The next four weeks settled into a new kind of normal.
Mornings belonged to the training grounds.
No matter how cold the winter air was, no matter how stiff my muscles felt when I first stepped onto the packed earth, Hanato was always already there—upright, composed, watching. The routine was strict and repetitive in the way all real foundations were: warm-up, cardio, strength work, stances, transitions, corrections. Every day the same structure, every day the same expectation that I would show up, endure, and improve.
Afternoons belonged to everything else.
Etiquette lessons, posture drills, tea service, quiet correction after quiet correction. Sometimes conversation practice, sometimes calligraphy-like exercises meant to teach control and patience rather than produce anything readable. Hikari and the older women rotated in and out like they were part of a well-oiled machine designed to produce a very specific kind of person.
A proper Hyuga lady.
Some days it felt like I lived two lives at once—one in which I was allowed to move, sweat, and strain my body toward strength, and another in which every gesture had to be measured and graceful, every word carefully polite.
Between those two worlds, my chakra training continued in the background like a heartbeat.
My own reinforcement had started to become reflex.
At first, every pulse of chakra into my muscles had been deliberate, something I had to think through step by step. Now, I caught myself doing it automatically—an unconscious tightening of my core as I lifted, a subtle surge into my legs as I sprinted, a stabilizing flow into my joints as I shifted from one stance to another.
It happened before I fully noticed.
Like breathing.
Hanato noticed too.
He watched me constantly with his Byakugan, not in a suspicious way but in the manner of a craftsman studying an unusual tool. Whenever we trained, I could feel his gaze following the patterns inside me, tracing every surge and adjustment.
And in the spaces between my own exercises, I watched him.
Because Hanato was trying.
Relentlessly.
Every day, after instructing me, he would practice his own chakra control, attempting to do what I did as casually as a child tying her shoes. He could move chakra along long, disciplined routes between tenketsu with impressive precision. He could guide it through established pathways for what felt like forever, patiently repeating the same motion until it became smooth.
But he could not do the crucial part.
He could not saturate.
No matter how carefully he guided the flow, he couldn't sink chakra into the muscle itself, couldn't make it spread through tissue and bone the way mine did. At best, it skimmed the surface—present, controlled, but not integrated.
It was like watching someone pour water over sealed stone.
The liquid moved.
It flowed.
But it never soaked in.
At first I merely observed, curious. Then, as the days passed, curiosity shifted into concern.
His persistence was admirable.
His approach was also… dangerous.
There was a point in my own experimentation where I had learned that forcing chakra into places it didn't want to go could lead to pain sharp enough to make my stomach twist, and to injuries that would have sidelined me if I hadn't stumbled into that crude pulsing-heal technique. I had already pushed myself far enough to understand what happened when your will outran your body's ability to handle it.
Hanato didn't have my healing shortcut.
The idea of him tearing something—muscle, tendon, joint—because he refused to stop grinding the same method into the ground began to gnaw at me.
After two weeks of watching him struggle in silence, I finally spoke.
It happened after our midday stance cycle, while my breathing steadied and the training hall settled into quiet again.
"Sensei," I said carefully, keeping my tone respectful. "Can I help you with the chakra reinforcement?"
Hanato looked up, surprised.
"I think," I continued, choosing my words as if I were walking across thin ice, "I might have an idea for a first approach. But I can only recommend it cautiously. When I tested something similar without understanding it, it caused me severe pain and a few injuries. I had to heal myself afterward."
His expression tightened slightly.
"Is that so," he murmured. Then, after a pause: "Very well. Show me what you mean."
I nodded, relieved he wasn't dismissing me outright.
"I've been watching you," I admitted, "and I can tell you're trying to move chakra the same way I do—directly into muscle and bone. But I also noticed something else. When you and other shinobi use certain movement techniques…" I hesitated, searching for the right phrase that wouldn't make me sound like an adult speaking through a child's mouth. "When you do the fast movement, the flicker—your chakra does go into your muscles. It just happens as part of the technique."
