Midnight draped the Hyuga compound in silence.
Gone were the measured footfalls of patrolling guards, the muffled hum of conversation behind paper-thin walls. The night had swallowed them whole, leaving only the flickering glow of lanterns and the restless dance of shadows against polished wood.
A breeze whispered through the corridors, stirring the flames—too feeble to banish the dark, yet too stubborn to surrender to it.
Akai lay motionless beneath his futon, listening.
Nothing.
No shifting tatami. No rustling fabric. No hushed murmurs slipping through the silence.
Stillness. Deep. Absolute.
Good.
Dinner had been an act, not a necessity. A performance. A calculated display meant to gather information. He had watched the slow pull of fatigue in their faces, the drag in their movements, mapping out the ones who might still be awake at this hour.
If I'm going to do this regularly, I need to know who can catch me.
Because tonight, he was hunting.
The hunger had been clawing at him for days, sharp and insistent. Twisting. Tightening. No longer a quiet whisper at the back of his mind, but something gnawing, demanding.
The first time had been curiosity. The second, an experiment.
But now?
Now, it was survival.
Slowly, he sat up. The cool air pressed against his skin, seeping through the thin fabric of his sleeping robes. He remained still, muscles taut beneath the quiet anticipation thrumming in his veins. Then, with practiced ease, he slid open the shoji door and stepped onto the engawa.
Bare feet met lacquered wood.
No sound.
The courtyard stretched before him, veiled in darkness. Gravel paths bled into the night, and the towering walls of the compound loomed high, silent sentinels beneath an indifferent sky.
For most, the dark was an abyss—obscuring, suffocating.
But to Akai?
It was transparent.
His Byakugan peeled back the layers of night, revealing rooftops, slumbering figures, the unseen spaces where reality frayed at the edges.
And more importantly, he saw them.
Curses.
They clustered in forgotten corners, clinging to the compound like parasites, feeding on the remnants of emotion left behind. Some were small, shadowy things with gaping maws and needle-thin fingers. Others were hulking masses of writhing malice, crouched in patient hunger.
A slow exhale left his lips.
Then, he moved.
He did not walk—he glided.
Each step was a whisper, sandals barely grazing the wood, his chakra threading through the soles of his feet to stifle even the subtlest of sounds. His kimono sleeves, secured with a Tasuki, would not hinder him.
The moment he crossed the threshold beyond the mansion's walls, their presence surged forward.
They had been waiting.
Perched on rooftops. Wrapped around tree limbs. Blending into the folds of darkness like vultures scenting fresh blood.
The Caged Birds.
Dozens of them.
Blind, lidless eyes swiveled toward him in eerie unison. Their beaks clattered in rasping murmurs, skeletal fingers flexing as their twisted forms began to stir.
Akai's fingers curled around the kunai at his side.
The hunger stirred in response, curling around his ribs like a second heartbeat, urgent, thrumming.
He had been careful. Too careful. Masking his consumption, ensuring that each disappearance could be dismissed as mere coincidence.
But it wasn't enough.
Not anymore.
Akai exhaled, slow and steady.
A flick of his wrist. A raised hand.
The crimson mist of Lapse coiled around his fingers, siphoning into the cold steel of his kunai.
A whispering slash.
A curse exploded into nothingness.
Silence. A flicker of movement. Shadows shifting.
Then—
Every cursed eye snapped toward him.
They had lurked, waiting, watching as he hunted them in secret. Their kind had vanished, one by one, under the guise of mere accidents. But now?
There was no secrecy. No feigned coincidence.
Now, I'm killing them outright.
And now—
They understood.
A chorus of guttural screeches split the night.
They attacked.
A blur of decayed feathers and gnashing teeth lunged from the side.
His kunai flicked forward—sharp, controlled. The blade met cursed flesh, slicing through like paper. Then, he subtracted.
Silence.
The creature unraveled into nothingness.
Another descended from above.
He twisted—too slow.
