School had gone as uneventfully as always. I'd half-paid attention to what Akira-sensei said while mostly reading the books Aiko had given me.
Then the class went out to the sparring ring where I beat all of my opponents that weren't Uchiha or Hyuga. I came close to beating one of the Uchiha kids though.
I didn't remember his name, but he'd gotten cocky and nearly let me throw him out of the ring. Unfortunately, he'd recovered in time to knock me down and kick me out of the ring. Still, the near-win affirmed that I was making progress.
Training with Misa was good for me. It was good for her too if her new rankings were anything to go by. Before we'd started training together, she'd been in the top ten, sometimes briefly breaking into the top five in our class for sparring.
Now, she was firmly in the top five and regularly broke into the top three. The looks on the Uchiha kids' faces whenever she beat them were always hilarious. They made this look that was half shocked and half angry with their cheeks all scrunched up and their jaws hanging open.
Speaking of Misa, I was eating dinner with her parents tonight. I still didn't know what to expect, but I assumed I wasn't about to be drawn and quartered. Misa's mother had told me she wanted Misa in the top ten for academics by the end of the year.
The year ended in about two months, but Misa was hovering around the twelfth of thirteenth seat. I was confident she'd be in the top ten by the end of the year.
That left the question of why I was invited over for dinner. Was it a 'thank you' dinner?
"Kagen, relax. You are too tense." Misa said, a disapproving frown on her face as she watched me throw senbon at the target.
I sighed. "Sorry. Hang on a second." I took a deep breath and extended my chakra strings from my fingers.
Misa hummed consideringly as she activated her byakugan, the veins around her eye bulging. While my strings were invisible to the naked eye, the byakugan could likely still see them as they were made of chakra. Or was it the sharingan that saw chakra?
"You've gotten better with your chakra strings. I couldn't see them." Misa commented. It was safe to assume she could see them with the byakugan then. She said 'couldn't' not 'can't' after all.
"I've been practicing my chakra control with a Nara matriarch. My better control lets me do this." I said, reaching into my kunai pouch with my chakra strings and pulling out a kunai with each string.
I heard Misa gasp as the kunai drifted into the air around me. With a flick of each of my fingers, I sent the kunai towards the target. I scored four out of ten hits.
I pursed my lips and huffed in frustration. "I'm still working on it."
When Misa didn't say anything, I turned to look at her. Her lips were drawn into a thin line as she stared at the kunai.
"Misa?"
She shook herself, as if pulled from her thoughts. "Do you have to throw the kunai or can you keep them attached to the string?"
I shrugged, sending out ten more chakra strings to pick up the fallen kunai. The kunai began to orbit my body as I puppetted them on the strings. "You can keep them attached to the string if you want, but you can't really make hand signs or punch effectively with your fingers all spread out like this. I've been practicing throwing them because I want to be able to weave ninjutsu in between volleys, but you could conceivably use them like an invisible rope dart if you wanted to."
"Can you teach me how to use chakra strings like that? With the byakugan, I could attack enemies behind me as well as those in front of me."
I nodded. "Sure. It might take you a while to get enough chakra control to maintain more than one, but I'm willing to work with you on it."
Though I doubted that she would require much training in chakra control. Hyuga were born with better chakra control and since they trained in Gentle fist, they had to improve their chakra control.
And since they could literally see chakra, they knew when they were putting more chakra or less. For a second, I thought that I should ask her for something in return but she had been kind to me until now so I decided not to.
Misa nodded, satisfied. "Thank you, Kagen." She frowned, and turned around. "The sun is setting. My parents will expect us for dinner soon."
I used my chakra strings to put all of my practice kunai back in my pouch and reset the targets. "I'm ready."
Misa led the way away from the training ground towards the residential area of the Hyuga compound. The houses we passed were small – only one story with slim dimensions.
I remembered the Hyuga clan were separated by main and branch families with the branch family being treated like servants of the main family.
Since Misa's family lived among such meager commendations, I assumed she was a branch member. It wasn't that the houses were poorly maintained or unsafe to live in, but they had a clear, 'I'm better than you so you get the smaller house' vibe to them.
"We are here." Misa announced, pushing open the door to the house at the very end of the cobbled road.
There was a planter filled with white-petalled flowers resting under the front window of the house. The walls were white. A spartan wooden patio broke up the monotonous white color. The Hyugas seemed to love white. I blamed their eyes.
"Mother, Father, we are here." Misa announced as we passed through the threshold into the house.
Misa's mother, she'd introduced herself as Mio when we'd first met, rounded a corner with a small, welcoming smile on her face. She wore a white kimono with violet patterns. She bowed shallowly and said, "It is good to see you again, Kagen. Please come in."
"Thank you, Hyuga-san." I said, bowing at the waist.
---------Author Notes--------
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