"To put it simply—that was a test."
"The Academy only teaches by the book. And yesterday's test had Hanabi leading both of you."
"So when Hanabi brought the plan to me, I agreed."
When it was all over, Hatake Kakashi gathered the two of them for a debrief.
"Heh heh—I must've done pretty great then!" Naruto had helped bring down the boar, and he was riding high.
"Naruto. You have no concept of stamina management. Your recovery speed is impressive, but if the boar had charged during midday, you wouldn't have had anything left." Kakashi said.
"Ugh…" Naruto had no comeback.
If it had come at midday, he'd have been flat on the ground. A real boar attack then would've left him with one option: lie there and wait to be run over.
"That said—the final tactic was a genuine highlight. You clocked the cliff's instability ahead of time, drew the boar toward it, used the Shadow Clone Technique to add weight and drag it over. Credit where it's due." Kakashi gave Naruto his nod.
"Heh heh, heh heh~" Naruto's grin came right back.
"That idiot absolutely did not think through all of that in the moment." Sasuke said it plainly, then looked toward Hanabi.
This 'test' had been set up for himself and Naruto. Which meant that in Kakashi-sensei's eyes, Hanabi hadn't needed to go through the test at all.
She'd been the one to propose it in the first place.
Something peculiar was simmering in his chest.
Envy? Longing? A hungry kind of wanting?
Sasuke couldn't name it.
"Alright. That's enough for today." Kakashi said.
"What about our mission?" Naruto was still hung up on the official task.
"My Shadow Clones already finished the patrol." Hanabi said.
Kakashi went to turn in the mission report. The Seventh Squad dispersed.
Sasuke, feeling deeply that he'd come up short, returned to training on his own.
"Is this what genius looks like?"
He'd been hearing it for a long time.
The prodigy of the Hyuga clan. A true genius.
If she still had her Byakugan…
Before today, Sasuke had never given it much thought. As classmates, they'd barely interacted.
But today, he'd felt it.
She was someone capable of training and assessing him at a level above his.
Like that day he'd found the destroyed training ground.
"Huff, huff." He kept going until he physically couldn't, and then he finally stopped.
Perhaps because he'd been thinking of the training ground, his feet had carried him there without his realizing.
"Hm?"
Someone was here.
"Hanabi."
It was Hanabi.
She was still in the kimono she'd worn all day, but the hem had been tucked up and her sleeves bound back with tasuki cords.
"Are those… bandages?"
Bandages wrapped her hands, and they were seeping through with blood.
He'd always thought of Hanabi's hands as unblemished. The sight was jarring.
"Good evening, Sasuke."
She turned to face him.
"Your hands—"
"Ah, these. Please don't worry about them." Hanabi said. "My skin doesn't callous, so taijutsu training tends to cause injuries. It's nothing—they'll be healed by tomorrow."
It hadn't mattered before; Hanabi had always trained at home. But as she'd grown older, broken skin and seeping wounds had become unavoidable, and Natsu-the-handmaiden fretted every time she saw them.
Which was why Hanabi no longer trained at home.
"Callouses…" Sasuke looked down at his own hands.
Skin that didn't callous—for a girl, that probably sounded ideal. But smooth, delicate skin was exactly what tore easiest.
And she was blind on top of it.
What kind of motivation kept her going?
In that moment, Sasuke realized something. Using the word 'genius' for her—it was a kind of discourtesy.
Hanabi was not something a word as weightless as 'genius' could contain.
"Spar with me." Sasuke said.
Hanabi shook her head.
"Why? Do you look down on me?!"
Sasuke's voice rose.
But then two warm fingertips pressed lightly against his neck from behind, and the spike of emotion dissolved instantly.
"Because there's no point."
The voice came from behind him. And the 'Hanabi' in front of him dissolved like morning mist.
The fight had ended before it began.
"What technique was that?" Sasuke asked quietly.
"Kyōka Suigetsu." For some reason, Sasuke had the sense that Hanabi was smiling when she said the name.
"Then at least show me your ninjutsu." He'd lost, but he still wanted to see her strength—not be undone by an illusion before anything started.
"I'm afraid that's not possible yet." Hanabi said.
"Then what do I have to do to get as strong as you?" Sasuke pressed.
"Train. Didn't you do well enough today?"
"I'm not talking about something like that!" Sasuke's composure cracked. "That kind of thing—only someone like Naruto would be cheerful about it!"
"I see." Hanabi understood. "Then—start by knowing yourself."
"Knowing… myself?"
That wasn't the answer he'd expected.
"Who you are. Where you came from. Where you're going." Three questions that sounded simple, but could occupy a person for a lifetime.
"I'm an avenger. I'll revive my clan. I'll kill that man…" Sasuke said.
"If that's all it is—then your capacity is exactly that small." Hanabi said.
"You already know about the Uchiha."
She'd known about Kakashi's background. His own family's situation, she certainly knew.
"If it were you—"
"Think more." Hanabi cut him off. "Sasuke. You need to think more."
Think more?
More about what?
"Where exactly is the problem? Are things really as they appear on the surface? Why did everything become what it is?"
As she spoke, she was unwrapping the blood-soaked bandages from her hands.
She dropped them on the ground. They caught fire.
"Fire Style…" Sasuke recognized it immediately—Fire Style ninjutsu, and the technique itself was far beyond his own.
"Why did all of this happen? How could one person do all of this without anyone noticing? When someone makes a choice like that—what were they actually thinking? Don't let hatred blind you. Sasuke. Think more."
"And then what?" Sasuke asked.
"Bury it. Say nothing to anyone." Hanabi straightened her kimono and stepped forward.
"Say nothing?!" He could almost grasp at something just out of reach.
"If you can truly think it through—truly reach that realization—" Hanabi turned back, "then I'll let you see my techniques. My real ones."
And with that, her figure faded—scattering like fireworks—and was gone.
Staring at the place she'd been, Sasuke fell into thought.
"Does she actually know something?"
Sasuke fell silent.
But he remembered what she'd said.
Bury it. Say nothing.
Think more.