"They say if you spread your wings and fly, you'll never come back again..."
A sweet, lilting girl's voice drifted above the Uchiha compound, accompanied by the clear, buoyant tones of a harmonica. Even the birds perched in the cherry tree outside had settled onto lower branches to preen their feathers, evidently charmed by the sound.
In the main hall, a golden-haired girl stood with her palms pressed together at her chest, long lashes veiling her closed eyes. She looked as though she were praying, her voice weaving into melody. The rest of the crew sat around her, each wearing a different expression as they drank in the music.
Shino, true to form as a closet attention-seeker, had arrived at the Uchiha compound with almost minute-perfect punctuality. He'd also purchased a small arsenal of instruments—recorder, saxophone, harmonica, accordion, and even a compact harp. His face betrayed nothing, as usual, but his actions told the story: he was all in.
Well, naturally. For bright kids who'd matured early, the Ninja Academy's kiddie games must have grown stale ages ago. They were hungry to do something that mattered.
Reclining on a soft cushion, Hinata kept her eyes closed and tapped a lazy beat with one finger, savoring the return of a melody from her previous life. The dreamlike sensation made her reluctant to open her eyes at all.
Sasuke sat perched on a windowsill, head bowed, expression hidden—but his white-knuckled grip betrayed how deeply the music had reached him. Shikamaru, sprawled on the floor with one hand propping up his head, wore an expression of rare, genuine contentment. For someone who prized peace and quiet above all else, a beautiful song was the perfect indulgence.
Sakura and Ino knelt primly on their cushions, eyes closed, absorbing every note. Their faces said it all—they were thoroughly enchanted.
And Choji was delicately—almost tenderly—placing chips into his mouth one at a time, letting saliva dissolve each one before swallowing. Not a single crunch. He seemed terrified that even the faintest noise might shatter the music.
"Soaring toward that azure sky..."
At last, with the final lyric, the golden-haired girl at the center of the hall vanished in a puff of smoke. In her place stood Naruto, clutching his throat and coughing violently. The abrupt anticlimax jolted everyone out of their reverie.
"Seriously! Singing is way harder on the throat than I expected! Hinata, I'm not going to end up mute, am I?"
Naruto shot Hinata a look of genuine alarm. She shook her head in exasperation, then snapped her fingers at Sakura.
The pink-haired girl reluctantly picked up a teapot and poured Naruto a cup. "Here. Hinata already thought of this. It's peppermint tea for your throat. Drink up."
"Ohh! Thanks, Sakura!"
Shoving the tail-wagging Naruto aside, Hinata cleared her throat and turned to the group. Her tone was crisp. "Well? How was it?"
The question concerned one thing only: quality. This was their first attempt at recording a song, and standards had to be maintained.
"Hmph. Passable."
Sasuke, ever the charmer, offered no higher praise. Not that it mattered. Shikamaru, still sprawled in his spot with eyes closed, lazily raised a thumb—his body language doing the talking.
"That was incredible! I've never heard anything like that melody before!"
The rest of the crew was far more vocal. Nodding with satisfaction, Hinata turned to Shino. "Well done. You're an excellent accompanist, Shino."
Shino's expression didn't flicker. He pushed up his sunglasses with practiced cool and began speaking. "This was a predictable outcome. Naruto's vocal range in his transformed state is exceptionally clear, my accompaniment was precise and faithful, and your composition and lyrics, Hinata, were quite accomplished. Therefore, I believe this level of quality was entirely within expectations."
"...Right. I'll just take that as you being pleased with yourself."
Fighting the urge to punch Shino in the face, Hinata somehow held it together and moved briskly to her summary. "Alright, everyone gets tonight to practice the song. Tomorrow we do the official recording—individual character vocal tracks for each of you. Nobody's getting out of it. Now—back to business."
Fox Tales, Act Two: A Fateful Reunion.
After a thousand years of waiting and reincarnation, the little fox spirit had at last found the shepherd boy from long ago. But the boy was no longer the lonely child who had died in solitude a millennium past. He had become a dissolute young nobleman named Zuo Lin, squandering his days in pleasure houses and revelry.
On this particular day, the profligate Lord Zuo Lin was indulging in his usual pastimes among the courtesans when a figure appeared before him.
"My lord. After so long apart, do you still remember an old acquaintance?"
Amid a cascade of falling cherry blossoms, a white-haired fox spirit in an oiran's kimono parted the curtain and stepped into the hall. Her snow-white bare feet pressed upon the petals scattered across the floor, crushing a carpet of rosy pink into fragments of rouge.
