In the early hour before dawn, a few birds struck a discordant note or two in the stillness of the new born morning. Hinata felt bleary from the lack of sleep. Her heart was in discord too between what she must do and what she wanted to do. She respected her cousin Neji but it was a respect bordering on fear. She had an inkling that perhaps he disliked her. On the surface, it was more like disdain, but underneath it felt almost like hate sometimes, when he refused to look at her or even acknowledge her presence within the same room. They barely spoke. At dinner too, he took his leave of Hanabi with only a curt nod her way. Father had given her the harshest punishment yet, by pitting her against her cousin. He knew of Neji's disdain towards her, today's training would not teach her anything other than humiliation, the difference between their talents being that great. For the hyugas though, duty came first regardless of feeling.

Meanwhile, Neji was sitting silently in the inner courtyard used for training. He seemed to be meditating, his eyes closed, but in reality he was observing. He liked to sense chakra signatures. The further away, the better. He focused in the direction of the gates. He sensed the usual chakra signatures of the guards. But there was another one behind him and approaching rapidly. He looked back, as Hinata appeared around the entrance. Neji raised an inquisitive eyebrow. He hadn't expected her to be so eager in seeking him out. Her eyes were shining and she tried a smile before deflating under his expressionless gaze.

"Nisan" she said respectfully.

"Hm!"

She could hear her own heartbeat in the silence that followed, it was ringing loudly in her ears.

"Let's...", she began, "Let's play."

Naruto tossed again in his sleep. He kept dreaming of a tall thin fellow eating large bowls of ramen while Naruto could only watch, as he picked out choice bits of meat and slurped down the soup, smacking his lips. Naruto licked his own dry lips imagining what it would taste like.

Yes...It would be tough, starchy, tasteless, ...disgusting.

"Pshaah", he woke up, coughing out the blanket he was chewing on.

Naruto groaned again. The pigeon over the cupboard cooed again. It was back. There were some things he wouldn't mind losing, he thought looking at it, but ramen was not one of them.

"You hungry?"

The pigeon looked at him benignly. Then started bobbing its head with a guttural noise.

"Pffft.." He laughed.

"Here, make yourself at home"

He got out of bed and tossed it bread crumbs from a leftover sandwich he'd snuck into his room last night.

He wondered why he'd let that thief go yesterday. He had felt pity. Surely, someone who had to steal money from an orphan had to be pitied.

In the moment that he realized this, he had been too surprised to do anything but let the thief get away. The thought had never occurred to him before and he wondered what came over him then. Well, mistakes could be fixed, he would get back what he was owed soon.

Over at the Hyuga compound, many eyes were drawn to the elegant figure of Neji skipping over the rooftops lightly with a blindfold secured tightly over his eyes. It was laughable really, Neji could sense chakra with or without his eyes closed. The blindfold was a joke. But yet, there he was circling and zigzagging fluidly through the air.

"Ah?" Hanabi exclaimed as she joined the spectators.

"What's going on?"

"We don't know. But he's been doing that for an hour already.", said someone.

He had been circling the compound in unpredictable patterns for quite a while now, it was almost certain that he would have found her by now. Chakra was not the only sense that he was relying on. His keen ears would pick up hints of movement. Sooner or later she had to make a mistake. Neji thought back to his conversation with Hinata, trying to find a flaw in his reasoning.

"Play" , Neji intoned.

"Yes", Hinata nodded shyly.

He took a deep calming breath, it was too early in the morning for jokes.

"PLAY?", he said louder.

"Uh yes", Hinata whispered.

He was about to put a stop to this line of thinking but Hinata had more to say.

"Yes, a game. I..I think, it would be a good training exercise. Its called blind mans buff."

"A... child's... game is what you call training ?" Neji said, unable to believe that these frivolous words had just come out of his shy cousins mouth.

"But! The one hiding can be anywhere within the Hyuga compound and we both can use chakra. The seeker must sense the targets chakra accurately without confusing it with other chakra signatures and the one hiding must suppress their chakra completely to avoid detection or use it to run away but risk detection...Being a good seeker is hard and requires skill", she ended wistfully.

Neji's eyebrows had been rising up with each statement. For all it's ridiculousness, there was merit in the idea, he thought grudgingly. He wanted to train his chakra vision to the point where it became instinct. He might get some use out of this "training" session after all. He was a brilliant seeker, he thought with pride. This was fact. Taking into account, the size of the compound, he had given himself ten minutes within which to locate her and hadn't been able to find her at all. What was he missing? Unless...unless she was lying. The only explanation was, that she was beyond his chakra vision, that is, outside the Hyuga compound. Hinata really did "run away".

Naruto was trudging down the path to the training ground lost in thought. He wondered why people did the things they did. He had never looked for an explanation. Ah, it was starting to hurt his head thinking so much. He reached the training grounds in good time and hadn't gone far when he came face to face with a pair of petite legs, swinging from his favorite tree.

"Hinata!", he exclaimed.