"WHAT?!!"
A roar shook the rafters of the Uchiha compound. Standing in the living room, one fist clenched, the other jabbing an accusatory finger at the dark-haired boy, the blond displayed a textbook posture of absolute refusal. The news he'd just received was clearly the cause.
"Stop screaming like an idiot. Starting today, Sasuke will be joining our production team. I expect you to get along with him, Naruto."
Slurping from her bowl of piping-hot Ichiraku Ramen takeout, Hinata's calm pronouncement left Naruto utterly deflated. Sasuke, sitting nearby and eating from his own bowl of the ramen Naruto had bought, maintained a perfect poker face and said nothing. Beyond the intense mortification, a subtler shade of embarrassment kept him from so much as glancing at the blond dead-last.
"So WHY do we need this guy?! My acting is obviously the best! And could this smug jerk even transform into a gorgeous older woman with a killer figure and a flirty personality?!"
Clutching his own hair in despair, Naruto jabbed his finger at Sasuke. Hinata's expression remained unperturbed, her tone as level as ever.
"That's precisely why Sasuke will be playing the leading man. And you, Naruto—the one who can transform into a gorgeous older woman with a killer figure and a flirty personality—are obviously the leading lady."
Silence.
"BLEEEEHHH~~~!"
Hands clamped over his mouth, Naruto dropped into a perfect orz at the edge of the hallway and vomited with gusto. Sasuke's stomach did a sympathetic backflip. The dark-haired boy shoved his ramen bowl away and pressed a handkerchief to his mouth. He'd gotten Hinata's assurance that there would be no explicit scenes, but hearing it spelled out like this—and associating it with the blond moron next to him—still churned his insides past the point of tolerance.
"That's right. This is how it's going to be. That's final."
Hinata set down her bowl. Her expression remained placid, but the skin at the corners of her eyes began to twitch and swell. Beneath the girl's smooth, porcelain-like skin, pulsing veins writhed like a demon struggling beneath painted skin.
"AAAARGH! FINE, I GET IT!!"
Naruto, still hunched over and retching, shot upright and stabbed a finger at Hinata. His voice was thick with indignant fury and a sour undertone.
"Hinata definitely thinks this stuck-up jerk is cool, right?! Just like Sakura and Ino and all the other girls at school! That's why you're playing favorites—"
CRACK!!!
A sharp, violent sound of something shattering ripped through the air above the Uchiha compound. A few small birds roosting in the nearby cherry trees scattered in panic, their survival instincts alerting them to the savage emotion packed into that noise.
Naruto stood rigid, back pressed against the hallway pillar behind him. In that instant, a wave of murderous pressure had slammed into him like a physical force, cutting his sentence clean in half. Beside him, Sasuke went taut, the wound on his left side flaring back to searing life as if reignited.
Hinata stood inches from Naruto's face. The veins flanking her fully activated Byakugan twitched and pulsed, turning those blue-white eyes more terrifying than ever. Her right arm was extended straight out, her index finger pressing into the pillar just past Naruto's cheek.
"Naruto. Do you know what the very first thing a ninja needs to break is?"
The girl's low murmur sent ice water through Naruto's veins. From the corner of his eye, he could see Hinata's right index finger was bent at an unnatural angle. The nail had been pried up from the impact, and bright red blood was dripping from beneath it, landing on Naruto's neck, one drop at a time.
Hinata's soft, slender fingers clearly couldn't match the hardness of structural building materials. She might be training a combat style that used her fingers as weapons, but she wasn't far enough along for her body to withstand clashing with solid wood and stone.
"That would be the habit of running your mouth without engaging your brain. Because one careless word can put you face to face with death."
She withdrew her hand. Beads of cold sweat had broken out across Hinata's smooth forehead from the pain. Pulling a roll of bandage from the supply pouch at the small of her back, she quickly wrapped the injured finger several times, then spoke over her shoulder.
"Shooting starts the morning after tomorrow. Please use today and tomorrow to work on your chemistry. Now, if you'll excuse me."
Only after Hinata's figure had completely vanished beyond the compound's gate did the petrified Naruto finally crumple to the hallway floor with relief, muttering under his breath.
"Sheesh... She didn't have to go that ballistic just because she doesn't like Sasuke... Nearly gave me a heart attack."
Sasuke, predictably, was handling things far better—partly because he was considerably more observant, and partly because something else had caught his attention entirely.
Stepping past Naruto, he walked into the yard and examined the pillar. What he saw made his pupils contract sharply. A crushing sense of defeat punched through his chest.
"What's your deal, standing there staring at a pillar? Real fascinating, is it?"
Arms crossed, Naruto glared at him. Everything about this insufferably arrogant jerk rubbed him the wrong way. Then the sharp sound of grinding teeth cut through the air.
"Shut up, dead-last! Get over here and look at this yourself!"
Fists clenched tight, Sasuke knew exactly where that crushing defeat was coming from. It was the shame of realizing that a classmate who'd been invisible, someone everyone had overlooked, had long since surpassed him.
