Hinata kept her eyes glued to her feet, her muscles continuing to tense up in front of Naruto. He was getting closer and closer to where she stood and it was becoming difficult for her to breathe and think properly.
"Hinata, what are you doing with someone like this dork anyways? Hey, don't tell me he's bullying you!" Naruto shouted as he narrowed his brows, growing a bit concerned for someone as shy and timid like Hinata. He personally disliked people who bully other people and knowing someone like Sasuke, he could imagine all the hurtful words coming out of his mouth.
"Th-that's...umm...n-no he was—."
"I was just leaving." Annoyed by the encounter with Naruto, Sasuke immediately cut off Hinata before she could finish her sentence. A vile tone to his words as he picked up his feet. He didn't have time for useless conversions. Knowing Naruto since the academy days, Sasuke had always found him to be tiresome.
Shouting his name and pointing his fingers at him whenever he beat him during class practice. He also couldn't stand Naruto coming up to his face at times whenever girls would surround him or talked about him. Creating all these assumptions about him. He understood it was just plain jealousy and envy, but all that didn't matter to him.
He had one goal in life and that goal was vengeance for his clan. And in order to make that happen he needed to become stronger. Stronger than any student in class and eventually stronger than any ninja in this village and in all existing villages outside of the Hidden Leaf. So getting worked up on trivial matters pertaining to emotion was a complete waste of time and energy.
"What? Can't bully anyone when I'm around, huh?" Noticing Sasuke's attention turned the other way, Naruto moved his body to face Sasuke's back as he proceeded to walk. "Fine go on ahead then!" Naruto stuck his tongue out and slightly pulled his lower eyelid downward in a way to taunt Sasuke as he watched his figure slowly disappear past the streetlight ahead of them.
"N-Naruto...umm...I..." Hinata uttered under her breath, maintaining the tint of red on her cheeks. It was just her and Naruto now and she couldn't stand being in front of him any longer. Much to her embarrassment and excitement, she thought about excuses to run away.
"Huh? What is it Hinata?" Naruto smiled.
After an instant reminder that she needed to be home, she now had a great excuse to remove her presence from this current state.
"A-actually, I should be getting home! My father won't be happy that I was late for dinner. A-anyways, see you around N-Naruto!" Panicking from the reminder and the rush of reality hitting her that father might actually punish her to an even greater degree, Hinata rushed out of Naruto's sight, heading in the direction of the Hyuga complex.
*****
"You're late. Dinner was served an hour ago." A tall man with long dark hair wearing a traditional loose-fitting robe sat above a cushion on the wooden floor inside a room. His back turned away from Hinata as she stood facing the slightly open door.
"Father..." Standing in front of the slightly open door, Hinata could feel her brain panicking for words to explain why she had been late today. Although, her eyes did not meet her fathers cold gaze, hearing his cold voice was enough to make her muscles tense.
"A successor to this clan would never be late. Why were you late?" Wanting an explanation from his daughter, the man shuffled his hands, rearranging the wooden pieces of a board game in front of him.
"I...I was catching up on my training." Hinata truthfully responded. An unpleasant feeling ran through her from his words. She wasn't sure why he would bring up what a successor should be when he had already withdrawn that position from her a long time ago. When he had lost confidence in her and decided to mold her younger sister into that role instead.
"Don't let this happen again." The man firmly spoke. A cold tone to his voice as he maintained his back from his very own daughter.
"Yes, father. I...won't let this happen again..." Hinata softly let out, her heart racing from anxiety and her emotion leading to an expression of regret.
Hinata stood in place, thinking about whether it was worth mentioning the excitement she felt landing a kunai while balancing her chakra. But even that wasn't enough to please her father.
If anything at all, it would be something laughable. Something she should have already mastered at a young age like her sister or her cousin.
"Make sure to come home right after your meeting with your team tomorrow. Neiji will need a partner to train his Byakugan. Treat it like a match." The clan leader stood up from his sitting position, turning his body around to face his daughter at last.
"Y-yes father..." Hinata responded, looking down at the wooden floor beneath her. After being dismissed, Hinata headed in the direction of the hallway that led to her room.
As she headed through the hall, she stopped her trail upon making eye contact with her sister who had been standing in front of her room, eavesdropping her conversation with their father.
"Hanabi..." Hinata spoke, maintaining her eye contact with the little girl standing ahead of her. Silence followed her words, and after a moment of no response, the little girl turned her head to the side avoiding further eye contact.
Hinata responded with a slight frown to her expression as she walked further down the hall and into her room.
*****
"Uh!" Landing her body on the dirt ground beneath her, Hinata slowly picked up her weight, straining her Byakugan at her opponent as she trembled from her already weakened state.
