Hui Youling looked at the masked person in front of her, feeling an unmistakably strange sensation.
How could she describe it?
A sense of familiarity and strangeness.
Loathing and attachment.
As if this person had once been a ray of light, and also her darkness.
She stopped thinking about it. The tangled feelings in her heart were impossible to sort out.
"Thank you!" Hui Youling said, accepting the things.
The person suddenly looked up at her and replied in an obviously altered voice, "You're welcome."
Hui Youling glanced at him in confusion. He vanished with a Body Flicker Technique, and she smiled faintly. There were some things she didn't yet have the ability to figure out.
When she turned around, she saw Naruto sleeping face-down on the sofa. She smiled helplessly and went to make breakfast.
But she was so short that she felt like flipping the table!
She could only stand on a chair to cook, but she couldn't move around, which caused all sorts of trouble.
"Naruto!"
Hui Youling set the fried eggs and milk on the table and gave a shout that jolted Naruto awake.
Naruto climbed groggily off the sofa. Catching the scent, he asked in confusion, "That smells great. What did you make, Hui?"
"Hey, get up and eat," she called again.
"Oh..." Naruto finally came over obediently.
As they were eating, Hui Youling suddenly set down her chopsticks and said solemnly, "Hey, Naruto, do you want to get stronger? Strong enough to take on a whole group of people and make them afraid of you!"
For some reason, Naruto wasn't startled. He kept eating with gusto. Had he gotten used to this?
"What are you planning now?" he asked casually.
"Naruto, we're going to train!"
"Do you know how people go from being idiots to strong after training? We can't miss out!"
Hui Youling wore an expression that said this was the absolute truth.
"Really?" Naruto had fallen for it again...
"That's right. We'll be one step closer to becoming Hokage!" She raised her eyebrows and kept coaxing him.
"Then I want to train too!" Naruto cried excitedly.
"Mm. So, do you have a training scroll?" Hui Youling finally got to the point.
"Huh? What's that?" Naruto answered blankly.
Hui Youling was at a loss for words. How had she forgotten that Naruto wasn't even six yet? He hadn't enrolled in the Ninja Academy, wasn't from one of the major clans, and had no secret techniques. He didn't even know the basic Three Body Technique. What could he train in?
It's fine. We can train in Taijutsu! Hui thought.
"Looks like I'll have to find Rock Lee!" Hui Youling was stumped.
"Hey, Naruto, have you seen someone with a bowl cut, big eyes, and thick eyebrows?" Seeing Naruto looking to her for help, she asked.
"Who? He sounds ugly!"
Naruto pictured the person and blurted out the question. A vein popped on Hui's forehead, and she smacked Naruto.
"You're ugly! Your whole family's ugly!"
Wait, that wasn't right. The Fourth Hokage had been a handsome man.
"You're the ugly one!" Hui Youling added.
"But..."
Naruto rubbed his head and protested innocently. Seeing Hui Youling get angry, he shut his mouth.
"Come on, let's train!"
She hopped down from her chair, shot Naruto a glance, and headed outside.
"If I don't go, will you beat me to death? Why are you not girly at all?" Naruto wailed.
In this world, where there were geniuses, there were idiots too. One special quality idiots had was great stamina!!!
Hui Youling watched Naruto running far ahead and sighed helplessly at the sky.
"Hui, hurry up!" someone shouted from up ahead.
She stopped. "Naruto, go on ahead. I'm going to rest for a bit."
"Oh, then wait here for me," Naruto said, before running off.
Hui Youling gazed at the Konoha River. In the early morning, its surface shimmered peacefully, but something unpleasant had mixed into the scene.
"That kid and that person are living together!"
"Hmph. It's no surprise that two bastards are living together." Two women gossiped.
"How can you say that?" another woman shouted at them, displeased.
"What do you know!" one of the older women said angrily.
"Don't go too far. If it weren't for that person, you'd all be dead!" the woman retorted.
"So what if that woman did that? What do you young people know!" another older woman chimed in.
"Tsk. Let's go!"
The first woman who had spoken pulled her companion away, while the other woman left in anger.
Things must really be such a mess that even they can't decide what's right and wrong. Hongye, what exactly did you do? Hui thought.
Hongye was the name of Hui's mother. She had no surname either. Hui Youling got up from the ground.
"This and that—it's all such a pain."
Just then, Naruto came back. "Hui!"
He called out and rushed over.
Looking at Naruto before her, Hui Youling suddenly thought of her little wooden house. "Naruto, go home first. I have something to do."
Before he could answer, she hurried away.
"Hui..." Naruto hesitated, but in the end, he didn't try to stop her.
With a sigh, he started running along the river again. Hui Youling had told him not to lose to her in stamina right from the start.
Standing beside the wooden house, Hui Youling carefully recalled what she remembered from before. There had been something important she'd put away. When she entered the house, she unconsciously said,
"I'm home!"
It was a habit of the body. She was probably afraid of loneliness too, so she pretended someone was home and did it without thinking. The empty house really had nothing in it.
It was a small house at the edge of the village, where only her mother had lived. Her mother had already been gone by the time Hui Youling became conscious. Even her name had been told to the original owner by the Third Hokage. Hui Youling had only seen her in a photograph and didn't know how she had died.
At the thought, sorrow filled her heart. Hui Youling remembered seeing a Three Body Technique scroll somewhere, but she hadn't known what it was, so she'd carefully stored it away.
She went into a dim room and took a box from the lower cabinet. It was a combination lockbox.
"I don't remember the combination at all!" Hui Youling cried.
Why had she even set a combination? It seemed the only way was to listen for the sound of the tumblers.
She stood the box upright and listened closely to the mechanism. The instant she closed her eyes, her hearing suddenly sharpened. She opened the box on her first try, then looked inside curiously, her pupils shrinking.
"Zero, zero, zero."
That definitely couldn't mean anything good.
She had cared so much about it in the past. How could she have left it without a combination? She must have chosen the original one on purpose.
Three zeros, representing nothingness and emptiness.
"Everything lost is gone forever..."
Hui Youling murmured, then clenched her teeth. She remembered how she had felt back then: that vacant, hollow feeling, filled with powerless despair.
But...
Why had she almost forgotten?
She opened the box solemnly and smiled faintly.
A little outfit.
Little gloves.
A little stroller.
And a book with a metal cover, several scrolls, and some small toys. Their original luster had all faded.
Her mother had prepared these for her, as if she had known from the start that she would be a girl. They were all bright, warm colors.
Looking at these things, the pain in her heart seemed to spread through her whole body, yet somewhere deep down she could feel a trace of warmth. She closed the box, locked it, and put it back where it had been.
Hui Youling looked at the Three Body Technique scroll in her hands and gripped it tightly.
She absolutely—
Absolutely had to become strong enough to protect herself, Naruto, and everyone in Konoha.
There were still three years, but she wasn't sure when Gaara would be attacked by Yashamaru. She knew his heart had turned cold from that moment onward. The sooner she could reach him, the better.
"I won't let your heart hurt again. Even if I can only see you once, I'll make sure you know how I feel."
She couldn't wait nine years. She couldn't wait until she met him after his heart had turned cold.
Suddenly, she envied the Kamui technique, which could ignore the distance between places. She loved him, yet he didn't even know she existed.
Before you continue