Zuo Lin, reclining with courtesans draped across each arm, froze. Never in his life had he seen a woman this beautiful. And when his gaze met her deep, tender blue eyes, the moment felt as though a thousand years of time were spiraling backward.
"Who... are you? Have we... met? Why... can I not remember you?"
Releasing the startled courtesans, Zuo Lin rose to his feet as if in a trance. The silver-tongued young lord found, for the first time, that his usual honeyed words would not come. All that remained was a dull ache from somewhere deep in his chest, and a sense of familiarity he could not explain.
It was a sorrow like mountain wind, a loneliness like the night itself—both churning in the depths of memories buried across a hundred lifetimes.
Without realizing it, Zuo Lin waved the courtesans away. Every fiber of his being was drawn to the white-haired fox spirit before him. This was the bond they had forged a thousand years and a hundred lives ago—a red thread woven into their very souls, impossible to sever.
"My lord once shared a song with me. Pray allow me to sing it for you."
The fox spirit stood there, still and serene. A breeze from the open window lifted her pure white hair at precisely the right moment. It was as though they had been transported back to that hilltop, a thousand years in the past.
The melody the shepherd boy had played over and over still lived in the fox spirit's memory.
"Very well... I shall accompany you..."
Zuo Lin tried to speak, but the words that emerged seemed to form of their own accord. He straightened his robes, picked up a recorder left behind by one of the courtesans, and was astonished to find that his fingers moved with practiced familiarity—as though he had done this a thousand times before.
Watching him, the fox spirit's heart ached beyond words. She knew that even though Zuo Lin had forgotten every moment they'd shared, somewhere in the depths of his soul, this melody—and the memory of playing it—had survived.
On the verge of tears, the fox spirit parted her lips, and a soaring melody poured forth—the same song the shepherd boy had once sung for her, a thousand years ago.
"They say if you spread your wings and fly, you'll never come back again..."
"CUT!!"
Hinata barked the order from behind her camera. Naruto, mid-breath and about to start singing, choked on his own air. Sakura and Ino, both glassy-eyed and thoroughly transported, stumbled and nearly fell over. Hinata's atmosphere-shattering bellow had all the subtlety of a fist punching them out of a dream.
Shikamaru and Choji fared even worse. Choji had a chip lodged in his windpipe and was rolling across the floor in agony.
"Urk..."
And up in the tree outside, the silver-haired Jōnin who'd been utterly spellbound lurched sideways and nearly fell off his branch. Grabbing the limb for dear life, Kakashi fumed: Seriously! Right when it was getting good! What is that Hyuga girl trying to do?!
"What's wrong? The mood was just right, Hinata."
Shino, who had genuinely been accompanying the scene on a recorder, adjusted his glasses with unruffled composure. Of everyone present, he was the only one still capable of coherent speech.
"Enough. We've got plenty of footage for today. Next comes the song recording—we just layer Naruto's earlier vocal take onto the footage."
Ignoring the sea of agonized faces around her, Hinata reviewed the camera's stored footage with visible satisfaction. This was the right approach. A good drama needed polishing. For now, while they were still in the photo-drama format, this level of production was sufficient.
"But didn't you say you wanted to scale up?"
Sasuke, having forcibly regained his composure, spoke up. Thinking back on it was admittedly revolting, but the atmosphere just now had been... how to put it?
"Scaling up means at least graduating from the Academy first, getting an adult account and legal identity. Right now, we've got the money and the talent, but we're still a pack of eleven-year-olds. Putting out photo dramas is one thing, but if we want to make actual TV shows or films, we can't even solve the guarantor problem."
Without looking up, Hinata stowed the camera. "Alright, I'm heading out to develop the photos. The rest of you—keep practicing the song. One track per person, no exceptions. Get it done early and I'll treat everyone to a hot-spring banquet tonight."
A hot-spring banquet—one of Konoha Hot Springs' premium services. Essentially a lavish catered dinner in a private hot-spring suite. A luxury experience most people never got to try.
"Yeah!! Hot-spring banquet!!"
"Wouldn't that cost way too much?"
"Hmph. Your call."
"I believe that after a period of hard work, a quality group dinner is indeed appropriate."
Hinata's incentive instantly dissolved any lingering complaints. After confirming the schedule, she left the Uchiha compound to get the day's photos developed.
Up in his tree, Kakashi tilted his head in thought, then stood with a satisfied expression. He'd figured out exactly how to approach these kids.
"Well now... looks like it's time for an adult to play the sucker."