#4. Blindfolded
A week and change later brought Konoha to the early declivity of August. One trait distinct to the village was that it adjusted to season changes well and immediately; the first snow always fell in the second week of December. The spring rain showers earned their own mark on the calendar. Widespread decompressing ensued at gradual shift from green to orange-brown in the background come autumn. At this point in time the leaves were not yet ready to descend, but that didn't stop shopkeepers from breaking out the old rakes and pencil brooms to protect their property from clutter. The seasons were just as efficient and punctual as an analog clock.
The weird thing about this time was that it was the only division of the year when missions were less frequent and dangerous. Spring and summer missions were assigned just about every other day, and in winter there were more trips to far, foreign lands worth four to eight day excursions. Now Team Gai was requested at most twice a week, and perhaps that was because of a lesser need to get things done speedily (that was their specialty, after all. Just as Hinata-sama's squad embodied the perfect assembly of trackers, his team was one of if not the fastest squad in Konoha). Things died down.
So, Neji had a lot of time to think.
He didn't endorse sentimentality or lingering around in the long-ago. There were many things he preferred to let sink into past, fade to the peripheral, not disappear but rarely be conscious of. In his ever-periodic meditation sessions he made himself more aware of the now, of every rift in his chakra and the blankness of his mind. The point of meditation was to be aware, yet numb. Effortlessly objective, like a neglectful god watching Earth as it spins.
But he was thinking about that night more and more, now. It was almost wistful; whether or not he had a desire to return to that time he did not consider, but it was impossible to keep that memory from resurfacing every now and then. For the sake of saving Tenten from any discomfort or embarrassment Neji had kept his mouth shut, thinking that she was far more mortified than she let on. That wasn't what he wanted at all; he didn't want the kind of affair where feelings were kept secret, especially concerning such a significant step (forward? Sideways? The direction was unclear but it was a step regardless) in their relationship. It was troubling that she couldn't tell him about those things. Still, if she didn't think it to be a conversation worth pursuing, then he wouldn't try to provoke her. That seemed to be the right course of action.
At first, anyway.
Now he knew it to be exactly the wrong direction for them, because the problem with locking away feelings to be suppressed and forgotten was that they were never actually forgotten, and they had very unfortunate ways of barrelling back all at once.
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At this rate, the explosions might put alarm clocks out of business.
Even from the cell of his hospital room Neji could hear Tenten's "experiments" roar like preaching thunder from the training grounds. She'd taken a recent interest—sparked by what, he wouldn't know—in the art of grand-scale explosives, paper bombs no longer enough to qualify in her arsenal of weapons. Currently she was with Gai and Lee, trying to work a way to incorporate it into formation without hindering them or blowing them into space.
Having come from a rare misranked mission (the client requested C rank when it should've been an A) that had pushed his byakugan to its limit, Neji sat at the edge of the bed, its paper cover crinkling beneath him. A line of gauze was dressed over his eyes like a blindfold.
Three precise knocks rung at the door. "Hyuuga for eye exam?"
"Yes. Come in."
He heard the door open and close, followed by dainty footsteps that came closer and stopped just before him. It was true that other senses became heightened when another was dulled. In an attempt to perceive what his eyes could not, Neji paid closer attention to sound, the cold, smooth surface of the bed, that distinctive smell of chemical sterility unique to only hospitals.
The examiner spoke again, "Remove the gauze, please."
He complied. Neji blinked a few times, adjusting to his vision. Everything was blurred, he saw vague shapes and colors with no outline. It had been like this since yesterday.
"How many fingers am I holding up?"
"... I can't tell." He said. It was all too distorted, he could barely make out her hand.
The scribbling of a pen to clipboard. There was a taut pause of silence after, so she must have been doing something that he couldn't hear. Then, she dictated, "Activate the byakugan and try again."
Seconds passed. His eyes were closed. Usually, in the heat of battle or at the briefest wisp of danger, Neji could activate the byakugan within seconds using no effort at all, like an involuntary muscle reaction. Without any threats or adrenaline it required more concentration. He focused on his eyes, and…
A striking jolt of pain assaulted the back of his eyes like a ripe dose of pepper spray and he groaned in response. It disappeared as quickly as it came, but the prickling heat radiated still within his eye sockets and a headache thrummed a threatening beat in his skull. Neji cursed. That hadn't happened before. His condition had worsened.
The doctor hummed, "Hmm… I've seen this before, there's no need to worry. You've been overexerting your eyes." There was more quick scribbling on paper. "You probably depend on the byakugan too much in battle. It's a common problem with Hyuuga men."
Why she felt the need to specify men, he didn't know, but the subtle jab at his abilities as a ninja did not go unnoticed. Regardless of her position, Neji didn't take insults from anybody lightly. "The byakugan is my birthright," he objected, folding his arms into each other. "I use it as I see fit, which is not a scale that a non-shinobi can measure."