A talon tore through fabric, carving a shallow gash into his shoulder. Pain flared, sharp but fleeting. The wound sealed almost instantly, golden light threading through torn flesh as Reversed Cursed Technique surged beneath his skin.
He moved. Stepped. Slashed. Subtracted.
Bodies burst apart—ink-black remnants dissolving into the wooden floor beneath him.
For the first time, he wasn't retreating.
He wasn't hiding.
I'm fighting.
Then—
The air thickened.
A presence swelled, vast and suffocating.
Shadows coiled, twisting like living things.
And from the heap of dissolving curses—something rose.
Towering. Misshapen. Pieced together from countless Caged Birds.
A grotesque amalgamation of suffering and spite.
Feathers, twisted limbs, and shifting flesh fused into a singular monstrosity.
Its eyes—wrapped in chains, bound by iron, sightless yet seeing.
Its hands—feathered yet eerily human, fingers tipped with blackened claws.
Its legs—taloned feet, rooted deep, as if shackled to the earth itself.
Its wings—mutilated, severed at the joint, stripped of flight.
Then—
It spoke.
Not in screeches. Not in the garbled howls of lesser curses.
But in words.
Broken. Fragmented. A voice like splintered glass, struggling to take shape.
"Hate... Main House... Curse mark... fate..."
It lunged.
Akai moved. Dodged. Countered.
But he was losing.
His Byakugan saw everything, yet his body couldn't keep up.
It was faster. Stronger. Its attacks weren't wild, weren't mindless.
They were calculated. Precise. Deliberate.
This wasn't a beast acting on instinct.
This was hatred with purpose.
It struck again, claws raised—
Then stopped.
Head twitching. Limbs shuddering.
A hesitation, raw and unnatural.
The moonlight poured through the training hall's tall windows, illuminating Akai's face—
And his forehead.
The seal.
The cursed mark carved into his flesh since childhood.
Chains rattled against its bound eyes.
The grotesque form convulsed.
Muttered.
"Branch member... Branch member..."
Over and over.
Recognition. Confusion. Hesitation.
Akai's gaze sharpened.
That's right. You weren't created just from hatred for the main house, were you?
You came from them.
The branch members who had scorned. Feared. Loathed the main house.
The ones who, in their suffering, had split their hatred—between those above them...
And those beside them.
This thing had been born from their pain. Their rage. Their chains.
Yet now—
It was attacking one of its own.
The claws poised to tear him apart wavered.
The shifting mass of tangled limbs trembled.
As if, for the first time—
It didn't know what it should do.
And in that single moment of uncertainty—
Akai moved.
Kunai. Strike. Subtraction.
The humanoid Caged Bird screamed.
It tried to speak.
A fractured breath, a voice clawing for form—
But the words never came.
It died.
Its grotesque body collapsed, splattering across the wooden floor in a sickening, oozing heap.
Akai exhaled.
His body ached. Limbs heavy. The hunger unrelenting.
His gaze swept over the battlefield—
The splintered floorboards, slick with blackened blood.
The twisted corpses, half-dissolved into nothing.
The lingering echoes of a curse that no longer existed.
Then, without a word—
He knelt.
And ate.
Flesh. Essence. Hate.
Devoured. Reduced. Made his own.
By the time he rose, his face was clean.
His heartbeat had settled.
The hunger had not.
A breath. A whisper.
"Unfortunately for you... I don't care about the curse mark. It clipped none of my wings."
And then—
The night returned to silence.
.
.
.
Golden light streamed through the wooden corridors of the Hyuga estate, casting long shadows against polished floors. The compound was already alive with quiet activity—servants moving with practiced efficiency, the distant sound of sparring echoing from the training grounds.
Akai moved through the halls at an easy pace, stretching his arms above his head in a show of lazy satisfaction. His gaze flicked forward.
There he was.
Elder Takahiro stood near the engawa, cup in hand, the steam from his tea curling in the morning air. His expression, as always, was one of a man who had long since exhausted his patience for anything remotely resembling nonsense.
Akai approached, hands neatly tucked into his sleeves, posture a little too straight.
