What could I do in a situation like this? What could I say? I did the only thing I could think of. I clung to her as hard as she clung to me. Words left my mouth: sweet nonsense and reassurances. I don’t know if that helped or not.

  At some point, Ino stopped crying, just sniffling occasionally.

  Gently, I pulled her down with me until we lay on our backs, looking at the starry sky. I pointed at a cluster of stars. “What do you think it’s called?”

  I’d never been one for astronomy — or was it astrology? — in the before. Some girls in my class really bought into that sort of stuff, with horoscopes, birth charts, zodiac signs, and planetary retrogrades. That never appealed to me. I could never point out a cluster of stars and understand how those unrelated points of light out there could depict a scorpion of all things. I could never see it, not even when people overlaid the scorpion image above the constellation to illustrate it.

  Ino followed my finger, then looked back at me. That cluster of stars, if I squinted hard enough, looked almost like a dumb brat smiling.

  “I’m naming it Sunshine Brat,” I declared.

  Ino looked from me to the star cluster, eyes narrowing. Then she let out the cutest of snorts and started giggling.

  Encouraged by her reaction, I pointed to another cluster. Maybe it was a placebo, or perhaps I had just never paid attention, but the next cluster I didn’t even need to overthink to see what it reminded me of.

  “And that one is Emo—Dramasuke,” I almost slipped and said Emosuke, but changed it midway.

  Ino giggled harder. She waved her hand about, pointing at random. “And what about those?” She wasn’t even looking at the stars.

  I squinted, trying to find what it reminded me of. Then it hit me. I knew what that one was. “The Bushy Brow Nebula,” I whispered in awe.

  Ino started laughing, then pointed in another direction at random.

  That went on for a few more minutes, until Ino joined in the fun too, instead of just having me name all the constellations. It was nice to see her smile when she looked so lost just a few minutes before.

  Closer to morning, when the sky started to brighten, Ino pulled the forehead protector she’d been holding the entire night and pushed it toward me. “Here, this is yours.”

  I looked at the protector. A bit battered up, there were a few spots of dried blood on it. I pushed it back toward Ino. “Keep it? But maybe… wash away the blood?”

  Ino pressed her face against my shoulder, clutching the forehead protector tight again. For a moment, I thought she was going to cry, but when she pulled away, her eyes were dry.

  “Do you want to talk?” I asked softly.

  Ino nestled against me again and shook her head with closed eyes.

  “It was a nightmare, and when I woke up, I wasn’t sure if it was all a dream or not.” She sniffled. “I couldn’t tell if the you sleeping by my side was real or not.”

  I pulled her closer to me. There were a lot of things I wanted to say, promises I wanted to make, but in the end, the only words that left my mouth were a whisper: “I’m sorry.”

  After that night, I alternated between sleeping at my apartment and sleeping over at Ino’s. By this point, I think Inoichi expected me to stay there every night or something, because whenever I didn’t show up, he always commented when I did.

  On more mundane news, I tried to appease my new cat overlord. Mister Tama wasn’t stalking me anymore. Now, he was always around, lazing about like the world belonged to him. Often mewling to get my attention, but getting angry when I tried to pet him.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Cats could be such cruel taskmasters.

  As for the bakery, the construction continued, and the place now looked like a lovely coffee shop. It was nowhere near done yet. Most of the details I wanted would take specialized work to do, and I think it would take a few weeks until everything was as I wanted it to be.

  My other side project, how to confront the Hyuga clan, hit a snag, or maybe that was the wrong term. I had sent a message to the Hokage to see if he could help. Good man Shisui could, in fact, help. I just wasn’t sure if I could afford his help in this case.

  Finding out what happened to Mom had nothing to do with village politics. Arguably, it was an internal clan affair, and if Shisui butted in on my behalf, that was the same thing as shouting to everyone I was tying my knots with the Uchiha clan.

  Or so that was what he explained to me.

  And no, Shisui wasn’t holding over my head a marriage proposal or adoption or something. He just wanted me to know what would happen if I called for his help in such personal matters. Not just gossip and rumormongers, but the kind of clan disputes that could turn into real conflict.