Hanato's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "The Body Flicker."
"Yes," I said quickly. "That. It seems like the technique already teaches the body how to distribute chakra into muscles. It's just… automatic, because the jutsu demands it."
He studied me for a moment, then gave a small nod. "Demonstrate."
I stepped back, positioning myself so there was a clear line toward the far wall of the training hall. I waited until Hanato activated his Byakugan again—because if I was going to show him anything, it had to be visible to him the way it had been visible to me.
Then I did what I always did when I didn't understand something: I imitated.
I reached inward, searching for the specific pulse I remembered from the shinobi I had watched near our house—the sudden gathering, the sharp rhythm, the way chakra snapped into the legs and core as if the body itself were being wound like a spring.
I pulsed.
The world lurched.
For a heartbeat, the hall blurred—not in my eyes, but in reality itself as my body launched forward with shocking speed. One moment I was near the starting point, the next I was near the far wall, momentum bleeding away as suddenly as it had arrived.
I did not crash.
Somehow, I managed to stop on my feet, wobbling only slightly.
My heart hammered.
Oh. That was… that was very fast.
I turned, slowly, to look back.
Hanato stood where he had been, Byakugan still active, his expression caught between disbelief and intense concentration.
I swallowed, steadied myself, and did it again—this time braced for the abrupt acceleration.
Again, the snap forward.
Again, the sensation of chakra biting into my legs like a command.
When I stopped, I looked at him, cheeks warm.
"Sensei," I said, trying to sound calm despite my pulse racing, "did you see it? Even this technique only distributes chakra into parts of the muscles, and then pulses it. It's like a short boost. But it's real distribution."
Hanato's voice came a little slower than usual. "I see what you mean," he said. "But that is a technique that normally requires hand seals."
I blinked. "It does?"
He nodded once. "Yes. Watch."
Hanato turned to face the opposite direction. His hands formed seals quickly—clean, practiced movements. With his Byakugan active, I could see the chakra respond to each seal, building in precise layers until it snapped into the muscles exactly as the jutsu demanded.
Then he flickered.
A blur.
He was at the wall.
Another set of seals.
He was back.
I stared.
The chakra pattern was unmistakable.
And so was the core point.
He was distributing chakra into muscle. He just wasn't doing it freely.
"Sensei," I said slowly, "that's exactly what I mean. When you form the seals, your chakra is already doing what you want—going into the muscles. Could you… stop before the flicker happens? And remember the feeling? Like… like catching it mid-breath?"
Hanato went still.
Then, very carefully, he tried.
He formed the seals again, building the chakra pattern… and stopped before the moment of release.
For a second, the chakra held in his muscles like tension in a drawn bow.
Then it faded.
He tried again.
And again.
The rest of that day turned into something different from normal training. Between my usual exercises, Hanato repeatedly half-cast the Body Flicker—building the chakra distribution, halting before release, letting it fade, repeating.
By the end of the day, the only concrete result was subtle but telling: the jutsu began activating earlier. His hands needed fewer seals to achieve the same distribution.
Two seals.
Three.
The flicker snapped more quickly now, as if his body had learned to shortcut the process.
But it didn't solve his original problem.
The chakra still refused to move freely into muscle and bone outside of the technique's structure.
Over the following days, he tested it further. He tried to hold the distribution without releasing the flicker. He tried to mimic it without seals. He even asked other shinobi to attempt the same method.
The conclusion remained the same.
For reasons neither of us understood, most ninja could follow established pathways with discipline, but could not saturate tissue the way I could. They could perform the jutsu—because the jutsu gave their chakra a predefined route—but outside of that, their control hit an invisible wall.
And as I watched Hanato return to his quiet, relentless effort, I couldn't help thinking that the wall wasn't just a matter of practice.
It was something deeper.
Something structural.
Something about me that wasn't normal.
AN: Hello hello Hello @All THX for Reading and for the Powerstones.
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