Offended or not, she was as unfazed as he could tell. "Well, consider this. What if one day you could no longer use it? Can you honestly say that you'd be just as strong?"
"There's no use for baseless hypotheticals. I'll always have the use of my byakugan."
"I disagree. I came down with a bad fever in my teens and my byakugan stopped functioning completely. Or have you not noticed that I'm blind?"
… He didn't say anything to that.
The doctor shuffled about the room, filing, writing, testing things, perhaps, and then finally dismissed him.
"If you can, try to concentrate some chakra to your eyes to keep the blood vessels from swelling. Come back in a week if you still can't see clearly."
Neji nodded, and excused himself as he rose from the bed and was guided by a nurse's aid out of the hospital.
He'd have to ask Hinata if she knew anything about that doctor from his clan, because she'd left him with some food for thought that was begrudgingly worth chewing.
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"Dang, Neji. You really can't see at all? That sucks. It'll be hell training and going on missions with Gai-sensei and Lee if you're not there."
Naturally, the first person he told about his condition was (Hinata actually, since she'd been waiting for him on the first floor and would also be able to inform Hiashi-sama) Tenten, within the prior of noon. He was in her apartment and it was about 11 AM, Friday.
With the tea boiling in her kitchen, he felt the cushion of the sofa sink with her added weight as she sat down with him. "Well, look on the bright side. The doctor said just a week, but knowing you, you'll be up again in three or four days."
"I hope you're right." He agreed with some degree of exhaustion, removing his headband. There was no need to conceal the curse mark anymore, especially not around Tenten. Something about what she said did bother him slightly, so he added, "The doctor didn't say that I couldn't train or go on missions, Tenten."
"Oh. Well… maybe because it was implied?" She laughed, "I mean, you can't see, Neji. What are you going to do without your eyes?"
Again, he didn't say anything.
"Neji?" Tenten's voice. "You seem distracted. What's on your mind?"
He looked at her and he didn't see her. She wasn't touching him. Her breaths were quiet. The only indication that she was there were her words left floating in the air, yet to be registered, subtle, mousy movements, and the earthly resonation of her chakra.
Often when she talked, Neji found himself getting distracted by the pure expressiveness of her features. When she was happy, her eyes would smile along with her, and when she was upset, it showed in that distinct underlying pout that she tried to hide sometimes.
Without being able to see Tenten, it was as if he understood her a little less.
"I'm fine." He uttered, calmly, tightening the blindfold for no reason at all. "You were working with explosives this morning. How did you fare?"
Her voice inflated with instant enthusiasm. "Oh, it was amazing! I really think that I can make it work, and, um… you know, maybe, eventually, get more in the front during our next battles since I could…"
With the progress of her sentence each word began to lose its brightness, the excitement, fading like the sun sinking slowly into a dimming horizon before dark. Everything faltered.
He hated it when she did that. It was happening more often, recently.
"... Never mind."
And he hated those words, too.
"What were you going to say, Tenten?"
Subtle movements on the couch. Moving away from him.
"Nothing."
Neji frowned. Discomfort curled in his gut, that feeling of malaise, offense, whining skepticism extinguishing his mood when he knew that secrets were being kept from him. Chances were he wouldn't be getting anything more out of her tonight. He wished that he could see what kind of face she was making.
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The day after promised his troubles no reconcile.
Firstly, Hinata told him that Tenten had dropped by to say she would be gone for a quick mission delivery with Kiba. She wouldn't be back for another hour or so.
Second, his eyesight had just marginally improved come next morning. At this rate, he really would need to wait a week before full recovery.
Sighing, Neji found the gauze at his bedside and carried it with him as he rose from his bed. He had wanted to try sparring with Tenten first thing in the morning to test his skills while impaired, like training with leg weights as Lee did, but that'd have to wait for a while. There wasn't much to do for an hour.
Navigating the room on his own wasn't difficult. He tried opening his eyes, looking around, but walking with everything so blurred was more troublesome and disorienting than with the blindfold, so he closed his eyes instead on his way to the shower.
Twenty minutes later and morning was on its way. Breakfast served, the first meditation of the day completed easily. He'd declined the offer to join Hinata and Hanabi for one of their chakra practices and went to the Hyuuga open grounds on his own, thinking to work on his trigrams technique without his byakugan.
Twenty minutes more into training and Neji found that he could do it quite well from muscle memory alone. If it was sloppy or less precise he wouldn't know, nor would he be surprised, but the Eight Trigrams 64 Palms didn't seem to require the byakugan so long as he knew where a person's chakra points were from memory. The discovery was appeasing—so the doctor didn't know all that he was capable of.
