"Stop," Neji said. "Before you humiliate yourself further."
Hinata's knees wobbled.
Naruto's voice crashed down like thunder.
"HINATA! DON'T QUIT!"
She couldn't look at him; if she did, she might cry, and crying would make it impossible to see.
But the sound wedged itself under Neji's words like a doorstop.
She straightened, just a little.
"I… know I'm not… like you," she said. Every word came out wrapped in effort. "I know I'm clumsy. And… slow. And everyone thinks I'm… useless."
Her chest hurt. Her lungs felt too small.
"But there are people who…" Her eyes flicked up, drawn like a magnet.
Naruto was plastered to the railing, eyes huge, face open and furious on her behalf.
"…who never give up," Hinata said. "No matter how many times they fall."
Her gaze slid further along.
Sylvie leaned on the railing, knuckles white, her glasses a little askew, bandages glaring against her skin. Sasuke wasn't there—gone with Kakashi—but where he'd stood felt like an empty spot in the pattern.
Kiba and Shino were pressed close to the edge on her side, Akamaru whining softly around Kiba's neck. Kurenai had one hand braced on the rail, eyes sharp and bright.
"And there are people who stand up for me…" Hinata's voice shook, but didn't break. "…even when I can't stand very well for myself."
Her fingers curled.
"I… I don't want to stay the way I've always been," she said. "So even if I fall, I… I want to try. Just once. To move forward. Like them."
Naruto went very still.
Up on the Hokage's balcony, a faint ripple passed through the gathered jōnin. Someone murmured. Hiashi's gaze didn't change, but something tightened at the corners of his mouth.
Neji's expression barely shifted, but for him, that tiny tension at his jaw might as well have been a shout.
"Pathetic," he said. "Admiring fools who struggle against what they are. Surrounding yourself with others does not change the fact that you are weak."
He stepped back.
Hinata's heart lurched. For a second she thought he had decided to walk away.
Then he bent his knees, sliding one foot in a clean arc.
His hand opened.
"The difference between us," he said, "is not something you can close with effort."
His chakra changed.
Even without her Byakugan active, she felt it—an inward coiling, a centering of power at his core.
"The Eight Trigrams…" he said.
Hinata's lungs stalled.
She had seen this in practice yards, from the wrong side of a fence. She had never been on the receiving end.
"…Sixty-Four Palms."
He moved.
He didn't rush straight in. He stepped into a circle only he could see, feet landing at exact points around her. His arms drew a pattern through the air—smooth, flowing arcs that turned halfway into strikes.
She flared her Byakugan in desperation.
Neji's chakra network lit up—brilliant, clean lines, every tenketsu clear, energy flowing in perfect loops. Around them, in her vision, the faint outline of a circle flared on the ground, divided like a compass rose.
The Eight Trigrams. The complete field of his control.
Her own network glowed inside her skin. Not as clean. Little scars where she'd overextended herself in training, places her chakra stuttered.
Neji's first step brought him into the top of the circle.
"Two palms," he said, and his hands hit her shoulders.
It wasn't just pain. It was interruption.
Her chakra at those points didn't just bruise; it cut off, the flow jolted sideways. Light winked out at the tenketsu he struck, little points going dim.
She tried to counter.
"Four palms."
This time he hit her wrist and her inner elbow. Her right arm went half-dead, tingling like it had been slept on wrong for hours. Her fingers wouldn't close properly.
"Eight palms."
He slid sideways, ghosting around her guard as if she'd telegraphed every intention. Hits landed along her ribs, her hip, the side of her neck. Each impact was a hammer on glass.
Her network fragmented.
"Sixteen palms."
Her feet tried to track his circle, but her coordination was collapsing. The circle in her vision—the one he was dancing through—darkened where his steps claimed it.
Spots gathered before her eyes.
"Thirty-two palms."
Her body lost clear edges.
Her arms, her legs, just shapes hanging from a center that hurt. Her chakra, once a shaky but continuous glow, snapped into pieces, broken segments flaring and dying under his hands.
"Sixty-four palms."
The last sequence blurred. His hands became a storm, each strike precise, each one landing on a point she knew, from years of diagrams and lectures, was vital.
Her chest. Her back. Up her arms. Down her legs. A lattice of impact.
Chakra gates slammed shut all through her body. The network inside her flickered, then guttered as if someone had pinched off every line.
The final strike drove into the center of her chest, right over her heart.
She didn't feel the hit itself so much as the sudden absence.
Her chakra shut down.
The world went muffled. Her limbs turned to wet sand.
Somewhere above, Kiba yelled something raw and angry. Shino's voice, tight: "Stop the match." Kurenai shouted her name.
Hinata's knees gave way.
