Chapter 4: A Different Vision
After delivering his warning, the main family boy, Hyūga Mōri, left with his entourage, his pride a palpable force in the cramped room. He was utterly confident. In his experience, the weak-willed, cowering Reitō would have no choice but to obey.
"Damn it, Hyūga Mōri… just you wait," Reitō growled, pushing himself up from the floor. The memory stream supplied the boy's name and status: son of a clan elder, hailed as a new genius of the Hyūga. Today's humiliation was a brand seared into Reitō's spirit, a debt he swore to repay.
But more than revenge, there was defiance. Mōri had forbidden him from taking the Ninja Academy exam. Therefore, Reitō would take it. He would pass. He was no longer the timid, defeated boy of the past. He was someone new, reborn with a fire that refused to be extinguished. He would not let others dictate his destiny.
As the anger settled into a cold, hard resolve, a sudden, sharp sting pierced his eyes. He stumbled back to the mirror.
His Byakugan had activated.
But the initial surge of hope was quickly tempered by confusion. This was… different. The legendary "telescopic sight" of the Hyūga—the ability to perceive chakra and movement for kilometers, to see through solid matter for dozens of meters in a perfect 360-degree sphere—was absent.
His field of vision remained stubbornly, frustratingly normal. No distant clarity, no penetrating walls. Experimentally, he pushed his focus outward. The world blurred past ten meters, and then… nothing. A hard, invisible wall seemed to exist at that boundary.
His inherited memories supplied the grim reason. No Hyūga in recorded history had ever suffered from severe congenital myopia. The clan's experts, upon examining him as a young child, had theorized that his ocular deformity would cripple his Byakugan's function. It appeared they were right. His awakened "White Eyes" provided visual acuity barely equal to an ordinary person's, utterly useless compared to the tactical omnipotence of a true Byakugan. The ten-meter limit was likely the maximum strain his malformed optics could sustain.
Worse, those same memories confirmed another truth: due to his frail constitution at birth, his chakra pathways had never properly developed. He had yet to consciously mold or use a single wisp of chakra. This combination—a useless Byakugan and blocked chakra—had made him the clan's laughingstock, the "tail feather" of the Hyūga, a joke even to outsiders like the Uchiha. It was the reason for the constant bullying. And it was precisely why Mōri had come today—to prevent the family disgrace from being paraded before the entire village.
"Damn it all!" Reitō slammed a fist against the wall, the impact a dull thud in the quiet room. "I won't give up! I will take the Academy exam! And I'll get into Class A, just to show you all!"
The Academy's system was clear in his mind: three tiers. Class C for civilian children with no foundational training. Class B for clan children with basic skills. Class A, the elite, reserved for prodigies from major clans or those of exceptional, innate talent. Given his current state, he wouldn't even qualify for Class C. The disparity was maddening.
He was about to deactivate his Byakugan, to retreat from the disappointing reality of his limited sight, when he froze.
Something was different.
While his outward vision was crippled, his inward vision was not. As he gazed into the mirror, his perception turned inward. He wasn't just seeing the surface of his own skin; he was seeing through it. The intricate lattice of his meridians, the pale architecture of his bones, the river-like flow of his blood—it all unfolded in his mind's eye with shocking, microscopic clarity.
"Internal sight…?" he whispered, awestruck.
The Hyūga's Byakugan could see the chakra network and tenketsu points within others. But he had no memory, from the comics or his inherited knowledge, of it being used for such profound, detailed self-diagnosis. This was beyond anatomical observation; it was like having a living, interactive map of his own biology.
"Did my myopia… mutate my Byakugan?" The thought was staggering.
Wait.
His focus, honed by this internal lens, zoomed in on specific pathways. There, at several critical junctures, he saw the problem. Blockages. Congealed, shadowy knots where his meridians should have been clear channels. His life energy—his qi and blood—flowed up to these points and was forced to divert, taking weaker, less efficient routes. It was a system choked at its source.
This was the root of his weakness. Not just poor eyesight, but a body whose energy was strangled from within.
A desperate, wild hope flared. If I could just open these blockages… let the energy flow freely…
The moment the thought formed, he felt a shift. The sluggish flow of his qi and blood seemed to stir, to gather, as if responding to the command of his will. Directed by his intense focus, the gathered energy turned and surged toward the nearest, smallest blockage.
A silent, internal pressure built. A strain. Then, a minute, almost imperceptible give.
A hairline fracture appeared in the congealed mass.
A wave of exhilaration, pure and electric, washed over him. His heart hammered against his ribs. It's not just sight… It's control! My eyes don't just let me see inside… they let me dominate what's inside!
The implications exploded in his mind, dazzling and terrifying. The path before him, once a dead-end of shame and limitation, was suddenly, violently, cracked wide open.