His sharpened senses instantly picked up on the silently approaching character from the complex. Neji turned his head to find them.
It was here when things got bad.
"Neji…"
That voice. "... Tenten?"
Tenten had never come this far inside the Hyuuga complex. She had been at the front entrance and seen glimpses inside, but Hyuuga rules prohibited anyone but family and special invited guests from entering, and only main house members could decide that. Hinata must have let her in… it was odd that he had never thought to ask her to grant Tenten permission. It just hadn't crossed his mind before.
He heard her getting closer. "How much did you tell Kiba?"
Neji just stared—well, not really—at her, waiting for clarification, but when he realized that she expected a response, he simply asked, "What are you talking about?"
"How much," she paused, voice low and serious, "did you tell Kiba?"
Neji recognized her anger, but as usual, she wouldn't tell him. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd spoken to the dog boy. "Tenten, I have not—"
"How much did you tell him, and who else have you told?" There was an escalating franticness in her tone like an overflowing dam on the verge of bursting—like her seams might tear, like she was about to spill. "How many people know about it, Neji? Why the hell would you tell him that?"
Indignation began to boil. Of all people, she should know that he and the dog boy were not well-acquainted. He did not consider Kiba as a friend or talk to him about anything, she should know that. So why…
… The last time he had spoken to him was on Chuunin Appreciation Day. When they found out that he and Tenten were together. "... The campfire last week. Is that what you're talking about?"
It only seemed to make her more distressed, "Oh, God, is that when you told him? With all the other guys around? Neji!"
So that was what she was bothered about. She didn't want anyone else to know about their relationship.
"..." He paused. "I didn't realize it was meant to be kept a secret."
"Are you joking? You're not supposed to go around sharing that stuff with all your guy friends like it's something to brag about! Maybe it makes you look cool, but it makes me look like—like—some desperate freak of a girl with no control! It's humiliating!"
There it was, that same logic.
"Well, I guess that makes sense." Naruto.
"If any girl were to date that bag of ice, it'd probably be her." Kiba.
"I was also not surprised when you informed Gai-sensei and I of your development, Neji!" Lee.
Suddenly he was grateful for the blindfold and grateful that he didn't have to see her face, that she didn't have to see his. He wanted nothing to do with Tenten right then. If she had anything more to say, he wasn't having any of it.
Neji spoke six hollow words, in the coldest voice he'd used for her since when they were first made teammates.
"Leave. You'll wake the entire compound."
Tenten went quiet.
As did her footsteps as they echoed down the hallway, further and further away.
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It had to have been one of the most rigorous self-training sessions Neji had ever forced on himself. Being on Gai's team, that was much to say.
Now, Neji was no fool, and he was not the kind of whimsical person to let upsets get the better of him. He knew that well, just as he knew that over three hours must have passed between "then" and now, the fact being it had taken that long for the immediate impulsive anger to wither down, for him to come about his senses and think like a proper Hyuuga man, not some capricious common boy. He was also just dimly aware that his hands were trembling, dripping with something warm, like his blood. A rigorous training session indeed.
When he could come to register the pain even then it barely hit him. His mind and his body were two separate entities at the moment, belonging to the same medium but still so singular in altitude. He didn't feel the water cold or hot striking his skin as he showered. He didn't feel the wrappings as they dressed over his blood wounds, and he didn't feel a response from within when he asked himself those questions.
Train the soul and the body becomes wiser. Train the body and the soul becomes stronger. A ninja is a construction of both in unfaltering unison, a machine with a human dialog. Such is the mantra of the shinobi.
How pathetic that a Hyuuga be so distorted as this. Neji was done wallowing and done pitying himself, if it had even been that much. Problems exist to be solved. So solve it, he thought.
Tenten. Teammate of five years. Comrade. Friend. ... "Girlfriend" (he was still hesitant to use that term—it sounded so immature).
Because of all of this experience with her that he shared, looking back on the argument, it didn't take long to understand that something wasn't right. Considering who Tenten was, it didn't make sense.
Ashamed of him as her "lover"? Him ? Impossible. His name was Neji Hyuuga. The mere breath of it spoken evoked respect for his talent and his clan. Furthermore, he knew that Tenten held his opinion much higher than others, especially higher than the likes of the dog boy. It's logical. It's factual. It's undeniable. Therefore, that old conclusion must have been false.
Certainties drew him back to that night, and... the way she had looked at him. That dreamy expression, that wholesome and hopeful aura of such bone-chilling warmth and debilitating strength. Pure, genuine love, the once-in-a-lifetime kind of love. Without a shred of doubt.
... Sex. He knew it only for its practical purpose. But in the wake of a decidedly impractical week, of fraught emotions in abundance, maybe he should attempt to know it for something more.
