Since her very first day at the Academy, Hashikama knew that she was a different breed than most people.
It's normal for most children to be emotional on their first day of school, and of course, she was no different. She was a pretty playful kid back then - always laughing and smiling at home, and always so excited to pull her brother from whatever he was doing to show him a bug she found. Hashikama has never been haughty, or arrogant, or even prideful. However, she was, and always has been, sensitive.
Her father has always said, "To be sensitive means you have an advantage over others." But Hashikama only sees it as just a curse that she's been forced to live with.
Hashikama's sensitivity is a double-edged sword. She's passionate, like a river when the thunder rolls overhead. On the other side of it, she is like a grain of sand on the beach that is hyperaware of every single other grain of sand that makes up the shoreline. As a young girl, her father would be lucky if he could take her out of the house and not have her experience a total meltdown in the middle of town because of all of the swaths of people that she could feel around her. Her father always had a tough time relating to her in the beginning, as he'd never experienced the sensory issues that she had to endure.
On her first day at the Academy, she was laughed at by the whole class because instead of standing from her seat and introducing herself like the instructor asked, she was too overwhelmed, and simply put her face on her desk and hid herself with her arms to avoid her classmates' eyes. Even when her eyes were closed, she could still 'see' the people around her through her sensory abilities; their chakra signatures wrapping around her like vibrating bees that never sleep. While in class, she could never focus on the lesson or her instructors' words - the constant hyperawareness of the children in front, besides, and behind her always too distracting for her to pay attention. Her grades began to decline, and her father was forced to come into the Academy for after-class parent-teacher conferences.
Taisuma was an intimidating man to other people, but not to Hashikama. She's always likened him to a big polar bear, and she his cub, who he would love and provide for as easy as it is to breathe. To Taisuma, she and her brother were everything. Although, she could never meet his eyes when she had trouble at school. Poor Hashikama, too afraid to disappoint her father in the shadow of her prodigious older brother. It always made her feel worse when she could literally feel the disappointment ebbing from her father when she failed tests and refused to join study groups.
Eventually, Taisuma switched gears in her at-home therapy. He began teaching her how to breathe, how to relax, how to zone out distractions. He gave her compression clothes to comfort her when her anxiety began to rise at school. Taisuma even enrolled her in pediatric therapy sessions where he would be with her the entire time to learn emotional regulation. His comforting words and soft encouragements meant everything to Hashikama, because he never, ever gave up on her. She was meant to grow up and be something great.
Now, in the dark woods, Hashikama is all alone, surrounded by darkness and shrouded by the dying embers of her campfire.
Melancholy exhaustion tugs downward on her features, as does her tattooed hands which smear the humid sheen of sweat from her skin. It's getting late, and she knows she should sleep soon, but her mind is too clouded with intent to let her relax so fast. Whilst sitting upon her sleeping bag, she reaches over for her pack and procures a carefully rolled-up scroll, which upon unraveling it reveals a map of the Hidden Rain country. The geographical image is decorated with several scrawled texts, circles, and arrows for her own personal reference. With a calculatedness, her sharp eyes focus on the red circle that she's placed on one specific part of the map.
'Akatsuki.'