Naruto pouted, blinked a few times, then reluctantly stood and walked over.
"What's the big—oh."
The sight before him froze his blue eyes wide.
The pillar was clearly the one Hinata had just struck. Its front face showed no visible damage. But on the back—the side facing the courtyard—the destruction was staggering.
The solid pine column looked as though it had taken a shotgun blast. A bowl-sized cavity had been blown clean through it, the edges smooth and fine, as if some kind of explosive force had punched in from the front and detonated the wood from within.
This was the true power behind Hinata's single finger-strike. Her training hadn't progressed far enough to protect her own hand from the recoil, but the sheer lethality of the technique was beyond question.
"If she'd aimed that at your forehead instead of the pillar, your skull would be a pile of mush right now."
Sasuke stated this coldly, his hand unconsciously drifting to the spot on his left side where she'd hit him that morning. The implication was obvious—Hinata had been holding back. If that morning's strike had carried the same force as this one, his ribcage would have been blown apart.
"Hinata... is really that strong?"
Even Naruto couldn't shrug this one off. The evidence before him made his jaw tighten.
The two boys locked eyes. In each other's gaze, they saw the same thing: bitter frustration and bewilderment.
When had it happened? When had the quiet girl who always sat there and faded into the background pulled so impossibly far ahead of them?
Ah, when indeed? Roughly seventy-five days and nineteen hours ago, I'd say.
Walking along the main street, Hinata examined her bandaged right index finger. She was long accustomed to this kind of pain.
It had started the moment she discovered she was a transmigrator—reborn into the body of this frail Hyuga heiress.
Unbelievable, really. To think something this absurd could actually happen to her. And into this character, of all people.
A deep, smoldering fury kindled from the darkness within, and the skin at her temples began to twitch again. What she found most unbearable—the one thing that made this transmigration truly intolerable—was the single detail they'd gotten catastrophically wrong.
Gender.
Why did it have to be me?! Nobody had asked to come to this world! And certainly not like this!
Her clenched left fist sent sharp pain shooting through her palm as her nails dug into the soft flesh, but Hinata gave no sign of noticing.
This humiliating transmigration had dealt a devastating blow to her psyche. That was why she'd snapped when Naruto ran his mouth—losing control so badly that she'd even injured herself through sheer lack of restraint.
But whatever else she might be, Hinata was no fool who couldn't sort her priorities. She understood instinctively that in this world, building strength was paramount. And as the old saying went—martial arts require money. Getting stronger fast in this world demanded financial resources just as much as training.
Konoha's streets bustled with life. As the most stable and peaceful ninja village among the Five Great Nations, it boasted a rich variety of goods. Hinata navigated purposefully to a particular street and knocked on a shop door.
"Oh, coming. Welcome."
A listless voice drifted from inside, and Hinata's eyebrows rose in mild surprise. The figure that appeared confirmed her guess.
"Good afternoon, Shikamaru. Looks like you're minding the shop today."
Behind the counter stood a boy with dark hair swept up in a spiky ponytail. Compared to Naruto's boundless energy or Sasuke's icy cool, this boy radiated an aura of supreme laziness. Without question, this was another of their classmates—Nara Shikamaru.
"Oh, it's you. Can't help it—this is my family's shop. Dad went drinking with someone, so I'm stuck running the place."
Shikamaru cocked his head and studied Hinata from behind the counter, his heavy-lidded eyes narrowing slightly.
"So, hurt yourself again?"
"Obviously. I need the usual: deer antler, red sage root, tiger bone, plus the other ingredients. Ground to powder, please."
Hinata set a stack of bills on the counter with her left hand. She was clearly no first-time customer when it came to purchasing these fast-acting medicinal compounds. And the Nara clan—Konoha's foremost breeders of medicinal herbs and deer—was the best possible source.
"Everything you order is the expensive, top-shelf stuff. This is the fifth time in two months. I'm not one to preach, but your training regimen has been a little insane, don't you think?"
Shikamaru pursed his lips and counted the bills before turning to pull ingredients from the medicine cabinet.
It was true—Konoha did have a ninja hospital staffed with medical-ninjutsu specialists. But hospital healing was decidedly gentle; the patient neither gained physical improvements nor accumulated hidden damage.
Medicinal decoctions brewed from rare herbs, on the other hand, could forge the body like steel in a crucible. Even in a world where chakra existed, the ancient practice of medicinal body-tempering remained effective.
The operative word being tempering—and what that felt like went without saying. It was agony akin to being submerged in molten rock and refined over and over. Combined with the eye-watering cost of the ingredients, very few people in this world chose to subject themselves to this archaic method.
Naturally, the higher the grade of ingredient, the greater the effect—and the steeper the price.
"Relax. By my calculations, I'll reach the next stage soon. And as luck would have it, I've recently found a very promising source of income."
Collecting her bag of ingredients, Hinata smiled at Shikamaru, who sat with his chin propped on one hand, looking thoroughly bored.
"In fact, I might need to call on you at some point, Shikamaru."