Neji was not a person who changed his mind easily. To him, sex was an animal thing. An urge to be suppressed. The awful evening when he'd given in to his temptations was the perfect proof of that—the deplorable act was his repugnant failure to isolate his carnal impulses and vanquish them from existence. How could vulgar pleasures such as that be anything but a mistake, a behavioral flaw, a model of poor character?
Some starry-eyed peoples called it "love-making." A term he could not take seriously. But closer inspection of that word brewed a discomfiting thought: had Tenten viewed it that way?
He allowed this notion to settle and develop. One thing he knew for certain, in the midst of these confounding matters of sex, was that Tenten was not "dirty". She was not "sordid". She was not an animal or some awful influence to be rejected. If sex could be an act of "love", and not an embarrassing premarital failure, then he could try to and rationalize her feelings a bit more. Maybe that was she had seen it, and why she had been so... aggressive on that night.
... That, he still struggled to conceptualize. The nakedness of it all… he could not accept it. She'd have to understand that. Just as he'll have to understand her innate passions.
But then a thought struck through the dark. He cursed. Of course. Of course.
Neji removed the bindings over his eyes and prepared himself to leave the compound.
Somehow, if just by a few degrees, his vision was a bit clearer.
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So clear, in fact, that he could escort himself to Tenten's apartment without an aide. He imagined that now his sight was about on the same level as a nearsighted person without glasses on. Navigation was fine enough, only the little details remained indistinct.
Afternoon tilted on its zenith, early evening waiting to resume its place. Part of him recognized that it was a bit too late and improper to be heading over to a female companion's place at the approaching-late hour he was—impropriety becoming a recurring problem in his life now—but necessity belaid those concerns. And this was… necessary, he supposed. He needed to make things clear. He should have done so in the first place.
Tenten's apartment and he were closing their distance.
Neji rehearsed his lines in his head. In a situation like this a man required delicacy and tact.
Tenten, I must explain. I did not tell Kiba anything. The only people who know of that night are the two of us. I apologize for the misunderstanding and the trouble that it caused.
Simple enough.
Simple enough that he should expect the unexpected in its place. Tenten, though normally composed, could be unpredictable when upset. Where strong feelings are involved, logic flees. There is danger in the absence of logic. Danger lies in the unpredictable.
This Neji kept in mind as he rang one knock, then three, then one more on her door, the "secret code" knock that she'd imagined up herself and forced on him to conduct whenever he came here. It was silly. He felt silly doing it with such pressing matters at hand.
It took a bit of time, but a shout rang from within, "I don't want to talk, Neji!"
He furrowed his brows. Yes, definitely troublesome when upset.
"Tenten." There were his lines. "There's been a misunderstanding. Allow me to explain."
"..."
He knew she was no good against her curiosity. She kept him waiting for some seconds, but soon he heard the locks click and the knob turned and then he was facing her.
"Well?" She demanded, her tone lilting on impatience.
His lips did not move.
"I said —oh. Fine. Come in."
She opened the door wider and he let himself inside.
Being that early dark was autumn's foible, he chose not to take a seat and to not let himself get too comfortable. Her bedroom was just the door at a corner's turn, the kitchen and general living area decorated with weapons in between. He didn't want a replication of that night, but he was surely conscious of the similar scenario presented to him right now. Neji considered whether or not that was on her mind. And then he wondered how often she'd thought about sex over the times they'd kissed or touched each other chastely. Just how much had Tenten delved into the prospect of sex already? Would she be offended if he asked?
Associating Tenten with sex was so... odd. Didn't she think the same of him? On what occurrences had he ever hinted at possessing—
(Persistently, he motioned his tongue back against hers, creating a simmering hot faint pressure as their tongues lightly pushed and slid so salaciously, feverishly, and he was allowed only two short pants to breathe as he withdrew for air before she tugged on his hair and pulled him back into her lascivious—)
As he stared into the bedroom, the memory came hurtling out of nowhere and it startled the life out of him. Neji's hand flew to his mouth in alarm, eyes widened, cheeks dashed with color. It had come back so treacherously vivid, like he were standing in front of the bed at this very moment, watching himself do these things—these things that were impossible. Impossible. Was that really him?
It was his doing all along, wasn't it?
No. It had been absolutely mutual. They'd both given all the signs, participated like consenting, eager players, and the referee that had halted the game was not just self-righteous prudishness or an epiphany of self-control, but the fearful realization that he was about to play for the very first time. So he'd quit.
It was infuriatingly simple. And his lack of self-awareness, his blindness to his own emotions was cold and so humiliating.
"Why are you just standing there?"
Reality relapsed.
Where-oh-where did those rehearsed lines go?
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