She hit the ground on her side, vision tilted. The circle Neji had traced, the invisible Eight Trigrams, seemed to spin slowly around her, then blur.
Neji stood over her, breathing barely elevated.
"Do you understand now?" he said quietly. "This is fate. The natural result of talent and birth. Of main house and branch. Of strength and weakness."
His gaze cut up toward the stands.
"Those who are chosen," he said, "stand above those who are not. That is all."
Hinata's ears started ringing.
Her body wouldn't move. She couldn't feel her fingers. Her chakra was a dead quiet inside her, like someone had turned out every light.
But she could still see, just a little, through half-closed eyes.
She saw the sky above the arena, bright and far away.
She saw a blur of orange launching itself over the railing.
"NARUTO!" Kurenai's voice snapped, too late.
Hinata heard the thud of his landing before she saw him, because he hit the stone like he meant to break it.
He stomped into her line of sight, between her and Neji, fists clenched so tight his knuckles were white under the scrapes.
"You—" he started, voice already serrated. "You…!"
His anger filled her chest for her, when her own lungs couldn't.
He planted himself like a shield.
"You don't get to talk about her like that!" he yelled, loud enough that it hurt even her half-dead ears. "You don't decide who's weak and who's not! You think you're so cool just 'cause you were born genius guy or whatever?!"
Neji's eyes flickered. The slightest reaction.
"The world is decided at birth," he said. "You should know this well, Uzumaki. The village has already decided your worth."
Something ugly sparked in Naruto's expression.
"Yeah?" he snapped. "Then the village is wrong! And you're wrong! Hinata's… Hinata…"
He faltered for a heartbeat, words scrambling, then slammed forward again.
"She stood up anyway!" he shouted. "Even when she was scared! Even when you were being a huge jerk! That's more strength than you've ever shown! I'll prove it!"
Hinata's vision blurred with tears she couldn't wipe away.
She wanted to say something. Wanted to thank him. Wanted to say: See? They stand up for me.
Her mouth wouldn't move.
Naruto jabbed a finger at Neji's chest.
"I'll beat you myself!" he roared. "I'll show you people can change their stupid fate! I swear it! On my name as a ninja-"
His chakra flared- and something in the world tilted sideways.
I'd been hanging onto the railing so hard my fingers had gone past numb into a weird buzzing numb.
Hinata's chakra had always looked delicate to me—pale blue, thin but woven into something quietly beautiful. Neji's was bright and merciless, a perfect lattice with no frayed edges.
Watching Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms through chakra-sight was like watching a machine disassemble a snowflake.
When he stepped into that invisible circle, his chakra folded inward, then flowed out in exact lines. Each strike was a clean, surgical spike of force that stabbed into Hinata's network and turned pieces of it dark.
By the time he finished the sequence, her chakra was a dim, flickering outline, gates slammed shut all over.
She wasn't just knocked down. She was… emptied.
My stomach kept trying to climb into my throat.
Naruto hitting the floor beside her jolted me out of it. His chakra flared hot orange, messy and furious, spilling everywhere as he planted himself between her and Neji.
"You don't get to talk about her like that!" he was shouting. "You don't decide who's weak and who's not!"
He was too bright in my senses, almost painful. The concussion was not enjoying this lighting choice.
I opened my mouth to yell too—
—and the world lurched.
It felt like someone opened a window inside my skull.
Cold slid along the inside of my skin. Not the nice kind of cold, not snow or ice water. The deep, still chill of empty rooms and places that never saw sun.
My headache snapped from throbbing to razor-sharp. The colors drained out of my vision in a blink; chakra went from texture and light to stark white lines on gray.
I saw Naruto, edges too clean. Neji, a cut-out of pale. The arena, flattened.
My own body felt half a step behind me.
My throat opened.
I did not decide to speak.
"I WILL BREAK THIS FATE!"
The shout ripped out of me, riding my breath, but the voice layered over mine was wrong. Clearer. Older. A tone that didn't belong in a thirteen-year-old girl's chest.
It landed on top of Naruto's "I'll prove it!" like an echo that had gotten tired of being late.
Most of the arena didn't notice. Naruto was loud enough to drown explosions. The crowd's reaction swallowed everything into a single roar.
One person heard it.
Up on the Hokage's balcony, Hiashi's head snapped toward me like someone had grabbed his hair.
For one instant, his Byakugan flickered on—veins bulging, pupils washing out—and I felt his gaze hit me like a physical thing.
Our eyes met.
The world was still washed-out white. For that breath between heartbeats, I saw him the way I saw chakra networks—outline and flow instead of flesh. Something about him rang against the thing inside me like a tuning fork.
His chakra jolted, sharp surprise cracking through the surface.
Recognition.
Then everything slammed back.
