There were days like this one, where she couldn't help but let her mind wander. It caught her off guard, as the last time it happened was when Neji-niisan had struck her heart with the gentle fist.

Pressing her hand against her side from the hit she had just received, she whimpered at the feel of something foreign inside her body moving. It wasn't really painful, yet it was.

It was that glowing thing again. She knew it was there since who knew how long, as her deceased mother didn't have a clue about it. Using her own Byakugan to check the thing had been useless as it couldn't be seen by Byakugan, yet she could see the round thing glowed pinkish purple with her normal eyes whenever she looked at the mirror.

Mouth in a grim line, she repressed the desire to just snatch the thing away from her body forever and be done with it. But she couldn't. She had promised her mother not to.

"Hinata-sama, don't lose your concentration!"

Leaping away from her cousin, Hinata grimaced as she looked at the ground, "Ye, yes, I understand!" even so, her eyes were unable to look up, so she said glumly, "I'm sorry, Neji-niisan, it's just..."

Neji examined her intensely. In the end he sat down and sighed, "You seem to be distracted, Hinata-sama. Please rest."

"Neji-niisan..." before Naruto-kun came, Neji-niisan wouldn't even talk normally to her. She smiled, thinking about the person she hadn't seen in two years. A half year more, and he would be back from the training trip. She could be patient to thank him again and showering him with gifts... anonymous gifts, of course.

"Ah, that's right, Hinata-sama. Do you know about the recently found abandoned well on our grounds?"

"An abandoned well?" she repeated, not finding anything wrong about it. The Hyūga had several wells across their grounds, as the clan certainly needed it.

"It's... something peculiar, I'd say," Neji stood up, "do you want to see it?"


"Bones?" Hinata blinked, as she and her cousin saw the inside of the well from a distance.

Neji nodded, "It seems to be buried there for a long time, but to my eyes, it seems that the bones aren't human's..."

Letting her feet carry her to the edge of the well, she deactivated her Byakugan. But soon, she was forced to bite back a scream as something slimy wrapped around her middle and dragged her down the well.

"The Shikon no Tama... You have it, don't you, little girl?"

Hinata froze as her eyes registered the sight before her. The veins around her eyes bulged a little even without activating the Byakugan.

A... woman centipede?

"Ah, my power! I feel it! They're coming back ―"

She didn't know what compelled her to do it, but regardless, she had done it without meaning to.

Directing both of her palms to the direction of the strange creature, she did the stance like when she practiced with Jūho Sōshiken (Gentle Step Twin Lion Fists) with her father.

Instantly, she had blew away the centipede creature to pieces with the weird energy that wasn't chakra, but she knew all along that she had it. Her mother once said it could be possible that someone had sealed her power.

But, wait. If it was sealed after all this time, she shouldn't be able to use it, yet, she just used it...

Hinata drew in a shuddering breath as she climbed up from the well, too wrapped up with her thoughts to use chakra.

What was going on?

She gaped, eyes examining her surroundings.

The well... it was the same. Yet...

Was this some illusion?

Hinata leaned her back against the edge of the well, eyes wide, shivering and utterly confused when she spotted the remaining of that woman centipede, not far from her.

So... not an illusion?

"Naruto-kun..." her lips betrayed her. She had said the name of the person that wouldn't come to save her from whatever just happened to her. Briefly shaking her head after she peered down to the well that brought her to this beautiful place, she jumped up from her sitting position and proceed to just walk around to find... anything.

Too tired after sparring with her father and Neji, she didn't bother to use her Byakugan to know where she was. The feeling of this place was nothing like Konoha... as she, even without her Byakugan, could feel chakra like a beginner sensor. This place had no chakra, at all. The trees, the grasses. Not a slightest bit of chakra.

A bit of walking did make her find something... or someone.

Hinata covered her mouth with both palms.

A boy... a silver-haired boy was pinned to the a tree by an arrow.

That tree, though...

... had a similar energy like chakra.

The seemingly peaceful looking boy, had a similar energy like chakra too, but the feel... it was almost like Naruto-kun's chakra... almost.

Suddenly numb, her hands falling to her sides. Drawing a huge breath to give herself the confidence to be near that boy... in order to get a better looking, Hinata trudged forward.

Only for her to dodge an incoming projectile from behind.

"Wha..." she trailed off, looking at the people that had come out of nowhere, "but, how?" Hinata whispered to herself, frightened.

They all didn't have chakra. How?

Suddenly, she felt all of this was just a bad dream.

This has to be a nightmare, she reassured herself, because there's no other explanation.

"Oi, we've found the remaining bones of Mukade-jōrō outside of the well!"

"The centipede yōkai?!"

"You," a man carrying a bow pointed it to her, "are you a yōkai?"

Hinata, naturally, shook her head and bowed. She fidgeted at their stares.

"Did she think she could fool us?! Her eyes aren't human..."

"She can't be serious... a girl in the Inuyasha Forest, especially in the middle of the night?"

Hinata felt her world slipped through her finger the moment the men, with no question asked, started firing arrows at her while screaming;

"Show us your true self, yōkai!"

She just wanted to go home and have a nice, hot bath after training, and this happened. Hinata quickly pinched herself as she dodged the incoming projectiles.

It was no use. She didn't wake up from this bizarre dream.

Was it wrong, that she just wanted to cry instead of figuring what had happened here?

But then, the boy pinned at the tree started talking and there she was, tearing up, half relieved that the boy wasn't dead and half frustrated at this unknown situation.

"What are you doing there, yo, Kikyō?"

"Ki, Kikyō?" she parroted, a rather dumb expression on her pale face. Who was this 'Kikyō'?

"Ah, it's Inuyasha! He's revived!"

"What about it? The woman yōkai just keeps dodging! We're in trouble already, no time to think about that one!"

"Oh, no, someone, run and tell Kaede-sama!"

Hinata chose that time to jump far away into the highest brach of the tree that the silver-haired boy was currently pinned into. Quicky, she performed a camouflage technique.

Inside her mind, she kept repeating 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry' because... well, the men had wasted lots of arrows in order to get her. Lots of money went down the drain because of her.

Her body and mind exhausted, she decided to conceal herself and watch from above the tree.

Just in time to see the supposedly defeated woman-centipede about to lunge at her.

Never in her life did Hinata want to blame someone, but she supposed Neji-niisan was to blame as he had brought her to the well.