"Good morning, Elder Takahiro," he greeted, voice smooth, perfectly polite.
Takahiro's eye twitched.
Suspicious.
Akai never greeted anyone politely unless there was an ulterior motive. And sure enough—
"Takahiro-sama... about my allowance—"
THWACK.
The smack landed with the precision of a man who had done this many times before. A solid, practiced motion.
Akai blinked, tilting his head slightly. Huh. It didn't hurt as much anymore. He was definitely building a tolerance.
"Greedy brat," Takahiro grumbled, turning back to his tea without another word.
Akai sighed, rubbing his head absently. Well, it had been worth a try.
The Passing Days
Time settled into an easy rhythm.
Morning training.
Watching over Naruto under the pretense of training him.
Dinner at the Hyuga estate.
And, of course—his midnight hunts.
Everything was improving.
His body felt stronger. His movements sharper. The hunger? Manageable. And Naruto—
Naruto was finally standing on water.
The boy's chakra control had bloomed under Akai's quiet manipulations. Not that Naruto had any idea he was being used as a research subject, but that was beside the point.
Things were progressing smoothly.
Until—
Night cloaked the Hyuga compound, the air crisp with the quiet hum of unseen things.
Akai slipped through the corridors like a shadow, the world unfolding in layers through his Byakugan. Curses lurked in their usual corners, clinging to the forgotten spaces where human presence had left its mark.
His gaze flicked ahead.
The training hall.
A breeding ground for spirits.
It made sense—so many people passed through here. Main house heirs. Branch family members on borrowed time. The walls had absorbed generations of sweat, frustration, and ambition.
Where there were people, there were curses.
But tonight—
Something was different.
The usual eerie crawl of cursed energy was absent. The air, instead of humming with unseen whispers, was still.
And in the center of the hall, standing with the weight of something inevitable—
A figure.
Human.
Old.
Grumpy.
Akai recognized him instantly.
Genzou.
The air thickened, pressing in with a quiet, suffocating cold. It wasn't just the chill of night—it was the kind that settled deep in the bones, silent yet stifling, like the moment before a storm.
Akai felt it immediately.
His expression didn't change, but his muscles coiled beneath his skin, bracing for something unseen. His senses sharpened, drinking in the stillness.
A test? A threat? Something worse?
Yet when he spoke, his voice was measured. Polite.
"Elder Genzou."
No response.
Genzou didn't move. Didn't blink. He simply stood there, arms crossed, his white eyes fixed on Akai with the weight of something heavy. Something deliberate.
Then, without preamble—
"What have you done to the Kyuubi's jinchūriki?"
Akai stilled.
For half a second, his thoughts raced.
Jinchūriki? The word was unfamiliar, but its meaning could be guessed. There was only one person this could be about.
Naruto.
Slowly, deliberately, Akai met Genzou's gaze.
His mind sifted through possibilities—was this a trap? A test? The Hokage's ANBU had been watching him for some time now. Even at dinner. But why would Genzou care about that?
His expression remained unreadable.
"What are you talking about?"
The words were easy. Light. Almost lazy.
It was the truth—he didn't know what a jinchūriki was. But truth had never been the thing that mattered most.
Genzou didn't waver.
The darkness in his white eyes did not fade. It only deepened.
Like a shadow stretching in the absence of light, it clung to him, silent, unshaken.
And then—he spoke.
But his words were not for Akai.
They were not an explanation, not a lesson meant to educate.
They were a recollection. A remembering. As if Akai already knew. As if he were merely filling in the gaps of something inevitable.
"A jinchūriki is a vessel. A prison."
The words were low, rough, carrying the weight of something old and unresolved.
"Long ago, the Kyuubi tore through this village, leaving behind ruin and corpses. But it wasn't without cause. It wasn't just a beast's rampage."
His fists clenched behind his sleeves.
"There was a perpetrator."
Akai said nothing.
The information was new, yet unsurprising. He had always assumed the Kyuubi's attack hadn't been a mere disaster—it had been set off.
