Winter had come, snowflakes drifted through the air, and the world was blanketed in silver.
In the small woods outside the Ninja Academy.
A little girl dressed rather luxuriously crouched beneath a crooked tree, shivering.
Her adorable face was red from the cold. Tears welled in her pure, unblemished eyes, yet stubbornly refused to fall.
Before her, several boys in ordinary clothes with garish hairstyles formed a circle around her. Each held two snowballs, tossing them up and down as they stared at her maliciously.
"Monster!"
One of them cursed, then viciously hurled the snowball in his hand at the girl.
"Ugh~"
The Byakugan girl let out a soft whimper and raised a hand to block it, but failed. She could only withdraw her hand silently and rub her aching shoulder in grievance.
"Hahaha—"
Seeing her reaction, the boy laughed triumphantly.
"You still want to block it? I'll let you block it! Go on, block it!"
He threw the other snowball in his hand as well and urged the others beside him to join in.
At once, nearly ten snowballs flew from their hands, shooting straight toward the crouching girl.
"Wah..."
Seeing this, the girl was so frightened that she buried her little face tightly between her knees, squeezed her eyes shut, and covered her head with her hands.
The laughter of those boys immediately became even more wanton.
Bullying a girl who was clearly of far nobler birth than themselves gave them an extraordinary sense of satisfaction.
Yet after crouching there with her head covered for quite some time, the girl did not feel the pain of being struck by snowballs.
Puzzled, she cautiously raised half her face and peeked outside through the gap between her knees and arms.
The first thing she saw was a grayish-white haori.
Her