Another miserable morning.
Staring blankly at the sunlight streaming through his window, Sasuke broke from his usual routine and stayed in bed. He was known for his relentless training, but every now and then, even he surrendered to the inertia of his own body.
No one would come to wake him. No one would have breakfast waiting for him. Sasuke knew this perfectly well—he was an orphan now.
Of the entire Uchiha clan, only Uchiha Sasuke remained in Konoha. The clan's properties and residential district still technically belonged to him, but this sprawling tract of land was nothing more than a silent, empty cage.
Memories of living with his parents were like the clan crests peeling from the walls—eroded by time into fragments, leaving only faint traces.
He got out of bed with the mechanical precision of a puppet, already knowing exactly what came next: walk to the Uchiha compound's pond, practice with shuriken and Fire Style ninjutsu. Then go buy a few bonito rice balls from the market for the day's meals.
He wouldn't run into anyone. Nothing out of the ordinary would happen.
Just like every other day for the past several years.
He stepped through his front door without bothering to lock it. There was nothing inside worth stealing—or rather, nothing left that Sasuke cared about protecting.
Watching a few sparrows flit across the sky, Sasuke shook his head with faint self-deprecation. Right—apart from the occasional bird or stray cat, no other living thing would set foot in the Uchiha compound. After all, this was cursed ground, once drenched in blood. No one besides the clan's sole survivor cared what became of this place.
He drew a deep breath and forced the melancholy from his mind. The pond wasn't far. Best to finish today's training regimen and be done with it.
With that thought, he started down his usual route. But as he turned onto a leaf-strewn street, a piercing, high-pitched voice slammed into his ears out of nowhere.
"Nico Nico Nii~~"
The voice dripped with an effortless coquettishness and sweetness, threaded through with an inexplicable blend of shyness and trepidation that was strangely pleasant to the ear.
The sound blanked Sasuke's mind for a full second. After years of solitude, there was a stranger in his home?
An inexplicable fire flared in his chest. One glance was enough to tell him the voice came from near the Uchiha ancestral shrine—the building that housed the memorial tablets of every Uchiha who had ever lived. And right now—
Someone was in there?!
A storm of emotions seized his body. By the time he regained awareness, he'd already drawn a kunai and charged. Rounding a corner, the scene he'd been imagining finally came into view—
"Nico Nico Nii~~ Let your feelings go Nico Nico Nii~~"
A golden-haired girl in a red-and-white shrine maiden outfit was striking a cutesy pose and reciting those maddeningly catchy lines with saccharine sweetness. Her looks were flawless—bronzed skin paired with a perfectly proportioned figure. The combination of appearance and pose was undeniably eye-catching.
"Put more sweetness into it! You stupid vixen!"
An impatient bark accompanied the scene. A figure standing in front of the shrine maiden clicked the shutter of a camera, the staccato ka-chak, ka-chak making it abundantly clear what she was doing.
And Sasuke, who had just appeared in the shrine doorway behind this figure, found himself locked in an excruciatingly awkward paralysis.
As a proud member of the Uchiha clan, he knew exactly how to deal with trespassers who entered the Uchiha shrine without permission.
A volley of shuriken and a Fireball Jutsu would be the minimum punishment. Even if he lost control and accidentally killed this pair of degenerates, they'd have had it coming—barging into someone else's ancestral shrine, they could die a hundred times over and it wouldn't be enough. Even if the matter reached the Hokage's desk, Sasuke wouldn't be in the wrong.
But the scene before him clearly didn't match his expectations.
There were no shrine-desecrating degenerates. Instead, there was... whatever this was. Sasuke didn't even have the vocabulary for it yet.
"Hmm, something's still missing."
The figure in front of the shrine maiden muttered to herself, then walked over and beckoned.
"Hey, hey—lift your arms higher. Did you skip breakfast or something?"
"I can't help it~! I literally didn't eat breakfast! And it's almost lunchtime already!"
The shrine maiden had clearly had enough. She planted her hands on her hips and screamed at the girl in front of her. But the moment she struck that hands-on-hips pose, it dealt a devastating blow to Sasuke's composure. A rush of heat surged toward his lower body, and he instinctively stepped backward—only for a sharp crack to ring out beneath his foot. A rotted branch had snapped clean in half.
"Hm?!"
The sudden noise immediately alerted the figure standing before the shrine maiden. Before Sasuke could even think about hiding, she'd already whipped her head around with predatory sharpness, locking her gaze directly onto him and the kunai in his hand.
Their eyes met. Both froze for a beat.
Sasuke struggled to stamp down the inexplicable heat roiling inside him, replacing it with full-blown wariness and fury.
Hyuga Hinata. That was the name of the girl standing there.
She was no minor figure in Konoha. She was the eldest daughter of the Hyuga clan—one of the village's most prestigious families. Back when the Uchiha had still been in their prime, the Hyuga were the only clan that could rival them. Now that the Uchiha had been reduced to Sasuke alone, the Hyuga stood unchallenged as the most powerful clan in all of Konoha.
The Uchiha and Hyuga weren't exactly enemies, but at a time like this, for the Hyuga heiress to be doing... this... whatever this was... inside the Uchiha shrine? It was nothing short of a direct insult.
"What do you think you're doing?!"
His grip tightened on the kunai. Sasuke's voice trembled with rage. If not for a shred of remaining restraint, he might have attacked on the spot.
To this, Hinata merely frowned slightly. She tilted her head, and the angle of the light turned her pupil-less eyes an eerie blue-white in the shadows. Her appearance was still as unassuming as it was at the Academy, but what she projected now was unmistakably dangerous—like something inhuman stirring beneath human skin.
"I'm sorry..."
Just as Sasuke instinctively raised his guard, Hinata spoke softly, her expression seeming to relax.
"The atmosphere and scenery here are well-suited for location shooting, so we came here. Oh—my apologies. I really should have cleared this with you beforehand, Sasuke."
She smiled and reached into her jacket pocket again. "As you can see, I've been collaborating with Naruto on a little photography side business. After all, we can't rely on adults for everything, right?"
Walking slowly toward Sasuke, her tone growing ever more gentle, she produced a stack of bills and held them out. "So, since we used the grounds without asking, please accept this location fee. Fifty thousand ryō isn't much, but it's decent pocket money, right?"
"What?!"
Sasuke jolted. Only now did he notice the shrine maiden's eyes—those unmistakable blue irises. Which meant—
This shrine maiden was that blond dead-last, transformed with a jutsu?! And he had actually felt... that... because of this idiot's transformation?!
A bone-deep mortification turned his face a blazing red. He bit down hard and glared at the Hyuga heiress, his voice seething with volcanic fury.
"What the hell do you think you're using my family's shrine for?! Get out! Now!"
The ferocity of the rebuff was absolute. The killing intent behind it made Naruto—still in female form—flinch reflexively—though not because Sasuke scared her. She knew exactly what kind of response this refusal might provoke from a certain someone.
The smile slowly drained from Hinata's face. In its place crept a vicious, predatory smirk. She tucked the cash back into her pocket, and the words that followed could have frozen blood.
"Well, well..."
"Turning down a polite offer, are we."