But what caught his attention was what came next.
"The Tailed Beasts have been scattered across the Elemental Nations. Each village holds one, controls one. And for Konoha, it is the Kyuubi."
Controls?
"A jinchūriki is chosen to bear the burden, to keep the beast contained... and to wield its power."
That made sense. If a vessel was needed, it meant the beast was dangerous even to them. It meant they feared it.
Akai opened his mouth, but Genzou wasn't finished.
"There are only two ways to truly control a Tailed Beast."
Akai tilted his head slightly.
Genzou's white eyes darkened.
"The First Hokage's Wood Style."
Expected. The history books spoke of the First's chakra, of his unique ability to suppress the Biju.
But what Genzou said next made Akai's brow furrow.
"And the eyes of that spiteful clan of yours."
Akai blinked.
"Of yours?"
The phrasing was strange. But before he could think too deeply about it, his gaze flickered downward, catching his own reflection in the polished wood floor.
Byakugan in one eye.
The other—
A permanent, unchanging red.
The Sharingan.
At least, that's what it was supposed to be.
No tomoe. No evolution. Just crimson. A color that had always set him apart, always made him something other among the Hyuga.
And suddenly—
That dream resurfaced.
The night his tenketsu had been forced open.
The night everything changed.
The dream where someone had asked—
"What happens if a Hyuga and an Uchiha have a child?"
Akai exhaled slowly.
Then, with the same practiced ease as before, he looked up, voice casual, almost lazy—
"Are you talking about the Uchiha?"
There was no hesitation. No feigned ignorance.
Genzou wanted to be cryptic.
Akai would get straight to the point.
For a moment, Genzou didn't react.
Then—
"So you know."
Simple words. But the weight behind them was suffocating.
The air thickened.
A wave of bloodlust crashed down, pressing against Akai's skin like unseen hands clawing at his throat. His breath hitched—just slightly—before instinct took over.
Subtraction activated.
His cursed energy flared, adjusting to the overwhelming hostility, balancing the oppressive force before it could drown him.
His Byakugan sharpened. Veins tensed around his eye.
Genzou's chakra spiked.
And then—
He moved.
Akai reacted instantly, shifting his weight in a fluid retreat. The elder's strike sliced through the air where his ribs had been a fraction of a second before.
Fast.
Faster than he expected.
He barely parried, a flicker of cursed energy-enhanced movement letting him slip just outside the range of a second blow. But Genzou was relentless.
Flawless. Calculated.
His attacks came with the precision of decades—Byakugan sharp, leaving no blind spots, no wasted motion. The Gentle Fist lashed out, every strike aimed to cripple, to dismantle.
Akai evaded by instinct.
Yet despite seeing the attacks coming—despite knowing exactly where they would land—his body lagged. Sluggish. Too slow.
His subtraction flared.
A burst of raw force detonated mid-dodge, sending a shockwave between them, disrupting Genzou's rhythm for a single breath. Floorboards groaned beneath their feet.
But it wasn't enough.
"You don't fight like a Hyuga."
Genzou's voice was sharp. Disgusted.
"You flail. You run. You throw those foul things into the air like a desperate beast."
Another strike. Akai barely caught it, cursed energy flaring in retaliation, canceling out the chakra flow meant to lock his tenketsu. But his counters were sloppy. Instinct over form.
Genzou pressed forward.
He wasn't holding back. Not even a little.
Each strike forced Akai further onto the defensive, his stamina bleeding away with every evasion. He considered blocking the elder's tenketsu—but no. That wouldn't be enough. He had only learned how to disrupt chakra flow, not shut it down permanently. Against a master, that was useless.
He needed something else.
Unpredictability.
His movements shifted. No patterns. No set rhythm. Ducking, twisting, limbs infused with cursed energy, his attacks became erratic, raw, vicious—strikes meant to hurt, not disable.
Not enough.
His body was breaking down, fatigue gnawing at the edges of his control. Even with reversed cursed energy keeping him from collapsing, he could feel it—his limit approaching.
One option left.
