Midnight.
Konoha Hospital.
Moonlight slipped through the window, casting orderly white patches on the pristine bedding.
Uchiha Sasuke lay curled up on his side in the hospital bed, his eyes hidden in the darkness, staring blankly at the pale windowsill. His pitch-black pupils were dull, like unpolished pearls devoid of luster.
Clan. Brother. Parents. The sticky blood and everything shattered to pieces.
He didn't even know what he was thinking about.
Pain, sorrow, rage—but above all, confusion.
That morning, everyone had been talking and laughing. By the time he returned from school in the evening, everything had changed.
Sasuke couldn't understand.
In just one day, what had happened to the clan? Even after days of resting in the hospital, he still couldn't fathom why Itachi had been so heartless.
Tap, tap, tap…
Urgent footsteps and heavy breathing echoed from the corridor outside, accompanied by hushed voices.
Huff…
Sasuke let out a long, heavy sigh.
The hospital, quiet until moments ago, had suddenly grown noisy. Already plagued by a throbbing headache, he now found it impossible to sleep, irritation gnawing at him.
Tap, tap…
The footsteps grew closer.
The nurses' hushed murmurs, faint as mosquito buzzes, became clearer.
"How did so many kids get injured all at once? There aren't even enough beds!"
"I heard the ninja academy held a wilderness training exercise and ran into an attack from rogue ninjas from another village!"
"No wonder! Did you see how badly those two kids were hurt? Especially that girl—I was scared to even touch her while bandaging her…"
"Shh, stop talking. I think this room has two empty beds."
Knock, knock, knock!
A soft knock came from the door.
Sasuke squinted, pretending to sleep.
He didn't want to share a room with strangers.
Since the Uchiha clan's massacre, every nurse and doctor who saw him gave him strange looks.
Pity? Sympathy?
He couldn't quite read their expressions.
But those looks constantly reminded him of the pain he'd endured—inescapable, unforgettable.
Knock, knock, knock—click!
The door swung open.
"Two empty beds, perfect."
"Isn't that kid from the Uchiha—shh, keep it down!"
Their voices were low, but to Sasuke, they were just noise.
Rustle!
He pulled the blanket over his ears.
The two nurses froze mid-conversation, quickly retreating from the room.
Moments later, the sound of a medical cart rolled in from outside.
This time, there were more people. The footsteps were heavier—not the two female nurses from before.
"This girl's kinda heavy. Lend a hand!"
"One, two, three—go!"
Thud!
Creak, creak, creak!
A heavy body hit the old bed, making it groan as if a seven-hundred-pound giant had been hoisted onto it.
Huff, huff…
The male nurses panted heavily.
"She's built like a tank!"
"Hope you say that to her face when she wakes up."
"What good would that do me?"
"Hey, if you survive her, you're basically Konoha's next elite Jōnin!"
"Pfft, elite Jōnin? I'd rather pass."
The group chuckled as they lifted another person onto the adjacent bed.
Click.
The door closed.
Their busy footsteps faded into the distance.
Sasuke, still under his thin blanket, heard every word clearly.
Curiosity sparked by their conversation, he quietly lifted the blanket and turned to look at the bed beside him.
Long, silver hair spread across the pillow, glinting like matte metal under the moonlight. The girl lay flat on her back, arms splayed out, her delicate features unobscured. Her profile was speckled with bloodstains, and her cherry-blossom lips were slightly pursed, a flash of crimson peeking through the gap between them.
Despite being gravely injured and unconscious, she showed no trace of weakness or fatigue.
Her bandaged chest rose and fell every seven seconds, her heavy breathing paired with a steady heartbeat, like a slumbering beast ready to devour anyone the moment it awoke.
" Kaguya Hikari?"
Sasuke froze for three seconds before snapping out of it.
He'd never seen Hikari's full appearance before.
At the academy, she always wore a loose cloak and a large blindfold that covered most of her face, giving her a mysterious air.
If not for the undeniable strength radiating from her even in this state and her signature silver-gray hair, he might not have recognized her.
Recalling the nurses' earlier conversation, Sasuke pieced together what had happened.
A wilderness survival exercise had gone wrong. Rogue ninjas from another village attacked the students. From the men's teasing remarks, it was clear Hikari had faced their main force—and likely killed them.
