Long, long ago, a shepherd boy tended his family's sheep on a hillside. He was a kind-hearted child who could coax beautiful music from a bamboo flute, and so the woodland creatures would creep close to listen whenever he played.
Among them was a breathtakingly beautiful little fox with pure golden-red fur. She would watch the gentle, lonely shepherd boy from the shadows of the trees, and the boy had noticed her too—this charming spirit of the forest. Neither ever tried to approach the other, yet both had silently accepted the other's presence.
It was an unspoken understanding—the boy stayed for the fox, and the fox stayed for the boy.
One day, the little fox stumbled into a hunter's trap. She was moments away from being skinned alive when the shepherd boy arrived just in time. To ransom her from the greedy hunter, the boy had to surrender his most precious possession—his bamboo flute. From that day forward, he could never again play his beautiful music.
Without the flute's melody, the animals who'd once kept the boy company drifted away. All except one—the little fox he'd saved. Even though the shepherd boy could no longer play, the fox remained at his side, and so the two spent many seasons together.
But human lives are fragile and fleeting. After a mountain rainstorm, the shepherd boy fell gravely ill. As death crept closer, the fox at his side wept, tears streaming down her face. But the shepherd boy smiled. He told the little fox: "You are the only one I've had in this short life of mine. So I hope we can meet again in the next. Promise me—you must not die."
And then the shepherd boy passed away. The fox he left behind held fast to their promise and began to train. A thousand years later, she finally gained the power to take human form and ventured into the human world—to find the reincarnation of the shepherd boy who had once made her that promise.
"HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!!"
An outraged roar shattered the mood. Naruto's whole outline seemed to quiver as he clutched his own shoulders, looking thoroughly horrified. "What the hell are you doing?! What IS this garbage?!"
"Huh? This is the new script. I'm reading it aloud so you two can familiarize yourselves."
Perched on a tree stump, Hinata didn't bother looking up from her notebook. Even she had to admit a twinge of satisfaction: Mm, not bad. Sure, the basic structure was lifted wholesale from The New Legend of Madam White Snake, but swapping the white serpent for a fox spirit made it slot right in without a seam.
And then, casting the fox spirit and the shepherd boy as Naruto and Sasuke respectively... well. If anything, it felt even more natural.
"BLEARGH—"
Before Hinata could finish savoring her own genius, Sasuke and Naruto had already begun their perfectly synchronized vomiting, half-kneeling on either side of her and facing away from each other. After the first round, they made the fatal mistake of turning to look at each other—whereupon the frequency of retching promptly doubled. Judging by the horror in their eyes, they'd both figured out exactly who the two leads in Hinata's little fairy tale were supposed to be.
"Hey! Is it really that unbearable?! Are you two doing this just to spite me?!"
Hinata's irritation flared, but when she saw that both boys had turned a shade of grey-green, she wavered slightly. Cruel as she was by nature, she generally didn't force people to do things they genuinely couldn't do. Pointless cruelty killed efficiency and morale.
"Ugh... don't... say any more... you told me... nothing involving... romance..."
Sasuke's palms were flat on the ground, head spinning from the sheer volume of vomit he'd produced. Yesterday's mental preparation regarding the film had counted for something, and he'd even concede that Hinata's script sounded genuinely compelling—poignant and beautiful, even.
But the instant he remembered that the two leads were supposed to be him and the blond dead-last next to him, the urge to vomit from the bottom of his soul became utterly unstoppable.
"...Hinata, just kill me and get it over with..."
Naruto lay face-down, tears streaming, cheek pressed to the dirt, a smear of vomit at the corner of his mouth. His psychological damage clearly exceeded Sasuke's—he'd achieved the full dead-eyed "life has no meaning" posture.
"But... the script can't just be changed on a whim."
Hinata frowned at the outline she'd spent days putting together. The setting was borrowed from Legend of the White Snake, sure, but the names, leads, and major plot beats were all different. She'd even given it a fitting title for this world—Fox Tales.
Throwing it all away would be a terrible waste. And her taijutsu training demanded enormous quantities of expensive medicinal ingredients. If she couldn't keep the money flowing, her training ground to a halt.
