The Night Before the Finals

Konoha at night, its streets were strung with colored lights.

On the night before the finals, no one could sleep. Shops had closed early, but the light spilling from their windows was brighter than usual. Some people sharpened blades, some wrote letters, and some simply sat there in a daze.

Ringo walked down the lantern-lined street. The look in his eyes was not one of anticipation—it was counting. One out of every three lanterns hung crooked. Its wick was a little shorter than the others; the flame flickered twice, dimmed once, then brightened again. Someone had hidden the fuse wires for explosive tags inside the lanterns. Not the Sand Ninja—the Anbu. The Third Hokage was setting up defenses. By hiding explosive tags in lanterns and disguising the fuse wires as wicks, the Sand Ninja would never notice. But Ringo had. Within the scanning range of his card slots, the chakra fluctuations of crooked lanterns differed from those of straight ones.

He passed beneath a crooked lantern without looking up. The Third Hokage had said it: he was not an intelligence agent, not Anbu, but an examinee. An examinee should not look at the explosive tags inside lanterns. An examinee should only return to the training ground, sit for a while, sleep, and step onto the field tomorrow.

The training ground.

Moonlight stretched the shadows of the wooden posts long, one after another, like a row of standing people. Ringo sat cross-legged before the third post, his palms resting flat on his knees. He was not training, but meditating. The card slots were fully open, every card arranged in a fan across his vision: twelve white, eight purple, six gold, and one orange. There was also Neji's Respect Fragment, Jiraiya's Sage Technique Fragment, that recording, and the Important Memory: Team 7's Oath he had just stored that afternoon.

Thirty chapters of accumulation, all of it was here.

After tomorrow, those numbers would change. There might be a few more cards—if he took down Temari, her Wind Style fragments would drop; if he took down Gaara, Shukaku's fragments would drop. Or there might be fewer. A failed synthesis, an exploded card slot, damaged fragments. He had gambled once in the Land of Waves and lost. The cards had shattered into powder and leaked out of the card slots like sand slipping through his fingers.

He lowered his head and looked at his hands. A thin layer of calluses covered his palms, not from practicing shuriken, but from steam burns. Whenever the steam went out of control, the first person it burned was not the enemy, but him. Three burn scars crossed his right palm, old ones layered over new ones, their colors ranging from pale pink to dark red like three rivers from different eras converging at the same estuary.

Tomorrow, would those three scars become four, five, or stop increasing altogether? That did not depend on whether the steam remained stable, but on whether he could make his opponent lose control before the steam did.

"Ringo."

Hinata's voice came from the edge of the training ground—not from the entrance, but from the shadows cast by the wooden posts. Ringo had not noticed how long she had been standing there. He had turned off the scan. At the training ground, he did not want to scan anything. He only wanted to sit quietly for a while.

Hinata stepped out of the shadows, moonlight falling over her. She wore a light purple yukata tied with a thin sash, her hair loose and hanging just below her shoulders. In her hand was a plain white cloth bundle with no embroidery on it. Not the blue one with the Hyuga crest from last time.

"The finals are tomorrow. I wanted to come tell you good night. Not tomorrow from the stands—now. There will be too many people in the stands tomorrow. You might not hear what I say."

Her voice grew softer as she spoke, afraid of disturbing his meditation.

Ringo patted the ground beside him, making a small sound to let her know she could sit.

Hinata sat down diagonally across from him, half a meter away. She chose a spot where the moonlight could reach her face, so he could see her expression.

"Are you scared?"

"Scared." Ringo did not pretend otherwise. There was no point putting on a brave face in front of her. "Not of Temari, not of Gaara—it's the steam I'm afraid of. Jiraiya gave me a stabilizing pouch, so the steam and sound waves can coexist now. But the day after tomorrow won't be training—it'll be real combat. The difference between real combat and training isn't whether the opponent is strong. It's that if you lose, there's no do-over."

Hinata spread her hands over her knees, palms up, her fingers slightly curled as if she were catching something.

"Then what do you think about when you're afraid?"

"Three things. First, the formula in the card slot: sound waves first, steam after, left hand filling the gaps. Second, the opponent's weaknesses: there's an opening between each swing of Temari's fan, Sandstorm covers a fan-shaped area, and her back is a blind spot. Third—"

He paused. The third thing was a little embarrassing to say.

"What's the third thing?"

"You."

Hinata's fingers curled, then loosened. Moonlight shone into her palm. Her fingers remained bent, as if they had caught something invisible.

"I'm not a weakness, am I?"

"Not a weakness. A stake. Jiraiya said it before: if you believe, then gamble. If you don't, change the formula. I believe in you. I believe you'll sit in the front row of the stands—not the last row, not some corner, but the front row. Because you said you should sit there—not as the Hyuga heiress, but as my partner."

