Splash, splash...
The faucet sprayed cold water into Hinata's cupped hands.
Water foamed and bubbled. She didn't care. She slapped the chill across her face.
The heat in her skull ebbed.
Her panic dulled, and Hinata slowly steadied herself.
She lifted her head.
In the center of the mirror above the sink, a pale girl stared back. Her damp blue hair hung in tangled strands, all trace of the Hyuga heiress's poise gone.
Her face had never held much color. Washed in cold water it looked even whiter, eyes rimmed red, lips bitten blue. She looked downright awful.
A shiver ran through her.
Konome's mere existence sat on her chest like a stone.
She could hardly breathe.
A stolen Byakugan. A body that was not human.
As the clan head's daughter, as the Hyuga's future successor, she should have told the clan everything she had seen. But her softness shackled her.
She knew it was wrong, and still she could not conquer herself.
Hinata hated her own weakness.
Her father's disappointed eyes and Konome's cold face flashed through her mind. Sense and fear clashed until she could not decide anything at all.
Sss sss...
Just as Hinata was drowning in self-reproach, a strange sound drifted up behind her, like something scraping across the floor.
She whirled, alert.
No one was there. The sound was gone.
What...?
She blinked. She had definitely heard it. How had it vanished?
Puzzled, Hinata turned back.
Scrape.
A massive, transparent python bloomed into being right in front of her. Its jaws split wide and clamped over her head.
"Ah... urk!"
Reflex screamed at her to call out.
Her voice never made it past her throat. The water-serpent swallowed her head in a single gulp.
Glug.
Water surged inside the serpent.
The clear body did not block her sight, but the folding, clinging water smothered her voice and her breath. No sound escaped her.
The gaping maw slid down until she was swallowed to the chest.
Coils as thick as pillars wrapped her, locked her arms and legs, and squeezed. The last faint pocket of air in her lungs was forced out by the tightening bands.
"Mmm... mm..."
The muffled groan died in the water.
Hinata's Byakugan bulged. She bucked and twisted.
Pain flared where she was crushed. Her lungs screamed. Her heart spasmed.
Blood rushed to her head.
The fear of dying peaked.
Crack...
Something creaked above.
Hinata dragged her gaze up, overfilled veins pulsing in her pale eyes, terror stark.
A web hung there.
A transparent spiderweb spanned the ceiling to the walls.
At its center crouched a blindfolded, eight-limbed thing. Four chitin-bright appendages sprouted from its waist, human limbs bent backward into wrong angles that made Hinata's muscles go limp just to look.
The lovely face she knew had split into a red grin.
Nested maws yawned, teeth crossing in dense ranks.
Drip. Drip.
Tears burst from Hinata's eyes.
Her legs shook as if shocked, and the bottoms of her pants went dark. A sour smell crept through the tiled room.
Konome crept down from the web.
Hinata's features crumpled into raw horror. She looked on the verge of fainting.
Konome's gaze flicked.
The water python tightened at once, muscles swelling as it cinched Hinata's body.
Agony shot through limbs and ribs. Hinata tried to scream, but the water choking her mouth let no sound out. She could not even faint.
She could only stare up at the creature on the ceiling and plead without a voice.
Clack.
Konome's jaws opened. The remade bones in her throat rasped with a metal-on-metal scrape.
"Do not make a sound. If anyone comes, I will eat you."
"Mmm!"
Pinned in the serpent, Hinata nodded over and over, Byakugan brimming with tears and entreaty.
Konome grinned, and the python parted just enough to let Hinata breathe.
"Haa... kh, kh... please, do not eat me..."
She begged between ragged breaths, too frightened to use the air she'd been given.
Tears ran unchecked. Her mind frayed to threads.
Konome was satisfied with the obedience.
The makeup of this nightmare had not been wasted. She didn't watch many horror films in her last life, but every scene she did remember had been poured into this. She even scared herself a little. What chance did timid Hinata have?
Byakugan flared.
Konome swept the space beyond the restroom. She had to end this before anyone came.
"No extra chatter. I ask, you answer."
"Mmm."
Hinata squeezed her eyes shut. A tiny whine escaped her throat. She would obey anything if it kept those teeth away.
"When did you find out?"
"That day, when you fought Kazama Etsu. I did not mean to."
"Have you told anyone?"
"No."
Konome twisted her head a full circle. Cloth-covered eyes met Hinata's pale ones.
"You are lying."
"No. I am not lying. I have not told anyone, I swear." Hinata opened her eyes to explain and yelped at the upside-down head in front of her. Face crumpling, she squeezed them shut again.
"Why did you not tell?"
"I... I was afraid. I was so afraid. Please, I promise I will never tell anyone. Do not eat me..."
She sobbed in a whisper, tears falling in strings.
Konome felt no pity.
If Hinata's status didn't make the blowback impossible to hide, the python would already be crushing her to a pulp and her clean, clan-pure eyes would be harvested.
Alive, Hinata could still be useful.
"Open your mouth."
Hinata obeyed before she could think.
Her mind had shut down under the fear.
Crack.
Konome raised a finger. A segment of finger bone pushed out through living flesh.
"Swallow it."
"W... what is that?"
The bloody sliver in Konome's hand made Hinata's heart thud even harder.
"I said swallow."
Gulp.
Hinata gulped the bone down, face twisting with nausea.
"Urk..."
The hard shard scraped her throat. She retched dryly.
"From now on, you are my slave.
"If you betray me, your bones will grow out from inside you. Believe me. The picture will be very beautiful."
Konome lifted her hand.
The empty fingertip sprouted bone, filling and smoothing in a heartbeat like a sausage fed into its casing.
"I... I will never."
Hinata shook her head so fast it blurred.
Just imagining bone forcing through her own flesh made her shake all over. Any thought of defying Konome died.
"Your first task."
Hinata swallowed and waited, head tipped up, barely breathing.
"Teach me your clan's Eight Trigrams Gentle Fist."
"I... I cannot."
Her lips trembled.
Leaking the main family's secret arts to an outsider was an unthinkable crime.
"Then do you want to die?"
"Uu..."
Tears slid down one by one. She stood on a cliff edge with nowhere to step.
Konome had no desire to drive her to death.
Even a rabbit will bite when cornered.
A ninja more so.
No matter how timid, everyone has a line that cannot be crossed.
"If you teach me the Eight Trigrams forms, I will not come for you again. When I finish learning, I will take that bone out of you. Our threads will be cut.
"No one will know who leaked the techniques. You will always be the Hyuga clan's young lady."
Konome's voice softened, coaxing.
A devil's whisper in the ear.
The bone was theater. The secret was the point.
Once Hinata agreed, Konome would hold that secret for life.
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