Chapter 168: Amatsukami and Kotoamatsukami
"Dinner?"
Getting into the Hyuga compound had been easy enough. A servant led them through to the training hall, where they found Hinata — who Sakura hadn't seen in some time — in the middle of a Gentle Fist session.
Her sparring partner was a girl five or six years younger than her.
Hyuga Hanabi.
Hiashi sat in the main seat watching, attended by a handful of servants standing ready at the edges of the room. He showed no reaction when they entered. He'd spotted the pink hair through the window and waved the servant ahead to bring them in.
The exchange happening on the floor was not close.
Hanabi was seven years old. She was also, plainly, the better fighter — pressing her older sister from the first exchange to the last, reading openings Hinata couldn't close.
Hiashi watched without surprise.
He'd run out of surprise a long time ago. Whatever faint hope he'd once maintained for his eldest had been set aside entirely. The plan now was simple: find Hinata a suitable husband, someone who could carry the clan's weight where she couldn't, and let her serve as the Hyuga's ceremonial face. If no such man materialized, Hanabi would simply take the headship herself.
"That's enough for today."
Both sisters stopped and looked at their father.
"Hinata. Your friends are here."
Hiashi stood and gestured toward the door.
"Yes, Father."
Hinata's eyes moved to Sakura and Ino. She looked genuinely surprised.
The Hyuga kept excellent intelligence even from inside the compound. They'd lost their share of people in Frost Country — the Kumo guerrilla tactics had chewed through branch-family members before the tide turned. Word had come back quickly about what ended the campaign, and about who had ended it.
First deployment: captured a jinchūriki alive.
Second deployment: killed the Raikage in the field.
Either achievement alone would have been remarkable. Both, accomplished before the age of thirteen, by a girl from a civilian family with no bloodline — Hinata had been aware of it in the abstract way you're aware of weather in another country.
Seeing her standing in the doorway made it suddenly very concrete.
"Senior Hiashi."
Sakura inclined her head.
Both she and Hiashi held jonin rank after the war. Same tier. But he had decades on her and she'd addressed him accordingly.
"No need for that. You're Hinata's classmate — 'uncle' is fine."
Whatever severity usually sat on Hiashi's face had softened noticeably.
"Uncle Hiashi."
Sakura said it without hesitation. Ino echoed her a half-beat behind.
"That's Inoshi's girl, isn't it?"
He looked at Ino with an easy expression.
"Tell your father he owes me a drink."
He'd been at the post-war debrief the previous day. The Yamanaka clan's contribution to breaking Kumo's guerrilla operation had been discussed at length — critical, the report said. And the Yamanaka were bound to the Nara and Akimichi, the Ino-Shika-Cho formation, all three clans carrying the Hokage's long trust. The Hyuga had no interest in friction with any of them.
"I'll let him know, Uncle Hiashi."
Ino was on her best behavior.
"Hinata." Hiashi turned to look at his eldest daughter, still slightly winded from training. "No more practice today. Spend some time with your guests."
"Yes — yes, Father."
Hinata watched him go, then turned back to Sakura and Ino, still visibly uncertain.
"Sa — Sakura. It's been a while..."
Her eyes dropped slightly as she said it.
Her father had used Sakura as a comparison before. The result had not been close. Same starting year, but Hinata had every advantage — resources, pedigree, dedicated training partners — and had still been outpaced by a girl from an ordinary civilian household with nothing exceptional behind her. It made Hinata hold herself carefully around her.
If the gap had been normal she could have adjusted. But Sakura had moved so far past any ordinary frame of reference that normal calibration didn't apply.
"Hina—"
"You're Haruno Sakura?"
A small voice cut in from behind Hinata's shoulder.
Hanabi. Future sister-in-law. Anyone who knew the story knew what that meant.
"Ha — Hanabi, don't be rude—"
Hinata reached for damage control, but Sakura was already crouching to Hanabi's eye level, meeting the girl's frank curiosity with an equally direct look, and then placing one hand on top of her head.
"...Huh?"
Hinata blinked.
She didn't actually know much about Sakura beyond the broad strokes. At the Academy, Sakura had been grinding relentlessly under the shadow of the Yin Seal's deadline while Hinata's attention had been almost entirely fixed on Naruto. By the time Sakura graduated and vanished into ANBU, they'd barely interacted — and the four-year gap had only widened the distance. Sakura had reappeared in everyone's awareness recently, suddenly and brilliantly, and that was approximately all Hinata knew.
She hadn't expected this. Easy wasn't the word she would have guessed.
Hanabi, for her part, immediately revised her initial assessment. She had anticipated cold.
"That's rude, little one. You'll get carried off by the snapping turtles."
Sakura's eyes curved into crescents, smile completely unhurried.
Hanabi: I take it back.
"What do you want with my sister anyway?" Hanabi planted her feet. Tone flat. She liked her sister. Nobody was getting near her sister without passing inspection.