Color rushed in too fast. The white lines of chakra turned back into normal weird colors. My stomach lurched. My knees went out.
I only stayed upright because my hands were welded to the railing. Pain flared behind my eyes, down the back of my neck, across my forehead like someone had drawn seal-lines there in fire.
My throat burned, raw and scraped, like I'd been screaming for hours.
What. The. Hell.
On the floor, Naruto was still going.
"I'LL BEAT YOU IN THE FINALS!" he yelled at Neji, voice shredded but just as loud. "I'LL SHOW YOU WHAT SOMEONE LIKE ME CAN DO! THAT'S A PROMISE!"
Neji stared at him for a long moment, expression unreadable.
"We'll see," he said finally. "If you make it there."
He turned away.
The spell broke for everyone else.
Hayate was suddenly there, waving med-nin in. Kurenai dropped over the railing like a knife. Kiba swore loud enough to make half the jōnin wince. Shino's bugs rustled like leaves under his coat.
The med team reached Hinata, hands already glowing green. They checked her pulse, her breathing, slid her onto a stretcher with practiced care.
"Is she okay?!" Naruto demanded, moving closer until a proctor put a hand on his chest.
"She's alive," the medic said. "Her chakra pathways are disrupted. We won't know more until we stabilize her. Move aside."
"I—"
"Let them work," Kurenai said tightly. Her face was calm; her chakra was not. It spiked, controlled barely under the surface. She caught Hinata's limp hand, squeezed it once, then let the stretcher carry her away.
As they passed under our balcony, Hinata's chakra looked like cracked glass—dim and fractured, but not entirely gone.
Naruto watched her go, fists curled so hard his knuckles shook.
He tilted his head up then, looking for us.
Looking for witnesses.
"I'm serious!" he called, voice breaking. "I'll win in her place! I'll beat that guy! You'll see!"
His chakra flared again, ridiculous and earnest and so bright it made my headache spike.
For a moment, despite the pain, I wanted to laugh. Or cry. Or both.
"Y-you better," I croaked. My voice sounded like I'd eaten sandpaper. "You already yelled a lot about it. It'll be really embarrassing if you lose now."
He blinked up at me, then grinned through the cracks and bruises.
"Then I just won't lose!" he shouted back.
"Annoying," Shikamaru muttered next to me. "Now I have to plan around him actually getting to the finals. Such a drag."
His chakra, neat and quiet, was already sketching invisible lines across the arena again, filing away Neji's footwork, Naruto's tells, everyone's weaknesses. Lazy, my ass.
I let go of the railing with one hand, slow, and pressed my fingers to my temple.
My head pulsed. Behind my eyes, that pale white flash lingered, a ghost-image that wouldn't completely fade. My throat protested every swallow.
Naruto squinted up at me.
"You okay?" he called. "You sound worse than I do, and I just fought a dog blender."
"I am…" I closed my eyes for a second, then opened them carefully. The arena stayed put. Good sign. "…adding this to the list."
"The what?"
"Things that are wrong with me," I said. "Hyūga. The moon. My head."
His face did that thing it did when he was trying to decide if I was joking.
"Uh," he said. "Okay. Well. If your head explodes or you start glowing, I'll, uh… yell at someone about it."
"That's a surprisingly comforting threat," I muttered.
He grinned again, then leaned on the railing, still watching Neji's retreating back like he could burn a hole through it by willpower alone.
The board overhead clacked back to life.
Click-click-click-click.
Names spun, letters blurring. The exam marched on, hungry and indifferent, swallowing kids and spitting out winners and losers and stretcher cases.
Fate, according to Neji, was a straight line.
Watching Hinata carried out on a stretcher, Naruto swearing himself into a future shaped like his own name, and Hiashi Hyūga staring at me like he'd seen a ghost with his bloodline eyes…
That line looked more like a cracked mirror.
And somewhere behind the cracks, something cold and ancient had pressed one fingertip against the glass and smiled.
The infirmary smelled like antiseptic and adrenaline.
Kabuto adjusted his glasses with one knuckle and smiled blandly at the wall of neatly labeled drawers in front of him. Bandages, painkillers, chakra-replenishing pills, tagged and stacked in tidy rows.
He'd helped "reorganize" them, of course.
"Thank you, Kabuto-kun," one of the older med-nin had said earlier, wiping sweat from his brow. "You're a lifesaver. With the exams this busy…"
Kabuto had ducked his head, shy smile in place. "I'm just glad to help. It's the least I can do, since I dropped out."
Now, alone in the little side storage room, he let the smile fall.
His fingers moved quickly over the paper in his hand—one of his precious data cards. Thin writing filled both sides already: diagrams, notes, shorthand that would look like nonsense to anyone else.
