As torrential rain poured down, Aoike knelt before a grave. The grief that had come too late turned the world in his eyes to gray.
He raised his head. His pure white eyes had turned red, and three black Tomoe spun rapidly across his pupils, gradually connecting into a six-petaled hexagram.
"Mother..."
"How absurd this world is!" Two trails of bloody tears slipped from the corners of his eyes. He leaned weakly against the gravestone.
His young body could no longer bear the strain of two powerful eyes. He fell asleep in the graveyard, beside the only family he had left.
When Aoike opened his eyes again, dawn was breaking. A whole night had passed.
He wiped the two bloody streaks from the corners of his eyes. His clothes were already soaked through, and he could feel the aching in his eyes.
He left the graveyard and returned to his cold, empty home. His mother had sacrificed her life protecting Hinata, and her death had earned him a pension.
His mother's death was like a pebble falling into the ocean. Apart from stirring up a great storm in his heart, it meant nothing to all of Konoha.
No!
To the Hyuga Clan alone, it hadn't even made a ripple.
In life, she had been cautious and dutiful.
In death, she was forgotten and insignificant.
"How cheap."
Standing before the mirror, he saw his blood-red Three-Tomoe Sharingan layered over his Byakugan. The sight brought on a powerful sense of emptiness, forcing him to deactivate the Sharingan.
Though he knew three Tomoe weren't his limit, he still didn't dare recklessly unleash the greater power that lay beyond.
Uchiha Itachi was a cautionary tale. Awakening and using the Mangekyo too early could lead to a severe bloodline disease.
Besides, he was only five, with less than half a card's worth of chakra.
As someone reincarnated into this world from birth, he had done everything he could to convince Hyuga Shirahana to treasure her life. But Shirahana, who guarded Hinata, still couldn't escape her fate.
"Land of Lightning!"
"Hyuga!"
(The timeline has been adjusted to when Neji is six and the main cast is five, with the Land of Lightning hostage incident set to occur.)
Aoike shifted his gaze to his reflection.
Perhaps because his bloodline had reverted to its ancestral form, his hair was as white as snow. His round, babyish face was rosy, but the forehead that should have been pristine bore the pale green mark unique to the Hyuga Branch Family.
The Caged Bird Seal.
"It's fine. Sooner or later, I'll erase this mark—and the Hyuga Clan along with it." He gently touched his forehead but didn't hide the Caged Bird Seal. The restraint that Hyuga Neji refused to accept was only a matter of time for him.
One of the techniques in his Mangekyo, combined with the Ōtsutsuki Clan on the moon—if the Byakugan couldn't break fate, then the Tenseigan would.
Until then, his identity as a member of the Hyuga Branch Family would serve as his disguise.
As a child of both the Uchiha and Hyuga, he could imagine how the Hyuga Clan regarded him. Were it not for the clan rule that the Byakugan must never leave the clan, he would have been driven out long ago.
Neither the Uchiha nor the Hyuga wanted him, and he hadn't inherited either surname. All he had was the name Aoike, given to him by his parents.
Time passed—
By the age of six, Aoike had already made a name for himself in the clan academy. Some in the clan were even comparing him to Hyuga Neji.
So, to his surprise, Hyuga Hiashi had him take over his mother's position as Hinata's bodyguard and sparring partner.
It brought to mind a famous line from Naruto: the Hokage's son would still be the Hokage, while the scapegoat's son would still be a scapegoat.
At the Ninja Academy's entrance ceremony, Aoike stood quietly beside Hinata, doing his best to play the part of a capable bodyguard.
From a distance, Hyuga Hiashi watched Aoike behave himself and nodded in satisfaction before returning to the clan compound.
After Hanabi was born, he no longer paid as much attention to Hinata as he had before.
That also made it easier for Aoike and Hinata to grow closer.
In Aoike's eyes, Hinata was, to a great extent, an "inheritance" bought with a loved one's life.
After the Hokage's speech ended, Aoike led the shy Hinata toward their classroom. As an elite class for students with influential backgrounds or great potential, it gave him the chance he'd hoped for to meet the future main cast.
Ino-Shika-Cho, Sasuke, Naruto...
He helped the easily embarrassed Hinata choose a seat by the window, and they sat down quietly.
As more and more students arrived, Iruka entered last, bringing the commotion to a close.
The loud thump of a book against the teacher's desk drowned out the classroom chatter. Seeing the room settle down, Iruka nodded in satisfaction and wrote his name on the blackboard.
"I'm Umino Iruka. I'll be your teacher for the next six years. I hope we'll all get along..."
After the usual pleasantries, it was time for the much-anticipated introductions of everyone's dreams.
Naruto, who wanted to become Hokage.
Sasuke, who looked up to his older brother.
The lazy pineapple head.
When it was Hinata's turn, she rose carefully and stole a glance at Aoike. Her voice was so quiet that even he could only make out most of what she said.
Under Aoike's gentle gaze, little Hinata's brain finally overloaded and shut down.
Aoike caught her just in time, took out the pillow he'd prepared, and helped her settle into a comfortable sleeping position.
"Sorry, Hinata gets embarrassed easily..." Aoike stood up and offered a brief explanation, then took the opportunity to share his own dream.
"My name is Aoike. I like delicious food, and there's nothing I dislike for now. My dream is to become strong enough to protect the people I cherish!"
His gentle air, modeled on his mother's, and his cute appearance had the six-year-old girls in the class—already learning to read people's expressions—stirring with excitement.
Ignoring the fact that kids in the Ninja World seemed to hit puberty at a young age, he had been focusing on Hinata lately, though not for the reasons some people might think.
Aoike remembered that the official materials said Otsutsuki Toneri and his father had traveled between Earth and the moon through a "cave" several times. It had happened when Hinata was young.
To figure out where the cave was, he needed to notice when Toneri and his father came to observe Hinata.
For that, he had practiced a Wind Style sensory technique from the scroll his Uchiha father, whom he had never met, had left him.
Wind Style: Heart Kamaitachi Technique.
Put simply, it let him sense different objects through the breeze. It was a pretty useless technique.
Aside from sensing different kinds of wind, it could barely detect anything else about a target—not its distance, nor how many there were.
It was a technique shinobi used to alert themselves when preparing for battle, but it was just right for Aoike at the moment.
After more than a year of training, he could already distinguish different winds within a radius of about eight hundred meters.