With a flicker of movement, his fingers found the kunai hidden in his sleeve.
He threw them.
A mistake.
The moment the kunai left his fingers, Genzou reacted. The elder's stance shifted, and then—
A violent Rotation.
A dome of swirling chakra expanded outward, repelling everything in its vicinity with overwhelming force. Akai had no time to adjust—his own kunai were thrown back at him with just as much force as he had hurled them.
Pain. Searing, sharp pain as the blades cut across his arms, his torso. But one strike was different. One kunai slashed across his head, severing something.
A sound—soft, wet. Something falling to the floor.
His ear.
Akai screamed. The pain was unbearable, like fire spreading through his skull. He clutched his head, breath ragged, memories flashing—
The same pain. Back then, when his body had been torn apart, when he had healed without knowing how. The moment his heart defect had begun to close.
It had been multiplication all along.
The thought barely registered before his body reacted. Reversed cursed energy surged, forcefully repairing what was lost. The bloodied kunai embedded in his skin were pushed out, clattering onto the floor as the wounds sealed themselves.
The sight of it—of Akai's body healing itself so unnaturally—only fueled Genzou's rage.
The elder moved before Akai could even react. A blur. A grip.
"I really don't know how you've done it... But, "
A hand closed around his throat.
Akai choked, struggling for breath. His nails dug into the elder's wrist, but Genzou's grip was like iron.
"A Hyuga who took the Kyuubi's chakra for himself," Genzou growled, "just so he can get stronger—"
Akai gasped, legs kicking uselessly against the floor.
"—is not a Hyuga."
His vision blurred. The elder's voice came through, sharp and absolute.
"Until you fight like a Hyuga, you shall receive your punishment."
That was the true weight of the misunderstanding.
Akai's fingers clawed desperately at Genzou's wrist, nails digging into skin, his body jerking in futile struggle.
The suffocating grip on his throat was unrelenting, his lungs burning as he gasped for a breath that wouldn't come. His vision blurred, darkness creeping in at the edges, but—
Then, it happened again.
That trance.
The haze of death faded, his mind sharpening to an unnatural focus. His Byakugan pulsed, veins pressing against his skin as every sensation, every detail of the world around him became painfully clear. But something was different.
His entire chakra network flooded—not with just chakra, but cursed energy, dual subtraction unraveling within him.
It wasn't just in his Byakugan, nor just in his cursed eye. It was everywhere, coursing through his body like fire and ice at once.
He needed his body to react as fast as his mind perceived. Chakra-based dual subtraction.
His body moved.
His hands, though still slower than the heightened perception of his red eye, became precise. Precise enough.
A single point. That was all he needed.
His fingers pressed into a tenketsu on Genzou's hand.
The elder's Byakugan flared in shock. His grip loosened—just enough.
Akai wrenched free, stumbling backward, coughing violently as air flooded his lungs.
Genzou took a step back as well, flexing his fingers, his sharp eyes watching the boy with newfound scrutiny. Then—he smiled.
It wasn't a kind smile. It was expectation. A challenge.
But Akai didn't care.
His body moved again.
Genzou had barely finished his backward step before Akai closed the distance.
His movements carried no formal stance, yet everything in his vision shifted. The world bent around him, unseen trigrams carving themselves into the compound floor. Not just beneath him—everywhere.
His chakra, flared by dual subtraction, pulsed outward, expanding his awareness to every detail within the compound.
His Byakugan painted the world in crystal clarity, his cursed eye painting it in raw instinct.
There was no hesitation.
The first strike.
Blocked—just barely. Genzou's eyes widened slightly, caught off guard by the sudden shift in Akai's approach.
The second.
The third.
Faster, stronger. He recognized it.
The Eight Trigrams.
Genzou's Byakugan saw only chakra. It did not detect the red energy twisting within it.
The cursed energy had subtracted from the chakra and, in doing so, increased it instead. Like a positive number being subtracted by a negative—turning the loss into an even greater gain.
Akai struck again.
16 palms.
32 palms.