Neiji had pushed her down countless times and every time, Hinata couldn't let herself be ridiculed for her lack of physical strength.
"Haven't you had enough? How could someone be so weak yet have the mental strength to keep going? Just give up." Neiji lowered his brows narrowing his eyes at the girl holding herself on her knees, panting from being taken down multiple times.
Hinata stood silently catching her breath. Drops of sweat continued to land below her and she could feel her muscles swelling from all the pain emerging throughout her body. Tears were pressing to escape her eyes, but instead of letting them out, she held on to them, keeping them from falling out.
Seeing that his opponent had most likely given up from the way they stayed silent, excessively breathing, appearing as if they were on the verge of collapsing, Neiji turned his body around to face the direction of the compound.
"Gentle...fist! Eight trigrams...sixty-four palms!" Panting with almost every other word, Hinata picked up her feet running towards Neiji whose back was already turned away from her. A fierce expression played on her as she grew a bit of strength to fight back.
Before Hinata could land her palms on his shoulders, Neiji had already directed a gentle fist into her heart. His direct hit was followed with a cough of blood coming out of Hinata's mouth and her body falling back down to the dirt ground.
"Some people are born more talented than others. For someone who can't fight back with full strength and the skills to survive in this shinobi world, it was right of your father to withdraw his succession from someone like you." Holding his fist while directing his words at the motionless body below him, Neiji diverted his gaze over at a figure standing on the porch past the tree of their compound.
Hinata's eyes slowly and tiredly flickered in the direction of the figure and although her vision was becoming more and more blurry with each passing second, she could tell it was Hanabi, standing silently, watching them from afar.
"Ha...na...bi..." Hinata weakly uttered before her mind had tired itself, fainting from all the pain.
****
Hinata slowly parted her eyelids as she woke up to the sound of birds chirping through an open window. A passing breeze had traveled through her and as her eyes fully opened, she could tell that she was in the hospital again.
This time it wasn't just from over exerting her body and fainting from overworking herself. Neiji really did strike a blow on her and if she wasn't rushed to the hospital, she could have possibly died then and there.
Hinata held out her left palm, squeezing it directly on her heart, sobbing from the thought of almost dying in front of her family that way. Weak and exhausted. Unable to have control of her mind and body and unable to have the strength to protect them and herself if real danger really did occur to them.
Wanting to dig her face inside her blanket to hide the tears rolling down her cheeks, Hinata grabbed onto the fabric but before she could hide herself, a knock was heard at the door, and through the slightly open door emerged a nurse.
"Miss Hyuga. You have some visitors today. Would you like for them to come in?" The nurse politely asked.
"Y-yes. Please let them through." Hinata responded, immediately wiping her tears and holding a smile on her face.
"Hinata! We heard what happened. Man, can you really call that cousin of yours family? I mean the way he treats you doesn't seem like family to me." A boy wearing a grey hooded fur-like coat spoke as he held on to a puppy above his head.
"We didn't think you'd wake up before the first real mission with Kurenai-Sensei, so we had to check for ourselves. It seems like you're doing fine. I hope." Another boy wearing dark glasses and a jacket that covered his mouth stood in the room, keeping his attention on Hinata who sat up from the bed.
"Kiba, Shino. You guys are here. And of course, little Akamaru is here too." Hinata gently smiled and as she closed her eyes from the happiness of seeing them, Akamaru jumped from Kiba's head, landing next to Hinata on the bed, wagging his tail with the excitement of seeing her again.
Although Kiba's words spiraled her emotions from remembering Neiji's expression of hatred before striking her with his gentle fist, she still couldn't help but forgive Neiji for what he did. To her, no matter what, she will always see him as family.
If anything, she continued to blame herself.
As time passes by with their visitation of laughter and their discussions about the different ranking systems and the many different types of missions Genins can perform, Kiba and Shino eventually left Hinata's hospital room, leaving her to her own thoughts once again.
Looking back at the window, it became apparent that the noon had already taken place outside and she could feel the warmth of the Sun traveling through her skin. Hinata stood up and made her way to the window, feeling more of the Sun's direct sunlight touching her skin.
Reaching her arms out and smiling at the Sun from up above, Hinata could feel as if her heart was healing, more rapidly than moments before.
A figure stopped their trail upon seeing her radiant movements and her expression from her open window of the hospital building.
Sasuke was making his way back home after restocking his medical supplies for his own training sessions when he noticed a figure reaching their arms out of the hospital window as if to photosynthesize. He thought about how silly they looked and the longer he kept his gaze on them, the more he realized and knew that familiar figure.
"With how far you're reaching, you'll end up falling off...idiot..." Sasuke muttered under his breath as he picked up his feet again, making his way back to his apartment.