AN: Feeddbbaacckk :-)
After the quiet resolve had settled in my chest, I allowed myself a few more moments to simply exist.
Hikari remained in the courtyard with me, gently rocking me as she walked along the wooden path that framed the inner garden. Snow still clung to the edges of leaves and stones, thin white caps resting on carefully trimmed shrubs. The koi pond lay mostly still, its surface dark and glassy, with only the faintest hint of movement beneath. The air was cold enough to sting my cheeks, yet so clean and sharp that every breath felt like it cleared something out of my lungs—and maybe even my head.
I let my eyes wander, quietly appreciating the symmetry of the garden, the deliberate placement of stones and plants, the way everything seemed designed to invite calm rather than demand attention. For a brief moment, the weight of my situation loosened its grip, and I simply watched the world breathe.
Soon enough, though, Hikari carried me back inside, the shoji doors sliding shut behind us and sealing the cold away. Warmth returned, familiar and comforting, and with it came routine.
And routine, I decided, was exactly what I needed.
From that point on, I began training in earnest.
There were no dramatic declarations, no sudden breakthroughs that changed everything overnight. Instead, there were long stretches of quiet focus, broken only by feeding times, naps, and the occasional indignity of being handled like a particularly fragile package. Within those limits, I turned inward, exploring the strange, powerful current that filled my body.
Chakra.
Now that I had a name for it, the energy felt slightly less alien, though no less overwhelming. Over the following weeks and months, I experimented with it constantly, learning how it responded to attention, how it flowed when left alone, and how stubborn it could be when I tried to force it.
My eyes became my primary focus.
Carefully, cautiously, I began letting different amounts of chakra flow into them while they were open. Too much, and the familiar flood of information threatened to drown my thoughts. Too little, and the world dulled, losing that unnatural sharpness I had tasted in the courtyard. Day by day, I refined the balance, learning to adjust the flow in smaller and smaller increments.
Eventually—after countless failed attempts—I reached a point where my eyes no longer overwhelmed my baby brain. The sensory storm softened into something manageable, and for the first time, I truly saw through whatever it was my eyes were capable of.
The experience was… strange.
Very strange.
In the anime I remembered, the Hyuga's vision was described as nearly three hundred and sixty degrees, with a small blind spot behind the neck. They didn't see textures or colors the way normal people did; they saw chakra—networks, flows, tenketsu—overlaid onto the world.
What I experienced was different.
There was no blind spot.
Instead, my perception wrapped fully around me, a complete sphere with myself at the center. Even more unsettling was the way my viewpoint wasn't fixed. With a thought, my perspective slid outward, drifting a short distance away as if I were operating a free-floating camera.
Walls didn't matter.
Obstacles didn't exist.
Everything within range was simply… there.
Chakra glowed through living beings like constellations, pulsing in complex rhythms, while inanimate objects appeared as quiet silhouettes defined by absence rather than presence. It was part wallhack, part infrared, part something entirely its own.
As I experimented further, I discovered the limitation wasn't really the chakra cost. I could pour chakra into my eyes at alarming rates without any immediate backlash. The true bottleneck was my mind—the sheer effort of processing so much information at once.
Still, even with that limitation, my effective range settled at around thirty meters, with me as the unmoving center.
Thirty meters was… a lot.
Once I understood that, I established a routine.
Every day, I spent hours—broken up by naps and feedings—cycling my eye control on and off, adjusting chakra flow until activation became smoother, more reflexive. I trained myself to bring the vision online gently instead of snapping it into place, reducing strain and sharpening clarity.
While I lacked a proper training ground, my surroundings provided unexpected opportunities. Clan members frequently moved around the estate, passing by rooms, hallways, and rooftops within my range. Through my eyes, I watched them leap across tiles, land silently on beams, or walk with the subtle confidence of trained shinobi.
More importantly, I watched their chakra.
I memorized the way it pulsed when they moved, how it gathered before a jump, how it flowed differently through arms and legs depending on intent. I tried to mimic those patterns within my own body, nudging my chakra into similar configurations.
The results were… mixed.