"I'm Hinata's classmate. Classmate means friend, friend means teammate — why shouldn't I come visit? Besides, I just want to take her to dinner. It's been too long."
Sakura kept her hand on Hanabi's head throughout, entirely unbothered by the attempts to escape it.
"She's not going with you!" Hanabi lunged sideways and discovered, with some frustration, that escape was simply not available. The hand moved with her every time.
"Sakura..."
Hinata hovered, half-wanting to intervene on her sister's behalf, half-distracted by her own calculations. She had flower arranging after dinner. Etiquette practice. Her father's schedule for her was full.
"Naruto's coming too."
Silence.
"I'll be there."
Hanabi stared at her sister.
What.
The girl who had been preparing a polite refusal had just committed to attendance in under two seconds.
That fast. She changed her mind that fast.
Who was Naruto? What was Naruto? Why did one name do that?
Hanabi's jaw tightened.
If my sister likes this "Naruto" person, he's definitely a troublemaker. Blonde, probably. You can always tell.
As long as I am alive, whatever his name is, he is not walking through that gate.
I'll Byakugan him into the ground.
Evening.
Uchiha district.
Sasuke had trained alone all day and his body was paying for it, but the physical exhaustion wasn't touching what was happening underneath.
He stood in front of the bathroom mirror, bare-chested, fresh from the shower, and looked at his own eyes.
Seven-pointed kaleidoscope. New pattern. His.
Something dark and still radiated out of them.
Sakura had spent the night at Naruto's.
He didn't know what had happened. Didn't know the context. But the part of his brain that generated context had been running without him all day, producing images he couldn't turn off.
Why.
Why.
Why was she there—
He pressed his hands over his eyes. In the mirror, the face looking back at him had started to blur — sharpening into a different face, older, similar bone structure—
"My foolish little bro—"
CRACK.
His fist went into the mirror.
Glass came down in pieces. His palm was bleeding, bright red against the tile.
He stared at it.
He'd forgotten nothing. Seven years and he'd forgotten nothing — not the sound, not the smell, not the exact way that night had felt from start to finish. That was the only thing that was supposed to matter. His father. His mother. Everyone.
And he was standing here with his hand bleeding over this?
You have the same eyes as Itachi now. And this is what breaks your focus?
His parents would be ashamed.
He knew that. He knew it clearly. But knowing it didn't stop anything — the noise in his head kept going regardless, irrational and uncontrolled, and he couldn't find the switch.
He looked down at the floor.
Every shard of mirror held a version of him. Mangekyo in each fragment, spinning. In the psychological distortion of the moment, each reflected face shifted — resolved into Itachi's, laughing, watching him fall apart, and Sasuke's fury rose to meet it—
Kill you—
Kill you—
KILL—
Blue-white lightning crackled to life around his hand. Chidori, forming. Every fragment of Itachi laughing at him—
He stopped.
The Chidori was an inch from the floor. And then it wasn't. Gone.
Sasuke stood there breathing.
What was I—
He looked at his left eye in the nearest shard of mirror.
The Mangekyo was still rotating. Slowly. And whatever had just spiked through him was receding, as if something had quietly cancelled it.
He understood it in the same moment he recognized what had happened.
Amatsukami.
Kotoamatsukami.
Two abilities. His, apparently — and he hadn't known until now.
The left eye: Amatsukami. The divine command of good fortune — a force that quietly steered choices and actions toward success, clearing paths, opening options, nudging probability in the user's favor.
The right eye: Kotoamatsukami. The divine command of ill fortune — turning an opponent's choices against them, seeding their actions with subtle misdirection until failure compounded into failure.
And today, when he'd seen Sakura leaving Naruto's building — the right eye had activated on its own, unfocused, without a target.
With no target to direct it outward, it had landed on the nearest available subject.
Him.
It had been feeding that spiral for hours. Amplifying the worst of it, twisting the loops tighter. Until the left eye recognized the interference and cancelled it.
I almost—
He looked at his hands.
The relief was physical. And behind the relief, something else — something almost like clarity.
He understood these abilities down to their bones. It hadn't taken long.
Fortune applied to himself. Misfortune applied to an enemy. Let those two forces work simultaneously on the same engagement, and the arithmetic was lethal. An opponent crossing open ground to strike at him trips on a loose stone they'd have otherwise missed. He's already standing at the angle they fall toward. Their technique fires into air. His is already moving.
He didn't even need the luck on himself, necessarily. The bad luck alone was enough. Just standing there with a blade out was sufficient if the enemy was busy being cursed.
Itachi.
This round goes to me.
Sasuke cleaned up the glass. His pulse was still elevated. His thoughts were still loud. But underneath the noise was something different from this morning — not peace, not calm, but purpose, sharp and cold and his.
He swept the last shards into the corner.
Someone knocked on the front door.
"Sasuke! You in there?"
"We came to drag you to dinner!"
Naruto's voice. And from the sound of it, he hadn't come alone.
☆☆☆
-> 20 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!
-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Hollowborn
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)
If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you