"No... we simply... cannot do this kind of thing..."
Having apparently emptied his stomach for the moment, Sasuke wobbled upright, one hand braced against a tree trunk for support. The poor Uchiha heir—normally the gold standard of cool detachment at school—was now grey-faced, gaunt, and sporting a visible streak of vomit residue at the corner of his mouth. The psychological damage had clearly been measured in metric tons.
"That's right! Making us film THAT kind of stuff—you might as well just slit our throats!!"
Naruto flung himself flat on the ground in a full-body starfish sprawl, broadcasting a loud and clear declaration: "Do whatever you want—I'm not getting up today."
Hmm.
Hinata's eyebrow twitched, a dangerous glint entering her eyes. She studied Sasuke, then Naruto, and her tone took on an edge. "How strange... 'you guys.' 'We.' Since when are you two on such chummy terms?"
"—!"
Both boys froze. Their behavior—no matter how you looked at it—reeked of suspiciously coordinated solidarity. This didn't look like a spur-of-the-moment refusal; it looked like something they'd planned in advance.
"I did say you should communicate and coordinate with each other. I did not say you could stage a joint walkout."
Hinata's white eyes flashed. Her left hand, resting on the tree stump, clenched abruptly. The solid wood groaned and cracked, finger-shaped grooves carving into the surface.
"Hmph. What this dead-last thinks is his business. Bottom line: you told me there'd be nothing involving romance, and now you want me to film a love story with this moron. I refuse."
With a haughty toss of his head, Sasuke's voice dropped back to its usual cool register. Naruto, meanwhile, leaped to his feet in a huff. "Hey, hey! Sasuke, you jerk! We agreed we'd protest together, and then get Hinata to tell us her training method—ah!"
There was, it turned out, an excellent reason the term "useless teammate" existed. Naruto had just provided a textbook demonstration. Slapping both hands over his mouth as the realization hit, cold sweat pouring down his face—yesterday's lesson from Hinata had clearly done nothing to cure his chronic foot-in-mouth disease.
"Naruto, you are almost impressively stupid. Honestly—with a brain like yours, you thought you could turn around and strong-arm somebody?"
Hinata's tone was flat, her expression blank. Internally, though, her anger had dissipated. As long as these two idiots weren't actually planning a walkout, the situation was negotiable.
Besides, canon knowledge or not, these two future powerhouses were currently nothing more than a pair of eleven-year-old brats.
As for her training method?
Heh heh heh. A safe road right in front of you, and you still won't take it. Protagonists they might be, but this headlong rush toward danger was genuinely amusing.
"That's right. The method I've been training isn't the Hyuga clan's Gentle Fist, because I have absolutely no aptitude for it. What I practice is an entirely different fist art."
Hinata confirmed it without hesitation. Sasuke and Naruto tensed, their expressions sharpening. After witnessing Hinata's shotgun-like destructive power yesterday, both had been forced to confront the chasm between her strength and their own.
That said, scheming to extract Hinata's training secrets was clearly Naruto's idea—the blond had far more cunning than people gave him credit for. Sasuke, on the other hand, simply had no resistance when it came to anything that might make him stronger.
"Um... Hinata~ I, uh~~"
Poking his index fingers together, Naruto hemmed and hawed at Hinata without managing to produce a single coherent sentence. The scene was practically a mirror image of the original timeline—roles reversed.
"You want to learn it? The martial art I've been practicing?"
Hinata cut through Naruto's stammering, stood up, and addressed them both directly. Scratching the back of his head, Naruto broke into a sheepish grin. "Ahaha~ If you could tell us the training method... that'd be awesome!"
"Ahem. I've heard that Gentle Fist requires the Byakugan to practice. If what you're doing isn't Gentle Fist, then..."
Sasuke had managed to compose himself, though his face was still burning to the tips of his ears. At least he'd gotten his point across, even if he couldn't finish the sentence.
"Sure. If you want to learn, I can share the training method. But brace yourselves—the difficulty of this art isn't in understanding it. It's in the perseverance and endurance."
Hinata's eyes gleamed, and a lie slid effortlessly from her lips.
"Its name—"
"—is the South Dipper Seven Sacred Fists."