The elder's defenses wavered, his blocks slightly slower, his steps slightly more forceful as he adjusted.
Then—
64.
Akai's final strike shot forward, but—
Blocked.
Genzou's palm caught it.
He had deflected most, blocked some, but undeniable damage had slipped through. He had taken the internal blows.
Still, Genzou smiled.
Finally.
Finally, you fight like a true Hyuga.
He didn't say it outright, but Akai could feel it in the elder's expression, in the way his body relaxed ever so slightly.
Akai exhaled sharply, his stance barely holding.
Then Genzou simply stated—
"There is no need for you to join the morning training now."
A verdict. A declaration.
And just like that, the fight was over.
It wasn't rational.
None of it was.
Genzou had never needed a real reason to antagonize him, to monitor him, to beat him down. It was just the way he was—stuck in the traditions of the old.
Would he not confront him and suddenly force him into a fight had Akai never shown that misunderstood Kyuubi's Chakra?
This whole time, it looked he the old man was just trying to test him. But Akai found it weird.
Genzou exhaled sharply through his nose, his posture relaxing as if the fight had drained out of him. Without another word, he turned on his heel and began to walk past Akai, his intent clear—he was leaving.
No apologies. No explanations.
As if what had just happened was nothing.
As if beating Akai to the ground was simply part of the lesson.
As if this entire thing was some ordinary clan matter that he could just walk away from.
Akai watched him take another step forward, his chest rising and falling with uneven breaths. His body ached, his mind reeled, but none of that mattered.
Because this?
This was bullshit.
His jaw clenched. His fingers twitched. The simmering rage within him boiled over.
And then—
His voice came out low, venomous— "Are you fucking kidding me?"
The sheer malice in his tone made Genzou pause.
Mid-step, his foot hovered for a split second before pressing against the ground. His spine went rigid.
Slowly, he turned his head, his Byakugan flaring as his gaze locked onto Akai.
The boy stood there, bloodied, battered—but still standing. Still defiant.
And the malice in his voice?
It was enough to send a chill down even Genzou's spine.
Then—
The elder scoffed.
"You..." Genzou's fingers flexed at his sides, his Byakugan narrowing. "I told you not to use the Kyuubi's chakra." His tone hardened.
"It seems you still need more correction. That bloodlust... this will teach you what it means to bear your fangs toward the Main House."
His hand formed a seal.
Akai's Cursed Seal.
Akai's gaze flicked toward his forehead. The mark glowed—a faint, sickly green.
That again?
For a split second, a flicker of disgust crossed Akai's face. Genzou was too emotional. Too irrational. It was pathetic.
One second passed.
Two.
Genzou's eyes widened.
Nothing happened.
No pain.
No scream.
Nothing.
Akai's bloodlust remained. His stance never wavered. His cursed energy never faltered.
The elder's brows furrowed.
He didn't know.
He didn't understand that Akai had already solved this.
His trance had led him to a breakthrough.
Just like when he was younger—when he had first heard about his heart defect and threw himself into learning everything about it.
The same frustration that had driven him then was the same frustration that had driven him now.
And his enlightenment?
The Curse Mark's activation.
It had been so simple.
Curse Marks weren't infinite wells of chakra. They didn't hold a limitless reservoir. They simply used the bearer's own chakra to inflict pain, to necrotize the brain and force obedience.
But Akai?
Akai had too little chakra.
So little, in fact, that it wasn't even enough to destroy him.
His Hyuuga blood and Uchiha blood colided. The same reason a new dōjutsu wasn't inherited in the first place. He had simply gained both eyes—one white, one red.
His chakra had always been small. So small that when he'd first tried molding it, it was never enough.
It had taken Dual Subtraction to increase it.
He had researched this for months.
He had written it all down in his journal.
This was why he had embraced the title of 'defect.' Since that very definition went far beyond his heart defect.
But now, the situation had flipped.
A Curse Mark that used the bearer's own chakra to harm them?
Ineffective.
"That won't work."
.
.
.
To be continued.