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Chapter 35: The Secret
🕑 Added 2025-05-08 23:00:05 +0000 UTCDing-ding-ding!
The school bell rang.
Sasuke stormed into the classroom first, his face dark. Behind him, Sakura fidgeted anxiously, unsure how to explain what had just happened. Shikamaru, Kiba, and Chōji dragged a still-rubbing-his-head Naruto back to his seat.
Ino entered alongside Hikari, her expression uneasy.
Hinata, lifting her head from the desk, watched as everyone trickled in—Naruto grinning goofily at Hikari as he passed.
Eep!
She immediately ducked back down, nearly smacking her forehead against the wood.
So scary…
So, so scary…
Hinata trembled uncontrollably.
Ever since that day—the day she’d seen it with her Byakugan—she hadn’t slept properly.
It happened during Hikari’s spar with Fūma-sensei.
The mist had been thick.
Naruto, perched on Kiba’s shoulders, couldn’t see a thing. So Hinata, wanting to help, activated her Byakugan to peek inside.
And then… she wished she hadn’t.
With the Byakugan’s penetrating vision, no secret could hide.
What she saw inside Hikari’s small, unassuming body was… a monster.
Deep blue chakra, pulsing with a sinister aura.
Bone-like armor beneath the skin, dense as steel plates, threaded with veins.
Muscles grotesquely swollen, twisting in ways that made her stomach churn.
And worst of all… the eyes.
Though the pupils were a different color, the veins around them were unmistakable.
Byakugan.
Hikari Tsuchigumo was a monster wearing human skin—and she’d stolen the Hyūga clan’s kekkei genkai!
The horrifying truth had seared itself into Hinata’s mind without permission.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Hikari’s footsteps passed by her desk. Hinata held her breath, arms clamped over her chest, curling into herself like a frightened hedgehog.
Don’t notice me… Don’t notice me…
Only when Hikari was far enough away did she dare exhale.
Cowardice won out.
That grotesque image had traumatized her. Even during combat training, when Sasuke had beaten her, she refused to activate her Byakugan—terrified of drawing Hikari’s attention or seeing that nightmare again.
Her parents had noticed her strange behavior, but when they asked, she couldn’t bring herself to confess.
"Father’s busy with clan matters lately…"
I should tell him. Hikari stole our kekkei genkai!
But…
Hinata’s heart pounded violently.
She didn’t even know what she was afraid of—just that the fear was paralyzing. The mere thought of Hikari’s true form made her shake so badly she couldn’t even consider opposing her.
In her nightmares, she kept seeing it:
A blood-drenched monster with bone spikes tearing free from Hikari’s skin, laughing as it slaughtered their classmates—her family—in a frenzy of gore.
If I tell anyone… that’s what will really happen.
Clenching her fists, Hinata vowed to keep the secret to herself.
"Tsuchigumo-san is so cute…"
"Right? My heart almost stopped when she walked by just now."
Two boys behind Hinata chatted loudly, oblivious.
Her stomach lurched.
Cute?
All she felt was a spine-chilling dread, like needles pressing into her back.
Is that thing looking this way?! What do I do?!
Just the thought of Hikari’s gaze on her made her skin crawl.
Please… stop talking about her…
You’ll get us all killed!
Hinata bit her lip, fighting tears as she wished she could vanish into her desk.
Nearby, Ino overheard the boys too. She glanced at Hikari’s delicate features, then at Sasuke, her expression growing conflicted.
Meanwhile, at the front of the class…
"Alright, everyone! Open your history books to page 21. Today, we’ll continue with the Warring States period and the Senju clan’s…"
Iruka’s lecture droned on, utterly failing to hold Hikari’s attention.
Unaware of Ino’s turmoil—and completely oblivious that Hinata had uncovered her secret—Hikari focused on her real goal:
Wind Release chakra nature training.
She pulled a leaf from her pocket.
Oval-shaped, roughly palm-sized, with a central vein branching outward. She had no idea what tree it came from—botany wasn’t her forte.
Her heart’s chakra core pulsed.
Deep blue chakra flooded her palm, swirling around the leaf.
Hum.
Moisture in the air stirred, eager to gather at her call—but she forcefully held it back.
Three-Tails’ power really is something.
Even without formal training, manipulating water felt instinctive. In a humid place like Kirigakure, her Water Release would be twice as strong.
Wind, though?
Not so cooperative.
Her chakra writhed around the leaf.
Now what?
The manga only said to "cut the leaf," but gave no specifics.
Do I shape the chakra into a blade?
Her gray pupils sharpened behind the blindfold. Invisible ocular power descended upon the chakra.
Like liquid mercury, the energy morphed—forging into a razor-sharp edge under the Byakugan’s precision control.
Slice.
The leaf split… but unevenly. The veins clung together, nothing like the clean cuts Wind Release was supposed to produce.
Wrong.
Hikari dissolved the chakra blade with a frown.
That was shape transformation, not nature transformation.
A true Wind Release blade would’ve been flawlessly sharp.
Now what?
Stuck at the first step, she faced the fundamental problem of self-taught training:
How do I know what direction to even try?
With a sigh, she redirected residual moisture in the air, condensing it into swirling water around the leaf.
Workaround time.
If she could reverse-engineer her Water Release, maybe she’d understand Wind’s mechanics. Both were fluid in nature—they had to share similarities.
Her Byakugan flared.
Veins bulged beneath the blindfold as the water’s structure magnified a thousandfold, every microscopic detail laid bare.
And what she saw stunned her.
The water wasn’t just water.
Outer layer: Normal H₂O.
Inner layer: Chakra, mimicking water’s properties so perfectly it had become indistinguishable from the real thing.
The "water" moved, merged, separated—all while her Byakugan revealed the truth:
Countless chakra particles, arranged like water molecules, simulating liquid motion.
Chakra nature transformation wasn’t conversion—it was emulation.
Hikari’s brow furrowed.
This feels… both scientific and utterly nonsensical.
(End of Chapter)