Without the ability to stand or perform the necessary physical motions, most of what I attempted went nowhere. Chakra patterns that clearly relied on footwork or full-body movement simply fizzled out when I tried to replicate them from my crib.
Still, I wasn't discouraged.
Even failed attempts taught me something. I learned which patterns required motion, which depended on posture, and which might someday be adaptable to a stationary body. I committed everything to memory, cataloging pulses, rhythms, and transitions for future use.
At the same time, I listened.
Constantly.
I absorbed as much of the language around me as possible. At first, it was slow and frustrating. Japanese wasn't something I had ever properly learned in my old life; most of what I knew came from exposure, not study.
Yet, as time passed, understanding came more easily.
Words began to click together. Sentences formed meaning. Occasionally, I caught myself understanding phrases I had no memory of ever encountering before.
That puzzled me.
I suspected it was some quirk of reincarnation—maybe a subconscious adaptation meant to help me survive—but I didn't question it too deeply. Whatever the cause, it made my life easier, and I wasn't about to complain.
Around eight months after my birth, I managed a small but significant physical milestone.
After countless failed attempts, frustrated grunts, and flailing limbs, I finally succeeded in rolling onto my stomach.
From there, awkward, uncoordinated crawling followed—slow, clumsy movements that nevertheless expanded my world by precious meters.
It was during one such triumph that new visitors arrived.
They weren't the usual faces.
Hikari greeted them warmly, her tone polite but affectionate. The man with her carried himself with a subdued gravity, and beside him stood a small boy—no older than two—who looked deeply uncomfortable in his own skin.
Neji.
Even without names being spoken immediately, I recognized him.
His father, Hizashi, bowed respectfully, his manner flawless. The boy mirrored the gesture as best he could, though his movements were stiff and uncertain.
Hikari seemed amused, encouraging Neji gently and inviting him closer. He approached me with visible hesitation, poking at me as if I might shatter.
I wanted to respond with something cutting, something articulate.
What came out was enthusiastic baby noise.
Neji jumped, startled, and then—after some encouragement—tried playing with me using stuffed toys, all under Hikari's watchful eye. The interaction was awkward but harmless, and for a brief moment, it almost felt… normal.
When Hiashi eventually appeared and drew Hizashi aside for a private conversation, the atmosphere shifted subtly. The brothers disappeared into another room, leaving Neji with us until it was time to go.
Their departure was as formal as their arrival.
Life returned to routine.
By the time I reached my first year, crawling had become easier, though my movement was carefully monitored. I rarely went anywhere unsupervised, and my world remained small despite my growing curiosity.
Language, however, was no longer a barrier. I could follow entire conversations now, missing only the occasional unfamiliar term.
Chakra training, on the other hand, had reached a plateau.
No matter how often I practiced internal patterns, I couldn't replicate the more advanced techniques I observed. Frustrated, I revisited an old memory.
Naruto.
The Rasengan.
Chakra didn't have to stay inside the body.
Creating a Rasengan was obviously out of the question—far too loud, far too dangerous—but it gave me another idea.
Chakra threads.
I began experimenting, pushing chakra out of my body for the first time. At first, it dispersed almost immediately, forming a faint mist that vanished within seconds.
I tried again.
And again.
Slowly, I learned how to maintain cohesion, shaping the chakra into tiny points, then thin lines. Over time, those lines grew longer, stronger, more stable.
As I practiced, I noticed something strange. Sometimes the threads brushed against physical objects; sometimes they passed through them entirely. The difference, I realized, lay in how much chakra I fed into them.
Curious, I pushed further.
One evening, driven by nothing more than interest, I concentrated an increasing amount of chakra into a single thread about a meter long. As I added more, I thinned it, compressing the energy tighter and tighter.
There was no resistance.
No warning.
Hours passed.
Eventually, I activated my eyes to examine it—and froze.
The hair-thin thread blazed like a miniature sun, dense with chakra far beyond anything I had intended.
Startled, I let it drop.
The thread sliced cleanly through the corner of my crib.
Panic flared.
I seized control, dissolving the construct before it could do any more damage, heart racing as I stared at the shallow cut it had left behind.
From that day on, I approached chakra compression with far more caution.
Because whatever I was becoming… it was already far more dangerous than I had realized.