"Kono, you are amazing."
At Ichiraku Ran, Naruto stared, bowl in hand, as the blind girl beside him tipped back yet another bowl and drank it dry without even using chopsticks.
On the counter, the stacked bowls were already higher than Kono herself.
"That makes twenty," Teuchi muttered, sweat beading as he slapped dough against the board. Failing to satisfy a custor's appetite felt worse to a cook than scars on a swordsman's back.
Sarutobi Hiruzen glanced from his thinning wallet to the five big bowls at Naruto's elbow and felt oddly grateful. Grateful he did not eat like that girl.
"Alright. No need to keep cooking, Teuchi. I am about done," Kono said.
She drained the broth, stood, and pulled a fat, green wad of bills from the pack on her back.
Aya blinked at the money, then patted the little change pocket on her apron. "That is too much."
"It is fine. Keep the extra here on my tab. I will be back."
She shouldered her pack, reached for her cane, and turned to the boy watching her with bright, expectant eyes. "See you, Naruto-kun."
"Uh, see you, Kono." He straightened his neck, joy bubbling up before he could stop it. "So, Kono, are we friends now?"
"Mhm."
The single syllable floated back on the breeze into his heart.
Years later, under a high sun, the Hokage nad Uzumaki Naruto would still find himself rembering that noonti at Ichiraku with Kono.
The Hyuga compound.
Heat shimred up from neatly cut bluestone slabs. The heavy ebon gate stood under massive beams, its panels inlaid with the clan's Eight Trigrams in relief. Two guards flanked the entrance, white bands around their foreheads, Byakugan shut but vigilant.
"Too hot," Hyuga Sato muttered, wiping sweat with his sleeve.
"Sato, we stand for the clan. Mind your manners," said Hyuga Yūjin.
"Tch. No one cos at this hour. Who can see my manners. Besides, brother, we are branch family. The Hyuga face is not ours to wear."
Yūjin flicked him a glance and said nothing. A branch fate was what it was. With the Caged Bird branded, even your life was not your own. Grumbling in private was all that was left.
Tap, tap, tap.
A small figure appeared at the far end of the path. Cane in hand, eyes banded, it was Kono from Ichiraku.
Byakugan open beneath the cloth, she checked the courtyard. Only the two branch guards. No one else. Asleep at midday, perhaps. Konoha soft, or the Hyuga soft. Security this loose made it less surprising that a Main House girl like Hyuga Hinata could be snatched by Kumo.
"Hyuga grounds. No admittance," Yūjin said, voice flat, looking down at her with the easy arrogance a branch guard could only wear for outsiders. Dignity was for the Main House. Guards like them borrowed pride from the gate.
Tap, tap.
Kono stepped closer and lifted her cane. "I am here for the elder of the Hyuga Main House. I am a friend of his daughter."
"Friend," Sato snorted, eyes lingering on the band over hers. "Do not lie, little blind girl. The elder has no daughter. What friend."
Kono's eyes narrowed beneath the cloth. No daughter. The Main House did not have many people to begin with. These two were not young. How could they not know Hyuga Amafuki, dead only six years. Unless the elder had changed.
"Is the Main House elder still Hyuga Kage," she asked.
The brothers traded a look at the familiar na. So she did know soone.
"Still Elder Kage," Yūjin said, less stiff now, "but he has no daughter, only a son. Little miss, perhaps you are at the wrong gate."
"You do not know Hyuga Amafuki," Kono asked.
At that na both n paused, their faces clouding. Sato's eyes filled with a sudden hate.
"That idiot died and left her precious Byakugan in the Mist. She shad the clan. Do you know how many branch mbers died cleaning up after her. The elder severed ties long ago, stripped her Main House status, erased her from the rolls."
"Blind girl, get out, or do not bla us for what cos next."
Stripped of status. Kono felt the jolt, not at Hyuga cruelty. A clan that branded family with a Caged Bird and punished them for nothing was not one for soft hearts. She had steeled herself for Hyuga ways. She had not expected this. Because Amafuki lost a Byakugan, the Main House had cut her down even as a corpse, and if Kono claid her now she would be a branch child, marked, and caged.
Her plan to return under the Hyuga roof fell apart.
Kono suddenly lifted her head and peered past them into the courtyard. "Elder Kage," she called, bright with surprise.
The brothers turned before they could stop themselves.
Two azure lashes snapped into being in Kono's hands and cracked forward. Water throbbed like living tentacles and drove into Yūjin's mouth and nose, pouring down his throat.
"Ghh… gurgle…"
Sato watched his brother's belly swell and swell while more water roared in. He yanked chakra to his eyes and began to form a seal.
He never finished. A sheet of water slamd across his face and drove hard up his nostrils. He clawed at the flood and found nothing to grasp.
Panic burned his oxygen faster. Water filled the lungs and popped the alveoli. Thin blood flooded back across his chest and clutched at his heart.
The drowning, the pain, dragged terror out of his bones. Through the blur of water he saw the blind girl's face twist, and his eyes begged. There was no argunt. No talk. To her, killing them was like crushing two ants. Not worth a cross word, not worth a pang.
What kind of person was this.
Regret coiled through him like pond weed, squeezing his breath to threads.
"Help… ghh…"
Kono raised one hand, fingers crooked like a claw. The water writhed, then clenched.
Two big pink bubbles rose in the globes that covered their heads. The guards' bellies swelled like drums. Their eyes rolled back and stilled.
A sickly green flared in both pupils. The Caged Bird Seal fired and ruined everything inside the eyes.
Kono checked that both were fully gone.
She flicked her right hand. The pink tint drained from the water and with it the water itself, stripped from flesh and cloth. The stones were left with two bodies that had drowned and yet were dried out like jerky.
She knelt, flashed through hand signs, and pressed both foreheads.
Substitution Technique, Reverse.
Smoke popped. Chakra wrapped and mimicked. When it cleared there were only two parched carp. She slid them into her pack.
Kono lifted her head, took a long look at the Eight Trigrams on the Hyuga gate, and walked away from the compound.
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