He wasn't quite like anyone Hinata had ever met.
Once he'd started talking again and lost that perpetual look of sadness and exhaustion in his eyes of onyx (though it lingered still sometimes), he was polite as ever, but in a more low-key way. No more glib words meant to enamor and gain trust, no more affected charm from Kabuto Yakushi. Just little smiles that didn't go beyond his lips.
Hinata saw him often. She delivered medicine to the hospital where he worked under close surveillance, and she was never quite sure how to greet him, but she always did her best to look him in the eye and smile at him. She didn't quite know why. Everyone else said he didn't deserve it, and they were probably right.
But he was never unkind. His old self was still present in little ways that only revealed themselves when she'd gotten him talking, if even for a minute or two. He had a sense of humor like unsweetened chocolate, a dark, bitter, acquired taste.
Hinata liked it. He was smart and wry and a lot of things that, on their own, might not be very appealing, but then there were his rare, small, genuine smiles, the ones she caught glimpses of when something he said made her giggle softly. There were the moments when his mask slipped when he thought she wasn't looking and she saw how lonely he was, saw it in his eyes that he couldn't even hide with those large glasses.
Those moments were probably what kept her coming back with more medicine, ointments she mixed herself. He never seemed to mind. Once or twice he'd offered his compliments; what she created was potent, healing minor wounds rapidly and keeping him from wasting chakra.
They struck up an odd sort of unspoken friendship. There were equally unspoken conditions. She didn't bring up his past, he didn't pretend he could move past it and be a real friend to her.
She wished these conditions, these boundaries, didn't exist, but they both understood that they did.
One day, before she left to go train, she was bidding him a cheerful goodbye when she noticed that he wasn't looking at her. Avoiding her gaze. It took a moment for her to see the passersby, a few young men, and hear their non-whispers: what could that traitor be doing with the little Hyūga heir?
Hinata wasn't quite sure where she got the idea or the courage to stand on tiptoe and kiss his cheek before turning and fleeing from the scene. But her eyes were famously keen, and they saw the surprise evident on the features of all watching.
None more so than Kabuto himself.