Day three blurred into a relentless pattern—an endless, predictable cycle. Hunger gnawed at me, I cried, Hikari fed me. The inevitable followed: digestion and the complete obliteration of whatever dignity I still thought I possessed. Afterwards came my training, squeezed into every quiet moment before the Byakugan inevitably activated on its own, draining my reserves until sleep claimed me once again. Rinse and repeat.
And just like that, the hours passed.
For any other newborn, these might have been meaningless, hazy days. For me, every moment was a calculated investment. I wasn't just living through the cycle—I was using it, finding slivers of time to wrestle with my chakra control. Each feeding, each nap, was followed by experimentation. My mind, though trapped in this fragile body, was far from idle.
By the night bridging day three and day four, I found myself staring toward the paper-screened window. Beyond it, framed in a slice of the outside world, hung the pale glow of the moon. Its light pooled softly over the courtyard, catching in the leaves and casting gentle shadows that my sharpened senses drank in. For a long moment I simply watched, letting the stillness settle into me before returning my focus inward, I sensed it. My progress wasn't just in my head—it was tangible. The warm current that had once felt wild and untouchable now responded to me, bending in subtle ways when I willed it. For the first time, I could guide it—not perfectly, but enough to feel in control.
Except… not fully.
The stream feeding into my eyes refused to obey. I could nudge it away for a breath or two, like redirecting a stubborn stream around a rock, but it always returned to its original course. Constant. Relentless.
That constancy sparked an idea.
If I can't stop it, maybe I can control it.
I focused inward, tracing the path the chakra took through my body. The more I observed, the more obvious the pattern became: the flow wasn't random. It traveled through the same points repeatedly, hopping from one tenketsu to the next in a predictable rhythm. It was a route, not a river.
A grin formed in my mind.
What if these tenketsu were like gates? Or valves? With that thought, I began testing. I imagined narrowing a point—pressing in on it from all sides. The flow slowed. Then I widened it, and the chakra poured through faster, fuller. It worked. I repeated the experiment over and over, adjusting one point at a time, until my awareness of each tenketsu was sharper than ever before.
It wasn't easy. Sometimes my mental grip slipped and the chakra snapped back to its original pace, flooding my eyes again. Other times I over-tightened and caused an odd, uncomfortable pressure in my chest or limbs. But with every mistake came understanding. I learned the thresholds—how much I could close a point before it resisted, how far I could open one without throwing the rest of the system off balance.
Eventually, after what felt like hours of steady practice, I managed to pinch the flow to my eyes down by more than half.
The effect was immediate and profound. My chakra pool no longer hurtled recklessly toward the Byakugan's activation threshold; instead it gathered at a measured pace, like water filling a series of carefully arranged channels. I could feel it spreading evenly, seeping into every corner of my tiny body in a balanced way. The difference was striking—calm where there had been turbulence, control where there had been chaos. No sudden, jarring activation, no overwhelming flood of perception, no skull-splitting headaches clawing at the inside of my mind. It was the kind of stability I hadn't dared to hope for in these first days, and the quiet satisfaction of it warmed me almost as much as the chakra itself.
I couldn't help it—I grinned inwardly. Finally.
But limiting the flow wasn't enough. Could I also unleash it on command?
I began working toward that goal immediately. My earlier tests had taught me the sensitivity of the tenketsu near my eyes, so I treated it like a faucet handle. Slowly, steadily, I opened the flow. The first few attempts fizzled—either too much or too little. But then, on what must have been the twelfth try, there was a familiar click inside my perception.
The Byakugan roared to life.
The world around me expanded in an instant. My vision filled with stark, white-hot clarity. I could see every curve and crease of the room, every grain in the wooden beams. Chakra signatures pulsed like heartbeats—lines of life and energy weaving through everything. The trees beyond the walls shimmered with their own soft auras. Even the smallest insect in the shadows glowed faintly.
It was intoxicating.
Carefully, I reversed the process, closing the valve until the extra sight faded away. My head felt blissfully free of the stabbing pain that had always followed. My control was working.
And then I did it again.
And again.
Sometimes I overshot and flooded my eyes too quickly, causing a dizzy rush. Other times I starved the flow, getting nothing but a dull throb behind my eyelids. But each attempt taught me something new: the exact angle of thought that made a tenketsu yield, the way my breath seemed to sync with the chakra's movement, the subtle hum of energy as it obeyed my will.
Time slipped by without my noticing. Outside, the light shifted—morning giving way to afternoon, and afternoon sinking toward evening. I only stopped when my chakra pool was reduced to a thin, flickering trickle.
My baby body, ever the tyrant, decided that was enough. Fatigue hit me all at once, making my limbs heavy and my eyelids heavier. I let the exhaustion take me. Just before sleep claimed me, a smug, victorious thought echoed through my mind:
Now it's my switch, not yours.
Author's Note:I have to say, I didn't expect so many people to be interested in this fanfiction. I hope you're enjoying it!If you can, please leave as much feedback as possible — I'd love to hear it.