Hinata's lashes trembled. The moonlight was too bright, and the shadows of her lashes fell across her eyelids.

"Ringo, there's something I want to tell you. Not tomorrow—now. There might not be a chance after tomorrow. Not because you'll lose—it's because of the war. I know the Sand Ninja are going to attack Konoha. My Byakugan saw it. The explosive tags in the lanterns, the Anbu ambushes on the rooftops, the battle map in Grandpa Third's office—I saw all of it."

Ringo did not ask why she had not told anyone else. He did not need to. Hinata was not the kind of person who spread around everything she saw. She saw it, kept it in her heart, and when it mattered, sat beside him and told him.

"So you didn't come tonight just to say good night."

"Mm. There's something I've wanted to say since the day we returned from the Land of Waves, but I never said it. I was afraid you'd get distracted during training if I did. Tomorrow is the finals, and after tomorrow comes war. If I don't say it tomorrow, I may never get another chance."

Hinata drew in a breath, all the way to the bottom of her lungs. She held it for three seconds, then let it out. Halfway through exhaling, she spoke.

"Ringo. There aren't many people you care about, I know. Naruto, Sasuke, Kakashi-sensei. Maybe Grandpa Third too. But... am I among them? I'm not asking. I'm confirming. If I'm one of the people you care about, then I want you to know—you're among the people I care about. Not one of them. You're the first. And the most important."

Her hands clenched on her knees. Having said it, she became even more nervous. Once the words were spoken, they could not be taken back. All she could do was wait for his answer.

Ringo reached out and covered her clenched fist. Her hand was small. Even clenched tight, her fist was not half the size of his palm. When he covered it, he could feel her knuckles trembling. Not from cold, but from having waited too long.

"Hinata. There aren't many people I care about. You're the first, and the most important. Not one of them. First and second aren't the same. The first is... before you realize you care about her, you're already caring about her. Since behind the tree at the training ground, since the first day you used your Byakugan and saw that my chakra was gold, I've cared about you. You saw it, but you didn't hide and you didn't run. You watched me three times from behind that tree. The fourth time, I waited for you to come over. And you came."

Hinata's tears fell. One drop slid from her lashes and landed on his finger. It was cold. Under the moonlight, tears were cold.

"I waited six chapters." She smiled, tears still on her face, the corners of her lips curving upward. "I finally got to hear it."

Ringo did not wipe away her tears. He could not. She was smiling, crying and smiling at once, her face glittering beneath the moonlight. It was not the outline of the Byakugan—it was the outline of a person. Not the Hyuga heiress—it was Hinata, just Hinata.

He held her hand, their palms pressed together, her fingers beneath the back of his hand and his fingers over the back of hers. It was not handholding—it was confirmation. Confirmation of each other's existence, confirmation that this hand would still be here after tomorrow.

The card slots trembled.

The system opened the card slot interface on its own, translucent and unobtrusive, not blocking his view of Hinata. There was only one line on it:

White ×12, Purple ×8, Gold ×6, Orange ×1. Tomorrow, these numbers will change. But some things will never change.

He closed the interface. Tonight, he did not need to look at the system. He only needed to look at one person.

Hinata stood, her hand still held in his. She looked down at him, moonlight behind her, turning her hair silver-white. Her face lay in shadow, but her eyes shone. Not with the Byakugan's ocular power, but with the reflection of someone in them.

"Tomorrow, I'll be in the front row of the stands. Not sitting—I'll stand in front of the railing. I won't be able to see you if I'm sitting. I'll stand. No matter what anyone says, I'll stand."

She released his hand, slowly pulling away. Her fingers brushed across his palm, her index finger dragging lightly across the back of his hand, reluctant to leave.

"Good night, Ringo."

She turned around. She did not run or stop. Her steps were steady, her shoulders relaxed, her hair swaying softly behind her. When she reached the entrance to the training ground, she raised her hand without looking back, making a fist just as she had during the preliminaries. Not to cheer him on—but to tell him she was ready.

Ringo watched her back disappear into the lantern light. The lantern light was warm, unlike moonlight, and her shadow was longer in it than it had been beneath the moon.

He walked up to the wooden post he struck most often. It was covered in steam-burn marks layered upon each other, the old ones dark brown and the new ones light brown. He raised a finger. Not steam—his fingernail. He carved into the post.

Not a name, but two words.

"Protect."

When he finished, he looked up. The moon was the same moon from that day on the rooftop, when she had said, "This is when I want to see you." Tomorrow, that moon would see him standing before everyone. Not Ringo the orphan—but Ringo the synthesis ninja.