Surviving against Hikari was enough to qualify as an elite Jōnin?
Sasuke didn't know how much of their talk was exaggeration, but for them to say something like that, Hikari's feats must have been extraordinary.
He gazed at the beautiful girl sleeping like a lion.
If he remembered correctly, his father, the head of the Uchiha clan, and his brother, the clan's prodigy, were on that same level.
But Hikari was so much younger than them.
This was a true genius.
Compared to her, the man who destroyed the Uchiha clan seemed utterly ordinary.
As for himself… Sasuke looked at his hands.
Scolded by his father since childhood, crushed by the "mediocre" Itachi, he was probably closer to "trash" or "dead last" than anything else when compared to Hikari.
Pride and inferiority were two sides of the same coin.
Sensitive after the clan's destruction and the trauma of Itachi's genjutsu, Sasuke felt the weight of a peer's overwhelming talent. His mindset, already teetering on one extreme, began to quietly tilt toward another.
Huff… huff…
Suddenly, a loud snore broke through the room, jolting Sasuke from his spiraling thoughts.
He glanced at Hikari.
Her chest rose and fell slowly, her breathing steady like the heavy pendulum of a clock tower.
It wasn't her.
Sasuke shook his head and sat up, his gaze moving past Hikari to the bed on her left.
There, a blond kid covered in bloodstains slept sprawled out, mouth wide open, snoring loudly with each breath.
Yup, the real "dead last" was right there.
Sasuke suddenly felt less inferior.
No matter how bad he was, he was still better than Naruto, right? At least he could see the gap between himself and a true genius. Naruto, that idiot, probably didn't even realize how high Hikari's level was!
With that thought, Sasuke felt he was still a step above "dead last."
With Naruto as the bottom rung, his mood lifted considerably.
Even his sleepless mind started to feel a hint of drowsiness.
His eyelids grew heavy.
Sasuke slowly closed his eyes.
Eng… eng…
The snoring grew louder, eventually sounding like an elephant trumpeting in a zoo.
For a long time, the restless boy covered his ears, irritably counting the stars in the sky.
Despair filled his eyes.
Damn that dead last!
Eng!
"ENG!!!"
Naruto, mouth agape, slept soundly.
The next day.
Konoha Hospital, Room 203.
Morning light flooded the room, bathing the stark white walls in a warm, golden glow. Three beds stood side by side, evenly dividing the space and the sunlight into thirds.
The black-haired, dark-eyed boy, sporting heavy dark circles under his eyes, tilted his head to stare at the still-sleeping silver-haired girl. His handsome cheeks flushed red.
Her chest rose and fell slowly, and he mimicked her breathing rhythm, as if trying to uncover the source of her strength.
On the other side, the blond, blue-eyed boy gazed at the girl's delicate profile, wondering if last night's bloody, terrifying battle had been real.
An impregnable armor of lightning, an unstoppable spear of thunder, a massive fox caged in a mountain-like prison, Hikari's body pierced through, her snarling fangs—and his own terrifying power, no less frightening.
He touched his forearm, where a bite wound had been.
The injury, along with the charred flesh across his body, had fully healed without a single scar.
Yesterday felt like a dream.
Waking up in the hospital bed, even seeing Hikari's bandaged chest, Naruto couldn't tell dream from reality.
He noticed Sasuke across the room.
Naruto had heard about the Uchiha clan's massacre. He didn't know the pain of losing family, but it couldn't be lighter than the agony of seeing Hikari's body pierced through.
Best not to bother him right now.
Time passed slowly.
The sunlight in the room grew brighter, almost blinding.
A faint tremble of eyelashes.
Hikari, the most gravely injured, finally stirred, squinting as she woke.
"Mmm…"
Hikari struggled to open her eyes.
A faint light greeted her.
The membrane over her pupils blocked most of it, leaving only a hazy white glow. Having exhausted her chakra and lost consciousness, her Shikotsumyaku's ability to suppress pain had failed, and a sharp, drilling pain stabbed at her chest.
Something's wrong with my Byakugan—wait!
Instinctively, she tried to channel chakra to activate her Byakugan but stopped abruptly.
Her fingers brushed against her smooth eye sockets.