HYŪGA, HINATA –chakra network: fragile but elastic; multiple micro-tears preexisting; reaction to psychological stress: self-sabotaging.
HYŪGA, NEJI –textbook Eight Trigrams, Sixty-Four Palms; efficiency near 98%; resentment vector toward main family: exploitable.
He could still hear the dull roar of the crowd through the ceiling. Snatches of shouting drifted down the corridor—the tail end of outrage, the buzz that followed a good show.
Testing ground, he thought. And they don't even realize it.
His pen flicked.
UZUMAKI, NARUTO –reserves: absurd; recovery: borderline impossible; psychological profile: embarrassingly straightforward. Responds strongly to perceived injustice.
He paused.
S – ORPHANAGE GIRL, "SYLVIE" – seal usage; preliminary medical aptitude; chakra perception anomaly (self-reported). Chakra signature: layered; foreign element present? (Moon-aspected? Reevaluate).
He tapped the card against his palm, thinking.
He hadn't been in the arena proper for Hinata's match—he'd already excused himself back to "recover." But waves made it even into quiet corners. A chakra flare here, another there. That odd, brief spike that hadn't fit any profile he had for the kids.
The report would be fun to write.
He slid the card into its slot in his little metal case with the rest. Color-coded, ordered by clan, by anomaly, by threat.
"Orochimaru-sama will be pleased," he murmured under his breath.
The old snake liked clean data.
Across the hall, someone laughed too loud, nerves fraying. A crash, a curse, the scuff of sandals. The exam ground above them devoured children and spat them down here in pieces to be put back together again.
Kabuto stepped away from the shelving and moved to the half-open door, peering out into the narrow, white-lit corridor. The main triage room lay to the left; he'd memorized every bed, every cabinet, every exit in the first ten minutes.
His "injured genin" routine was paying off nicely.
He took two steps toward the records desk, then paused. Reached down to adjust the folders in the crate at his feet, like he'd just remembered something.
The floor shook faintly as someone pounded past upstairs. The roar of the crowd rolled again, closer this time.
"Make way!"
The shout snapped down the corridor a heartbeat before the stretcher appeared.
Kabuto sidestepped smoothly, pressing back against the doorframe, head bowed in the practiced posture of a junior making room for real professionals.
The med-nin barreled by.
Hinata lay on the stretcher, skin waxy-pale, eyes closed. Her chakra pathways—what little he could feel without making it obvious—were a mess. Eight Trigrams really was an elegant technique when you wanted to break someone without leaving visible scars.
Kurenai was right behind, walking fast, one hand wrapped around the rail of the stretcher, jaw clenched. Her eyes passed over Kabuto without registering him. Good.
They rushed past, vanishing into the main room in a blur of green vests and shout-barked instructions.
Behind them, the rest of the little storm followed.
A flash of orange—Naruto, being physically blocked from charging in after her by a proctor with more courage than sense.
And further back, just catching up, a blur of too-bright pink.
Kabuto's gaze snagged on it for a fraction of a second.
Sylvie, one hand pressed against the side of her head, breathing hard, eyes a little too wide. Her chakra felt… off, even from here. Agitated. Something in it crackled, then smoothed, like static under glass.
Interesting.
She glanced his way as she passed, but her focus slid right over him, dragged onward by the gravity of Hinata's limp form.
"You can't all crowd the doorway," a harried nurse was saying, trying to herd them. "We need space to work. Wait out here."
Voices tangled in the hall.
Kabuto watched them go, adjusted his glasses, and allowed himself one small, private smile.
Hyūga internal fractures, a jinchūriki with more heart than sense, an anomaly girl who saw too much and didn't know what she was looking at.
Konoha really was full of surprises this year.
He turned back into the storage room and shut the door most of the way, leaving just a sliver.
Plenty of noise now. Plenty of emotion. Everyone's eyes would be on the bloodline heirs and the fainting girl and the loud, angry orphan.
Perfect.
Kabuto knelt by the lowest drawer, slid it open, and pulled out a slim folder from the back. The one he'd tucked away earlier, marked with a dull little code that meant nothing to the hospital staff.
He flipped it open, scanning the contents one last time. Floor plans. Emergency evacuation routes. Security rotations scribbled in a different hand.
They'd been surprisingly easy to misfile once he knew where to look.
"Better finish while they're all distracted," he murmured, voice almost cheerful.
He folded the papers into thirds, slipped them into the lining of his vest, and closed the drawer gently, leaving the bandages and medicines sitting innocently on top.
By the time the commotion in the hall died down, Yakushi Kabuto would be just another helpful almost-chūnin, resting his "injuries" and ready with a clipboard when the next stretcher rolled in.
And somewhere far above, under the stone faces of dead Hokage, the real exam was already starting.