  And so, I had three options for how to deal with this.

  One, I could go nuclear. Revisit my plan to put a barrier around the whole compound and hold the clan hostage until they let me see Mom. Not that I think the Hokage would let me do that. It was basically terrorism at that point.

  Two, I could try to infiltrate the place. I wasn’t a stealth specialist, and trying to infiltrate a place where every ninja could see through walls and chakra veins was borderline impossible.

  Or option three, the one I really didn’t want to consider. Picking a fight against the entire clan was more appealing.

  I could just… knock on their door and ask for an audience.

  A knock at the apartment door took me out of my contemplation. I cast my chakra senses about, and on the other side, it was only that smallest bundle of chakra that usually meant a normal kid, not someone practicing to be a ninja.

  I created one of the black kunai and left it in my bedroom while grabbing a few of the explosive ones. I kept them out of sight and then pulled the door open a smidge.

  On the other side, there was a brat, smiling brightly at me. He looked about seven or eight, with a runny nose, missing a tooth, and a bag slung over his shoulder. “Hinata-chan?” he asked, once he saw me.

  I relaxed a bit, pulled the door open. “That’s me,” I said.

  The boy nodded, dug into his bag, took an envelope, and handed it over. “For ya!” he said.

  Now curious, I took the correspondence. As soon as I did, the boy turned around and ran away. Not fled or anything, just dashed out and toward another apartment down the corridor. I heard him knocking on their door, too.

  The envelope was white and sealed. There was no name telling who sent it. The only words written outside were beautiful penmanship. To Hinata-chan.

  Now even more curious, I closed the door and opened the correspondence after the standard security check.

  Inside, there was a small white paper.

  Please meet me at training field three.

  The name at the bottom of the paper was Secretary-chan’s name. It made no sense. She never sent me any mail before, and the contents made even less sense. My intrigue senses started tingling like crazy. It had been a while since someone tried to attack me or something. Was this another ploy? Someone pretending to be my friend?

  Or maybe it wasn’t? It had been a few weeks since I last saw Secretary-chan, and the last time she was an enormous mess, crying her eyes out. I needed to check this, but I wasn’t going to be stupid about it.

  I got into my shinobi gear, armed and prepared. With the beacon safely hidden inside the room, I left and took the highway toward the training field. Before I got there, I stopped, created a clone, and sent Decoy-chan to scout the area.

  It didn’t take long before my clone dispersed, and her memories returned to me.

  Sitting on training field three, her clothes marred and hair a mess, was Secretary-chan. Her eyes were puffy, and she looked at least a decade older.

  Worried now, I rushed toward her.

  The prettiest secretary of them all was a mess. My clones’ memories didn’t do justice to her state. Hair unkept, clothes like she hadn’t swapped out of them in weeks. Her face was gaunt, and her eyes lifeless, but she smiled when she saw me, even if it was a brittle, wrong smile.

  I dashed toward her, unsure what had happened, but knowing she needed help.

  And it wasn’t only her appearance that looked wrong. Secretary-chan’s chaka was a mess. I couldn’t really put into words how it felt, but if pressed to describe it, it was like a coating or a layer of something sticky and wrong over a chaotic, shivering pool of chakra. This same coating felt like those bitter, too-controlled chakra I sensed from Danzo’s goons the few times some of them got close to me.

  “I’m glad you came,” Secretary-chan said in a voice that sounded mechanical, lacking any of the warmth I was used to from her. She looked toward the wall that surrounded Konoha. “Please follow, we have to go.”

  I didn’t move or approach. This didn’t feel right. “What’s wrong? Go where?”

  Secretary-chan looked back at me, with tears falling from her eyes, the chakra beneath that bitter coating was even more chaotic. Her smile showed too many teeth and was too wide.

  I took a step back. What the heck was this?

  Secretary-chan’s smile disappeared. A hand went behind her back, and when it came into view again, she held a kunai. “If you don’t, I have to kill you.”