The wide cloth that usually covered her eyes was gone.
Hikari dispersed the chakra gathering in her eyes.
When the Byakugan activated, the veins around her face would bulge—an unavoidable effect of chakra flooding her meridians.
This visible effect couldn't be controlled by her Shikotsumyaku's bodily manipulation.
Forcing it would be like biting a straw flat and trying to drink through it—no matter how hard she tried, the chakra flow wouldn't pass through the narrowed pathways.
Until she could overthrow the Hyūga main branch, the blindfold was essential for freely using her Byakugan.
She opened her crystal-like eyes.
Raising a hand, she groped blindly at the pillow and headboard, like a severely nearsighted person searching for glasses.
Naruto and Sasuke, who had been watching her, snapped to attention at her movements.
Sasuke quickly turned his head away, his chest heaving guiltily, afraid Hikari would notice him mimicking her breathing.
He wasn't sure if her unusual breathing rhythm was some secret technique.
In ninja battles, information was everything.
Stealing or prying into someone's secret techniques was an absolute taboo. He wasn't close to Hikari, and if she took offense, a single punch could justifiably crush him.
Even the Hokage wouldn't have much to say about it.
Compared to Sasuke's complex thoughts, Naruto was far simpler.
Seeing Hikari awake, he scrambled off his bed, brimming with questions. "Hikari, you're finally up! Last night—"
"Stop!"
Hikari raised a hand, cutting off the overwhelming presence of the massive "chakra mass" to her left.
Then, a jumble of emotions—murky confusion, vibrant orange joy—poured from the "chakra mass" on her left, flooding her mind through some unknown means.
What's this?
The unexpected sensation confused her. She turned to "look" at the "chakra mass" on her right.
It was much smaller, barely a speck compared to the left, but it too carried a mix of emotions.
Deep yellow tension, green jealousy, gray-blue pain…
These emotions were darker, more complex, and harder to distinguish than the vibrant hues on the left.
Hikari was certain her Byakugan wasn't active, and it didn't have the ability to sense emotions anyway.
That left only one possibility: the Kyūbi's "malice perception."
Could malice perception distinguish emotions this clearly?
Watching the colorful emotions drifting from both chakra masses, Hikari was astonished.
She'd thought the Kyūbi's sensory ability would be vague, but it was incredibly precise, capturing every nuance of emotion, not just good or ill intent.
No wonder the Kyūbi liked Naruto so much.
His mind was pure, his emotions bright and full of goodwill.
Just looking at his vivid, untainted emotions lifted Hikari's mood.
The other "chakra speck," though?
A mixed bag.
No extreme malice or killing intent, but the tangle of negative emotions suggested that, while not a bad person, they could easily veer to extremes under prolonged influence.
Hikari closed her eyes, immersing herself in the radiant emotions of the two, as if stepping into a new world.
Their feelings were laid bare, no secrets hidden. She observed them freely, gradually understanding the colors corresponding to each emotion.
Naruto, seeing Hikari close her eyes as if probing something, grew anxious. He knew she was blind—if her injury had robbed her of her ability to sense the world, it would be a devastating blow.
In Hikari's perception, gray and yellow lights flickered over Naruto, settling into a gray-green hue she hadn't seen before.
Was this… concern?
A spark of insight hit her, and she quickly identified the emotion.
"I'm fine, don't worry."
"Heh, good to hear! Wait—how'd you know?"
Naruto's emotional light shifted from gray-green to orange-yellow, then to blue-white surprise. Hikari marveled at the cheat-like power of her new ability.
No wonder the Kyūbi, Kurama, was the strongest of the tailed beasts.
Even an obscure ability from the original story was this powerful.
To reduce such a nuanced emotion-sensing ability to mere "good or evil" detection was such a waste—only a creature as naturally gifted as a tailed beast could afford to squander power like that.
Thinking of Kurama's terrifying chakra, Hikari could understand why it opted for a simple approach: sense malice, blast it with a Tailed Beast Ball. Quick, brutal, effective. Far easier than analyzing every flicker of emotion.
She found the ability powerful precisely because she wasn't strong enough yet.
Clatter, clatter…
As Hikari immersed herself in Naruto's emotions, the sound of a cart rolling in from outside the room broke her focus.